Catastrophe Modeling with Financial Applications

Catastrophe modeling is used to prepare for losses caused by natural catastrophes such as earthquakes, hurricanes, or tornadoes and man-made catastrophes such as terrorism. Modeled data can be used to create a comprehensive distribution of possible disasters. The distribution gives probabilities of potential catastrophes of different severities occurring over a certain time frame. Calculating potential losses and probability of those losses occurring allows insurance companies to plan and reserve enough money to protect themselves from catastrophic events. Using a catastrophe case study posted online from the Casualty Actuarial Society and R software, this paper shows the use of statistical techniques to create an Exceedance Probability plot for possible losses from a set of hurricanes with varying loss severity (CAS 18). The creation of the probability plot will then be used on a set of data called “SP500_2000to2015_SM” to show how the use of catastrophe modeling can apply to financial data

Resistant tissues of modern marchantioid liverworts resemble enigmatic Early Paleozoic microfossils

Absence of a substantial pretracheophyte fossil record for bryophytes (otherwise predicted by molecular systematics) poses a major problem in our understanding of earliest land-plant structure. In contrast, there exist enigmatic Cambrian–Devonian microfossils (aggregations of tubes or sheets of cells or possibly a combination of both) controversially interpreted as an extinct group of early land plants known as nematophytes. We used an innovative approach to explore these issues: comparison of tube and cell-sheet microfossils with experimentally degraded modern liverworts as analogues of ancient early land plants. Lower epidermal surface tissues, including rhizoids, of Marchantia polymorpha and Conocephalum conicum were resistant to breakdown after rotting for extended periods or high-temperature acid treatment (acetolysis), suggesting fossilization potential. Cell-sheet and rhizoid remains occurred separately or together depending on the degree of body degradation. Rhizoid break-off at the lower epidermal surface left rimmed pores at the centers of cell rosettes; these were similar in structure, diameter, and distribution to pores characterizing nematophyte cell-sheet microfossils known as Cosmochlaina. The range of Marchantia rhizoid diameters overlapped that of Cosmochlaina pores. Approximately 14% of dry biomass of Marchantia vegetative thalli and 40% of gametangiophores was resistant to acetolysis. Pre- and posttreatment cell-wall autofluorescence suggested the presence of phenolic compounds that likely protect lower epidermal tissues from soil microbe attack and provide dimensional stability to gametangiophores. Our results suggest that at least some microfossils identified as nematophytes may be the remains of early marchantioid liverworts similar in some ways to modern Marchantia and Conocephalum

Recitoire: a tool for qualitative surveys involving citizens in urban planning projects

Ponencias, comunicaciones y pósters presentados en el 17th AGILE Conference on Geographic Information Science "Connecting a Digital Europe through Location and Place", celebrado en la Universitat Jaume I del 3 al 6 de junio de 2014.The difficulty to involve citizens into projects that influence or transform their experience of the urban space is underlined by public authorities and professionals such as urban planners. The implication of citizens in the existing modes of consultation (public meeting, opinions polls) is often limited and not representative. New solutions for facilitating citizens’ involvement in both the diagnosis and the construction of the city need to be found. We propose here a prototype called Recitoire, as a support for qualitative surveys involving citizens in urban planning projects. Using a mobile application, a data collect is performed which includes the path followed by a citizen (her/his trace is kept) and the different kinds of media files she/he produces all along the path to illustrate her/his feelings and impressions on a given thematic - chosen for the survey by urban planners. A server application centralizes the collected data and offers an interface for both their exploration and their exploitation by the actors of the urban project

Late Mid Devonian Sawdonia (Zosterophyllopsida) from Venezuela

Premise of research. Fossil plants from the Late Middle to early Late Devonian age Campo Chico Formation, Sierra de Perijá, western Venezuela, are determined to represent a new species of the zosterophyll genus Sawdonia. While mentioned in previous publications, this plant has not been previously described or formally named. A conclusive taxonomic assignment was not possible until clarification of the sporangial morphology of the type species of Sawdonia, S. ornata (Gensel and Berry 2016), from the Early Devonian of Canada. Methodology. The adpressions were prepared using dégagement, including serial dégagement and photography at each stage. Permineralized remains were prepared using established techniques for pyrite sectioning and polishing. Taphonomic analysis included preparing models and subjecting them to compression to aid in understanding their shape and orientation in life. Pivotal results. The Venezuelan plants are adpressions of spiny axes that exhibit two types of branching (especially in vegetative ones), circinate tips, anatomy with G-type tracheids, and lateral sporangia with unequal-sized sporangial valves, with the abaxial valve being spinous as is characteristic of the genus Sawdonia Hueber emend Gensel and Berry 2016. Sporangia are irregularly arranged along some axes and appear to be located in medial to subdistal regions. Spores were not obtained. Conclusions. Differences in length and density of spines, the presence of two types of branching related to its growth habit, and details of sporangial morphology distinguish the Venezuelan plants from those of the type species and S. deblondii, thus leading to establishing a new species. This discovery demonstrates the longevity of the genus (ca. 20 Myr) during a time of profound vegetational change, including the rise of forests, and is the first record of a fertile zosterophyll recorded from the Middle Devonian of South America