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

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

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 (|$\eta$|<0.8) and transverse momentum range 0.2< $p_{\rm T}$< 5.0 GeV/$c$. The elliptic flow signal v$_2$, measured using the 4-particle correlation method, averaged over transverse momentum and pseudorapidity is 0.087 $\pm$ 0.002 (stat) $\pm$ 0.004 (syst) in the 40-50% centrality class. The differential elliptic flow v$_2(p_{\rm T})$ reaches a maximum of 0.2 near $p_{\rm T}$ = 3 GeV/$c$. 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

Two-pion Bose-Einstein correlations in central Pb-Pb collisions at sNN\sqrt{s_{\rm NN}} = 2.76 TeV

The first measurement of two-pion Bose-Einstein correlations in central Pb-Pb collisions at $\sqrt{s_{\rm NN}} = 2.76$ 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 $e^{\pm}p$ neutral and charge current reactions and $\nu$ ($\bar{\nu}$) 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 $p\bar{p}$ collisions and inclusive $\pi^0$ production in $pp$ 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