O tratado Speculum Musicae do Magister Jacobus de Ispania (ou Jacobus Leodiensis) não recebeu a devida visibilidade nas instituições de ensino e de investigação intelectual tanto de sua época quanto posteriormente. A partir da segunda metade do século XX o tratado foi gradualmente ganhando maior visibilidade e nos últimos anos tem recebido por parte de diversos estudiosos um maior esforço de investigação. A presente dissertação visa expor o contexto filosófico e teológico desse tratado, investigando os seus principais conceitos norteadores a partir de uma leitura dos primeiros capítulos do seu primeiro livro. A partir da exposição dessas concepções fundamentais, buscamos então esclarecer algumas das questões mais fundamentais a respeito da musica speculativa, a saber, sua função no programa das artes liberais, sua concepção enquanto ciência e sua relação com a teologia sagrada. / Magister Jacobus de Ispania\'s treatise, Speculum Musicae, did not receive the due visibility in the educational and scholarly institutions of its time as well as later. From the second half of the twentieth century the treatise gradually gained more visibility and in recent years has received from several scholars a greater research effort. The present dissertation aims at exposing the philosophical and theological context of this treatise and investigating its main guiding concepts through a reading of the first chapters of its first book. Through the exposition of these fundamental conceptions, we seek to clarify some of the most fundamental questions regarding speculative music, namely, its function in the liberal arts program, its conception as a science and its relation to sacred theology.

Bien que les processeurs actuels possèdent plus de 10 cœurs, de nombreux programmes restent purement séquentiels. Cela peut être dû à l'algorithme que le programme met en œuvre, au programme étant vieux et ayant été écrit durant l'ère des uni-processeurs, ou simplement à des contraintes temporelles, car écrire du code parallèle est notoirement long et difficile. De plus, même pour les programmes parallèles, la performance de la partie séquentielle de ces programmes devient rapidement le facteur limitant l'augmentation de la performance apportée par l'augmentation du nombre de cœurs disponibles, ce qui est exprimé par la loi d'Amdahl. Conséquemment, augmenter la performance séquentielle reste une approche valide même à l'ère des multi-cœurs.Malheureusement, la façon conventionnelle d'améliorer la performance (augmenter la taille de la fenêtre d'instructions) contribue à l'augmentation de la complexité et de la consommation du processeur. Dans ces travaux, nous revisitons une technique visant à améliorer la performance de façon orthogonale : La prédiction de valeurs. Au lieu d'augmenter les capacités du moteur d'exécution, la prédiction de valeurs améliore l'utilisation des ressources existantes en augmentant le parallélisme d'instructions disponible.En particulier, nous nous attaquons aux trois problèmes majeurs empêchant la prédiction de valeurs d'être mise en œuvre dans les processeurs modernes. Premièrement, nous proposons de déplacer la validation des prédictions depuis le moteur d'exécution vers l'étage de retirement des instructions. Deuxièmement, nous proposons un nouveau modèle d'exécution qui exécute certaines instructions dans l'ordre soit avant soit après le moteur d'exécution dans le désordre. Cela réduit la pression exercée sur ledit moteur et permet de réduire ses capacités. De cette manière, le nombre de ports requis sur le fichier de registre et la complexité générale diminuent. Troisièmement, nous présentons un mécanisme de prédiction imitant le mécanisme de récupération des instructions : La prédiction par blocs. Cela permet de prédire plusieurs instructions par cycle tout en effectuant une unique lecture dans le prédicteur. Ces trois propositions forment une mise en œuvre possible de la prédiction de valeurs qui est réaliste mais néanmoins performante. / Although currently available general purpose microprocessors feature more than 10 cores, many programs remain mostly sequential. This can either be due to an inherent property of the algorithm used by the program, to the program being old and written during the uni-processor era, or simply to time to market constraints, as writing and validating parallel code is known to be hard. Moreover, even for parallel programs, the performance of the sequential part quickly becomes the limiting improvement factor as more cores are made available to the application, as expressed by Amdahl's Law. Consequently, increasing sequential performance remains a valid approach in the multi-core era. Unfortunately, conventional means to do so - increasing the out-of-order window size and issue width - are major contributors to the complexity and power consumption of the chip. In this thesis, we revisit a previously proposed technique that aimed to improve performance in an orthogonal fashion: Value Prediction (VP). Instead of increasing the execution engine aggressiveness, VP improves the utilization of existing resources by increasing the available Instruction Level Parallelism. In particular, we address the three main issues preventing VP from being implemented. First, we propose to remove validation and recovery from the execution engine, and do it in-order at Commit. Second, we propose a new execution model that executes some instructions in-order either before or after the out-of-order engine. This reduces pressure on said engine and allows to reduce its aggressiveness. As a result, port requirement on the Physical Register File and overall complexity decrease. Third, we propose a prediction scheme that mimics the instruction fetch scheme: Block Based Prediction. This allows predicting several instructions per cycle with a single read, hence a single port on the predictor array. This three propositions form a possible implementation of Value Prediction that is both realistic and efficient.

