Estimating the Fair Insurance Premium for Dungeness Crab Yields in the Western U.S. Coast

The Dungeness is a popular food and the most commercially important crab in the western states in the U.S. Like all agricultural production, the crab fisherman face yield risks and must manage these risks. In addition to weather risk, crab fisherman may experience low yields if the crabs are over fished in previous years. Farmers for many traditional agricultural crops can purchase crop insurance to insure against low yields. However, crab fishermen at this time do not have this option. The purpose of this paper is to estimate a fair insurance premium based on the historical yields of the Dungeness crab. This information can then be used in risk/return models for crab fishing to determine if it would be optimal for fisherman to purchase crop insurance. An important input into the fair insurance premium estimation is the yield distribution. Sherrick et al. estimated alternative yield distributions to evaluate traditional crop insurance. However, no one has looked at the yield distributions for the Dungeness crab nor explored possible crop insurance. Much of the past literature for the fishing industry has focused on production functions, cost function models, and optimal catching yields for specific fish species. Moreover, most research has focused on the endangered commercial ocean species such as tuna and swordfish. Data and Methodology This research collects the annual landing data including metric tons, pounds, and price per pound from NOAA's National Marine Fisheries Service (NOAA Fisheries Service) to analyze the yield distributions of Dungeness crab in California, Oregon, Washington, and Alaska from 1950 to 2009. Dickey Fuller test is conducted for each state to test if the data is stationary. The Durbin-Watson test was used to make sure the data did not have autocorrelation problems. We find that the detrended data has positive Skewness contrary to traditional crop yield data. The positive Skewness indicates that the tail on the right sides is longer than the left side and the mass of the distribution is concentrated on the left. It also has relatively few high values. The candidate distributions used include normal, Gamma, Weibull, logistic, lognormal, and loglogistic distributions. The fitted distributions are compared with formal goodness- of- fit tests including Chi-Square, Anderson-Darling, and Kolmogorov-Smirnov. The loglogistic distribution is best to estimate the yield losses of Alaska, Oregon, and California respectively while the logistic is best for Washington. The Gamma and normal distribution are the worst for the four states. Actual Production History (APH) policies insure crop producers against yield losses due to natural causes. After Just and Weninger found that crop yield losses were nonnormally distributed, many agricultural researchers use parametric (Goodwin and Ker) and nonparametric distributions (Sherrick et al) and the insured price to estimate the insurance premium. The premium refers to the periodic payment made on the insurance policy. When the yields are below the insured level (the predicted level each year), the insurance company has to pay indemnities to the producers to compensate them for their losses. Our study uses different parametric distributions to forecast the crab yields. Along with the yield distributions and yield forecasts, we assume that the crop insurance insures up to 80% of the yield distribution. We also assume that the insured price is the predicted price per pound for 2010 (since the price model are Pth-order autoregressive (AR(p)) processes) to estimate the fair insurance premium. The insured prices per pound of the four states from north to south are $1.88,$2.39, $1.94, and$1.99 respectively. If the random value (that the realized yields fall below the guaranteed yields) generated by the best distributions which may generate different parametric value for the four states falls below zero, it will means that the fisherman suffer yield losses, and that the insurance company has to compensate the fishermen’s revenue. The insurance company pays the fishermen the dollars that the insured price times 80% of the yield that the fishermen suffer from loss. The indemnities will be either zero or positive. Next, we adopt Latin hypercube sampling (LHS) to simulate the indemnities 500 times to calculate the average indemnities. If we don’t consider the capital and administration fees of the insurance company, the average indemnities will be the actuarially fair insurance premium. The average indemnity and thus the actuarially fair premiums of the overall crab industry are $1,380,924,$702,344, $2,823,855, and$3,470,998 one year for the all ships in Alaska, Washington, Oregon, and California respectively. Unlike traditional crop insurance that estimates the premium per acre, we use the total premium shared by all fishing vessels in the state and account for the total tons that the fishing vessels load because the crabs and the fishing vessel move everywhere. After simulated, half of the time the insurance company must pay indemnities. To avoid the high risk of yield losses and uncertainty, the existence of insurance is necessary to protect the fishermen’s revenue. Finally, we will try to use non-parametric method to estimate the fair premium and compare the results of the parametric and non-parametric distributions for the rigorous study. We will also estimate the potential welfare gain of fishermen from this insurance policy.Dungeness Crab, Fair Insurance Premium, Simulation, Agricultural and Food Policy, Agricultural Finance, Risk and Uncertainty,

