13,177,987 research outputs found
Reincarnation belief and the Christian churches
Reincarnation has never been part of mainstream Christian theology. This is true in spite of periodic speculations by Christian theologians, and in spite of the fact that reincarnation believers sometimes wrongly impute belief in reincarnation to prominent Christian thinkers. Even so, in 1984 Paul Badham was able to point to statistics which indicated that as many Anglicans believed in reincarnation as believed in heaven and hell. This paper is based on the responses of the many Christians who were among informants in an interview study we conducted in 1997 in the south-west of England; our purpose was to investigate European Values Survey (EVS) statistics which suggest that around a quarter of all British people and, indeed, of Europeans more generally, believe in reincarnation
Radiative Ke3 decays revisited
Motivated by recent experimental results and ongoing measurements, we review
the chiral perturbation theory prediction for radiative Ke3 decays (neutral
kaons). Special emphasis is given on the stability of the inner
bremsstrahlung-dominated relative branching ratio vs. the Ke3 form factors, and
on the separation of the structure dependent amplitude in differential
distributions over the phase space. For the structure dependent terms, an
assessment of the order p^6 corrections is given. In particular, a full
next-to-leading order calculation of the axial component is performed. The
experimental analysis of the photon energy spectrum is discussed, and other
potentially useful distributions are introduced.Comment: Version published in Eur.Phys.J.C.: 23 pages (LaTeX), 10 figures.
Minor changes in text, typos removed, references updated, Springer style file
use
DNA Renaturation at the Water-Phenol Interface
We study DNA adsorption and renaturation in a water-phenol two-phase system,
with or without shaking. In very dilute solutions, single-stranded DNA is
adsorbed at the interface in a salt-dependent manner. At high salt
concentrations the adsorption is irreversible. The adsorption of the
single-stranded DNA is specific to phenol and relies on stacking and hydrogen
bonding. We establish the interfacial nature of a DNA renaturation at a high
salt concentration. In the absence of shaking, this reaction involves an
efficient surface diffusion of the single-stranded DNA chains. In the presence
of a vigorous shaking, the bimolecular rate of the reaction exceeds the
Smoluchowski limit for a three-dimensional diffusion-controlled reaction. DNA
renaturation in these conditions is known as the Phenol Emulsion Reassociation
Technique or PERT. Our results establish the interfacial nature of PERT. A
comparison of this interfacial reaction with other approaches shows that PERT
is the most efficient technique and reveals similarities between PERT and the
renaturation performed by single-stranded nucleic acid binding proteins. Our
results lead to a better understanding of the partitioning of nucleic acids in
two-phase systems, and should help design improved extraction procedures for
damaged nucleic acids. We present arguments in favor of a role of phenol and
water-phenol interface in prebiotic chemistry. The most efficient renaturation
reactions (in the presence of condensing agents or with PERT) occur in
heterogeneous systems. This reveals the limitations of homogeneous approaches
to the biochemistry of nucleic acids. We propose a heterogeneous approach to
overcome the limitations of the homogeneous viewpoint
The Making of the Standard Model
This is the edited text of a talk given at CERN on Septembr 16, 2003, as part
of a celebration of the 30th anniversary of the discovery of neutral currents
and the 20th anniversary of the discovery of the W and Z particles.Comment: 21 page
Elliptic flow of charged particles in Pb-Pb collisions at 2.76 TeV
We report the first measurement of charged particle elliptic flow in Pb-Pb
collisions at 2.76 TeV with the ALICE detector at the CERN Large Hadron
Collider. The measurement is performed in the central pseudorapidity region
(||<0.8) and transverse momentum range 0.2< < 5.0 GeV/. The
elliptic flow signal v, measured using the 4-particle correlation method,
averaged over transverse momentum and pseudorapidity is 0.087 0.002
(stat) 0.004 (syst) in the 40-50% centrality class. The differential
elliptic flow v reaches a maximum of 0.2 near = 3
