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Yes / We develop an analytical real-option solution to the after-tax optimal timing boundary for a replaceable asset whose operating cost and salvage value deteriorate stochastically. We construct a general replacement model, from which seven other particular models can be derived, along with deterministic versions. We show that the presence of salvage value and tax depreciation significantly lowers the operating cost threshold that justifies (and thus hastens) replacement. Although operating cost volatility increases defer replacement, increases in the salvage value volatility hasten replacement, albeit modestly, while increases in the correlation between costs and salvage value defer replacement. Reducing the tax rate or depreciation lifetime, or allowing an investment tax credit, yield mixed results. These results are also compared with those of less complete models, and deterministic versions, showing that failure to consider several stochastic variables and taxation in the replacement process may lead to sub-optimal decisions.

Thesis (MPhil)--Stellenbosch University, 2012. / ENGLISH ABSTRACT: The definition and function of Socratic irony has been much disputed in contemporary scholarship. This thesis identifies some methodological difficulties in interpreting and defining Socratic irony and attempts to narrow the field of interpretation in order to facilitate the formulation of a new definition of the concept. With reference to the primary texts of Plato, Xenophon and Aristophanes, as well as some fragments, the different types of irony as employed by Socrates are identified as verbal, in the form of self-deprecation and knowledge disavowal, and physical. A review of late 18th, 19th and 20th century philosophical scholarship on the topic is done in order to gain a better understanding of the perceived functions of Socratic irony. On the basis of this, as well as the opinions of prominent classical scholars, it is argued that the function of Socratic irony in its verbal form is primarily heuristic, while the physical form is a political mode of being designed to criticise 5th-century Athenian politics. Socratic irony is then redefined to allow for these forms and functions, which are shown to be much more complex than previously thought. / AFRIKAANSE OPSOMMING: Daar word baie gedebatteer oor die definisie en funksie van die Sokratiese ironie in die onlangse navorsing. Hierdie tesis identifiseer sommige metodologiese probleme in die interpretasie en die definisie van Sokratiese ironie en poog om die veld van interpretasie te beperk ten einde die formulering van 'n nuwe definisie van die begrip te fasiliteer. Met verwysing na die primêre tekste van Plato, Xenophon en Aristophanes, asook 'n paar fragmente, word die verskillende vorme van ironie soos deur Sokrates gebruik, geïdentifiseer as verbaal, in die vorm van self-afkeuring en ontkenning van kennis, en fisies. ʼn Oorsig van die laat 18de-, 19de- en 20ste-eeuse filosofiese navorsing is gegee ten einde 'n beter begrip te verkry van die waargenome funksies van Sokratiese ironie. Op grond hiervan, asook die menings van vooraanstaande klassici, word aangevoer dat die funksie van die Sokratiese ironie in sy verbale vorm hoofsaaklik heuristies is, terwyl die fisiese vorm 'n politieke bestaanswyse is, met die doel om die 5de-eeuse Atheense politiek te kritiseer. Teen hierdie agtergrond word Sokratiese ironie dan herdefinieer om voorsiening te maak vir bogenoemde vorme en funksies wat blyk baie meer kompleks te wees as wat voorheen gemeen is.

