Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Broker monitoring of premium adequacy: the role of contingent commissions

Contingent commissions, which are payments made by an insurer to brokers based on the volume and profitability of insurance placed with the insurer, have been criticized as damaging to the relationship between the insured and its broker. The argument is made that contingent commission payments encourage brokers to select insurers for their clients based on the potential to earn contingent commissions, rather than on the needs of the insured. We argue that contingent commission payments, which while directly paid by the insurer are ultimately paid by the insured through higher premiums, are beneficial to insureds because they provide an incentive for the broker to place their coverage with an insurer that is charging an adequate premium. We contend that although inadequate premiums are perhaps good for the insured in the short term, in the longer term, inadequate premiums will result in price hikes or coverage restrictions that are harmful to the insureds. Our empirical analysis demonstrates that insurers who pay contingent commissions experience less price fluctuation over the underwriting cycle than insurers who do not pay contingent commissions in the US property and casualty insurance industry.
Research and Modeling of Supervisory Control Behavior. Report of a Workshop

Abstract : This report of a workshop on Supervisory Control was compiled under the Review of the National Research Council. Supervisory control is the human activity involved in initiating, monitoring, and adjusting processes in systems that are otherwise automatically controlled. The two-day workshop covered three major themes: (1) concepts and characteristics of supervisory control systems, (2) the choice of appropriate research vehicles, and (3) the interchange between researchers and designers. Summary conclusions are: (1) it is useful to characterize the emergency class of human-supervised, computer-controlled systems by strict as well as broader definitions. (2) no single or simple model of supervisory control is appropriate at this time. (3) experimenting with supervisory control systems is difficult for various reasons. (4) experienced subjects are essential for research. (5) supervisory control systems can never be completely closed, since the human supervisor must have the capability to set subgoals. (6) better guidance from researchers is needed for designers and operators, in the form of principles and checklists. Various articles cover the analysis of supervisory control systems and behavior, mental models, matching mental models of operators and designers and models of human performance. Failure modes are also discussed.
Impact of photon lifetime on thermal rollover in 850-nm high-speed VCSELs

We present an empirical thermal model for VCSELs based on extraction of temperature dependence of macroscopic VCSEL parameters from CW measurements. We apply our model to two, oxide-confined, 850-nm VCSELs, fabricated with a 9-μm inner-aperture diameter and optimized for high-speed operation. We demonstrate that for both these devices, the power dissipation due to linear heat sources dominates the total self-heating. We further show that reducing photon lifetime down to 2 ps drastically reduces absorption heating and improves device static performance by delaying the onset of thermal rollover. The new thermal model can identify the mechanisms limiting the thermal performance and help in formulating the design strategies to ameliorate them.
Possible Haematological Abnormalities Induced by Herbal Tea Consumption: A Review

Nowadays, a vast majority of herbal products used in traditional medicine are consumed in the form of tea due to their aromas, favourable tastes, and health-boosting effects arising from the antioxidant activity of the phenolic content. Even though people are advised to include these herbal teas in their daily diet as health promoters, the articles in the literature often present conflicting findings on the relationship between herbal tea consumption and haematological parameters. In this review, we recompiled the limited research on the possible relationship between herbal tea consumption and haematological alterations. We suggest that the contributions of active ingredients in the herbal tea products may affect haematological parameters such as the degree of iron absorption, serum ferritin concentration, thrombocyte level, aggregation rate, and lymphocyte mediated immunity. Populations, especially pregnant women and patients under the risk of haematological diseases, should consume these products under the control of physicians or other healthcare professionals. Furthermore, online marketing of these products or via TV commercials should be restricted due to the increasing misusage and related haematological alterations.
Le rôle de la mémoire de travail dans les apprentissages et leurs troubles

RÉSUMÉ : Le rôle de la mémoire de travail dans les apprentissages et leurs troubles Les troubles des apprentissages sont très fréquemment associés à des déficits de la mémoire de travail. Ces déficits sont néanmoins hétérogènes et complexes et nécessitent des cadres théoriques précis pour une évaluation et une interprétation valides. Les modèles actuels de la mémoire de travail suggèrent que la mémoire de travail inclue au moins trois aspects : des interactions avec les connaissances en mémoire à long terme pour le stockage temporaire des informations, des mécanismes permettant le stockage de l’ordre d’apparition des informations, et des mécanismes attentionnels. Ces différents aspects peuvent être altérés de manière sélective dans différents troubles des apprentissages. Cette hétérogénéité des déficits de la mémoire de travail sera illustrée par la situation de l’enfant dyslexique et celle de l’enfant dyscalculique. Mots clés : Mémoire de travail – Mémoire court terme – Langage – Ordre sériel – Attention – Dyslexie – Dyscalculie.
Housing in the Animal Enclosure Module Spaceflight Hardware Increases Trabecular Bone Mass in Ground-Control Mice

