Stochastic analysis in life office management: applications to large annuity portfolios

The paper deals with the riskiness analysis for a large portfolio of life annuities. By means of the limiting distribution of the present value of the portfolio, in the first part of the paper a model for evaluating the investment and the projection risks is presented. In the second part, with regard to the investment risk's effects, the insolvency risk is measured considering the cumulative probability distribution function of the discounted average cost per policy. Copyright © 2003 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

UV‐ignited frontal polymerization of an epoxy resin

By combining frontal polymerization and radical‐induced cationic polymerization, it was possible to cure thick samples of an epoxy monomer bleached by UV light. The effect of the relative amounts of cationic photoinitiator and radical initiator was thoroughly investigated and was related to the front's velocity and its maximum temperature. The materials obtained were characterized by quantitative conversion also in the deeper layers, not reached by UV light. © 2004 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J Polym Sci Part A: Polym Chem 42: 2066–2072, 2004     

On the chromatic polynomial of a graph

Let P(G,λ) be the chromatic polynomial of a graph G with n vertices, independence number α and clique number ω. We show that for every λ≥n, ()^α≤≤ () ^{n −ω}. We characterize the graphs that yield the lower bound or the upper bound.?These results give new bounds on the mean colour number μ(G) of G: n− (n−ω)() ^{n −ω}≤μ(G)≤n−α() ^α. Received: December 12, 2000 / Accepted: October 18, 2001?Published online February 14, 2002     

Group-valued measures on coarse-grained quantum logics

In [3] it was shown that a (real) signed measure on a cyclic coarse-grained quantum logic can be extended, as a signed measure, over the entire power algebra. Later ([9]) this result was re-proved (and further improved on) and, moreover, the non-negative measures were shown to allow for extensions as non-negative measures. In both cases the proof technique used was the technique of linear algebra. In this paper we further generalize the results cited by extending group-valued measures on cyclic coarse-grained quantum logics (or non-negative group-valued measures for lattice-ordered groups). Obviously, the proof technique is entirely different from that of the preceding papers. In addition, we provide a new combinatorial argument for describing all atoms of cyclic coarse-grained quantum logics.     

Fluoride effect on the palladium–phenanthroline catalyzed carbonylation of nitroarenes to carbamates

Fluorides promote the palladium–phenanthroline catalyzed carbonylation of nitroarenes to carbamates. The effect is more evident on the rate of the reaction at short reaction times, but a positive effect on selectivity is also observed under certain conditions. The effect is observed even under conditions under which chloride inhibits the reaction. Tetraethylammonium is a better countercation than sodium. Copyright © 2007 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Layered Video and Differentiated Coding for Adaptive QoS in Mixed Wired-Satellite Networks

Mobile networks are becoming nothing but a way to allow ubiquitous access to multimedia services. To allow efficient use of resources, new systems provide flexible bandwidth and different error protection techniques to match channel behavior. As the backbone network is increasingly becoming based on packet techniques and in particular on IP and related transport protocols, end to end service quality must be analyzed considering both the fixed and the mobile part. Source scalability may help in coping with a mixed and heterogeneous environment. In this work we present some results of a transmission chain comprising a scalable MPEG-2 coder, an IP network and a radio access exploiting the availability of satellites. It is shown that for a given target rate, differentiated coding can be exploited to achieve decodability and good quality at a channel SNR much lower that single layer streams. This revised version was published online in July 2006 with corrections to the Cover Date.