Huvudsyftet med den här studien var att undersöka vilka egenupplevda faktorer som vana motionärer håller som viktiga för sin egen träning. Undersökningen ägde rum på en av Friskis & Svettis anläggningar. Studiedesignen var en undersökande studie. I en sådan studie är målet att förklara människors egna upplevelser och deras åsikter. Det genomfördes 15 individuella halvstruktuerade intervjuer med regelbundet tränande medlemmar på Friskis & Svettis. Alla motionärer ansåg att det var viktigt att kunna välja vilken intensitet de skulle träna på. Majoriteten ansåg också att det var viktigt att få välja vilken typ av träning de skulle utföra. De flesta som tränar regelbundet upplevde känslor som glädje, att det var kul och att det var roligt under tiden eller efter de tränade. Ledaren ansågs vara en viktig person och att han eller hon kunde påverka träningen genom att ”vara medryckande” och ”ha utstrålning”. Musiken var också viktigt för inspirationen, att orka med lite extra. Friskis & Svettis idé om att erbjuda motionärerna lustfylld träning uppfyller det som motionärerna ansåg vara viktigt i den här undersökningen. / Objectives: The aim of this study is to investigate what self-perceived factors that influence people’s regular training habits. Methods: The study is based on a qualitative study design. Fifteen interviews were conducted at regularly physical active people and took place at a Friskis & Svettis training facility in a middle-east city in Sweden. Results: All of the regular training exercisers felt it was important to be able to choose intensity and type of workout. The majority also reported feelings of happiness, joy and fun during and after their training sessions. When inactive people tend to report lack of money and no time to exercise, regular active people seem to plan for their training and also seem to think that the price paid is worth the money spent. The leader was seen as a person of inspiration along with music and was also important for the experience of the training session. Conclusions: Friskis & Svettis motto, to offer people joyful exercise and easy accessible training facilities meet the results of this study.

The classical Extreme Value Theory deals with independent random variables. If random variables are dependent, large values tend to cluster (that is, one large value is followed by a series of large values). It is of interest to describe probabilistically the clustering and estimate the relevant cluster functionals. We consider disjoint blocks, sliding blocks and runs estimators of cluster indices. Using a modern theory of multivariate, regularly varying time series, we obtain consistency results and central limit theorems under conditions that can be easily verified for a large class of short-range dependent models. In particular, we show that in the Peak-over-Threshold framework, all the estimators have the same limiting variances. This solves a longstanding open problem and is in contrast to the Block Maxima method. Our findings are illustrated by simulation experiments.

Value-added tax (VAT) was introduced in South Africa in 1991 by the Value-Added Tax Act (89 of 1991) (the VAT Act). The South African VAT system is a destination-based, consumption-type VAT and is levied on goods or services consumed in South Africa. The definition of enterprise is an important definition in the VAT Act and it sets out the persons, activities and supplies that are to be included in the VAT base. It is compulsory for a person that conducts an enterprise in South Africa to register for VAT if the threshold set for taxable supplies is exceeded. There are interpretational problems and uncertainties in respect of the definition of “enterprise” and when an enterprise is conducted in South Africa or partly in South Africa. The purpose of this research study was to interpret the term enterprise for South African VAT purposes, to identify interpretational challenges and uncertainties and to suggest what must be addressed through guidance and interpretation by the South African Revenue Service (SARS) to provide more clarity. The research methodology followed to achieve the set objectives was normative research which is a form of legal research, specifically doctrinal. The requirements in terms of the VAT Act for levying of VAT, registration for VAT and the conducting of an enterprise in South Africa were explored and interpretational challenges and uncertainties were identified. The requirements for levying of and registration for VAT/ GST, in New Zealand, in terms of information supplied by the EU and guidance supplied in respect thereof by the OECD were analysed and discussed. The information obtained was used to establish how the interpretational problems and uncertainties that were identified are dealt with in New Zealand and in terms of the information and guidance from the EU and the OECD. The interpretational challenges and uncertainties identified include the reference in the definition of enterprise in Section 1(1) of the VAT Act to activities that must be conducted continuously or regularly in South Africa or partly in South Africa. Uncertainty as to the interpretation of the term “utilised or consumed in the Republic” also exists. Guidance in respect of these interpretational problems and uncertainties is necessary to enable suppliers and consumers to determine with certainty if a person is obliged to register for and levy VAT on supplies made in South Africa. / MCom (South African and International Tax) ,North-West University, Potchefstroom Campus, 2015