Spekulationsköp i nyproduktion av bostadsrätter förekommer i allt större utsträckning och antalet spekulationsköpare har ökat under senare år. Genom litteraturstudier samt intervjuer och enkäter med såväl byggherrar som spekulationsköpare och mäklare verksamma i nyproduktion har spekulationsmarknaden av nyproducerade bostadsrätter i Stockholms län utretts och kartlagts. Den generella spekulationsköparen är en man mellan 25-35 år med varierande kapitalstyrka som vill tjäna snabba pengar. Områden som är mest attraktiva för spekulationsköpare att investera i är centrala Stockholm och närförorter. Byggherrarna är samstämmiga i att spekulationsköp idag utgör ett problem främst med avseende på företagets affärsrisk. Mäklarna upplever inte spekulationsköp som ett problem. Både byggherrarna och mäklarna ser dock svårigheter i att förhindra spekulationsköp av nyproduktion eftersom det är svårt att identifiera vem som är spekulationsköpare. För att komma tillrätta med problematiken skulle samverkan mellan olika byggherrar och deras kundregister behöva komma till stånd, vilket strider mot befintlig lagstiftning. Efter granskning av köpprocessen i nyproduktion anser författarna att de mest riskfyllda spekulationsköparna kan förhindras genom att senarelägga upplåtelsen till tillträdet och då även låta köparen betala hela köpeskillingen som upplåtelseavgift. Idag betalas omkring 10 procent av den totala köpeskillingen som upplåtelseavgift upp till 6 månader innan tillträdet. Detta innebär att dagens köpare av nyproduktion inte behöver erlägga hela köpesumman förrän tillträde men kan ändå överlåta bostadsrätten till annan från upplåtelsen innan tillträde. Detta öppnar upp för handel med hög avkastning till låg insats. / Speculative buying of newly constructed condominiums has turned to be more common and the number of speculative buyers has increased in recent years. Through literature studies, surveys and interviews with developers as well as speculative buyers and real estate brokers within sales of new housing development, the speculation market of newly built condominiums in Stockholm have been investigated. In general, the most frequent speculation buyer is a man between 25-35 years with variable capital strength who want to make quick and easy money. Areas that are most attractive for speculative buyers to invest in are central Stockholm and the inner suburbs. The developers are unanimous in that speculative buying today is a problem mainly with respect to the company's business risk. The brokers do not experience speculative buying as a problem. Both developers and brokers see, however, difficulties in preventing speculative buying of new construction due to that it is difficult to identify who is a speculative buyer. To deal with the problem the developers would have to interact and share customer records, which is contrary to existing law. After examination of the buying process of new construction, the authors consider that the most risky speculative buyers can be prevented by delaying the concession and at that point also allow the buyer to pay the full purchase price fee. Today, buyers pay around 10 percent of the total purchase price as a concession fee up to 6 months before access. This means that today's buyers of new construction does not need to pay the entire purchase price until the access but can still sell the apartment to another person after the concession and before the access. This opens up for trade of high yield with a low effort.

