Insurance accounting has for many years proved a challenging topic for standard setters, preparers and users, often described as a “black box”. Will recent developments, in particular the July 2010 Insurance Contracts Exposure Draft, herald a new era?

This paper reviews these developments, setting out key issues and implications. It concentrates on issues relevant to life insurers, although much of the content is also relevant to non-life insurers.

The paper compares certain IFRS and Solvency II developments, recognising that UK insurers face challenges in implementing new financial and regulatory reporting requirements in similar timeframes. The paper considers resulting external disclosure requirements and a possible future role for supplementary information.

While investigating variations in agglutinability, occurring among certain strains of paratyphoid bacilli, it became desirable to obtain cultures derived from single bacterial cells. The technique at first adopted was that devised by Mutch (1919), but the results obtained were not satisfactory. Certain modifications of this method were attempted, but were no more successful.

The main difficulty, and one which appears to us to have been far too little emphasised in all the methods hitherto described, has been encountered in obtaining satisfactory conditions for the microscopical observation of the bacillary suspensions employed. The difficulty of accurately observing hanging-drop preparations, and still more of controlling manipulation of them by microscopical observation, would seem to us to have been insufficiently realised; and the ease with which faulty interpretation of microscopical appearances may introduce fatal errors into work of this kind has not, perhaps, been fully taken into account.

Helminth infections were studied in bank voles (Myodes glareolus) from 3 woodland sites in N.E. Poland in the late summers of 1999 and 2002, to assess the temporal stability of derived statistics describing the regional helminth fauna and component community structure, and spatial influence on the latter. Regional helminth fauna changed dramatically between the two years, primarily due to a fall in the abundance of Syphacia petrusewiczi but was partially compensated for by an increase in Mesocestoides lineatus and Cladotaenia globifera. It was dominated by nematodes overall, but more so in 1999 than in 2002 when larval cestodes were more frequent. Most derived parameters for component community structure varied considerably between sites and the two surveys, the hierarchical order for sites not being maintained between surveys. They were susceptible to the disproportionate influence of three relatively rare, unpredictable species with the greatest overall aggregated distribution among hosts. Jaccard's similarity index was less influenced by the rare species, showing greater stability between sites and across years. In conclusion, temporal variation confounded any site-specific characteristics of the summary measures quantified in this study and their usefulness is therefore restricted to the years in which the surveys were conducted.

The relative importance of temporal and spatial effects was assessed in helminth communities of bank voles (Myodes glareolus) in 3 woodland sites in N.E. Poland in the late summers of 1999 and 2002. Among common species the rank order of sites in relation to prevalence and abundance of infection was maintained between surveys. Site effects accounted for most of the deviance (in statistical models), and time was less important, so the exact location from which voles were sampled was of critical importance. The only exception was Syphacia petrusewiczi. In contrast, for derived measures such as species richness and diversity, most deviance was accounted for by host age, and the interaction between site and year was significant, implying that rank order of sites changed between years. Temporal effects on derived measures were generated primarily by a combination of relatively small changes in prevalence and abundance of the common, rather than the rare, species between the years of the study. In the medium-term, therefore, helminth communities of bank voles in N.E. Poland had a stable core, suggesting a substantial strong element of predictability.

We compared helminth communities in spiny mice (Acomys dimidiatus) from 4 wadis in the arid montane region of the southern Sinai in Egypt, in a 4-week period in late summer. Total helminth species richness was 14 (8 nematodes, 5 cestodes and 1 acanthocephalan) with 94% of mice carrying at least 1 species and an overall mean species richness of 1·85. The most prevalent parasites were Protospirura muricola (47·8%) and Dentostomella kuntzi (46·3%). One larval cestode, Joyeuxiella rossicum, represents a new host record. The helminth community was dominated by intestinal nematodes (88·7%) of which 58·2% were arthropod-transmitted heteroxenic species. At the component community level, 70% of the worms were recovered from mice in just two wadis (Gharaba and Tlah) and 48·6% of intestinal nematodes were from Wadi Gharaba. Although only 7 species of helminths were recorded from Wadi Gharaba, this site gave the highest Berger-Parker dominance index because of P. muricola. P. muricola was also dominant in Wadi El Arbaein whilst Syphacia minuta was the dominant species in Wadis Gebal and Tlah. At the infracommunity level, mean species richness and Brillouin's index of diversity were highest in Wadi Tlah and lowest in Wadi Gebal, and the former was age dependent. Whilst mice from different wadis differed in the nematodes that were most common, those from Wadi Gharaba carried the highest mean number of worms/mouse. The abundance of P. muricola in particular varied markedly between sites: Wadi Gharaba was distinct as the site showing the highest mean worm burden whereas mice from Wadi Gebal were uninfected. None of the directly transmitted oxyuroid nematodes showed significant variation in abundance between wadis, or host sex or age classes. Overall, the single extrinsic factor in the study, site of capture, was more important than the intrinsic factors in explaining variation in helminth communities in the region. We conclude that in the high mountains of southern Sinai, each wadi is distinct in terms of its rodent parasites, and hence we expect spatially different coevolutionary pressures on their hosts, with resultant variation in life-histories.