ABSTRACT During spaceflight, mice are housed in specially designed cages called the Animal Enclosure Module (AEM). Utilization of this flight hardware may affect the skeletal properties of housed animals, independent of microgravity considerations. To address this issue, we studied the effect of 13 days of AEM housing versus standard vivarium enclosure on female C57BL/6J mice (n=12/group). The effects of AEM housing were most pronounced in the trabecular compartment. AEM mice had 44% and 144% greater trabecular bone volume fraction and connectivity density, respectively, versus vivarium. A similar response was seen at the proximal humerus. We noted a decrease in proximal tibia osteoclast surface (-65%) and eroded surface (-73%) for AEM versus vivarium, while tibia trabecular mineralizing surface (MS/BS) was nearly three-fold greater. Surprisingly, there was also decreased osteoblast surface, as well as lower osteoid volume, surface, and thickness at this site. The effects of AEM housing on femur cortical bone were modest: there was greater periosteal MS/BS, with no effect at the endocortical surface, and lower femur stiffness. Taken together, we have demonstrated significant effects of AEM housing on ground control mice, particularly in the trabecular bone compartment. These findings suggest that an early increase in bone formation, perhaps due to altered behavior and loading in this unique housing environment, was followed by decreased bone formation and resorption as the animals adapted to their new environment. Characterization of spaceflight animal housing is critical to elucidating the true effects of microgravity on skeletal parameters and for the proper selection of ground-based controls.
APCMB-943 Predicting Consumer Behavioral Intention in Bandung Ethnic Restaurant Sri

Bandung is one of popular culinary tourism destination in Indonesia. The significant growth of restaurant industry in Bandung makes the competition in this industry become more intense. To win the competition, restaurant owner needs to learn more about consumer behavior. This study investigated consumer buying behavior towards ethnic restaurants. Data were collected using a questionnaire survey (n = 300) at ethnic restaurants in Bandung. Of particular interest was the role of consumers‘ shopping values of eating-out and their behavioral intention on ethnic restaurant. The findings indicated that hedonic and utilitarian values have significant influences on the level of customer satisfaction when they consumed food at this traditional restaurant. The study also reveals that shopping value influenced customer behavioral intention in the future.
Evaluation of the Role of the Relationship Between Red Blood Cell Distribution Width (RDW) and Monocyte on Estimation of Mortality in Surgical Intensive Care Unit

Objective: The aim of the present study was to assess the usability of the relationship between the red blood cell distribution width (RDW) and the monocyte count, complete blood count (CBC) parameters routinely checked in the intensive care units (ICUs), for mortality prediction in the surgical ICU. Material and methods: Five hundred thirty-seven patients who were followed up at the surgical ICU between October 1, 2014 and October 1, 2015 were retrospectively assessed. To ensure that the study involves patients who really needed intensive care, patients who were followed up at the ICU for postoperative monitoring were excluded from the study. Patients with a hemoglobin value <10 g/dL were also excluded from the study so that the RDW would not be affected by anemia. Results: A total of 183 patients were evaluated after the exclusion criteria. The maximum RDW value and the Acute Physiology and Chronic Health Evaluation II score of the patients who died were higher than those of the living patients. On the other hand, a significant decrease in the monocyte values of the dead patients was detected, and there was a statistical difference between dead and living patients (p<0.01). Conclusion: Checking CBC is a routine in the ICUs. Of the CBC parameters, the RDW and monocyte values have been assessed in the present study as being convenient, easily accessible, and practical method for predicting mortality for surgical intensive care patients.
Curve Distance Measure for Quantitative Evaluation of Myocardial Boundary Tracking

Myocardial boundary tracking is part of feature extraction task for evaluating human cardiac abnormalities. In this case, the feature of myocardial contraction is extracted in the form of the boundary shape movement and alteration such as shape motion, shape deformation. In this paper, a curve distance measure is proposed for evaluating performance of myocardial boundary tracking techniques. The curve is constructed of 9 – 14 control points along the myocardial boundary which is tracked to all frames in the cardiac cycle between the end diastole and the end systole. The curves distance measure implemented in this study is average of absolute shortest distance between estimated curve and ground truth curve. Both of curves are generated using b-spline interpolation technique. The estimated control point is the yield of the tracking process of the initial point in motion vector space. In this experiment, eight seven motion estimation techniques such as Black Anandan, Brox, Gautama, Gurner Farneback, Horn Shuck, LK, LK-Pyr and proposed method are compared to know their performance in tracking on echocardiography image. The database sets are generated to test the performance algorithm that comprising set sequences of ultrasound images with known initial and finalboundary. The known vector motion is used to generate the ground truth of synthetic myocardial boundary tracking. The real clinical data that have initial and final boundary generated by cardiologist are also used to evaluate the performance. Accordingly, results obtained showed that quantitative measures can be obtained in term of curve distance mean of initial and final boundary which is useful for performance evaluation of the aforementioned techniques with the proposed method recorded superiority over other techniques. In short, the curve distance measure described in here is useful and provides means of evaluating performance of myocardial boundary tracking quantitatively.
An inhomogeneous and anisotropic constitutive model of human dentin

