In order to evaluate potential trends in global natural catastrophe losses, it is important to compensate for changes in asset values and exposures over time. We create a Global Normalized Catastrophe Catalogue covering weatherrelated catastrophe losses in the principal developed (Australia, Canada, Europe, Japan, South Korea, United States) and developing (Caribbean, Central America, China, In...

Microtubules switch stochastically between phases of growth and shrinkage. The molecular mechanism responsible for the end of a growth phase, an event called catastrophe, is still not understood. The probability for a catastrophe to occur increases with microtubule age, putting constraints on the possible molecular mechanism of catastrophe induction. Here we used microfluidics-assisted fast tub...

Oncoprotein18/stathmin (Op18) is a microtubule (MT) destabilizing protein that is inactivated during mitosis by phosphorylation at four Ser-residues. Op18 has at least two functions; the N-terminal region is required for catastrophe-promotion (i.e., transition from elongation to shortening), while the C-terminal region is required to inhibit MT-polymerization rate in vitro. We show here that a ...

Catastrophe Mortality Bonds are a recent capital market innovation providing insurers and reinsurers with the possibility to transfer catastrophe mortality risk off their balance sheets to capital markets. This article introduces a time-continuous model for analyzing and pricing catastrophe mortality contingent claims based on stochastic modeling of the force of mortality. In addition, we give ...

Uncertainty is the inherent nature of catastrophe models because people usually have incomplete knowledge or inaccurate information in regard to such rare events. In this paper we study the decision makers’ aversion to model uncertainty using various entropy measures proposed in microeconomic theory and statistical inferences theory. Under the multiplier utility preference framework and in a st...

The catastrophe theory and deterministic chaos constitute the basic elements of economic complexity. Elementary catastrophes were the rst remarkable form of nonlinear, topological complexity that were thoroughly studied in economics. Another type of catastrophe is the complexity catastrophe, namely an increase in the complexity of a system beyond a certain threshold which marks the beginning of...

We investigate the cooperative dynamics of an ensemble of N microtubules growing against an elastic barrier. Microtubules undergo so-called catastrophes, which are abrupt stochastic transitions from a growing to a shrinking state, and rescues, which are transitions back to the growing state. Microtubules can exert pushing or polymerization forces on an obstacle, such as an elastic barrier, if t...

The actin cytoskeleton plays an important role in many cellular processes, including cell mortality, mitosis, cytokinesis, intracellular transport, endocytosis and secretion but also is involved in gene transcription. The dynamics of the actin cytoskeleton is controlled by different classes of actin-binding proteins (ABPs) which regulate the polymerization of actin filaments. In this report we ...

This study investigated the anticancer effects of subamolide A (Sub-A), isolated from Cinnamomum subavenium, on human nonsmall cell lung cancer cell lines A549 and NCI-H460. Treatment of cancer cells with Sub-A resulted in decreased cell viability of both lung cancer cell lines. Sub-A induced lung cancer cell death by triggering mitotic catastrophe with apoptosis. It triggered oxidant stress, i...

Cloud computing represents a new paradigm where computing resources are offered as services in the world via communication Internet. As many new types of attacks are arising at a high frequency, the cloud computing services are exposed to an increasing amount of security threats. To reduce security risks, two approaches of the network traffic anomaly detection in cloud communications have been ...