In this note we introduce a notion of essentially-Euclidean normed spaces (and convex bodies). Roughly speaking, an n-dimensional space is λ-essentially-Euclidean (with 0 < λ < 1) if it has a [λn]-dimensional subspace which has further proportional-dimensional Euclidean subspaces of any proportion. We consider a space X₁ = (ℝⁿ,||·||₁) with the property that if a space X₂ = (ℝⁿ,||·||₂) is "not too far" from X₁ then there exists a [λn]-dimensional subspace E⊂ ℝⁿ such that E₁ = (E,||·||₁) and...

For each ordinal α < ω₁, we prove the existence of a separable, reflexive Banach space W with a basis so that Sz(W), $Sz(W*)\le {\omega }^{\alpha +1}$ which is universal for the class of separable, reflexive Banach spaces X satisfying Sz(X), $Sz(X*)\le {\omega }^{\alpha }$.

It is shown that for every k ∈ ℕ and every spreading sequence eₙₙ that generates a uniformly convex Banach space E, there exists a uniformly convex Banach space $X_{k+1}$ admitting eₙₙ as a k+1-iterated spreading model, but not as a k-iterated one.