A Cabin in the Woods: A Former Statistician Responds to a Critique of the Bayesian Version of the Fine-Tuning Argument for God’s Existence

Many theists and atheists agree that the fine-tuning argument is the most compelling argument for the existence of God. However, there are many different versions of this argument and, as with most things in life, some versions are better than others. In this paper I will respond to Neil A. Manson’s recent critique of what I call the Bayesian Version of the Fine-Tuning Argument for God’s existence. I will argue that the Bayesian version is a relatively poor argument but that the Abductive Version of the Fine-Tuning Argument for God’s existence is quite compelling

Use of optical mapping to sort uropathogenic Escherichia coli strains into distinct subgroups

Optical maps were generated for 33 uropathogenic Escherichia coli (UPEC) isolates. For individual genomes, the NcoI restriction fragments aligned into a unique chromosome map for each individual isolate, which was then compared with the in silico restriction maps of all of the sequenced E. coli and Shigella strains. All of the UPEC isolates clustered separately from the Shigella strains as well as the laboratory and enterohaemorrhagic E. coli strains. Moreover, the individual strains appeared to cluster into distinct subgroups based on the dendrogram analyses. Phylogenetic grouping of these 33 strains showed that 32/33 were the B2 subgroup and 1/33 was subgroup A. To further characterize the similarities and differences among the 33 isolates, pathogenicity island (PAI), haemolysin and virulence gene comparisons were performed. A strong correlation was observed between individual subgroups and virulence factor genes as well as haemolysis activity. Furthermore, there was considerable conservation of sequenced-strain PAIs in the specific subgroups. Strains with different antibiotic-resistance patterns also appeared to sort into separate subgroups. Thus, the optical maps distinguished the UPEC strains from other E. coli strains and further subdivided the strains into distinct subgroups. This optical mapping procedure holds promise as an alternative way to subgroup all E. coli strains, including those involved in infections outside of the intestinal tract and epidemic strains with distinct patterns of antibiotic resistance

Perinatal paracetamol exposure in mice does not affect the development of allergic airways disease in early life

Background Current data concerning maternal paracetamol intake during pregnancy, or intake during infancy and risk of wheezing or asthma in childhood is inconclusive based on epidemiological studies. We have investigated whether there is a causal link between maternal paracetamol intake during pregnancy and lactation and the development of house dust mite (HDM) induced allergic airways disease (AAD) in offspring using a neonatal mouse model. Methods Pregnant mice were administered paracetamol or saline by oral gavage from the day of mating throughout pregnancy and/or lactation. Subsequently, their pups were exposed to intranasal HDM or saline from day 3 of life for up to 6 weeks. Assessments of airway hyper-responsiveness, inflammation and remodelling were made at weaning (3 weeks) and 6 weeks of age. Results Maternal paracetamol exposure either during pregnancy and/or lactation did not affect development of AAD in offspring at weaning or at 6 weeks. There were no effects of maternal paracetamol at any time point on airway remodelling or IgE levels. Conclusions Maternal paracetamol did not enhance HDM induced AAD in offspring. Our mechanistic data do not support the hypothesis that prenatal paracetamol exposure increases the risk of childhood asthma

Psychosocial factors associated with outcomes of sports injury rehabilitation in competitive athletes: a mixed studies systematic review.

The prime focus of research on sports injury has been on physical factors. This is despite our understanding that when an athlete sustains an injury it has psychosocial as well as physical impacts. Psychosocial factors have been suggested as prognostic influences on the outcomes of rehabilitation. The aim of this work was to address the question: are psychosocial factors associated with sports injury rehabilitation outcomes in competitive athletes?Mixed studies systematic review (PROSPERO reg.CRD42014008667).Electronic database and bibliographic searching was undertaken from the earliest entry until 1 June 2015. Studies that included injured competitive athletes, psychosocial factors and a sports injury rehabilitation outcome were reviewed by the authors. A quality appraisal of the studies was undertaken to establish the risk of reporting bias.25 studies were evaluated that included 942 injured competitive athletes were appraised and synthesised. Twenty studies had not been included in previous reviews. The mean methodological quality of the studies was 59% (moderate risk of reporting bias). Convergent thematic analysis uncovered three core themes across the studies: (1) emotion associated with rehabilitation outcomes; (2) cognitions associated with rehabilitation outcomes; and (3) behaviours associated with rehabilitation outcomes. Injury and performance-related fears, anxiety and confidence were associated with rehabilitation outcomes. There is gender-related, age-related and injury-related bias in the reviewed literature.Psychosocial factors were associated with a range of sports injury rehabilitation outcomes. Practitioners need to recognise that an injured athlete's thoughts, feelings and actions may influence the outcome of rehabilitation