Nearly one in five American adults are currently experiencing stress and anxiety throughout their daily lives. While there are countless techniques by which to cope with stress and anxiety, evidence suggests that consumption of humorous adult animated television is a popular coping mechanism. This thesis posits the reasons for the success of these popular adult animated television series used for stress coping is the utilization of self-deprecating humor and the relatable narratives stemmed from such humor. To explore the possible similarities of self-deprecating humor within these television series, this qualitative content analysis examined randomly selected episodes from ten of the most popular adult animated television series and coded for different aspects of the utilization of self-deprecating humor. Results from this study found that the adult animated data selected and analyzed all utilize self-deprecating humor, with narratives mainly surrounding self-worth and personal, familial, and cultural stressors. These narratives may lend themselves to aid in the stress coping process through the relation the audiences feel towards these stressors. Acknowledging these specific narratives within television shows that are possibly helpful in coping with mental afflictions and stress could aid in creating more beneficial media narratives for future generations to come. / Media Studies & Production

Submitted by Adriana Alves Rodrigues (aalves@espm.br) on 2017-11-27T14:56:15Z No. of bitstreams: 1 BARBARA CONTE.pdf: 5513593 bytes, checksum: a80e52230fea102ad0f64a185e76317a (MD5) / Approved for entry into archive by Adriana Alves Rodrigues (aalves@espm.br) on 2017-11-27T14:56:40Z (GMT) No. of bitstreams: 1 BARBARA CONTE.pdf: 5513593 bytes, checksum: a80e52230fea102ad0f64a185e76317a (MD5) / Approved for entry into archive by Ana Cristina Ropero (ana@espm.br) on 2017-12-01T11:21:52Z (GMT) No. of bitstreams: 1 BARBARA CONTE.pdf: 5513593 bytes, checksum: a80e52230fea102ad0f64a185e76317a (MD5) / Made available in DSpace on 2017-12-01T11:23:41Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 BARBARA CONTE.pdf: 5513593 bytes, checksum: a80e52230fea102ad0f64a185e76317a (MD5) Previous issue date: 2017-04-27 / One of the great problems of Brazil's best-selling book lists is the fact that it is not possible to have an overview of national authors, which happens because of the strong presence of foreign authors. The main purpose of this dissertation is to investigate whether self-deprecation causes prejudice with books of national authors, through four specific objectives: 1) To determine if selfdepreciation precedes the preference for foreign products (xenocentrism); 2) Check if the author's fame precedes the prejudice, 3) Investigate if the author's nationality precedes the prejudice, 4) Investigate if self-deprecation precedes the preference for famous authors. To do so, a causal quantitative research has been developed, consisting of eight independent experiments, in which four hypotheses have been tested with the participation of 254 respondents. The results suggest that although Brazilians self-describe with more positive than negative adjectives in the section of self-depreciation, the works of foreign authors tend to receive more favorable ratings than those of national authors. It has also been identified that the averages of famous and not famous books, national or foreign, with or without a section of self-deprecation, have not had significant difference, revealing that book genre can exert more influence than the author's fame in the consumer's preference. Autobiography, self-help, and entrepreneurship books have received the most favorable rankings, while "colouring" and religion books have achieved the least favorable ratings. The evaluation of technical-scientific books has been also carried out, so that the respondents would probably buy, whether they were national or foreign works, with slight preference not significant by foreigners. Thus, as contributions, discussion on prejudice in consumer behavior has started, contributing with new theoretical and scientific elements in the respective gap, and has obtained possible data to be used in marketing strategies and editorial product management as well as in techniques to encourage reading in Brazil. / Um dos grandes problemas das listas de livros mais vendidos do Brasil é o fato de não ser possível uma visão geral das obras de autores nacionais, o que acontece por causa da forte presença de autores estrangeiros. O objetivo principal desta dissertação é investigar se a autodepreciação causa preconceito com livros de autores nacionais. Para tanto, foi desenvolvida uma pesquisa quantitativa causal constituída por dois grupos independentes, por meio de modelagem de equações estruturais, análise fatorial exploratória, confirmatória e modelagem; em que foram testadas quatro hipóteses com a participação de 254 respondentes. Os resultados obtidos sugerem que, apesar de os brasileiros se autodescreverem com mais adjetivos positivos do que negativos na seção de autodepreciação, as obras de autores estrangeiros tendem a receber classificações mais favoráveis em relação às de autores nacionais. Também identificou-se que as médias de avaliação dos livros famosos e não-famosos, nacionais ou estrangeiros, com ou sem seção de autodepreciação, não tiveram diferença significativa, revelando que o gênero da obra pode exercer mais influência do que a fama do autor na preferência do consumidor. Os livros de autobiografia, autoajuda e empreendedorismo receberam as classificações mais favoráveis, enquanto os livros “para colorir” e de religião obtiveram as classificações menos favoráveis. A avaliação de livros técnico-científicos também foi realizada, de forma que os respondentes provavelmente comprariam, fossem obras nacionais ou estrangeiras, com leve preferência não significativa pelos estrangeiros. Dessa forma, como contribuição, iniciou-se a discussão do preconceito no comportamento do consumidor, contribuindo com novos elementos teóricos e científicos para preencher a respectiva lacuna; obtiveram-se dados possíveis de serem utilizados em estratégias de marketing e gerenciamento de produto editorial bem como em técnicas de incentivo à leitura no Brasil.