Dentin constitutes the major part of human tooth. It is composed of a large number of tubules with both variational radii and radially parallel pattern. In addition, peritubular dentin surrounds each tubule lumen and has a higher elastic modulus than the matrix of dentin, i.e. intertubular dentin. Considering the above microstructural characteristics, a micromechanics model is used in this paper to evaluate the overall elastic properties of dentin. Five independent effective elastic parameters in transverse isotropic elasticity matrix can be expressed analytically by the material parameters of periand intertubular dentin and the volume fraction of tubules. To determine the effectivity of this theoretical model, a finite element (FE) model simulating a longitudinal tooth slice in moir! e fringe testing of Wang and Weiner (J. Biomech. 31 (1998) 135) was performed. Furthermore, the FE model was developed incorporate modeling of variation of tubule’s diameter and softer characteristic of intertubular dentin near the dentin–enamel junction and around the pulp chamber. It turned out that the isoline figure of longitudinal displacement by FE calculation has very similar patterns to the moir! e fringe results. However, the FE results of displacement by traditional stress–strain models which regard dentin as a homogeneous and isotropic material show an obviously different strain distributions as compared to published moir! e fringes results. Thus the inhomogeneous and anisotropic model developed in this paper more accurately reflects the true physical nature of human dentin. r 2004 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
Effect of addition of a non-equidiffusional reactant to an equidiffusional diffusion flame

A Burke–Schumann (flame-sheet) formulation is developed for diffusion flames between a fuel and oxidiser with Lewis numbers of unity, subject to addition to the fuel and/or oxidiser stream of a different reactant for which the Lewis number differs from unity. This formulation is applied to laminar counterflow diffusion-flame experiments, reported here, in which hydrogen was added to either methane–nitrogen mixtures or oxygen–nitrogen mixtures at normal atmospheric pressure, with both feed streams at normal room temperature. Experimental conditions were adjusted to fix selected values of the stoichiometric mixture fraction and the adiabatic flame temperature, and the strain rate was increased gradually, maintaining the momentum balance of the two streams, until extinction occurred. At the selected sets of values, the strain rate at extinction was measured as a function of the hydrogen concentration in the fuel or oxidiser stream. The ratio of the fraction of the oxidiser flux that consumes hydrogen to the fraction that consumes fuel was calculated from the new Burke–Schumann formulation, and it was found that, within experimental uncertainty, the ratio of the extinction strain rate with hydrogen addition to that without was the same at any given value of this oxygen flux ratio, irrespective of whether the hydrogen was added on the fuel or oxidiser side. This experimental result was also in close agreement with computational predictions employing detailed chemistry. These results imply that differences in detailed hydrogen concentration profiles within the reaction zone have little or no influence on the chemical kinetics of extinction when the stoichiometric mixture fraction, the adiabatic flame temperature, and the proportion of oxygen that consumes the added fuel are fixed. This same correspondence may be expected to apply for other fuels and additives.
Ecology of the capercaillie (Tetrao urogallus) and forest management in relation to its protection in the West Carpathians

Ecology of capercaillie (Tetrao urogallus) was studied in the mountains of Central Slovakia (West Carpathians) in 1981-2003. In the studied area, the capercaillie population inhabited especially old natural forests (100-250 years old) in the spruce-beech-fir (850-1,270 m a.s.l.) and spruce (1,250-1,530 m a.s.l.) vegetation zones. The overstorey stand age ranged between 80 and 250 years with the mean of 128 years. The understorey stand age ranged from 10 to 60 years. The overstorey tree density ranged between 200 and 1,050 stems per ha (mean 725). The understorey tree density ranged from 5 to 650 trees per ha (mean 290). Both males and females preferred old forests throughout the year. The results demonstrate a marked decrease (> 50%) in the numbers of cocks and hens on twelve monitored leks (28%) and a slight decrease (< 50%) on ten display grounds (24%). During the study period, capercaillie cocks became extinct on seven (16%) leks and in their surroundings. More or less constant numbers were found on twelve leks only (28%) and a slight increase occurred on two leks only (4%). A statistically highly significant corre - lation was found between the area of old-growth forest and the number of cocks attending a lek. In addition to forest deterioration predation appeared to be of major importance in limiting the numbers of capercaillies. Key points for forest management in relation to capercaillie protection are suggested.
Dynamic carbon dioxide exchange through snowpack by wind‐driven mass transfer in a conifer‐broadleaf mixed forest in northernmost Japan

