Access to Physician Services: Does Supplemental Insurance Matter? Evidence from France

In France, public health insurance is universal but incomplete, with private payments accounting for roughly 25 percent of all spending. As a result, most people have supplemental private health insurance. We investigate the effects of such insurance on the utilization of physician services using data from the 1998 Enquˆte Sant‚ Protection Sociale, a nationally representative survey of the French population. Our results indicate that insurance has a strong and significant effect on the utilization of physician services. Individuals with supplemental coverage have substantially more physician visits than those without. In a context where patients are free to choose their provider, we find no evidence that adults with supplemental insurance are more likely to visit a specialist than a general practitioner.

Statistical analysis of rockfall volume distributions: implications for rockfall dynamics.

International audienceWe analyze the volume distribution of natural rockfalls on different geological settings (i.e., calcareous cliffs in the French Alps, Grenoble area, and granite Yosemite cliffs, California Sierra) and different volume ranges (i.e., regional and worldwide catalogs). Contrary to previous studies that included several types of landslides, we restrict our analysis to rockfall sources which originated on subvertical cliffs. For the three data sets, we find that the rockfall volumes follow a power law distribution with a similar exponent value, within error bars. This power law distribution was also proposed for rockfall volumes that occurred along road cuts. All these results argue for a recurrent power law distribution of rockfall volumes on subvertical cliffs, for a large range of rockfall sizes (102–1010 m3), regardless of the geological settings and of the preexisting geometry of fracture patterns that are drastically different on the three studied areas. The power law distribution for rockfall volumes could emerge from two types of processes. First, the observed power law distribution of rockfall volumes is similar to the one reported for both fragmentation experiments and fragmentation models. This argues for the geometry of rock mass fragment sizes to possibly control the rockfall volumes. This way neither cascade nor avalanche processes would influence the rockfall volume distribution. Second, without any requirement of scale-invariant quenched heterogeneity patterns, the rock mass dynamics can arise from avalanche processes driven by fluctuations of the rock mass properties, e.g., cohesion or friction angle. This model may also explain the power law distribution reported for landslides involving unconsolidated materials. We find that the exponent values of rockfall volume on subvertical cliffs, 0.5 ± 0.2, is significantly smaller than the 1.2 ± 0.3 value reported for mixed landslide types. This change of exponents can be driven by the material strength, which controls the in situ topographic slope values, as simulated in numerical models of landslides [Densmore et al., 1998; Champel et al., 2002]. INDEX TERMS: 5104 Physical Properties of Rocks: Fracture and flow; 1815 Hydrology: Erosion and sedimentation; 8122 Tectonophysics: Dynamics, gravity and tectonics

Autophagy plays an important role in protecting Pacific oysters from OsHV-1 and Vibrio aestuarianus infections.

Recent mass mortality outbreaks around the world in Pacific oysters, Crassostrea gigas, have seriously affected the aquaculture economy. Although the causes for these mortality outbreaks appear complex, infectious agents are involved. Two pathogens are associated with mass mortality outbreaks, the virus ostreid herpesvirus 1 (OsHV-1) and the bacterium Vibrio aestuarianus. Here we describe the interactions between these 2 pathogens and autophagy, a conserved intracellular pathway playing a key role in innate immunity. We show for the first time that autophagy pathway is present and functional in Pacific oysters and plays an important role to protect animals from infections. This study contributes to better understand the innate immune system of Pacific oysters.This work was partially funded through the EU project Bivalife (FP7 KBBE, contract n 266157), the Poitou Charentes Region and DPMA (Direction des p^eches maritimes et de l’aquaculture, AESTU project). David Rubinsztein is aWellcome Trust Prinicipal Research Fellow.This is the final published version. It first appeared at http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/15548627.2015.1017188

Level variations in speech: Effect on masking release in hearing-impaired listeners

Acoustic speech is marked by time-varying changes in the amplitude envelope that may pose difficulties for hearing-impaired listeners. Removal of these variations (e.g., by the Hilbert transform) could improve speech reception for such listeners, particularly in fluctuating interference. Léger, Reed, Desloge, Swaminathan, and Braida [(2015b). J. Acoust. Soc. Am. 138, 389–403] observed that a normalized measure of masking release obtained for hearing-impaired listeners using speech processed to preserve temporal fine-structure (TFS) cues was larger than that for unprocessed or envelope-based speech. This study measured masking release for two other speech signals in which level variations were minimal: peak clipping and TFS processing of an envelope signal. Consonant identification was measured for hearing-impaired listeners in backgrounds of continuous and fluctuating speech-shaped noise. The normalized masking release obtained using speech with normal variations in overall level was substantially less than that observed using speech processed to achieve highly restricted level variations. These results suggest that the performance of hearing-impaired listeners in fluctuating noise may be improved by signal processing that leads to a decrease in stimulus level variations.National Institutes of Health (U.S.) (R01DC000117

Extração de métricas fenológicas a partir de séries temporais de ndvi visando o mapeamento da intensificação sustentável da agricultura brasileira

No ano de 2009, o Governo do Brasil apresentou o Plano de Agricultura de Baixa Emissão de Carbono (Plano ABC), cujo objetivo é a organização de ações para a adoção de tecnologias de produção de alimentos alinhadas aos compromissos de redução de emissões de GEE. Entre diversas práticas destaca-se a da integração lavoura-pecuaria (iLP) para a produção de grãos e carne ou leite. No entanto, a falta de procedimentos de monitoramento para avaliar a abrangência da adoção limita a governança do Plano. Este artigo tem como objetivo analisar o comportamento espectral dos sistemas integrados de produção iLP em comparação com uma floresta de Cerrado nativa e uma pastagem degradada. O estudo foi conduzido em uma fazenda experimental da Embrapa, em GO, Brasil. Utilizamos 83 imagens NDVI dos sensores Landsat-8 OLI e Landsat-7 ETM para uma série temporal 2009-2016. Para 12 tipos de uso da terra, foram criadas métricas fenológicas. Os resultados mostraram que tais métricas representaram o comportamento do crescimento vegetativo podendo ser usadas como indicadores espaciais para a classificação de áreas de sistemas iLP

The water relations of two tropical rainforest species (Virola surinamensis and Eperua falcata): Is Virola unusual as previously reported?

HYDROInternational audienceThe objective of this study was to examine the water relations and hydraulic architecture and vulnerability to cavitation in Virola surinamensis and V. michelii and to compare to similar measurements in Eperua falcata. In several previous reports Virola was seen to have a rather narrow range of xylem pressure potentials (Ψx) near zero in the course of a wet-season day while having water fluxes quite close to Eperua. We tested the hypothesis that the narrow range of Ψx might be consistent with very high hydraulic conductivities of stems, roots and shoots and high vulnerability to cavitation in Virola compared to Eperua. When this hypothesis proved false we concluded that the previous determinations of Ψx might be wrong in Virola due to latex. We re-examined the determination of Ψx in Virola by the pressure chamber technique and compared results to determination of Ψleaf by the thermocouple psychrometer technique and found that the likely range of Ψx are more negative than previously reported. Problems concerning the determination of Ψx in species with latex are discussed