The Chinese insurance industry has been growing substantially, and this provides a motivation to examine the insurance market in China. This study used survey data to identify key determinants related to Chinese consumers’ ownership of life insurance, by using a probit model. The results revealed that several groups of variables influence Chinese consumers’ life insurance purchases, including knowledge and trust, consumer profile and investment preferences, importance of product attributes, and socio-demographics. Also, this study applied factor analysis to investigate factors that are important for Chinese consumers regarding life insurance. Factor analysis results indicated that four factors are identified including importance of product attributes, consumers’ financial strength, consumers’ attitude and trust toward the life insurance industry, and consumer attributes. Lastly, to better understand Chinese consumers regarding life insurance, consumers were segmented into three main groups through applying cluster analysis. Each cluster shows distinct differences in purchasing criteria and socio-demographic characteristics.

Natural products occupy a central role as the majority of currently used antibiotic and anticancer agents. Among these are type-II polyketide synthase (PKS)-derived molecules, or polyketides, which are produced by many representatives of the genus Streptomyces. Some type-II polyketides, such as the tetracyclines and the anthracycline doxorubicin, are currently employed as therapeutics. However, several polyketide molecules exhibit promising biological activity, but due to toxic side effects or solubility concerns, remain undeveloped as drugs. Gilvocarcin V (GV) (topoisomerase II inhibitor) has a novel mechanism of action: [2+2] cycloaddition to thymine residues by the 8-vinyl side chain and cross-linking of histone H. Mithramycin blocks transcription of proto-oncogenes c-myc and c-src by forming an Mg2+-coordinated homodimer in the GC-rich minor groove of DNA. The purpose of this research was to investigate the biosynthesis of several type II polyketide compounds (e.g. chrysomycin, elloramycin, and mithramycin) with the goal of improving the bioactivities of these drugs through combinatorial biosynthesis. Alteration of the glycosylation pattern of these molecules is one promising way to improve or alter the bioactivities of these molecules. To this end, an understanding of the glycosyltransferases and post-polyketide tailoring enzymatic steps involved in these biosynthetic pathways must be established. Four specific aims were established to meet these goals. In specific aim 1, the biosynthetic locus of chrysomycin A was successfully cloned and elucidated, which afforded novel biosynthetic tools. Chrysomycin monooxygenases were found to catalyze identical roles to their gilvocarcin counterparts. Cloning of deoxysugar constructs (plasmids) which could direct biosynthesis of ketosugars, NDP-D-virenose, and NDP-D-fucofuranose in foreign pathways was undertaken in specific aim 2. Finally, these “sugar” plasmids were introduced into producer organisms of elloramycin and mithramycin pathways in specific aims 3 and 4 to interrogate the endogenous glycosyltransferases in order to alter their glycosylation patterns. These experiments resulted in the successful generation of a newly glycosylated tetracenomycin, as well as premithramycin, and mithramycin analogues. In specific aim 4, a new mithramycin analogue with an altered sugar pattern rationally designed and improved structural features was generated and structurally elucidated.

In recent years a move towards knowledge economies has been observed in many advanced countries. Knowledge based sectors and related activities have been expanding rapidly. However, the preconditions for developing such activities differ strongly between types of regions, depending on their location conditions, firm structure and institutional fabric. The regional innovation systems (RIS) approach captures such different settings in a useful way, allowing us to distinguish e.g. between well endowed and networked, fragmented and thin RIS. Using this approach we will study which conditions, potentials and barriers exist in different types of RIS for developing knowledge based industries and activities, and which routes and policy options might be adequate in different regional settings. We investigate these questions at first conceptually, drawing on the literature on RIS, and location and clustering of knowledge based sectors. Empirically we will present evidence on three regions in Austria (Vienna, Upper Austria and Salzburg) representing different types of RIS. Based on the conceptual findings we will compare these regions regarding their RIS characteristics, their preconditions for and strengths of knowledge based sectors focussing in particular on the ICT sector. Furthermore we will analyse routes and policy options for developing knowledge based sectors for such different types of regions. (author´s abstract) / Series: SRE - Discussion Papers

