Development of model for insurance risk management and its application to insurance companies operating in the Serbian market

The literature on the topic of risk management in insurance generally separately treat insurance risk and insurance company risk, however such a separate treatment of risk excludes a third type of risk which is defined here, that is the risk of incorrectly calculating insurance risk, which causes uncertainties and disruptions in the operations of an insurance company and its concept of risk management arising from its activities. This paper presents a Model developed for insurance risk management and its attempt to assess the calculation of insurance risk. Also, the Model has been applied to the 2005 to 2010 results of five insurance companies in the Serbian market.Risk; Insurance; Management

The flux ratio of the [OIII] 5007,4959 lines in AGN: Comparison with theoretical calculations

By taking into account relativistic corrections to the magnetic dipole operator, the theoretical [OIII] 5006.843/4958.511 line intensity ratio of 2.98 is obtained. In order to check this new value using AGN spectra we present the measurements of the flux ratio of the [OIII] 4959,5007 emission lines for a sample of 62 AGN, obtained from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS) Database and from published observations. We select only high signal-to-noise ratio spectra for which the line shapes of the [OIII] 4959,5007 lines are the same. We obtained an averaged flux ratio of 2.993 +/- 0.014, which is in a good agreement with the theoretical one.Comment: Accepted for publication in the MNRA

Linearization of multichannel amplifiers with the injection of second harmonics into the amplifier and predistortion circuit

A linearization technique that uses the injection of the fundamental signal second harmonics together with the fundamental signals at the amplifier input has been extended in this paper by introducing the injection the second harmonics into nonlinear microwave amplifier and so-called predistortion circuit. Predistortion circuit produces the third-order intermodulation signals that are injected at the amplifier input together with the second harmonics making the linearization procedure more independent on the phase variation of the second harmonics. In addition, a considerably better improvement is attained for the power of fundamental signals close to 1-dB compression point by applying the linearization technique proposed in this paper in comparison to the linearization with the injection of the second harmonics merely in the nonlinear amplifier

Development and validation of the ACE tool: Assessing medical trainees' competency in evidence based medicine

BACKGROUND: While a variety of instruments have been developed to assess knowledge and skills in evidence based medicine (EBM), few assess all aspects of EBM - including knowledge, skills attitudes and behaviour - or have been psychometrically evaluated. The aim of this study was to develop and validate an instrument that evaluates medical trainees’ competency in EBM across knowledge, skills and attitude. METHODS: The ‘Assessing Competency in EBM’ (ACE) tool was developed by the authors, with content and face validity assessed by expert opinion. A cross-sectional sample of 342 medical trainees representing ‘novice’, ‘intermediate’ and ‘advanced’ EBM trainees were recruited to complete the ACE tool. Construct validity, item difficulty, internal reliability and item discrimination were analysed. RESULTS: We recruited 98 EBM-novice, 108 EBM-intermediate and 136 EBM-advanced participants. A statistically significant difference in the total ACE score was observed and corresponded to the level of training: on a 0-15-point test, the mean ACE scores were 8.6 for EBM-novice; 9.5 for EBM-intermediate; and 10.4 for EBM-advanced (p < 0.0001). Individual item discrimination was excellent (Item Discrimination Index ranging from 0.37 to 0.84), with internal reliability consistent across all but three items (Item Total Correlations were all positive ranging from 0.14 to 0.20). CONCLUSION: The 15-item ACE tool is a reliable and valid instrument to assess medical trainees’ competency in EBM. The ACE tool provides a novel assessment that measures user performance across the four main steps of EBM. To provide a complete suite of instruments to assess EBM competency across various patient scenarios, future refinement of the ACE instrument should include further scenarios across harm, diagnosis and prognosis

Frequency-selective near-field enhancement of radiative heat transfer via photonic-crystal slabs: a general computational approach for arbitrary geometries and materials

We demonstrate the possibility of achieving enhanced frequency-selective near-field radiative heat transfer between patterned (photonic crystal) slabs at designable frequencies and separations, exploiting a general numerical approach for computing heat transfer in arbitrary geometries and materials based on the finite-difference time-domain method. Our simulations reveal a tradeoff between selectivity and near-field enhancement as the slab--slab separation decreases, with the patterned heat transfer eventually reducing to the unpatterned result multiplied by a fill factor (described by a standard proximity approximation). We also find that heat transfer can be further enhanced at selective frequencies when the slabs are brought into a glide-symmetric configuration, a consequence of the degeneracies associated with the non-symmorphic symmetry group

High-Q Nanomechanics via Destructive Interference of Elastic Waves

Mechanical dissipation poses an ubiquitous challenge to the performance of nanomechanical devices. Here we analyze the support-induced dissipation of high-stress nanomechanical resonators. We develop a model for this loss mechanism and test it on silicon nitride membranes with circular and square geometries. The measured Q-values of different harmonics present a non-monotonic behavior which is successfully explained. For azimuthal harmonics of the circular geometry we predict that destructive interference of the radiated waves leads to an exponential suppression of the clamping loss in the harmonic index. Our model can also be applied to graphene drums under high tension.Comment: 8 pages, 1 figur

Measuring frequency fluctuations in nonlinear nanomechanical resonators

Advances in nanomechanics within recent years have demonstrated an always expanding range of devices, from top-down structures to appealing bottom-up MoS$_2$ and graphene membranes, used for both sensing and component-oriented applications. One of the main concerns in all of these devices is frequency noise, which ultimately limits their applicability. This issue has attracted a lot of attention recently, and the origin of this noise remains elusive up to date. In this Letter we present a very simple technique to measure frequency noise in nonlinear mechanical devices, based on the presence of bistability. It is illustrated on silicon-nitride high-stress doubly-clamped beams, in a cryogenic environment. We report on the same $T/f$ dependence of the frequency noise power spectra as reported in the literature. But we also find unexpected {\it damping fluctuations}, amplified in the vicinity of the bifurcation points; this effect is clearly distinct from already reported nonlinear dephasing, and poses a fundamental limit on the measurement of bifurcation frequencies. The technique is further applied to the measurement of frequency noise as a function of mode number, within the same device. The relative frequency noise for the fundamental flexure $\delta f/f_0$ lies in the range $0.5 - 0.01~$ppm (consistent with literature for cryogenic MHz devices), and decreases with mode number in the range studied. The technique can be applied to {\it any types} of nano-mechanical structures, enabling progresses towards the understanding of intrinsic sources of noise in these devices.Comment: Published 7 may 201