Value-added tax (VAT) was introduced in South Africa in 1991 by the Value-Added Tax Act (89 of 1991) (the VAT Act). The South African VAT system is a destination-based, consumption-type VAT and is levied on goods or services consumed in South Africa. The definition of enterprise is an important definition in the VAT Act and it sets out the persons, activities and supplies that are to be included in the VAT base. It is compulsory for a person that conducts an enterprise in South Africa to register for VAT if the threshold set for taxable supplies is exceeded. There are interpretational problems and uncertainties in respect of the definition of “enterprise” and when an enterprise is conducted in South Africa or partly in South Africa. The purpose of this research study was to interpret the term enterprise for South African VAT purposes, to identify interpretational challenges and uncertainties and to suggest what must be addressed through guidance and interpretation by the South African Revenue Service (SARS) to provide more clarity. The research methodology followed to achieve the set objectives was normative research which is a form of legal research, specifically doctrinal. The requirements in terms of the VAT Act for levying of VAT, registration for VAT and the conducting of an enterprise in South Africa were explored and interpretational challenges and uncertainties were identified. The requirements for levying of and registration for VAT/ GST, in New Zealand, in terms of information supplied by the EU and guidance supplied in respect thereof by the OECD were analysed and discussed. The information obtained was used to establish how the interpretational problems and uncertainties that were identified are dealt with in New Zealand and in terms of the information and guidance from the EU and the OECD. The interpretational challenges and uncertainties identified include the reference in the definition of enterprise in Section 1(1) of the VAT Act to activities that must be conducted continuously or regularly in South Africa or partly in South Africa. Uncertainty as to the interpretation of the term “utilised or consumed in the Republic” also exists. Guidance in respect of these interpretational problems and uncertainties is necessary to enable suppliers and consumers to determine with certainty if a person is obliged to register for and levy VAT on supplies made in South Africa. / MCom (South African and International Tax) ,North-West University, Potchefstroom Campus, 2015