Statistics Sweden is an administrative agency that delimits built-up areas and produces statistics regarding them. The statistics provide information about the area of the built-up areas, their population number, number of gainfully employees working in the built-up areas, and of buildings. Now Statistics Sweden wishes to extend such statistics by producing a measure regarding how well developed the service is in each built-up area. This study is a contribution to this statistical improvement work and the purpose is to – by employing geographical information systems and cluster analysis – classify the Swedish built-up areas according to 1) service width and 2) service degree. A particular built-up area has a high service width if it has many different service functions, such as pharmacies, schools and grocery stores. It has a high service degree if it has many service functions per 1000 inhabitants. The result consists of two different “urban hierarchies”, one in which one can identify the level of service width of each built-up area and one in which one can position each built-up area according to its service degree. This study shows that built-up areas with a high service width also have manyinhabitants. In contrast, this is not the case for built-up areas with a high service degree: built-up areas with high service degree have relatively few inhabitants. The study shows that built-up areas with high service degree have a higher quota number of people employed in the locality / number of residents, which indicates that these built-up areas are “commuting localities” – built-up areas where people work but not necessarily live. The results from the two separate modes of classification also show that the service width and service degree do not display a positive correlation. Built-up areas with high service degree are thus not the same built-up areas that those scoring high onservice width; if anything, the relationship is rather the opposite.

We study the (strong-)Gibbsian character on R Z d of the law at time t of an infinitedimensional gradient Brownian diffusion / when the initial distribution is Gibbsian.

In this paper, I argue that there are some video games which are art. I begin my paper by laying out several objections as to why video games could not be art. After laying out these objections, I present the theory of art I find most persuasive, Berys Gaut’s cluster concept of art. Because of the nature of Gaut’s cluster concept, I argue that video games, as a medium of expression, do not need to be defended as a whole. Rather, like all other media of expression, only certain works are worthy of the title art. I then introduce and defend several games as art. After, I return to the initial objections against video games and respond in light of my defended cases. I conclude that video games, as a medium of expression, are still growing, but every day there are more examples of video games as art.

Defining art has been one of philosophy of art’s biggest projects. However, no definition offered has achieved to account for all objects we consider art. In this paper, I argue that normative dualism, an unjustifiable Western prejudice for the mental, plays a big part in this failure. The division between fine art and utilitarian and “low” art has been perpetuated because the former is associated with the mental processes involved in its appreciation and, thus, considered more valuable. Theories of art also tend to exclude production (a physical process), concentrating mostly on the appreciation of art (a mental process). Ridding theory of the bias of normative dualism, by abolishing the division that sets fine art apart as more valuable and writing theory that takes art production into consideration, is the only way art theory will succeed in accurately describing art objects.

Intelligent Transport System (ITS) has become a hot research topic over the past decades. ITS is a system that applies the following technologies to the whole transportation management system efficiently, including information technique, wireless communication, sensor networks, control technique, and computer engineering. ITS provides an accurate, real time and synthetically efficient transportation management system. Obviously, Vehicular Ad Hoc NETworks (VANETs) attract growing attention from both the research community and industry all over the world. This is because a large amount of applications are enabled by VANETs, such as safety related applications, traffic management, commercial applications and general applications. When connecting to the internet or communicating with different networks in order to access a variety of services using VANETs, drivers and passengers in different cars need to be able to exchange messages with gateways from their vehicles. A secure gateway discovery process is therefore critical, because vehicles should not be subject to security attacks while they are communicating; however, currently there is no existing protocol focusing on secure gateway discovery. In this thesis, we first analyze and compare current existing secure service discovery protocols and then we propose a Secure Gateway Localization and Communication System for Vehicular Ad Hoc Networks (SEGAL), which concentrates on the security issue in gateway discovery. We focus on the authentication aspect by proposing secure cluster based VANETs, that can ensure the gateway discovery messages exchanged through secure clusters. We present the principle and specific process of our SEGAL protocol and analyze its performance to guarantee its outstanding practical applicability.