This thesis explores the factors leading to the images of self-deprecation and shame in contemporary Scottish film. It would seem that the causes of these reoccurring motifs may be because the Scottish people are unable to escape from their past and are uneasy about the future of the nation. There is an internal struggle for both Scottish men and women, who try to adhere to their predetermined roles in Scottish culture, but this role leads to violence, alcoholism, and shame. In addition, there is also a fear for the future of the nation that represented in films that feature a connection between children and the creation of life with the death of Scotland's past. This thesis will focus on films created under a recent boom in film production in Scotland beginning in 1994 till the present day.

À la lumière des perspectives critiques sur les théories et les pratiques comptables, « la comptabilité pour la durabilité » a émergé comme une discipline relativement nouvelle. Par rapport aux différents modèles développés dans le cadre de l’idéologie néolibérale, certains modèles alternatifs avec des stratégies « plus fortes » de conservation des capitaux, notamment la « Triple Ligne d’Amortissement » (TLA) (Richard, 2012; Rambaud et Richard, 2013), semblent avoir beaucoup des potentiels de faire quelques changements fondamentaux. Cette thèse est une enquête sur les conditions nécessaires et les résistances possibles rencontrées par la mise en place du modèle TLA. Le secteur agricole de la République populaire de Chine est choisi comme le terrain de recherche en vue d’étudier le contexte institutionnel et historique. L’enquête sur le contexte chinois est effectuée en référence aux théories de l’économie politique institutionnaliste, inspiré par Karl Polanyi (2002[1944]), Mancur Olson (1965), and Chang Ha-Joon (1994, 2002). / In the light of critical perspectives on accounting theories and practices, sustainability accounting (SA) as a relatively new discipline has emerged. Compared to various SA models developed under the mainstream neoliberal ideology, some alternative models with “stronger” capital conservation strategies, notably the “Triple Deprecation Line” (TDL) (Richard, 2012; Rambaud & Richard, 2013), seem to have a lot of potentials to make some fundamental changes. This dissertation is essentially an investigation of necessary conditions and possible resistances faced by the establishment of the TDL model. The agriculture sector of the People’s Republic of China is chosen as the field of research in order to study the institutional environment and historical context in real-world settings. The investigation on the Chinese context is conducted with reference to theories of institutionalist political economy, inspired by Karl Polanyi (2002[1944]), Mancur Olson (1965), and Chang Ha-Joon (1994, 2002).

The notion of change is one of the more pronounced challenges API developers face, since a change to published APIs means a change for its’ consumers. API Versioning is a commonly used strategy to mitigate the risks of changing APIs, however, the strategy introduces a possibility of having practically innumerable number of API versions published at once, all possibly used by different consumers, creating considerable overhead for API developers to manage. API Versioning and API version management are well-researched disciplines. Nevertheless, Yasmin et al. (2020) have identified a research gap in the support for API consumers to made aware of API deprecations in a proactive and automatic fashion. API Versioning in the context of microservices– which the literature seldom addresses– may serve as an interesting solution space for answering the call of Yasmin et al. (2020), due to the architecture’s strong ties to continuous integration– a practice concerned with automatically and proactively ensuring software quality. Concisely, this thesis is set out to answer Yasmin et al.’s (2020) call for research by utilizing the underexplored contextualization of microservices and continuous integration. Using a Design Science Research strategy, this thesis proposes a model detailing how deprecated RESTful web API version usage can be automatically and proactively detected in microservices using continuous integration. The model is subsequently proven to be instantiable via a proof of concept, designed for and situated at a national Swedish bank. Through a series of in-vitro simulations at the bank, the proof of concept is demonstrated to successfully being able to automatically and proactively detect deprecated RESTful web API version usage. An evaluation of the solution shows that the proof of concept– and by extent the model– fulfills the demarcated research objectives of automaticity, proactivity, generality, and autonomy. Thus, the proposed solution is determined to be both novel and useful, successfully answering the call of Yasmin et al. (2020) in the context of microservices and continuous integration.

