A Critique of Alvin Plantinga’s Speech: ‘’Science and Religion: Where the Conflict Really Lies?’’

This article aims to examine Alvin Plantinga's speech at Biola University which name is: ‘‘Science and Religion, Where the Conflict Really Lies.’’ In order to achieve this purpose, after giving a description of the emergence of conflict between two disciplines, the ideas of Plantinga is examined through his speech and articles. The remainder of the article conducts a critical examination of his thesis in the light of Islamic viewpoint

Can Balassa and Samuelson effect explain the international price disparity between low and high income countries?

This article assesses the Balassa and Samuelson effect which offers an explanation of the differences in international prices based on productivity disparity between tradables and nontradables. It argues that although the Balassa and Samuelson effect provides a reasonable explanation for the deviations in price levels between countries that export similar types of commodities, it is less compelling in terms of explaining the price differences between low and high income countries, as these countries typically export dissimilar types of commodities.Balassa and Samuelson effect, international price disparity

What is Globalisation and What is Not?: A Political Economy Perspective

Despite the widespread use of the concept there is neither a consistent theoretical construction nor a clear definition of globalisation. Although the debate between pro and anti globalisation scholars and activists is interesting, it largely fails to address globalisation as a fundamental structural transformation of modern capitalism from a historical perspective and tends to reduce it to a re-articulation of the old debate on states versus markets. The first aim of this paper is to provide a clearer definition of globalisation which will be helpful in assessing the validity of various arguments surrounding the concept of globalisation, including whether such a process exists. Then an alternative interpretation of globalisation viewed from a political economy perspective will be introduced. It will be argued that internationalisation in the form of increased trade and foreign direct investment is the nature of capitalist accumulation process, thus, cannot be impeded. This accumulation process necessarily creates its own ideological climate to facilitate acceptance of the doctrine and to justify the economic and social problems it creates. Finally it will argue that there is a globalisation tendency since increased internationalisation inevitably weakens the role of nation states by transferring some of their functions to newly created supranational states that are created by the dynamics of this internationalisation process.Globalisation; Political Economy; International Trade Organizations

Improved numerical methods for turbulent viscous recirculating flows

The hybrid-upwind finite difference schemes employed in generally available combustor codes possess excessive numerical diffusion errors which preclude accurate quantative calculations. The present study has as its primary objective the identification and assessment of an improved solution algorithm as well as discretization schemes applicable to analysis of turbulent viscous recirculating flows. The assessment is carried out primarily in two dimensional/axisymetric geometries with a view to identifying an appropriate technique to be incorporated in a three-dimensional code

Mu + N --> Tau + N at a Muon or Neutrino Factory

The experimental discovery of large nu_mu-nu_tau mixing indicates that analogous mixing in the charged lepton sector could be substantial. We consider the possibility that if a high intensity muon beam, perhaps at the early stages of a muon or neutrino factory, strikes a nuclear target, then conversion of some of the muons into tau leptons could occur (similar to the conversion of muons to electrons at MECO). Using current experimental limits on rare tau decays to bound the size of the relevant operators, we find that a 50 GeV muon beam, with 10^20 muons on target per year, could yield as many as 10^7 mu + N --> tau + N events per year. Backgrounds could be substantial, and we comment on the possibility of detection of this process.Comment: Paragraph on theoretical models added. Version to be published in Phys. Rev.

Radiative dileptonic decays of B-meson in the general two Higgs doublet model

We investigate the exclusive $B\to \gamma \ell^+ \ell^-$ decay in the general two Higgs doublet model (model III) including the neutral Higgs boson effects with an emphasis on possible CP-violating effects. For this decay, we analyse the dependencies of the forward-backward asymmetry of the lepton pair, $A_{FB}$, CP-violating asymmetry, $A_{CP}$, and the CP-violating asymmetry in forward-backward asymmetry, $A_{CP}(A_{FB})$, on the model parameters and also on the neutral Higgs boson effects. We have found that $A_{FB}\sim 10^{-1}, 10^{-2}$, $A_{CP}\sim 10^{-2}, 10^{-1}$ and $A_{CP}(A_{FB}) \sim 10^{-2}, 10^{-1}$ depending on the relative magnitude of the Yukawa couplings $\bar{\xi}_{N,tt}^{U}$ and $\bar{\xi}_{N,bb}^{D}$ in the model III. We also observe that these physical quantities are sensitive to the model parameters and neutral Higgs boson effects are quite sizable for some values of the coupling $\bar{\xi}_{N,\tau \tau}^{D}$.Comment: 29 pages, 18 eps figures, requires appolb.cls (included