Transferable Ageing Provisions in Individual Health Insurance Contracts

We consider lifetime health insurance contracts in which ageing provisions are used tosmooth the premium profile. The capital stock accumulated for each individual can bedecomposed into two parts: a premium insurance and an annuitised life insurance, onlythe latter being transferable between insurers without triggering premium changesthrough risk segmentation. In a simulation based on German data, the transferable sharedeclines in age and falls with an increasing age of entry into the contract. In spite ofdifferent benefit profiles, it is almost identical for women and men.Health insurance, lifetime contracts, ageing provisions, premium insurance, simulations

Transferable Ageing Provisions in Individual Health Insurance Contracts

We consider lifetime health insurance contracts in which ageing provisions are used to smooth the premium profile. The stock of capital accumulated for each individual can be split into two parts: a premium insurance and an annuitised life insurance, where the latter would be transferable between insurers without triggering premium changes through risk segmentation. In a simulation based on German data, the transferable share declines in age. It is smaller for women than for men, and it falls with an increasing age of entry into the contract.health insurance, lifetime contracts, ageing provisions premium insurance, simulations

Vergleich des Sprachverstehens im Störgeräusch bei Cochlea Implantat Trägern mit unterschiedlichen Mikrophonen

Einleitung: Es wurden die Leistungen beim Verstehen im Störgeräusch von CI-Patienten mit unterschiedlichen Implantattypen verglichen. Der TEMPO+ Sprachprozessor (MED-EL, Implantat C40+) verwendet ein Mikrophon mit Kugelcharakteristik, während der ESPrit 3G Prozessor (COCHLEAR, Implantat CI24R(CA)) mit einem frontal ausgelegten Richtmikrophon ausgestattet ist. Methode: Von den zwei untersuchten Patientengruppen (n=20) war eine mit einem C40+ Implantat (MED-EL, Innsbruck), die andere mit dem CI24RCA Implantat (Cochlear, Melbourne) versorgt. Es wurde die S0N180 Lautsprecheranordnung im Freifeld für den HSM-Test (Hochmair, Schulz und Moser, 1997) und die S0N0 Anordnung für den Oldenburger Satztest (Wagener, Kühnel und Kollmeier, 1999) verwendet. Der OLSA wurde mit festem Sprachpegel (65 dB SPL) und adaptivem Störgeräusch durchgeführt. Der HSM-Satztest wurde bei Signal-/ Rauschverhältnissen von 15 dB, 10 dB, 5 dB, 0dB sowie ohne Störgeräusch durchgeführt. Ergebnisse: Im HSM-Satztest (S0N180) wurden signifikant bessere Leistungen beim Verstehen im Störgeräusch für die Gruppe mit dem Richtmikrophon nachgewiesen. Im Oldenburger Satztest zeigten sich keine signifikanten Unterschiede. Schlussfolgerungen: Im Vergleich zu einem Mikrophon mit Kugelcharakteristik verbessert ein Richtmikrophon das Sprachverstehen in Situationen, in denen die Sprache frontal und der Störschall von hinten dargeboten werden

The Hindu Presence in Europe and Implications of Interfaith Dialogue

The World\u27s Parliament of Religions held in Chicago in 1893 is often referred to as the catalytic start of organized interfaith activities in Canada and the United States. Europe, however, cannot look back to such a pioneering event. One may point to the Religions of the Empire Conference, held in 1924 in conjunction with the British Empire Exhibition in London, or the World Congress of Faiths in 1936. These incipient initiatives of an interfaith dialogue were confined to Great Britain only and did not reach the continent

Computing earliest arrival flows with multiple sources

Earliest arrival flows are motivated by applications related to evacuation. Given a network with capacities and transit times on the arcs, a subset of source nodes with supplies and a sink node, the task is to send the given supplies from the sources to the sink "as quickly as possible". The latter requirement is made more precise by the earliest arrival property which requires that the total amount of flow that has arrived at the sink is maximal for all points in time simultaneously. It is a classical result from the 1970s that, for the special case of a single source node, earliest arrival flows do exist and can be computed by essentially applying the Successive Shortest Path Algorithm for min-cost flow computations. While it has previously been observed that an earliest arrival flow still exists for multiple sources, the problem of computing one efficiently has been open. We present an exact algorithm for this problem whose running time is strongly polynomial in the input plus output size of the problem

Muslim and Buddhist youths in Switzerland: individualising religion and striving for recognition?

Since the second half of the 20th century, immigrants and refugees from numerous countries have arrived in Switzerland. With their long-term settlement, the immigrant minorities have established cultural and religious associations to maintain their cultural and religious traditions and to teach their children the faith and religious practices from the country of origin. In contrast to the first immigrant generation, the second generation has had concurrent social influences from the Swiss ordinary school system and the cultural-religious traditions of their parents. This article asks to what extent the young generations have continued the religious traditions brought by their parents and what changes have occurred in adapting religious practices, ideas and collective forms to the new socio-cultural environment. In addition, we study whether and how the second generations have striven to move away from the often-marginalised social position of their parents and engage with social recognition in Swiss society. To provide answers to these pertinent questions, the article will draw on the examples of first and second-generation Muslims and Buddhists in Switzerland and refer to the theoretical model designed by the American scholars Fred Kniss and Paul Numrich. The article argues that not only outward changes of religiosity are observable among second-generation youths, but also that despite an intensified degree of individualisation, some of their newly founded youth associations strive for civic participation and social recognition in the public arena of Swiss civil society

CSF prostaglandin D synthase is reduced in excessive daytime sleepiness

Lipocalin-type prostaglandin D synthase (L-PGDS) is a brain enzyme, which produces prostaglandin D2, a substance with endogenous somnogenic effects. Using a standardized protocol for immunonephelometric determination of cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) L-PGDS levels, we show that CSF L-PGDS levels are significantly lower in 34 patients with excessive daytime sleepiness when compared with levels in 22 healthy controls. Thus, L-PGDS may represent the first neurochemical measure of excessive daytime sleepines