Det finns lagar som reglerar hur företagen ska upprätta och slutföra sin redovisning och hur redovisningen utvecklas är ett ständigt pågående arbete. Bokföringsnämnden har sedan 2004 arbetat med att ta fram förenklade regler för svenska onoterade företag som benämns K-regelverket och har som syfte att underlätta för företagen i sin redovisning. Studien fokuserar på hur materiella anläggningstillgångar ska redovisas efter anvisningarna i K3.Värderingsförutsättningarna för materiella anläggningstillgångar har ändrats i och med en reglering i K3. Tillgångens anskaffningsvärde ska fördelas på komponenter istället för att redovisas som en helhet, detta för att tydligare spegla tillgångens förbrukningskapacitet. För att dela upp en tillgång ska komponenterna ha betydande värde i förhållande till tillgångens totala anskaffningsvärde. K3 är ett principbaserat regelverk vilket innebär att företagen får göra egna bedömningar och tolkningar i redovisningen vad det gäller uppdelning i komponenter. Då K3 inte ger någon vidare vägledning kan implementeringen bli en omfattande och problematisk process.Implementeringen kan komma att se olika ut för alla berörda företag eftersom förutsättningarna för företagen varierar. Vi använder oss i huvudsak av teorin meningsskapande för att studera hur implementeringen kan ske på ett meningsfullt sätt för företaget. I tidigare studier beskrivs det att när det handlar om att leta efter en kontext och göra en situation mer förutsägbar är meningskapande av betydelse. Syftet med studien är att försöka beskriva en tänkbar arbetsprocess som skapar mening vid implementeringen av komponentavskrivningar. I studien används den kvalitativa metoden i form av intervjuer, observationer och fokusgrupper för att få djupgående information för studiens genomförande. Vi utförde en fallstudie på Santa Maria som är ett företag som tillämpar K3 och som under 2014 ska införa komponentavskrivningar i sin redovisning.För att studera hur meningsskapande kan användas vid implementeringen har vi utgått ifrån Weicks sjustegsmodell för att beskriva en process som blir meningsfull för företagen. Beroende på företagets utgångspunkter kan olika delar vara mer eller mindre relevanta. I studien var fyra delar särskilt framträdande för Santa Maria. Studiens resultat visar att individens erfarenheter och kunskaper är förutsättningar för en meningsfull process. Det är också viktigt att individen får utrymme att visa sina kunskaper och bidra till organisationens utveckling. Processen utgår ifrån individens perspektiv för att sedan riktas mot organisationen. Studiens resultat lyfter främst fram delarna identitet, hur tidigare erfarenheter kan användas i nya situationer och fokus på ledtrådar, att det är viktigt att individernas kunskaper kombineras för att nå ett bättre resultat. Uppfylls dessa delar finns det förutsättningar att processen blir meningsfull. / Swedish unlisted companies face new accounting rules as the laws evolve. One example is the K-project which has been published by Bokföringsnämnden who decide the rules in Sweden to facilitate companies in their accounting. The tangible assets should be accounted for according to the instructions in K3 which this study focus on.Instead of reported an asset as a whole it will be allocated in components because of the new rules in K3. If the component has a significant value in relation to the total cost it will be divided into components in order to show the asset´s consumptions capacity more clearly. How companies are going to divide an asset in components is not regulated in K3 because it’s a principles-based regulatory framework. This means that the companies need to make their own judgment and interpretation when they identify theirs components. The implementation of component deprecation can therefore be a considerable and problematic process.Companies have different conditions and the implementation will vary between companies because of their own assessments. When we study how the implementation can be meaningful we use the theory sense making. Sense making can be used to understand and get knowledge about a situation, according to previous studies on the subject.The aim of the study is to describe a meaningful process when companies implements component deprecation in their accounting. The study was made with a qualitative