I denna kandidatuppsats har den verkliga bostadsrättsmarknaden studerats ur ett perspektiv inriktat på spekulationsköp av nyproducerade bostadsrätter. Studien omfattar Stockholmsområdet och intervjuer med inblandade aktörer verksamma i områder har legat till grund för undersökningen. Byggbolag, fastighetsmäklare och spekulationsköpare har bistått med information som lett till insyn och fördjupning i spekulationsköpen som pågår av nyproducerade bostadsrätter. Samtliga parter är eniga om att spekulationsköp är vanligt förekommande på dagens bostadsmarknad. Under de senaste två åren har uppemot 30 procent av köpen inom nyproducerade bostadsrätter utgjorts av spekulationsköpare med syfte att göra en ekonomisk vinning. Det stora tidsspannet mellan köp och tillträde, som ofta uppgår till två år, utgör utrymme för bostadens marknadsvärde att stiga rejält i dagens uppåtgående bostadsmarknad. Tre grupper av spekulationsköpare har kunnat urskiljas. Dessa består först och främst av de rutinerade spekulationsköparna med stor koll på bostadsmarknadens prisutveckling. Den andra gruppen består av mer amatörmässiga spekulationsköpare som genom vänner hört hur stora vinster man kan göra. Den tredje gruppen utgörs av fastighetsmäklarna själva som givetvis är väl medvetna om prisutvecklingen, ofta före alla andra, och ser sin chans till snabba pengar. Gemensamt för dessa grupper är att det i hög grad rör sig om yngre män i 30-års åldern med en bra ekonomi. Små bostäder är av högst intresse men även större bostäder till en högre insats är aktuellt för de mer rutinerade köparna. Fastighetsmäklarna spelar en oberoende roll i spekulationsmarknaden, för dem utgör inte spekulationsköpen något problem. För byggherrarna är dock fenomenet problematiskt då det innebär negativa konsekvenser för företaget. Spekulationsköpen resulterar i fler avhopp, utnyttjande av företagens trygghetssystem, missnöjda slutkonsumenter samt en möjlig bidragande faktor till skenande priser och hysteri på bostadsrätter i Stockholm. Byggbolag har vidtagit flertalet åtgärder för att reglera spekulationsköpen. Bland annat förekommer begränsning till max ett pågående köp per kund, krav på lånelöfte, förhöjda kontantinsatser samt svarta interna listor på spekulationsköpare. Fastighetsmäklarna anser att byggbolagen innehar det största ansvaret för reglering av spekulationsköp då det är dem som prissätter bostäderna. Byggbolagen själva anser att ansvaret är fördelat hos flertalet aktörer såsom kommun, lagstiftning, bostadsrättsföreningar samt regleringar hos byggbolagen själva. / In this bachelor thesis the real housing market is studied from a perspective focused on speculative buying of newly built condominiums. The study covers the Stockholm area and interviews with the involved actors operating in this zone have been the basis for the investigation. Construction companies, real estate agents and speculative buyers have provided information that’s aided transparency, and depth of understanding in speculative purchases of newly built condominiums. All parties agree that speculative buying is common in today’s housing market. Over the past two years, up to 30 percent of the purchases of newly constructed condominiums have consisted of speculative buyers out to make a quick profit. The time span between purchase and access, which can be up to two years, allows the property time to react to the current market in Stockholm’s ever-rising housing market. Three groups of speculative buyers have been distinguished; the first group consists primarily of seasoned speculative buyers with a keen eye on price trends and today's housing market. The second group is more amateur, have little experience, but are well informed from friends and acquaintances that large profits can be made. The third group consists of real estate agents, they of course, are well aware of price trends often before anyone else, and see an opportunity for fast profits. Common to all three groups are males in their 30’s, with substantial backing. Smaller condominiums are of greatest interest but also larger ones appear among the more routine buyers. Real estate agents play an independent role in the speculative market, for them the speculative buying is not a problem. For building companies, however, the phenomenon has become problematic because it implies negative consequences for the company. Speculation purchases result in more defections, abuse of security systems, and disgruntled end users - as well as contributing to already soaring house prices in Stockholm. Construction companies have taken several measures to regulate speculative purchases. One of the factors, among others, is the limit of one single on going purchase per customer. Also restricted are increased cash contributions and notably the inclusion of internal black lists used to expose offending buyers. Real estate agents believe that construction companies hold most of the responsibility for the regulation of speculative buying, because they are setting the prices. Construction companies themselves believe that the responsibility is shared by stakeholders such as municipalities, legislation, housing associations – but should also expect internal regulating of their own companies.

