A Postscript to Struck by Stereotype

Property valuation of commercial real estates is often seen as complicated. The actors think that their valuation method is the best and the results of the valuation depend on whom you ask. There are many attributes that have to be given a value and information about these attributes is often difficult to get. A possible explanation for these problems is the decline of the transparency in the Swedish real estate market over the last years. Essential information about commercial real estates is lost because they are traded as companies. This makes it problematic to make optimal valuations. The co-operative apartment market is very different from the commercial real estate market. The transparency is high and the transactions are many. The prices in the co-operative apartment market continue to rise and they are much easier to valuate. The purpose of this thesis is to see if there is a connection between market values in the condominium market and market values for office buildings. If a connection is found it may be helpful in the valuation process of office buildings. The first objective is to look at the ratio square meter co-operative apartment prices divided with square meter office building prices. The first part of the thesis is based on analogy and digital literature. Next part will consist of valuations with yield methods of office buildings and observed transactions. The result of this thesis shows no given connection between office and co-operative apartment prices, but the highest residence prices are found in the same areas with highest office prices. The ratio that is mentioned above was not useful for the purpose. The results have shown the difficulties of finding information and valuating real estate.Värderingar av kontorsfastigheter anses ofta komplicerade. Olika aktörer anser sin värderingsmetod som bäst och resultatet av bedömda värden beror på vem du frågar. Det är många parametrar som kan bedömas och ges ett värde, samtidigt som informationen ofta är svår att få tag i. En anledning till problemet skulle kunna vara den minskning av transparens som skett på svenska fastighetsmarknaden under senare år, troligtvis till följd av att allt fler fastigheter ingår i bolagsförvärv. För att kunna göra en optimal värdering av en kontorsfastighet krävs lättillgänglig information om liknande transaktioner. Därför krävs en öppenhet på kontorsmarknaden som i dag försvårats av tidigare nämnda bolagsförvärv. Tittar man istället på bostadsrättsmarknaden är läget annorlunda. Informationen är lättillgänglig och transaktionerna många. Trots att priserna Stockholmsområdet fortsätter att stiga kan man med relativt hög säkerhet värdera en bostadsrätt. Syftet med denna rapport är att undersöka om det finns någon koppling mellan marknadsvärden på bostadsrättsmarknaden och marknadsvärden kontorsmarknaden. Om denna koppling finns, kan den vara till hjälp vid värdering av kontorsfastigheter. Målet är först och främst att se om kvoten, bostadrättspris dividerat med kontorspris, är användbar. Rapportens första del bygger på analog och digital litteratur. Den andra delen består av värderingar med direktavkastningsmetoden och jämförelser som gjorts med hjälp av aktuella transaktioner och riktvärden. Resultatet visar inget självklart samband mellan priser på bostadsrätter och kontor, men de högsta kontorspriserna återfinns i områden med högst bostadspriser. Det har inte gått att styrka användningen av ovan nämnda kvot. Rapporten har framförallt resulterat i en bekräftelse av de svårigheter informationssökning och värdering av kontor innebär

Predicting malting barley protein concentration

The preferred grain protein concentration (CP) of malting barley is 10.5-11.0%, but 9.5-11.5% is acceptable. It is a challenge for farmers to achieve this target with crops grown in heterogeneous fields and exposed to fluctuating weather conditions. There are also economic and environmental reasons to balance the supply of nutrients to plant requirements. This forms the basis for precision agriculture, where barley has received limited attention. The key factor for precision agriculture in malting barley is the ability to predict CP from early observations of the crop so as to control a second fertiliser application. This thesis investigates the possibility of predicting malting barley grain CP at an early stage of development and of using a second fertilisation application during growth for total nitrogen (N) adjustment. Three experiments were conducted. The first consisted of eleven field trials (1992-1994) and was used to compare broadcasting/harrowing and combi-drilling for applying full-rate fertiliser at sowing using two types of fertilisers; pure N and one also containing phosphorus (NP). The second experiment consisted of sixteen fertiliser field trials (2001-2003) and was used to examine the possibility of postponing the decision on total N. The third consisted of three evenly fertilised fields (2002-2004). In experiments 2 and 3, canopy reflectance was measured at developmental stages BBCH 32, 45 and 69. Soil macronutrients, organic matter and mechanical composition were analysed in all ex-periments. Malting barley yield was higher when fertiliser was combi-drilled into the soil and when NP fertiliser was used. Grain CP was predicted in the field (R2adj = 0.73) from soil electrical conductivity (SECa), the canopy reflection-based vegetation index (VI) TCARI/OSAVI estimated at BBCH 32 and the sum of daily maximum temperatures during anthesis and grain filling (STS). In the fertilisation trials, CP was predicted (R2adj = 0.83) by sowing day number and the VI TCARI evaluated together with solar angle at measurement. Grain yield was independent, and grain CP almost independent, of whether all fertiliser was applied at sowing or divided between sowing and BBCH 32

The Science of Philosophy: Discourse and Deception in Plato’s Sophist

At 252e1 to 253c9 in Plato’s Sophist, the Eleatic Visitor explains why philosophy is a science. Like the art of grammar, philosophical knowledge corresponds to a generic structure of discrete kinds and is acquired by systematic analysis of how these kinds intermingle. In the literature, the Visitor’s science is either understood as an expression of a mature and authentic platonic metaphysics, or as a sophisticated illusion staged to illustrate the seductive lure of sophistic deception. By showing how the Visitor’s account of the science of philosophy is just as comprehensive, phantasmatic and self-concealing as the art of sophistry identified at the dialogue’s outset, this paper argues in favor of the latter view

Two-scale convergence in thin domains with locally periodic rapidly oscillating boundary