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Cette thèse se place dans le cadre de la Statistique des valeurs extrêmes. Elle y apporte trois contributions principales. L'estimation des quantiles extrêmes se fait dans la littérature en deux étapes. La première étape consiste à utiliser une approximation des quantiles basée sur la théorie des valeurs extrêmes. La deuxième étape consiste à estimer les paramètres inconnus de l'approximation en question, et ce en utilisant les valeurs les plus grandes du jeu de données. Cette décomposition mène à deux erreurs de nature différente, la première étant une erreur systémique de modèle, dite d'approximation ou encore d'extrapolation, la seconde consituant une erreur d'estimation aléatoire. La première contribution de cette thèse est l'étude théorique de cette erreur d'extrapolation mal connue.Cette étude est menée pour deux types d'estimateur différents, tous deux cas particuliers de l'approximation dite de la "loi de Pareto généralisée" : l'estimateur Exponential Tail dédié au domaine d'attraction de Gumbel et l'estimateur de Weissman dédié à celui de Fréchet.Nous montrons alors que l'erreur en question peut s'interpréter comme un reste d'ordre un d'un développement de Taylor. Des conditions nécessaires et suffisantes sont alors établies de telle sorte que l'erreur tende vers zéro quand la taille de l'échantillon augmente. De manière originale, ces conditions mènent à une division du domaine d'attraction de Gumbel en trois parties distinctes. En comparaison, l'erreur d'extrapolation associée à l'estimateur de Weissman présente un comportement unifié sur tout le domaine d'attraction de Fréchet. Des équivalents de l'erreur sont fournis et leur comportement est illustré numériquement. La deuxième contribution est la proposition d'un nouvel estimateur des quantiles extrêmes. Le problème est abordé dans le cadre du modèle ``log Weibull-tail'' généralisé, où le logarithme de l'inverse du taux de hasard cumulé est supposé à variation régulière étendue. Après une discussion sur les conséquences de cette hypothèse, nous proposons un nouvel estimateur des quantiles extrêmes basé sur ce modèle. La normalité asymptotique dudit estimateur est alors établie et son comportement en pratique est évalué sur données réelles et simulées.La troisième contribution de cette thèse est la proposition d'outils permettant en pratique de quantifier les limites d'extrapolation d'un jeu de données. Dans cette optique, nous commençons par proposer des estimateurs des erreurs d'extrapolation associées aux approximations Exponential Tail et Weissman. Après avoir évalué les performances de ces estimateurs sur données simulées, nous estimons les limites d'extrapolation associées à deux jeux de données réelles constitués de mesures journalières de variables environnementales. Dépendant de l'aléa climatique considéré, nous montrons que ces limites sont plus ou moins contraignantes. / This thesis takes place in the extreme value statistics framework. It provides three main contributions to this area. The extreme quantile estimation is a two step approach. First, it consists in proposing an extreme value based quantile approximation. Then, estimators of the unknown quantities are plugged in the previous approximation leading to an extreme quantile estimator.The first contribution of this thesis is the study of this previous approximation error. These investigations are carried out using two different kind of estimators, both based on the well-known Generalized Pareto approximation: the Exponential Tail estimator dedicated to the Gumbel maximum domain of attraction and the Weissman estimator dedicated to the Fréchet one.It is shown that the extrapolation error can be interpreted as the remainder of a first order Taylor expansion. Necessary and sufficient conditions are then provided such that this error tends to zero as the sample size increases. Interestingly, in case of the so-called Exponential Tail estimator, these conditions lead to a subdivision of Gumbel maximum domain of attraction into three subsets. In constrast, the extrapolation error associated with Weissmanestimator has a common behavior over the whole Fréchet maximum domain of attraction. First order equivalents of the extrapolation error are thenderived and their accuracy is illustrated numerically.The second contribution is the proposition of a new extreme quantile estimator.The problem is addressed in the framework of the so-called ``log-Generalized Weibull tail limit'', where the logarithm of the inverse cumulative hazard rate function is supposed to be of extended regular variation. Based on this model, a new estimator of extreme quantiles is proposed. Its asymptotic normality is established and its behavior in practice is illustrated on both real and simulated data.The third contribution of this thesis is the proposition of new mathematical tools allowing the quantification of extrapolation limits associated with a real dataset. To this end, we propose estimators of extrapolation errors associated with the Exponentail Tail and the Weissman approximations. We then study on simulated data how these two estimators perform. We finally use these estimators on real datasets to show that, depending on the climatic phenomena,the extrapolation limits can be more or less stringent.

Yogurt is a characteristic fermented dairy product of Turkey and Bulgaria and its popularity has been increasing all over the world. Streptococcus thermophilus and Lactobacillus delbrueckii subsp. bulgaricus (Lactobacillus bulgaricus) are used together as starter culture in production of yogurt. The objective of this study was to isolate and characterize yogurt cultures from traditionally produced yogurts (i.e. produced without using commercial starter cultures) and to search the genotypic diversity within traditional S. thermophilus isolates. Yogurt cultures were isolated from traditionally produced yogurts collected from different regions of Turkey and identified biochemically. Acidification ability of the isolates was examined and the cultures giving best acidifying rates were further subjected to a selection in terms of their acetaldehyde production ability. Then, phage resistance and proteolytic activity of chosen isolates were tested. Finally, twenty-five L. bulgaricus and twenty-two S. thermophilus isolates were selected as cultures having best technological properties. Furthermore, subtyping studies were carried out to indicate strain diversity among isolates. S. thermophilus was selected as target organism for subtyping in this study. Clustered regularly interspaced short palindromic repeats (CRISPR) loci are highly polymorphic genetic regions, which are composed of partially palindromic direct repeats interspaced by sequences called spacers. In order to characterize S. thermophilus isolates genotypically, CRISPR1 locus of the isolates were analyzed. Additionally, nineteen isolates selected after CRISPR1 analysis were characterized using multilocus sequence typing (MLST). This provided to compare CRISPR1 analysis with MLST as a typing method. According to CRISPR1 analysis S. thermophilus isolates were grouped into 6 main clusters with a total of 15 sub-clusters. MLST results demonstrated an evolutionary relationship among these strains compatible with that derived from the CRISPR1 analysis.