Acute exacerbation of psychiatric symptoms during influenza treatment with oseltamivir in chronic schizophrenia

AbstractInfluenza treatment and prophylaxis with oseltamivir are critically important in reducing the morbidity and mortality of patients in chronic psychiatric facilities. Abnormal behavior, delusions, perceptual disturbances, mania, and depression have all been reported as oseltamivir-related psychiatric side effects. We hereby report two chronic schizophrenia patients in Taiwan manifesting psychiatric instability who were being treated with oseltamivir for suspected influenza infection, and further discuss other potential contributing factors. The possibility that oseltamivir can cause psychotic or affective symptoms suggests that additional caution is necessary for its use in patients with an established psychiatric diagnosis

Price-Quantity Dynamics, Prequential Analysis, and Yield Insurance Premium Estimation of Dungeness Crab

This dissertation analyzes the Dungeness crab prices and quantities, which is conducted within three essays. The first essay studies the relationships among the West Coast Dungeness crab landing prices and quantities using cointegration analysis and directed acyclic graphs. The forecast tests are added to determine the number of cointegrating rank. Directed acyclic graphs are estimated using different algorithms for comparison and are used to discover the causality of the crab markets. The four states’ crab prices are strongly connected contemporaneously. The price-quantity relationships exist among the California, Oregon and Washington markets because of their tri-state Dungeness crab project. The Alaska quantity does not affect and is not affected by the other prices and quantities possibly due to stock collapse in some areas of Alaska. The second essay uses the three models to explore the prequential relationships among the West Coast states’ Dungeness crab fisheries. A random walk and the 1-lag VAR outperform the 2-lag VAR. Most series in the random walk and the l-lag VAR are well-calibrated. For the Dungeness crab quantities, the random walk does slightly better than the 1-lag VAR; the 1-lag VAR dominates the random walk for the crab prices. The results are consistent with the literature on the Dungeness crab movement patterns. Information about the crab fishery management decision making are provided in this essay. The third essay estimates the Dungeness crab yield insurance premiums and the probabilities of the indemnities being paid to the crab fishermen in each western coastal state using cointegration analysis, goodness-of-fit tests, and Monte Carlo simulation. The lognormal distribution provides the best-fit for the Alaska crab yield and the logistic for the Oregon, Washington, and California yields, respectively. The log-logistic is found to be the best-fit for each state’s prices. At 50%, 60%, 70%, and 80% yield coverage levels, Alaska has the highest insurance premiums and the highest probability of paying the indemnities, followed by California, and then Washington or Oregon

A reduced risk of stroke with lithium exposure in bipolar disorder: a population‐based retrospective cohort study

Peer Reviewedhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/115969/1/bdi12336.pdfhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/115969/2/bdi12336_am.pd

Effect of rehabilitation on a patient suffering from a tuberculous brain abscess with Gerstmann’s syndrome: case report

There are few reports in the literature of tuberculous brain abscess. Tuberculous brain abscess usually occurs in an immunocompromised host. Almost all previously documented cases have involved acquired immune deficiency syndrome. We encountered a 53-year-old right-handed immunocompetent male who was initially suspected of having a cerebrovascular accident due to acute-onset right hemiparesis and paresthesia. A tentative diagnosis of brain tumor versus brain abscess was made on imaging studies. The patient was finally diagnosed with a tuberculous brain abscess based upon deterioration on imaging and a positive tuberculosis culture. The tuberculous brain abscess was located in the left parietal lobe, which resulted in Gerstmann’s syndrome and right-sided apraxia. Stereotactic surgery was performed. He was also given antituberculosis chemotherapy and comprehensive rehabilitation. Considerable improvement was noted after rehabilitation. The patient even returned to a normal life and work. Our case demonstrates that an aggressive intensive inpatient rehabilitation program combined with stereotactic surgery and effective antituberculosis therapy play an important role in improving the outcome for patients with tuberculous brain abscess, Gerstmann’s syndrome, and right-sided apraxia