LSST: from Science Drivers to Reference Design and Anticipated Data Products

(Abridged) We describe here the most ambitious survey currently planned in the optical, the Large Synoptic Survey Telescope (LSST). A vast array of science will be enabled by a single wide-deep-fast sky survey, and LSST will have unique survey capability in the faint time domain. The LSST design is driven by four main science themes: probing dark energy and dark matter, taking an inventory of the Solar System, exploring the transient optical sky, and mapping the Milky Way. LSST will be a wide-field ground-based system sited at Cerro Pach\'{o}n in northern Chile. The telescope will have an 8.4 m (6.5 m effective) primary mirror, a 9.6 deg$^2$ field of view, and a 3.2 Gigapixel camera. The standard observing sequence will consist of pairs of 15-second exposures in a given field, with two such visits in each pointing in a given night. With these repeats, the LSST system is capable of imaging about 10,000 square degrees of sky in a single filter in three nights. The typical 5$\sigma$ point-source depth in a single visit in $r$ will be $\sim 24.5$ (AB). The project is in the construction phase and will begin regular survey operations by 2022. The survey area will be contained within 30,000 deg$^2$ with $\delta<+34.5^\circ$, and will be imaged multiple times in six bands, $ugrizy$, covering the wavelength range 320--1050 nm. About 90\% of the observing time will be devoted to a deep-wide-fast survey mode which will uniformly observe a 18,000 deg$^2$ region about 800 times (summed over all six bands) during the anticipated 10 years of operations, and yield a coadded map to $r\sim27.5$. The remaining 10\% of the observing time will be allocated to projects such as a Very Deep and Fast time domain survey. The goal is to make LSST data products, including a relational database of about 32 trillion observations of 40 billion objects, available to the public and scientists around the world.Comment: 57 pages, 32 color figures, version with high-resolution figures available from https://www.lsst.org/overvie

Monte Carlo Simulations of Metasomatic Enrichment in the Lithosphere and Implications for the Source of Alkaline Basalts

One hypothesis for the origin of alkaline lavas erupted on oceanic islands and in intracontinental settings is that they represent the melts of amphibole-rich veins in the lithosphere (or melts of their dehydrated equivalents if metasomatized lithosphere is recycled into the convecting mantle). Amphibole-rich veins are interpreted as cumulates produced by crystallization of low-degree melts of the underlying asthenosphere as they ascend through the lithosphere. We present the results of trace-element modelling of the formation and melting of veins formed in this way with the goal of testing this hypothesis and for predicting how variability in the formation and subsequent melting of such cumulates (and adjacent cryptically and modally metasomatized lithospheric peridotite) would be manifested in magmas generated by such a process. Because the high-pressure phase equilibria of hydrous near-solidus melts of garnet lherzolite are poorly constrained and given the likely high variability of the hypothesized accumulation and remelting processes, we used Monte Carlo techniques to estimate how uncertainties in the model parameters (e.g. the compositions of the asthenospheric sources, their trace-element contents, and their degree of melting; the modal proportions of crystallizing phases, including accessory phases, as the asthenospheric partial melts ascend and crystallize in the lithosphere; the amount of metasomatism of the peridotitic country rock; the degree of melting of the cumulates and the amount of melt derived from the metasomatized country rock) propagate through the process and manifest themselves as variability in the trace-element contents and radiogenic isotopic ratios of model vein compositions and erupted alkaline magma compositions. We then compare the results of the models with amphibole observed in lithospheric veins and with oceanic and continental alkaline magmas. While the trace-element patterns of the near-solidus peridotite melts, the initial anhydrous cumulate assemblage (clinopyroxene ± garnet ± olivine ± orthopyroxene), and the modelled coexisting liquids do not match the patterns observed in alkaline lavas, our calculations show that with further crystallization and the appearance of amphibole (and accessory minerals such as rutile, ilmenite, apatite, etc.) the calculated cumulate assemblages have trace-element patterns that closely match those observed in the veins and lavas. These calculated hydrous cumulate assemblages are highly enriched in incompatible trace elements and share many similarities with the trace-element patterns of alkaline basalts observed in oceanic or continental setting such as positive Nb/La, negative Ce/Pb, and similiar slopes of the rare earth elements. By varying the proportions of trapped liquid and thus simulating the cryptic and modal metasomatism observed in peridotite that surrounds these veins, we can model the variations in Ba/Nb, Ce/Pb, and Nb/U ratios that are observed in alkaline basalts. If the isotopic compositions of the initial low-degree peridotite melts are similar to the range observed in mid-ocean ridge basalt, our model calculations produce cumulates that would have isotopic compositions similar to those observed in most alkaline ocean island basalt (OIB) and continental magmas after ~0·15 Gyr. However, to produce alkaline basalts with HIMU isotopic compositions requires much longer residence times (i.e. 1–2 Gyr), consistent with subduction and recycling of metasomatized lithosphere through the mantle. EM magmas cannot readily be explained without appealing to other factors such as a heterogeneous asthenosphere. These modelling results support the interpretation proposed by various researchers that amphibole-bearing veins represent cumulates formed during the differentiation of a volatile-bearing low-degree peridotite melt and that these cumulates are significant components of the sources of alkaline OIB and continental magmas. The results of the forward models provide the potential for detailed tests of this class of hypotheses for the origin of alkaline magmas worldwide and for interpreting major and minor aspects of the geochemical variability of these magmas

