Animals and the Problem of Evil in Recent Theodicies

This paper critically evaluates the theodicies of John Hick, Richard Swinburne and process theism regarding animal suffering and evils. The positions of Hick and Swinburne are based on false empirical assumptions, e.g., animals do not suffer. Process theism’s claim that God is not omnipotent is an unsatisfactory answer inconsistent with the traditional concept of God. These positions cannot fully explain the mass suffering and unnecessary deaths of animals throughout time. My positive position is that God’s putative love for all sentient beings does not necessarily entail that he loves every individual human and animal. Humans do not interfere with the suffering and deaths of animals in the wild, and God has no obligation to interfere with human evils. It is very possible that God acts similarly with humans and animals regarding evils. This theory partly explains human tragedies such as the Holocaust and much unnecessary animal and human suffering

Caulk: Lookup Arguments in Sublinear Time

We present position-hiding linkability for vector commitment schemes: one can prove in zero knowledge that one or $m$ values that comprise commitment cm all belong to the vector of size $N$ committed to in C. Our construction Caulk can be used for membership proofs and lookup arguments and outperforms all existing alternatives in prover time by orders of magnitude. For both single- and multi-membership proofs Caulk beats SNARKed Merkle proofs by the factor of 100 even if the latter instantiated with Poseidon hash. Asymptotically our prover needs $O(m^2 + m\log N)$ time to prove a batch of $m$ openings, whereas proof size is $O(1)$ and verifier time is $O(\log(\log N))$. As a lookup argument, Caulk is the first scheme with prover time sublinear in the table size, assuming $O(N\log N)$ preprocessing time and $O(N)$ storage. It can be used as a subprimitive in verifiable computation schemes in order to drastically decrease the lookup overhead. Our scheme comes with a reference implementation and benchmarks

The long term effects of sports concussion on retired Australian football players: a study using Transranial Magnetic Stimulation

This study investigated corticomotor excitability and inhibition, cognitive functioning, and fine motor dexterity in retired elite and amateur Australian football (AF) players who had sustained concussions during their playing careers. Forty male AF players who played at the elite level (n=20; mean age 49.7±5.7 years) or amateur level (n=20; mean age 48.4±6.9 years), and had sustained on average 3.2 concussions 21.9 years previously, were compared with 20 healthy age-matched male controls (mean age 47.56±6.85 years). All participants completed assessments of fine dexterity, visuomotor reaction time, spatial working memory (SWM), and associative learning (AL). Transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) was used to measure corticospinal excitability: stimulus-response (SR) curves and motor evoked potential (MEP) 125% of active motor threshold (aMT); and intracortical inhibition: cortical silent period (cSP), short-interval intracortical inhibition (SICI), and long-interval intracortical inhibition (LICI). Healthy participants performed better in dexterity (p=0.003), reaction (p=0.003), and movement time (p=0.037) than did both AF groups. Differences between AF groups were found in AL (p=0.027) and SWM (p=0.024). TMS measures revealed that both AF groups showed reduced cSP duration at 125% aMT (p>0.001) and differences in SR curves (p>0.001) than did healthy controls. Similarly, SICI (p=0.012) and LICI (p=0.009) were reduced in both AF groups compared with controls. Regression analyses revealed a significant contribution to differences in motor outcomes with the three measures of intracortical inhibition. The measures of inhibition differed, however, in terms of which performance measure they had a significant and unique predictive relationship with, reflecting the variety of participant concussion injuries. This study is the first to demonstrate differences in motor control and intracortical inhibition in AF players who had sustained concussions during their playing career two decades previously

Requirements for Cosmological 21-cm Masers

We perform Monte-Carlo calculations of the radiative transfer of Lyman Alpha (hereafter Lya) photons emitted by a source embedded in a neutral collapsing gas cloud. This represents a young galaxy or quasar during the early stages of the epoch of reionisation (EoR). After computing the Lya spectrum as function of radius and time, we find that the Lya color temperature may be negative in large volumes surrounding the central source. Motivated by this result, we explore the prospects for a population inversion in the hyperfine levels of atomic hydrogen via the Wouthuysen-Field (WF) effect. The reason for this exploration is clear: if 21-cm masers exist during the EoR, they could greatly boost the expected 21-cm flux from this epoch. We find that population inversion is unlikely to occur for several reasons: (1) the required Lya luminosities of the central source exceed ~10e45 erg/s. The radiation pressure exerted by such a large Lya flux likely halts the collapse of the cloud; (2) When quantum corrections to the WF-coupling strength are applied, the required Lya luminosities are (even) larger by orders of magnitude; (3) A relatively low flux of Lya photons that is produced via other channels (x-ray heating, collisional excitation of hydrogen) prevents the Lya color temperature from becoming negative.Comment: 13 pages, Accepted for publication in New Astronom

