Movement of live animals is a key contributor to disease spread. Farmed Atlantic salmon Salmo salar, rainbow trout Onchorynchus mykiss and brown/sea trout Salmo trutta are initially raised in freshwater (FW) farms; all the salmon and some of the trout are subsequently moved to seawater (SW) farms. Frequently, fish are moved between farms during their FW stage and sometimes during their SW stage...

In enhanced annuities, the annuity payment depends on one’s state of health at some contracted date while in ”standard annuities”, it does not. The focus of this paper is on an annuity market where ”standard” and enhanced annuities are offered simultaneously. When all insured know equally well on their future health status either enhanced annuities drive standard annuities out of the market or ...

Biosecurity programs have long been known to be effective at preventing disease outbreaks in the poultry production system. However, these programs are only effective if they are properly adopted and adequately followed. Evaluation of the biosecurity practices on individual farms is needed to determine if such practices are followed and to what extent. Broiler growers for an integrator in Alaba...

Organic farming is increasingly recognized as a prototype for sustainable agriculture. Its guidelines ban the use of artificial fertilizers. However, organic farms may import nutrients from conventional farming through material exchanges. In this study, we aimed at estimating the magnitude of these flows through the quantification of nitrogen, phosphorus and potassium inflows from conventional ...

Emergency department (ED) use, by both insured and uninsured, leads to significant health care costs in the United States. While frequent ED use is often attributed to the uninsured, there is some evidence that insured populations also report utilizing the ED when otherwise preventable or nonurgent. We conducted in-person surveys of patients visiting the ED at a large research hospital and exam...

We use a Principal-Agent framework to evaluate the economic impacts of imposing a tax on insurance payment in presence of moral hazard using a Gamma conditional distribution of losses. Our results show that any tax paid by the insured would the lower his effort to prevent loss, hence increasing insurance payments and decreasing pro ts. This result is reinforced as the insured becomes more risk ...

Background By eliminating economic hurdles, the Women's Health and Cancer Rights Act of 1998 represented a paradigm shift in the availability of breast reconstruction. Yet, studies report disparities among Medicare-insured women. These studies do not account for the inherent differences in age and comorbidities between a younger privately insured and an older Medicare population. We examined im...

Currently, many wind farms exist throughout the world and, in some cases, supply a significant portion of energy to networks. However, numerous uncertainties remain with respect to the amount of energy generated by wind turbines and other sophisticated operational aspects, such as voltage and reactive power management, which requires further development and consideration. To fix the problem of ...

Building-Integrated Agriculture (BIA) in urban areas is claimed to be environmentally sustainable vis-à-vis conventional commercial agriculture practices by reducing food miles, minimizing land and water use and improving yields. However, as it is operated in controlled indoor environments, BIA can be highly energyintensive. In order to better understand the influence of local foodshed characte...

With the ultimate aim of containing the emergence of resistant bacteria, a Dutch policy was set in place in 2010 promoting a reduction of antimicrobial use (AMU) in food-producing animals. In this context, a study evaluated strategies to curb livestock-associated methicillin resistant Staphylococcus aureus (LA-MRSA). Fifty-one veal calf farms were assigned to one of 3 study arms: RAB farms redu...