method in order to get much information for the execution, we did interviews and observations. We have study Santa Maria who is preparing the implementation of component deprecation during 2014 by following the rules in K3. We have used Weick´s model with seven properties to show how sense making can be used when we describe a meaningful implementation process. The different part can be more or less relevant depending on the companies promises. In this study with Santa Maria there are four properties that are emphasized. The result shows that individual´s experience and knowledge are important elements for a meaningful process. Individuals should also use their knowledge and get the opportunity to be involved in the organization´s work. The process started from an individual perspective and during the process the focus shifted to the organization. The result of this study focus on the parts identity and plausibility over accuracy which shows how earlier knowledge are useful in a new situation and a combination of the experience is important for a better result. A condition to make the process meaningful is to make a combination of these two elements.

Made available in DSpace on 2016-03-15T19:34:14Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 RENATO RIBEIRO DE ALMEIDA.pdf: 1434838 bytes, checksum: 785c9cb2927d7312172125601376e3c9 (MD5) Previous issue date: 2014-02-10 / Universidade de São Paulo / This master dissertation aims to systematize and provide discussions on the chances of acquiring ineligibility that follow bad representatives, especially after the introduction or modification of conducts arranged in Complementary Law No. 135/2010, popularly titled lei da ficha limpa amending the Supplementary Law No. 64/1990. It aims to systematize, in a single text, all the situations covered by the new legislation restricting the eligibility of those who are already in the exercise of political elective office, discussing what are the main legal nuances that, while restricting eligibility, concern, in general, the whole Brazilian society. Besides the specific subject of great legal significance which concerns the hypotheses about the acquisition of ineligibility during the period of elective office, this work will hold a debate about the principle of good governance and how it has been dealed by the international doctrine. This principle postulated in the Federal Constitution in Article 37, but also found throughout the constitutional text, argues that public managers, especially those agents with electoral and political mandate, with special emphasis on those dealing with public funds, have, as a functional duty, the obligation of providing proper accountability and transparency in their political- administrative acts featuring what can be named positive provisions of the State. / A presente dissertação de mestrado tem por objetivo sistematizar e estabelecer discussões sobre as hipóteses de aquisição de inelegibilidade a que estão sujeitos os maus mandatários de cargos eletivos, sobretudo após a introdução ou alteração de condutas dispostas na Lei Complementar n° 135/2010, popularmente intitulada Lei da Ficha Limpa, que alterou a Lei Complementar nº 64/1990. Objetiva-se sistematizar, em um único texto, todas as situações previstas pela nova legislação que restrinjam a elegibilidade daqueles que já se encontram no exercício de mandato político-eletivo, discutindo quais são as principais nuances jurídicas que, ao restringir a elegibilidade, atingem, de forma geral, toda a sociedade brasileira. Além da temática específica e de grande relevância jurídica sobre hipóteses de aquisição de inelegibilidade no exercício de mandato eletivo, este trabalho terá como pano de fundo o debate acerca do princípio da boa governança ou good governance, como é tratado pela doutrina internacional. Tal princípio, postulado na Constituição Federal principalmente no artigo 37, mas encontrado também ao longo de todo texto constitucional, dispõe que os gestores públicos, sobretudo os agentes com mandato político-eleitoral, com especial ênfase naqueles que lidam com recursos públicos, possuem, como dever funcional, a devida prestação de contas e a transparência em seus atos político-administrativos, caracterizando, desta forma, o que se pode chamar de uma prestação positiva do Estado.