Measurement of the cross-section and charge asymmetry of WW bosons produced in proton-proton collisions at s=8\sqrt{s}=8 TeV with the ATLAS detector

This paper presents measurements of the $W^+ \rightarrow \mu^+\nu$ and $W^- \rightarrow \mu^-\nu$ cross-sections and the associated charge asymmetry as a function of the absolute pseudorapidity of the decay muon. The data were collected in proton--proton collisions at a centre-of-mass energy of 8 TeV with the ATLAS experiment at the LHC and correspond to a total integrated luminosity of 20.2~\mbox{fb^{-1}}. The precision of the cross-section measurements varies between 0.8% to 1.5% as a function of the pseudorapidity, excluding the 1.9% uncertainty on the integrated luminosity. The charge asymmetry is measured with an uncertainty between 0.002 and 0.003. The results are compared with predictions based on next-to-next-to-leading-order calculations with various parton distribution functions and have the sensitivity to discriminate between them.Comment: 38 pages in total, author list starting page 22, 5 figures, 4 tables, submitted to EPJC. All figures including auxiliary figures are available at https://atlas.web.cern.ch/Atlas/GROUPS/PHYSICS/PAPERS/STDM-2017-13

Search for new phenomena in final states with an energetic jet and large missing transverse momentum in pp collisions at √ s = 8 TeV with the ATLAS detector

Results of a search for new phenomena in final states with an energetic jet and large missing transverse momentum are reported. The search uses 20.3 fb−1 of √ s = 8 TeV data collected in 2012 with the ATLAS detector at the LHC. Events are required to have at least one jet with pT > 120 GeV and no leptons. Nine signal regions are considered with increasing missing transverse momentum requirements between Emiss T > 150 GeV and Emiss T > 700 GeV. Good agreement is observed between the number of events in data and Standard Model expectations. The results are translated into exclusion limits on models with either large extra spatial dimensions, pair production of weakly interacting dark matter candidates, or production of very light gravitinos in a gauge-mediated supersymmetric model. In addition, limits on the production of an invisibly decaying Higgs-like boson leading to similar topologies in the final state are presente

Search for chargino-neutralino production with mass splittings near the electroweak scale in three-lepton final states in √s=13 TeV pp collisions with the ATLAS detector

A search for supersymmetry through the pair production of electroweakinos with mass splittings near the electroweak scale and decaying via on-shell W and Z bosons is presented for a three-lepton final state. The analyzed proton-proton collision data taken at a center-of-mass energy of √s=13  TeV were collected between 2015 and 2018 by the ATLAS experiment at the Large Hadron Collider, corresponding to an integrated luminosity of 139  fb−1. A search, emulating the recursive jigsaw reconstruction technique with easily reproducible laboratory-frame variables, is performed. The two excesses observed in the 2015–2016 data recursive jigsaw analysis in the low-mass three-lepton phase space are reproduced. Results with the full data set are in agreement with the Standard Model expectations. They are interpreted to set exclusion limits at the 95% confidence level on simplified models of chargino-neutralino pair production for masses up to 345 GeV

The astrobiology primer: An outline of general knowledge - Version 1, 2006

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