Host Galaxy Contribution to the Colours of `Red' Quasars

We describe an algorithm that measures self-consistently the relative galaxy contribution in a sample of radio-quasars from their optical spectra alone. This is based on a spectral fitting method which uses the size of the characteristic 4000\AA~ feature of elliptical galaxy SEDs. We apply this method to the Parkes Half-Jansky Flat Spectrum sample of Drinkwater et al. (1997) to determine whether emission from the host galaxy can significantly contribute to the very red optical-to-near-infrared colours observed. We find that at around $2\sigma$ confidence, most of the reddening in unresolved (mostly quasar-like) sources is unlikely to be due to contamination by a red stellar component.Comment: 11 pages, 11 figures. Accepted for Publication in Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Societ

The study of ionospheric anomalies in Japan area during 1998–2010 by Kon et al.: An inaccurate claim of earthquake-related signatures?

The problem of identifying precursory signals of earthquakes in the hope of mitigate the seismic hazard is a very important topic, but inaccurate documentations of precursory signatures decrease the credibility of this field of research. The statistical analysis by Kon et al. (2011) shows that there is tendency of positive total electron content (TEC) anomalies to occur 1–5 days before 52 M > 6 earthquakes which struck Japan during 1998–2010. Kon et al. (2011) also report in detail three selected case studies claiming the occurrence of TEC anomalies possibly related to large and destructive earthquakes. This paper casts doubts on the possibility that in the three cases the TEC disturbances were caused by seismic events suggesting that these TEC changes could be induced by normal variations of the global geomagnetic activity. As a consequence, also the results of the Superimposed Epoch Analysis performed by Kon et al. (2011) could be seriously influenced by global magnetospheric signals

The History of Insurance: Risk, Uncertainty and Entrepreneurship

The goals of presenting a short review of the history of insurance are to provide a historical perspective on this industry; explain how it has developed with an emphasis on its recent history; and show the relationship between insurance – pooling and transfer of risks- and entrepreneurship - broadly defined as the capability to introduce new combinations of productive factors. The analysis offered here is based on the distinction between risk and uncertainty as indicated by Knight (2002, or.pub.1921) arguing that risk involves situations where a decision maker  face unknown outcomes but known ex-ante probability distributions, while uncertainty is characterized by situations in which the probability distribution of a random outcome is unknown. Consequently, while risk can be covered by insurance, uncertainty normally is not.Against this background, the history of insurance focuses on the development of insurance in developed and emerging markets with a particular attention to Latin America. The historical review is instrumental to investigate on two main aspects: whether insurance and entrepreneurship interact; and whether the widespread availability of insurance leads to a reduction of uncertainty and support the deployment of entrepreneurship