The main goal of this thesis is to investigate the nature of an optional consonant deletion process, through an articulatory and acoustic study of word-final consonant clusters in Persian. Persian word-final coronal stops are optionally deleted when they are preceded by obstruents or the homorganic nasal /n/. For example, the final clusters in the words /næft/ “oil”, /suχt/ “burnt” and /qæsd/ “intention” are optionally simplified in fast/casual speech, resulting in: [næf], [suχ], and [qæs]. What is not clear from this traditional description is whether the coronal stop is truly deleted, or if a coronal gesture is produced, but not heard, because it is obscured by the adjacent consonants. According to Articulatory Phonology (Browman & Goldstein 1986, 1988, 1989, 1990a, 1990b, 1992, 2001), the articulatory gestures of the deleted segments can still exist even if the segments are not heard. In this dissertation, ultrasound imaging was used to determine whether coronal consonant deletion in Persian is categorical or gradient, and the acoustic consequences of cluster simplification were investigated through duration and spectral measures. This phonetic study enables an account for the optional nature of the cluster simplification process. A general phonological account is provided for the simplification of coda clusters with rising sonority, and the acoustic and articulatory investigation focuses on the simplification of clusters with coronal stops. Ten Persian-speaking graduate students from the University of Ottawa and Carleton University, five male and five female, aged 25-38 participated in the articulatory and acoustic study. Audio and real time ultrasound video recordings were made while subjects had a guided conversation with a native speaker of Persian. 662 tokens of word-final coronal clusters were auditorily classified into unsimplified and simplified according to whether they contained an audible [t]. Singleton coda consonants and singleton /t/s were also captured as controls. The end of the constriction plateau of C1 and beginning of constriction plateau of C3 were used to define a time interval in which to measure the coronal gesture as the vertical distance between the tongue blade and the palate. Smoothing Splines ANOVA was used in a novel way to compare tongue blade height over time across the three conditions. The articulatory results of this study showed that the gestures of the deleted segments are often still present. More specifically, the findings showed that of the clusters that sounded simplified, some truly had no [t] gesture, some had gestural overlap, and some had reduced gestures. In order to explain the optional nature of the simplification process, it is argued that the simplified tokens are the result of two independent mechanisms. Inevitable mechanical and physiological effects generate gesturally reduced and overlapped tokens whereas planned language-specific behaviors driven by phonological rules or abstract cognitive representations result in no [t]-gesture output. The findings of this study support the main arguments presented in Articulatory Phonology regarding the underlying reasons for sound patterns and sound change. The results of this study are further used to examine different sound change models. It is argued that the simplified tokens with totally deleted [t] gesture could be the result of speakers changing their representations based on other people’s gestural overlap. This would be instances of the Choice and Chance categories in Blevins’ (2004) CCC sound change model. The acoustic results did not find any major cues which could distinguish simplified tokens from controls. It is argued that articulatory data should form an integral part of phonetic studies.

The Chinese insurance industry has been growing substantially, and this provides a motivation to examine the insurance market in China. This study used survey data to identify key determinants related to Chinese consumers’ ownership of life insurance, by using a probit model. The results revealed that several groups of variables influence Chinese consumers’ life insurance purchases, including knowledge and trust, consumer profile and investment preferences, importance of product attributes, and socio-demographics. Also, this study applied factor analysis to investigate factors that are important for Chinese consumers regarding life insurance. Factor analysis results indicated that four factors are identified including importance of product attributes, consumers’ financial strength, consumers’ attitude and trust toward the life insurance industry, and consumer attributes. Lastly, to better understand Chinese consumers regarding life insurance, consumers were segmented into three main groups through applying cluster analysis. Each cluster shows distinct differences in purchasing criteria and socio-demographic characteristics.