Revisiting the Afterlife: The Inadequacies of Heaven and Hell

This paper deals with some of the ambiguities that are associated with the intermediate and final states after death. Whereas many in the church have dismissed these concepts as myths of the ancients, this discussion shows how the grounding of such beliefs in the Hebrew mindset was the key to Jesus’ own teachings about the afterlife. The argument begins by developing a biblical anthropology over against the modern naturalistic anthropologies that have largely dominated the philosophical and theological scenes. From here we look at the Old Testament concept of the afterlife, and how the modern view that the Hebrews were ambivalent about such a concept is plainly false. Then it is argued that the New Testament doctrines of heaven and hell, which become very specific at this point, are thoroughly indebted to Jewish underpinnings. Without this foundation there would be no clear divisions within the realms of the dead, but because Jesus and his followers assume the validity of the Old Testament material they are able to flesh out such eschatological questions as where Jesus went after death, and where the saint and reprobate will go today. Far from being a stale theological issue, this study has direct bearing upon how one evangelizes today. For when the specific concepts are grasped, the believer will realize that the lost are not going to hell, at least not yet

Exobiology and Future Mars Missions

Scientific questions associated with exobiology on Mars were considered and how these questions should be addressed on future Mars missions was determined. The mission that provided a focus for discussions was the Mars Rover/Sample Return Mission

Multi-epoch infrared photometry of the star forming region G173.58+2.45

We present a multi-epoch infrared photometric study of the intermediate-mass star forming region G173.58+2.45. Photometric observations are obtained using the near-infrared $JHKL'M'$ filters and narrow-band filters centered at the wavelengths of H$_2$ (1-0) S(1) (2.122 $\mu$m) and [FeII] (1.644 $\mu$m) lines. The H$_2$ image shows molecular emission from shocked gas, implying the presence of multiple star formation and associated outflow activity. We see evidence for several collimated outflows. The most extended jet is at least 0.25 pc in length and has a collimation factor of $\sim$ 10, which may be associated with a binary system within the central cluster, resolved for the first time here. This outflow is found to be episodic; probably occurring or getting enhanced during the periastron passage of the binary. We also find that the variable star in the vicinity of the outflow source, which was known as a FU Ori type star, is probably not a FU Ori object. However, it does drive a spectacular outflow and the variability is likely to be related to accretion, when large clouds of gas and dust spiral in towards the central source. Many other convincing accretion-outflow systems and YSO candidates are discovered in the field.Comment: 15 pages, 9 figures, accepted for publication in MNRA

Construction and evaluation of classifiers for forensic document analysis

In this study we illustrate a statistical approach to questioned document examination. Specifically, we consider the construction of three classifiers that predict the writer of a sample document based on categorical data. To evaluate these classifiers, we use a data set with a large number of writers and a small number of writing samples per writer. Since the resulting classifiers were found to have near perfect accuracy using leave-one-out cross-validation, we propose a novel Bayesian-based cross-validation method for evaluating the classifiers.Comment: Published in at http://dx.doi.org/10.1214/10-AOAS379 the Annals of Applied Statistics (http://www.imstat.org/aoas/) by the Institute of Mathematical Statistics (http://www.imstat.org

Will Changing Demographics Affect U.S. Cheese Demand?

U.S. cheese consumption has grown considerably over the last three decades. Using a censored demand model and Nielsen Homescan retail data, this study identifies price and non-price factors affecting the demand for differentiated cheese products. Own-price and expenditure elasticities for all of the cheese products are statistically significant and elastic. Results also reveal that a strong substitution relationship exists among all cheese products. Although demographic influences are generally smaller than those related to prices and expenditures, empirical findings show that household size, college educated female heads of household who are age 40 and older, residing in the South, Central, and Western regions of the United States, as well as Black heads of household, have positive statistically significant effects on consumers’ cheese purchases.cheese form, cheese purchase, demand elasticities, demographic and economic factors, Nielsen Homescan data, Food Consumption/Nutrition/Food Safety, Marketing, C25, D12, Q11,

Influence of classical resonances on chaotic tunnelling

Dynamical tunnelling between symmetry-related stable modes is studied in the periodically driven pendulum. We present strong evidence that the tunnelling process is governed by nonlinear resonances that manifest within the regular phase-space islands on which the stable modes are localized. By means of a quantitative numerical study of the corresponding Floquet problem, we identify the trace of such resonances not only in the level splittings between near-degenerate quantum states, where they lead to prominent plateau structures, but also in overlap matrix elements of the Floquet eigenstates, which reveal characteristic sequences of avoided crossings in the Floquet spectrum. The semiclassical theory of resonance-assisted tunnelling yields good overall agreement with the quantum-tunnelling rates, and indicates that partial barriers within the chaos might play a prominent role

Vortex pairing in two-dimensional Bose gases

Recent experiments on ultracold Bose gases in two dimensions have provided evidence for the existence of the Berezinskii-Kosterlitz-Thouless (BKT) phase via analysis of the interference between two independent systems. In this work we study the two-dimensional quantum degenerate Bose gas at finite temperature using the projected Gross-Pitaevskii equation classical field method. While this describes the highly occupied modes of the gas below a momentum cutoff, we have developed a method to incorporate the higher momentum states in our model. We concentrate on finite-sized homogeneous systems in order to simplify the analysis of the vortex pairing. We determine the dependence of the condensate fraction on temperature and compare this to the calculated superfluid fraction. By measuring the first order correlation function we determine the boundary of the Bose-Einstein condensate and BKT phases, and find it is consistent with the superfluid fraction decreasing to zero. We reveal the characteristic unbinding of vortex pairs above the BKT transition via a coarse-graining procedure. Finally, we model the procedure used in experiments to infer system correlations [Hadzibabic et al., Nature 441, 1118 (2006)], and quantify its level of agreement with directly calculated in situ correlation functions.Comment: published versio