This thesis aims to investigate to what extent the quantitative easing monetary policy tool, applied by the Riksbank, contributed to abnormal returns at the Swedish stock market during Covid-19. The chosen time period is 2007-2022, including the period before and after the implementation of quantitative easing in Sweden in 2015. Furthermore, the chosen time period includes two crises, the global financial crisis (GFC) and the Covid-19 crisis. Two artificial portfolios are created, one representing a high-risk portfolio and the other representing a low-risk portfolio. The thesis applies the ADL error correction model to estimate a potential relationship amongst QE and the returns for each of the computed portfolios. Results show a short-run relationship for both the high-risk and the low-risk portfolio. From the long-run perspective, there is only a relationship found concerning the high-risk portfolio. A modified CAPM-model is used as an interpretation when calculating abnormal returns, where the growth rate of industrial production reflects the expected return. Results show the presence of QE and abnormal returns for both portfolios during the time period of Covid-19, 2020-2022. / Denna uppsats syftar till att undersöka i vilken utsträckning Riksbankens kvantitativa lättnader bidrog till abnorm avkastning på den svenska aktiemarknaden under Covid-19. Den valdat idsperioden är 2007 – 2022, vilket inkluderar perioden före och efter genomförandet av kvantitativa lättnader i Sverige. Vidare inkluderar den valda tidsperioden två kriser, den globala finanskrisen samt Covid-19-krisen. Två artificiella portföljer konstrueras, där en representerar en högriskportfölj och den andra representerar en lågriskportfölj. Studien tillämpar en ADL error correction modell för att undersöka huruvida det existerar ett samband mellan kvantitativa lättnader och avkastningen för var och en av portföljerna. Resultaten visar ett kortsiktigt förhållande för både högrisk- och lågriskportföljen. Ur det långsiktiga perspektivet hittades endast ett samband för högriskportföljen. En modifierad CAPM-modell används vid beräkning av abnorm avkastning, där variabeln för den industriella produktionstillväxten reflekterar den förväntade avkastningen. Resultaten visar förekomsten av abnorm avkastning i samband de kvantitativa lättnader som genomfördes under Covid-19 för båda portföljerna under tidsperioden 2020–2022.

Ce projet examine comment la politique et l’amitié sont actualisées dans la fiction spéculative du XXIe siècle à travers différents médias. Cette thèse aborde la manière dont ces relations interpersonnelles affectent la sphère sociale et le statu quo des mondes fictifs à l’étude. Pour orienter la discussion, j’utilise le concept d’autonomie relationnelle qui reconnaît l’interdépendance des individus autonomes et de la communauté en général et l’éthique du care qui environne la moralité comme étant relationnelle et contextualisée. L’utilisation conjointe de ces deux cadres me permet de discuter de la façon dont les amitiés sont propices à la participation politique. Le premier chapitre présente une discussion globale de The Handmaid’s Tale (1985) de Margaret Atwood et notamment de son influence au sein du genre de la fiction spéculative féministe. Ensuite, dans une première section, je me concentre sur les notions d’autonomie par rapport à l’adaptation graphique du roman d’Atwood par Renée Nault (2019), que je compare avec la bande dessinée Bitch Planet de Kelly Sue DeConnick et Valentine de Landro (2013-2017). Dans une seconde section, je me concentre sur l’éthique du care en tant que processus pouvant favoriser des amitiés empreintes d’implications politiques en analysant l’adaptation télévisée de The Handmaid’s Tale, produite par Hulu, et la série Orphan Black, produite par BBC America. La fiction spéculative permet d’expérimenter librement avec différentes idées politiques et de comprendre comment la société pourrait réagir dans des scénarios extrêmes. Ces expériences de pensée reflètent nos propres luttes et lacunes politiques et pourraient ultimement indiquer de meilleures façons de résoudre les problèmes actuels. / This project examines how politics and friendship are actualized in speculative fiction across different media in the twenty-first century. This thesis discusses how these interpersonal relationships affect the social sphere and the status quo of the fictional worlds in question. To guide the discussion, I use the concept of relational autonomy, which recognizes the interconnectedness of both autonomous individuals and the community at large, and ethics of care, which understands morality as relational and contextualized. I use these two frameworks in tandem to discuss how friendships are conducive to political participation. The first chapter presents an overarching discussion of Margaret Atwood's The Handmaid's Tale (1985) in its legacy to the feminist speculative fiction genre. Following, in the first section, I focus on notions of autonomy in relation to Renée Nault's graphic novel adaptation of Atwood’s novel (2019) and contrast it with Kelly Sue DeConnick and Valentine de Landro’s comic Bitch Planet (2013-2017). In the second section, I focus on the ethics of care as a process that can foster friendships with political implications by analyzing Hulu's TV adaptation of The Handmaid's Tale and BBC America's Orphan Black. SF offers the freedom to test different political ideas and to understand how society might react in extreme scenarios. These thought experiments reflect our own political struggles and shortcomings; ultimately, they might point at better ways to solve current problems.