Au cours des dernières années, des changements importants dans le domaine des assurances et des finances attirent de plus en plus l’attention sur la nécessité d’élaborer un cadre normalisé pour la mesure des risques. Récemment, il y a eu un intérêt croissant de la part des experts en assurance sur l’utilisation de l’espérance conditionnelle des pertes (CTE) parce qu’elle partage des propriétés considérées comme souhaitables et applicables dans diverses situations. En particulier, il répond aux exigences d’une mesure de risque “cohérente”, selon Artzner [2]. Cette thèse représente des contributions à l’inférence statistique en développant des outils, basés sur la convergence des intégrales fonctionnelles, pour l’estimation de la CTE qui présentent un intérêt considérable pour la science actuarielle. Tout d’abord, nous développons un outil permettant l’estimation de la moyenne conditionnelle E[X|X > x], ensuite nous construisons des estimateurs de la CTE, développons la théorie asymptotique nécessaire pour ces estimateurs, puis utilisons la théorie pour construire des intervalles de confiance. Pour la première fois, l’approche de bootstrap non paramétrique est explorée dans cette thèse en développant des nouveaux résultats applicables à la valeur à risque (VaR) et à la CTE. Des études de simulation illustrent la performance de la technique de bootstrap.

Cílem této diplomové práce je sjednotit a zobecnit známé výsledky z literatury, studovat asymptotické chování kladných regulárně se měnících řešení jisté třídy nelineárních diferenciálních rovnic (tzv. skoro pololineárních diferenciálních rovnic) pomocí dostupných nástrojů. Tato práce zahrnuje popis teorie regulární variace, některé informace o nelineárních diferenciálních rovnicích různých typů, detailní odvození výsledků týkajících se asymptotického chování řešení a příklady aplikace získaných výsledků.

>Magister Scientiae - MSc / Saccharomyces cerevisiae is an important host in industrial biotechnology. This yeast is the host of choice for the first and second-generation biofuels for ethanol production. Genome modification in S. cerevisiae has been extremely successful largely due to this yeast’s highly efficient homology-directed DNA repair machinery. The advent of CRISPR (Clustered Regularly Interspaced Short Palindromic Repeats) genome editing technology has made multi-gene editing in yeast more accessible. In this study, we aimed at targeting the Cas9 to multiple genomic positions for integrating multiple genes at different sites. We have developed two CRISPR-Cas9 systems, based on published one- and two-plasmid systems, for application in S. cerevisiae strains. In this study, these CRISPR-Cas9 systems were used to transform fungal heterologous genes into yeast using the electroporation transformation method. We first utilized the CRISPR systems for targeting the T.r.eg2 gene to single locus chromosomal sites for single copy integration. Subsequently, we then targeted the same gene to repeated sequences in the genome, namely the delta sites, for multi-copy integration. The procedure was repeated with a different gene, T.e.cbh1, integrated into the same sites to ascertain reporter gene specific effects. High integration efficiency was achieved, since all the strains successfully integrated the genes. However, we discovered significant differences in enzyme activities between the two genes when targeted to different loci, as well as varying copy numbers as determined by qPCR. The T.e.cbh1 gene was highly expressed by yeast transformants targeted at the repeated delta sequences used for multi-copy integration, reaching maximum levels of 248 mU/gDCW. The T.r.eg2 gene was highly expressed in yeast transformants targeted to the single locus site on chromosome 12, reaching a maximum of 160U/gDCW, though it was shown that off-target integration likely occurred. We then used the information from these observations to construct a CBP yeast strain containing three cellulase genes: T.r.eg2, T.e.cbh1, and S.f.BGL1. Significant differences in enzyme activities were observed between the three genes, and it was shown that the S.f.BGL1 gene was poorly expressed by the CBP yeast strain, whereas the T.r.eg2 gene was highly expressed. Notably, due to the fact that marker containing plasmids could be cured from these strains, many additional genetic changes can still be made. Overall, our two CRISPR-Cas9 systems were efficient at engineering strains that produce recombinant proteins and can be used in future studies for a variety of applications, including metabolic engineering in S. cerevisiae