Outcomes and characteristics of ertapenem-nonsusceptible Klebsiella pneumoniae bacteremia at a university hospital in Northern Taiwan: A matched case-control study

Background and purposeCarbapenem-resistant Klebsiella pneumoniae is an emerging problem worldwide. The object of this study was to investigate the risk factors, characteristics and outcomes of ertapenem-nonsusceptible K pneumoniae (ENSKp) bacteremia.MethodsWe conducted a 1:2 ratio matched case-control study. The controls were randomly selected among patients with ertapenem-susceptible K pneumoniae (ESKp) bacteremia and were matched with ENSKp cases for bacteremia.ResultsSeventy-five patients were included in this study (25 cases and 50 controls). Bivariate analysis showed that prior exposure to either β-Lactam/β-Lactam-lactamase inhibitors (p = 0.008) or 4th generation cephalosporins (p < 0.001), chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) (p = 0.001), acute renal failure (p = 0.021), chronic kidney disease without dialysis (p = 0.021), recent hospital stay (p = 0.016), intensive care unit stay (p = 0.002), mechanical ventilation (p = 0.003), central venous catheter placement (p = 0.016), Foley indwelling (p = 0.022), polymicrobial bacteremia (p = 0.003) and higher Pittsburgh bacteremia score (p < 0.001) were associated with ENSKp bacteremia. The multivariate analysis showed that prior exposure to 4th generation cephalosporins (odds ratio [OR], 28.05; 95% confidence interval [CI], 2.92–269.85; p = 0.004), COPD (OR, 21.38; 95% CI, 2.95–154.92; p = 0.002) and higher Pittsburgh bacteremia score (OR, 1.35; 95% CI, 1.10–1.66; p = 0.004) were independent factors for ENSKp bacteremia. ENSKp bacteremia had a higher 14-day mortality rate than ESKp bacteremia (44.0% vs. 22.0%; p = 0.049). The overall in-hospital mortality rates for these two groups were 60.0% and 40.0% respectively (p = 0.102).ConclusionENSKp bacteremia had a poor outcome and the risk factors were prior exposure of 4th generation cephalosporins, COPD and higher Pittsburgh bacteremia score. Antibiotic stewardship may be the solution for the preventive strategy

Discovering Chromatin Motifs using FAIRE Sequencing and the Human Diploid Genome

Background: Specific chromatin structures are associated with active or inactive gene transcription. The gene regulatory elements are intrinsically dynamic and alternate between inactive and active states through the recruitment of DNA binding proteins, such as chromatin-remodeling proteins. Results: We developed a unique genome-wide method to discover DNA motifs associated with chromatin accessibility using formaldehyde-assisted isolation of regulatory elements with high-throughput sequencing (FAIRE-seq). We aligned the FAIRE-seq reads to the GM12878 diploid genome and subsequently identified differential chromatin-state regions (DCSRs) using heterozygous SNPs. The DCSR pairs represent the locations of imbalances of chromatin accessibility between alleles and are ideal to reveal chromatin motifs that may directly modulate chromatin accessibility. In this study, we used DNA 6-10mer sequences to interrogate all DCSRs, and subsequently discovered conserved chromatin motifs with significant changes in the occurrence frequency. To investigate their likely roles in biology, we studied the annotated protein associated with each of the top ten chromatin motifs genome-wide, in the intergenic regions and in genes, respectively. As a result, we found that most of these annotated motifs are associated with chromatin remodeling, reflecting their significance in biology. Conclusions: Our method is the first one using fully phased diploid genome and FAIRE-seq to discover motifs associated with chromatin accessibility. Our results were collected to construct the first chromatin motif database (CMD), providing the potential DNA motifs recognized by chromatin-remodeling proteins and is freely available at http://syslab.nchu.edu.tw/chromatin