CO2 efflux in the period of snow cover can be a large carbon source in the yearly carbon budget of snowy ecosystems. However, the behavior of CO2 in snowpacks and the mechanisms of the snow surface efflux are still unclear. We performed continuous (half‐hourly) midwinter measurements of CO2 concentrations in a conifer‐broadleaf mixed forest snowpack, and found that concentrations in the snowpack fluctuated significantly as wind speeds varied. The snow surface efflux was evaluated as the sum of the CO2 storage change in the snowpack and the CO2 input from the soil to the snowpack, taking into account the mixing due to airflow. The median value over 52 days (49 mmol m−2 d−1) was almost the same as the daily net ecosystem exchange rate in this forest (50 mmol m−2 d−1) estimated by the eddy covariance technique and the storage‐change flux in the air column. These values are clearly larger than the value we estimated using Fick's law of diffusion. These results show that airflow can be a dominant cause of mixing within snowpacks in midwinter. In addition, in the soil pores under the snowpack, the CO2 concentration was primarily related to air temperature, implying that soil respiration responds directly to air temperature, not to soil temperature, even beneath a 1‐m‐thick snowpack. We infer that the air temperature affected the root activity of trees through their trunks and that the variation in root respiration strongly affected the CO2 concentration fluctuation in soil under the snowpack.
An Expert-driven Ontology-based Approach to the Collaborative Acquisition of Information

This article presents design decisions for an ontologybased framework supporting an expert-driven approach to the collaborative acquisition, integration and analysis of information. It describes a three-tier organization in which components facilitate establishing an information system to assist domain experts in addressing multi-causal dynamic situations where heterogeneous information sources must be integrated and the interaction of a variety of actors must be supported in large geographical areas with possibly low or intermittent connectivity levels. The approach and envisioned framework are illustrated with a case-study in the design of bikeways in urban zones.
On-chip polarization splitter based on a multimode plasmonic waveguide

The miniaturization of polarization beam splitters (PBSs) is vital for ultradense chip-scale photonic integrated circuits. However, the small PBSs based on complex hybrid plasmonic structures exhibit large fabrication difficulties or high insertion losses. Here, by designing a bending multimode plasmonic waveguide, an ultrabroadband on-chip plasmonic PBS with low insertion losses is numerically and experimentally realized. The multimode plasmonic waveguide, consisting of a metal strip with a V-shaped groove on the metal surface, supports the symmetric and antisymmetric surface plasmon polariton (SPP) waveguide modes in nature. Due to the different field confinements of the two SPP waveguide modes, which result in different bending losses, the two incident SPP waveguide modes of orthogonal polarization states are efficiently split in the bending multimode plasmonic waveguide. The numerical simulations show that the operation bandwidth of the proposed PBS is as large as 430 nm because there is no resonance or interference effect in the splitting process. Compared with the complex hybrid plasmonic structure, the simple bending multimode plasmonic waveguide is much easier to fabricate. In the experiment, a broadband (Δλ≈120 nm) and low-insertion-loss (<3 dB with a minimum insertion loss of 0.7 dB) PBS is demonstrated by using the strongly confined waveguide modes as the incident sources in the bending multimode plasmonic waveguide.
Fluoroscopy-Guided Percutaneous Transthoracic Biopsy: Comparison between Fine Needle Aspiration Biopsy and Core Biopsy with an Automated Cutting Needle

Purpose: To compare the diagnostic accuracy and complication rates of fluoroscopyguided percutaneous transthoracic fine needle aspiration biopsy (FNAB) and core biopsy (CB). Materials and Methods: Ninety-one fluoroscopy-guided lung biopsies were performed in 86 patients using a 22-gauge fine needle (n=52) or a 21-gauge automated cutting needle (n=39). The size of pulmonary lesions were 1-9 cm. Histologic diagnosis rates and complications rates of the two groups were compared. Results: The overall sensitivity of FNAB was 98% (51/52) which was higher than that of CB 89.7% (35/39) (p=0.160, Fisher's exact test). For the diagnosis of malignancy, sensitivities of FNAB and CB were 97.2% (35/36) and 89.7% (26/29), respectively (p=0.316). For the diagnosis of benignancy, sensitivities of FNAB and CB were 100% (16/16) and 90% (9/10), respectively (p=0.384). The specific histologic diagnosis rate of CB was 80% (8/10) in benignancy, which was higher than that of FNAB 56% (9/16) (p=0.398). The pneumothorax rates were 7.7% (4/52) for FNAB and 15.4% (6/39) for CB (p=0.316). Conclusion: Although not statistically significant, a higher overall sensitivity was found in fluoroscopy-guided FNAB in the diagnosis of both malignancy and benignancy, and FNAB also achieved lower complication rates. More specific histologic diagnoses were obtained with CB.