This dissertation is a collection of three essays dealing with selected problems of the Euro Area during its most recent crisis. It applies empirical, theoretical, and institutional analyses to gain new insights into many of its financial aspects. The first essay offers an alternative explanation for the surge in government bond spreads. Many researchers attribute this phenomenon to market sentiment and multiple equilibria alone. We show that an often neglected fundamental variable may drive spreads: a decrease in the expected recovery value of private market participants. With an ever-increasing share of crisis countries’ debt held by official creditors, private investors may feel pushed into the position of subordinated creditors. The other two essays both explain the sharp increase in central bank credit from different perspectives. First, from the national perspective, central banks may be confronted with a classical tragedy-of-the-commons problem, which gives rise to an expansionary bias. Second, from the perspective of the ECB, we argue that the empirical patterns surrounding the liquidity provision in December 2011 are reminiscent of a speculative attack on a fixed exchange rate system.

Shared microarchitectural state is a target for side-channel attacks that leverage timing measurements to leak information across security domains. These attacks are further enhanced by speculative execution, which transiently distorts the control and data flow of applications, and by untrusted environments, where the attacker may have complete control over the victim program. Under these conditions, microarchitectural attacks can bypass software isolation mechanisms, and hence they threaten the security of virtually any application running in a shared environment. Numerous approaches have been proposed to defend against microarchitectural attacks, but we lack the means to test them and ensure their effectiveness. The users cannot test them manually because the effects of the defences are not visible to software. Testing the defences by attempting attacks is also suboptimal because the attacks are inherently unstable, and a failed attack is not always an indicator of a successful defence. Moreover, some classes of defences can be disabled at runtime. Hence, we need automated tools that would check the effectiveness of defences, both at design time and at runtime. Yet, as it is common in security, the existing solutions lag behind the developments in attacks. In this thesis, we propose three techniques that check the effectiveness of defences against modern microarchitectural attacks. Revizor is an approach to automatically detect microarchitectural information leakage in commercial black-box CPUs. SpecFuzz is a technique for dynamic testing of applications to find instances of speculative vulnerabilities. Varys is an approach to runtime monitoring of system defences against microarchitectural attacks. We show that with these techniques, we can successfully detect microarchitectural vulnerabilities in hardware and flaws in defences against them; find unpatched instances of speculative vulnerabilities in software; and detect attempts to invalidate system defences.

No description available.

There is a push by governments and industries to move towards an all-electric future. With the trajectory of an all-electric vehicle future, the development and popularity of smart chargers have increased. Smart chargers are still in the infancy stage of their lifespan. Currently, there is also a lack of social sustainability research in the HCI community. Right now, is the perfect opportunity to research smart chargers. This research has focused on discovering what makes a smart charger “smart” for a family. With the use of participatory design and speculative design approaches in a workshop setting, four themes were discovered. The themes discovered are priority, habitual assistance, local sharable economy, and home environment handler. The workshop allowed the participants to draw their ideal home in the future. In the drawings and the discussions, the families highlighted that they did not see a charging station in their ideal future home. In its place, several of the families drew a computer that could act like a charger and more. This computer would assist the inhabitants of a home with their daily routines.