17,633 research outputs found
Kant, Morality, and Hell
In this paper I argue that, although Kant argues that morality is independent of God (and hence, agrees with the Euthyphro), and rejects Divine Command Theory (or Theological Voluntarism), he believes that all moral duties are also the commands of God, who is a moral being, and who is morally required to punish those who transgress the moral law: "God’s justice is the precise allocation of punishments and rewards in accordance with men’s good or bad behavior." However, since we lack a strict proof of God's existence, we can still fulfill our duties from the motive of duty. if we did know that God exists, then this would undermine our pure moral motivation to do our duty, since we would have an even stronger interest in pleasing God through our good conduct. The effect of undermining our pure moral motivation would be to make us less eligible for divine reward, since God rewards us for doing our duty from the motive of duty
Understanding single-top-quark production and jets at hadron colliders
I present an analysis of fully differential single-top-quark production plus
jets at next-to-leading order. I describe the effects of jet definitions,
top-quark mass, and higher orders on the shapes and normalizations of the
kinematic distributions, and quantify all theoretical uncertainties. I explain
how to interpret next-to-leading-order jet calculations, and compare them to
showering event generators. Using the program ZTOP, I show that HERWIG and
PYTHIA significantly underestimate both s-channel and t-channel
single-top-quark production, and propose a scheme to match the relevant samples
to the next-to-leading-order predictions.Comment: 40 pgs., revtex4, 35 ps figs; added Fig. 4, 1 Ref., minor
clarifications, to appear in Phys. Rev.
Rotating Electromagnetic Waves in Toroid-Shaped Regions
Electromagnetic waves, solving the full set of Maxwell equations in vacuum,
are numerically computed. These waves occupy a fixed bounded region of the
three dimensional space, topologically equivalent to a toroid. Thus, their
fluid dynamics analogs are vortex rings. An analysis of the shape of the
sections of the rings, depending on the angular speed of rotation and the major
diameter, is carried out. Successively, spherical electromagnetic vortex rings
of Hill's type are taken into consideration. For some interesting peculiar
configurations, explicit numerical solutions are exhibited.Comment: 27 pages, 40 figure
Constraining the Progenitor Companion of the Nearby Type Ia SN 2011fe with a Nebular Spectrum at +981 Days
We present an optical nebular spectrum of the nearby Type Ia supernova
2011fe, obtained 981 days after explosion. SN 2011fe exhibits little evolution
since the +593 day optical spectrum, but there are several curious aspects in
this new extremely late-time regime. We suggest that the persistence of the
~\AA\ feature is due to Na I D, and that a new emission feature at
~\AA\ may be [Ca II]. Also, we discuss whether the new emission
feature at ~\AA\ might be [Fe I] or the high-velocity hydrogen
predicted by Mazzali et al. The nebular feature at 5200~\AA\ exhibits a linear
velocity evolution of per 100 days from at least
+220 to +980 days, but the line's shape also changes in this time, suggesting
that line blending contributes to the evolution. At days after
explosion, flux from the SN has declined to a point where contribution from a
luminous secondary could be detected. In this work we make the first
observational tests for a post-impact remnant star and constrain its
temperature and luminosity to and
. Additionally, we do not see any evidence for narrow H
emission in our spectrum. We conclude that observations continue to strongly
exclude many single-degenerate scenarios for SN 2011fe.Comment: 11 pages, 10 figures, published by MNRA
National Evaluation of the Capacity Building Programme in English Local Government: Evaluation of the National Programmes: Annex 2: Evaluation of the National Programmes
The report is one of a series of outputs from the national evaluation of the CBP, being undertaken by a team of researchers at the Policy Research Institute (PRI) at Leeds Metropolitan University and the Cities Research Unit at the University of West of England. The Capacity Building Programme for local government was launched in 2003 as a joint Department for Communities and Local Government (DCLG) / Local Government Association (LGA) initiative to support capacity building and improvement activities within local authorities in England. The evaluation of the Capacity Building Programme has been underway since late 2004. A scoping phase was conducted until May 2005, including a short evaluation of the Pilot Programmes. The main phase of the evaluation commenced in September 2005 and encompassed four main phases (see Section 1.3: p10)
Theoretical Characterization of the Interface in a Nonequilibrium Lattice System
The influence of nonequilibrium bulk conditions on the properties of the
interfaces exhibited by a kinetic Ising--like model system with nonequilibrium
steady states is studied. The system is maintained out of equilibrium by
perturbing the familiar spin--flip dynamics at temperature T with
completely--random flips; one may interpret these as ideally simulating some
(dynamic) impurities. We find evidence that, in the present case, the
nonequilibrium mechanism adds to the basic thermal one resulting on a
renormalization of microscopic parameters such as the probability of
interfacial broken bonds. On this assumption, we develop theory for the
nonequilibrium "surface tension", which happens to show a non--monotonous
behavior with a maximum at some finite T. It ensues, in full agreement with
Monte Carlo simulations, that interface fluctuations differ qualitatively from
the equilibrium case, e.g., the interface remains rough at zero--T. We discuss
on some consequences of these facts for nucleation theory, and make some
explicit predictions concerning the nonequilibrium droplet structure.Comment: 10 pages, 7 figures, submitted to Phys. Re
Field of a Radiation Distributuion
General relativistic spherically symmetric matter field with a vanishing
stress energy scalar is analyzed. Procedure for generating exact solutions of
the field equations for such matter distributions is given. It is further
pointed out that all such type I spherically symmetric fields with distinct
eignvalues in the radial two space can be treated as a mixture of isotropic and
directed radiations. Various classes of exact solutions are given. Junction
conditions for such a matter field to the possible exterior solutions are also
discussed.Comment: Latex file, 13 pages, no figures. Accepted for publication in Phys.
Rev.
Quantization of the diagonal resistance: Density gradients and the empirical resistance rule in a 2D system
We have observed quantization of the diagonal resistance, R_xx, at the edges
of several quantum Hall states. Each quantized R_xx value is close to the
difference between the two adjacent Hall plateaus in the off-diagonal
resistance, R_xy. Peaks in R_xx occur at different positions in positive and
negative magnetic fields. Practically all R_xx features can be explained
quantitatively by a ~1%/cm electron density gradient. Therefore, R_xx is
determined by R_xy and unrelated to the diagonal resistivity rho_xx. Our
findings throw an unexpected light on the empirical resistivity rule for 2D
systems
- …