The aim of this paper is to adapt the notion of two-scale convergence in $L^p$ to the case of a measure converging to a singular one. We present a specific case when a thin cylinder with locally periodic rapidly oscillating boundary shrinks to a segment, and the corresponding measure charging the cylinder converges to a one-dimensional Lebegues measure of an interval. The method is then applied to the asymptotic analysis of linear elliptic operators with locally periodic coefficients in a thin cylinder with locally periodic rapidly varying thickness.Comment: 13 pages, 1 figur

Introduction

Guided by the bold ambition to reexamine the nature of philosophy, questions about the foundations and origins of Plato’s dialogues have in recent years gained a new and important momentum. In the wake of the seminal work of Andrea Nightingale and especially her book Genres in Dialogue from 1995, Plato’s texts have come to be reconsidered in terms of their compositional and intergeneric fabric. Supplementing important research on the argumentative structures of the dialogues, it has been argued that Plato’s philosophizing cannot be properly assessed without considering its intellectual debts. By detailed examinations of the practical, generic and textual origins of the dialogues, it has been shown how Plato’s chosen form of philosophical inquiry is deeply influenced by traditional forms of poetry, rhetoric, sophistry, and even medicine..

Dangerous Voices: On Written and Spoken Discourse in Plato’s Protagoras

Plato’s Protagoras contains, among other things, three short but puzzling remarks on the media of philosophy. First, at 328e5–329b1, Plato makes Socrates worry that long speeches, just like books, are deceptive, because they operate in a discursive mode void of questions and answers. Second, at 347c3–348a2, Socrates argues that discussion of poetry is a presumptuous affair, because, the poems’ message, just like the message of any written text, cannot be properly examined if the author is not present. Third, at 360e6–361d6, it becomes clear that even if the conversation between Socrates and Protagoras was conducted by means of short questions and answers, this spoken mode of discourse is problematic too, because it ended up distracting the inquiry from its proper course. As this paper 2 sets out to argue, Plato does not only make Socrates articulate these worries to exhibit the hazards of discursive commodifi cation. In line with Socrates’ warning to the young Hippocrates of the dangers of sophistic rhetoric, and the sophists’ practice of trading in teachings, they are also meant to problematize the thin line between philosophical and sophistical practice. By examining these worries in the light of how the three relevant modes of discourse are exemplifi ed in the dialogue, this paper aims to isolate and clarify the reasons behind them in terms of deceit, presumptuousness and distraction; and to argue that these reasons cast doubts on the common assumption that the dialogue’s primary aim is to show how sophistical rhetoric must succumb to Socratic dialectic

Danger and Disability: The Female Body of Miniature in Neo-Victorian Fiction

Neo-Victorian reimaginations of the freak simultanously repeat and reject the binaries of normalcy and deviance to criticise the exploitative and objectifying conventions of nineteenth-century enfreakment practices. This fluctuation between sameness and difference calls for new critical approaches to freak-show characters that relocate the disabled body outside rigid frames of binary thinking. By approaching the freak subject through the lens of Gilles Deleuze’s difference and repetition, I aim to further the debate on the disabled subject beyond the limits of a social constructivist approach by situating the neo-Victorian body in a constant process of becoming. To this end, I explore Deleuze’s notion of “difference and repetition” as an apt critical tool to analyse neo-Victorian repetitions of the Victorian freak show. In Difference and Repetition (1968), the philosopher moves the concept of identity beyond the positive and the negative, to explore the relationship between identity and difference, identity and repetition, arguing that difference “must be understood in the pronominal; we must find the Self of repetition, the singularity within that which repeats” (2014: 28). Taking this as starting point, I set out to explore how the disabled body emerges positively and productively within the shifts and flows of enfreakment practises in neo-Victorian literature. The novel under analysis is Melanie Benjamin’s The Autobiography of Mrs. Tom Thumb (2011), and I will explore the subjective experience and desire of Lavinia Warren (or Minnie) with a special interest in the singularities of both the presentation of her as a miniature woman and her subjective experience of life as a little person. I hope to demonstrate how the novel mirrors contemporary concerns regarding sexuality and disability in conjunction, exploring how the sexualised disabled woman is embedded within discourses of danger.Universidad de Málaga. Campus de Excelencia Internacional Andalucía Tech

The somatechnics of enfreakment: literary articulations of the body

Lately, the Victorian freak show has attracted scholarly and literary attention alike. New critical approaches to the freak show set the European exhibition of human corporeal deviance apart from the American side show as popularized by P. T. Barnum. Topics ranging from, the social context of freakery (Tromp et al. 2008) and the cultural history of enfreakment (Kérchy, Zittlau et al. 2012), to the significance of disability in Victorian literature (Craton 2009) and the spectacle of deformity (Durbach 2009) have been addressed by scholars who are concerned with the ethics of embodied difference. In the twenty-first century, the Victorian world of spectacle has emerged as a separate ramification within neo-Victorian literature—this densely visual narrative mode sets up an apt socio-historical frame to delve into the social construction of embodied subjectivities. The present paper explores neo-Victorian enfreakment through the lens of somatechnics reading “[e]mbodiment as the incarnation or materialisation of historically and culturally specific discourses and practises” (Sullivan and Murray, 3). My principal aim is to examine the epistemological speculation of (un)intelligible corporeality by analysing the intersection of gender and ideology on the body. By delving into neo-Victorian reinventions of the divergent body, I seek to address the formation and representation of the complexities of the embodied self. With this objective in mind, I will analyse how the neo-Victorian mode interlocks the Victorian freak-show discourse with the reader perspective to bring subjective responses to corporeality, humanity and normativity to the forefront, and in doing so, turns an exploitative space as the freak show into a site of self-reliance, self-expression and even fulfilment.Universidad de Málaga. Campus de Excelencia Internacional Andalucía Tec