GeV/. Compared to RHIC Au-Au collisions at 200 GeV, the elliptic flow
increases by about 30%. Some hydrodynamic model predictions which include
viscous corrections are in agreement with the observed increase.Comment: 10 pages, 4 captioned figures, published version, figures at
http://aliceinfo.cern.ch/ArtSubmission/node/389
Measurement of the LT-asymmetry in \pi^0 electroproduction at the energy of the \Delta (1232) resonance
The reaction p(e,e'p)pi^0 has been studied at Q^2=0.2 (GeV/c)^2 in the region
of W=1232 MeV. From measurements left and right of q, cross section asymmetries
\rho_LT have been obtained in forward kinematics \rho_LT(\theta_\pi^0=20deg) =
(-11.68 +/- 2.36_stat +/- 2.36_sys)$ and backward kinematics
\rho_LT(\theta_\pi^0=160deg) =(12.18 +/- 0.27_stat +/- 0.82_sys). Multipole
ratios \Re(S_1+^* M_1+)/|M_1+|^2 and \Re(S_0+^* M_1+)/|M_1+|^2 were determined
in the framework of the MAID2003 model. The results are in agreement with older
data. The unusally strong negative \Re(S_0+^* M_1+)/|M_1+|^2 required to bring
also the result of Kalleicher et al. in accordance with the rest of the data is
almost excluded.Comment: 7 pages, 7 figures, 4 tables. Changed content. Accepted for
publication in EPJ
One-step generation of high-quality squeezed and EPR states in cavity QED
We show how to generate bilinear (quadratic) Hamiltonians in cavity quantum
electrodynamics (QED) through the interaction of a single driven three-level
atom with two (one) cavity modes. With this scheme it is possible to generate
one-mode mesoscopic squeezed superpositions, two-mode entanglements, and
two-mode squeezed vacuum states (such the original EPR state), without the need
for Ramsey zones and external parametric amplification. The degree of squeezing
achieved is up to 99% with currently feasible experimental parameters and the
errors due to dissipative mechanisms become practically negligible
A Covariant Path Amplitude Description of Flavour Oscillations: The Gribov-Pontecorvo Phase for Neutrino Vacuum Propagation is Right
An extended study is performed of geometrical and kinematical assumptions
used in calculations of the neutrino oscillation phase. The almost universally
employed `equal velocity' assumption, in which all neutrino mass eigenstates
are produced at the same time, is shown to underestimate, by a factor of two,
the neutrino propagation contribution to the phase. Taking properly into
account, in a covariant path amplitude calculation, the incoherent nature of
neutrino production as predicted by the Standard Model, results in an important
source propagator contribution to the phase. It is argued that the commonly
discussed Gaussian `wave packets' have no basis within quantum mechanics and
are the result of a confused amalgam of quantum and classical wave concepts.Comment: 39 pages, 1 table, 1 figure. Subject matter similar to
hep-ph/0110064, hep-ph/0110066. More pedagogical presentation addressing
referee criticism of earlier paper
Two-pion Bose-Einstein correlations in central Pb-Pb collisions at = 2.76 TeV
The first measurement of two-pion Bose-Einstein correlations in central Pb-Pb
collisions at TeV at the Large Hadron Collider is
presented. We observe a growing trend with energy now not only for the
longitudinal and the outward but also for the sideward pion source radius. The
pion homogeneity volume and the decoupling time are significantly larger than
those measured at RHIC.Comment: 17 pages, 5 captioned figures, 1 table, authors from page 12,
published version, figures at
http://aliceinfo.cern.ch/ArtSubmission/node/388
The statistical parton distributions: status and prospects
New experimental results on polarized structure functions, cross sections for
neutral and charge current reactions and () charge
current on isoscalar targets are compared with predictions using the
statistical parton distributions, which were previously determined. New data on
cross sections for Drell-Yan processes, single jet in collisions and
inclusive production in collisions are also compared with
predictions from this theoretical approach. The good agreement which we find
with all these tests against experiment, strenghtens our opinion on the
relevance of the role of quantum statistics for parton distributions. We will
also discuss the prospects of this physical framework.Comment: 34 pages, 23 figures, references and figures adde
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