The reduction of threading dislocations (TDs) in GaN is very important as TDs act as non-radiative recombination centres and generally reduce the luminescence efficiency of GaN-based optoelectronic devices, particularly UV emitting devices. In order to reduce the density of TDs, we have used an in-situ ELO technique by depositing a non-uniform SiNx mask (as revealed by STEM-EDX) using simultaneous flow of silane and ammonia gas, either on a sapphire substrate or on a GaN pseudo-substrate. The effect of several growth parameters, such as V/III ratio, duration of Si/N treatment, pressure and temperature, on the morphology, structural quality and reduction mechanisms of TDs in GaN have been investigated and the effects of the first two parameters are reported here. To start the epilayer growth with a low V/III ratio gives rise to predominantly 3D growth, forming islands with multiple inclined facets and a vanishing top (0001) facet. A high V/III ratio enhances the lateral growth, and islands with inclined {-2112} facets together with wide flat top (0001) facets are formed. The duration of the Si/N treatment and the low V/III ratio growth regime are optimised in order to reduce the TD density down to 8×107 cm−2, as measured from plan-view TEM images. It is observed that TDs bend through 90° at inclined side facets. The role of atomic ledges moving across inclined facets which are responsible for bending the line direction of the TDs is briefly discussed.

We have studied the distribution of indium in Inx Ga1-x N single quantum wells (SQWs) with compositions of In0.18Ga0.82N and In0.22Ga0.78N. Based on lattice parameter maps extracted from HRTEM lattice fringe images, we do not find evidence for strong nanometre-scale fluctuations in the composition of the wells (indium “clusters”). Z-contrast (high-angle annular dark field) scanning TEM (STEM) and X-ray reflectivity (XRR) results both show that the width of the interface at the top of the quantum well is slightly greater than that at the bottom, which is quite abrupt. The quantum wells exhibit bright photoluminescence so these results suggest that the conventional explanation for the high efficiency of light emission from InGaN LEDs may not apply in these structures.

Wing feather mite burdens on seven species of passerine birds (Carduelis carduelis – goldfinch; C. chloris – greenfinch; Serinus serinus – serin; Sylvia atricapilla – blackcap; Sylvia melanocephala – Sardinian warbler; Turdus merula – blackbird; Passer domesticus – house sparrow) from Portugal were assessed by the subjective semi-quantitative scoring system of Behnke et al. (1995) in order to evaluate more fully the accuracy and reliability of the technique. Our analysis indicated that in all species, scores allocated to flight feathers showed a significant positive relationship with mite counts as assessed through microscopical examination of the same feathers. However, there were differences between species of birds. Of the species examined, goldfinches and greenfinches showed the weakest relationships between assigned mite scores and actual mite numbers indicating that the technique was less accurate when applied to these species compared with the remaining five. No evidence was found that anything more was to be gained from scoring both wings, rather than just one. Feather mites (Proctophyllodes spp., Trouessartia incisa) were also detected on tail feathers, but the assessment of these feathers presented additional problems and it was concluded that in the interests of minimizing handling time of birds, tail scores had little more to offer. We conclude that scoring all the flight feathers (including all primary, secondary, and tertiary feathers) on one entire wing, but alternating between left and right wings of birds within a species, represents an acceptable compromise between sufficiently detailed examination and minimization of bird handling time in the field.