High-Quality Exome Sequencing of Whole-Genome Amplified Neonatal Dried Blood Spot DNA

Stored neonatal dried blood spot (DBS) samples from neonatal screening programmes are a valuable diagnostic and research resource. Combined with information from national health registries they can be used in population-based studies of genetic diseases. DNA extracted from neonatal DBSs can be amplified to obtain micrograms of an otherwise limited resource, referred to as whole-genome amplified DNA (wgaDNA). Here we investigate the robustness of exome sequencing of wgaDNA of neonatal DBS samples. We conducted three pilot studies of seven, eight and seven subjects, respectively. For each subject we analysed a neonatal DBS sample and corresponding adult whole-blood (WB) reference sample. Different DNA sample types were prepared for each of the subjects. Pilot 1: wgaDNA of 2x3.2mm neonatal DBSs (DBS_2x3.2) and raw DNA extract of the WB reference sample (WB_ref). Pilot 2: DBS_2x3.2, WB_ref and a WB_ref replica sharing DNA extract with the WB_ref sample. Pilot 3: DBS_2x3.2, WB_ref, wgaDNA of 2x1.6 mm neonatal DBSs and wgaDNA of the WB reference sample. Following sequencing and data analysis, we compared pairwise variant calls to obtain a measure of similarity--the concordance rate. Concordance rates were slightly lower when comparing DBS vs WB sample types than for any two WB sample types of the same subject before filtering of the variant calls. The overall concordance rates were dependent on the variant type, with SNPs performing best. Post-filtering, the comparisons of DBS vs WB and WB vs WB sample types yielded similar concordance rates, with values close to 100%. WgaDNA of neonatal DBS samples performs with great accuracy and efficiency in exome sequencing. The wgaDNA performed similarly to matched high-quality reference--whole-blood DNA--based on concordance rates calculated from variant calls. No differences were observed substituting 2x3.2 with 2x1.6 mm discs, allowing for additional reduction of sample material in future projects

Bilateral volume reduction in posterior hippocampus in psychosis of epilepsy

Objective Psychosis of epilepsy (POE) occurs more frequently in temporal lobe epilepsy, raising the question as to whether abnormalities of the hippocampus are aetiologically important. Despite decades of investigation, it is unclear whether hippocampal volume is reduced in POE, perhaps due to small sample sizes and methodological limitations of past research. Methods In this study, we examined the volume of the total hippocampus, and the hippocampal head, body and tail, in a large cohort of patients with POE and patients with epilepsy without psychosis (EC). One hundred adults participated: 50 with POE and 50 EC. Total and subregional hippocampal volumes were manually traced and compared between (1) POE and EC; (2) POE with temporal lobe epilepsy, extratemporal lobe epilepsy and generalised epilepsy; and (3) patients with POE with postictal psychosis (PIP) and interictal psychosis (IP). Results Compared with EC the POE group had smaller total left hippocampus volume (13.5% decrease, p<0.001), and smaller left hippocampal body (13.3% decrease, p=0.002), and left (41.5% decrease, p<0.001) and right (36.4% decrease, p<0.001) hippocampal tail volumes. Hippocampal head volumes did not differ between groups. Conclusion Posterior hippocampal volumes are bilaterally reduced in POE. Volume loss was observed on a posteroanterior gradient, with severe decreases in the tail and moderate volume decreases in the body, with no difference in the hippocampal head. Posterior hippocampal atrophy is evident to a similar degree in PIP and IP. Our findings converge with those reported for the paradigmatic psychotic disorder, schizophrenia, and suggest that posterior hippocampal atrophy may serve as a biomarker of the risk for psychosis, including in patients with epilepsy.JA is supported by an Australian Postgraduate Award

Lyman Alpha Driven Outflows Around Star Forming Galaxies

We present accurate Monte-Carlo calculations of Lyman Alpha (hereafter Lya) radiation pressure in a range of models which represent galaxies during various epochs of our Universe. We show that the radiation force that Lya photons exert on hydrogen gas in the neutral intergalactic medium (IGM), that surrounds minihalos that host the first stars, may exceed gravity by orders of magnitude and drive supersonic winds. Lya radiation pressure may also dominate over gravity in the neutral IGM that surrounds the HII regions produced by the first galaxies. However, the radiation force is likely too weak to result in supersonic outflows in this case. Furthermore, we show that Lya radiation pressure may drive outflows in the interstellar medium of star forming galaxies that reach hundreds of km/s. This mechanism could also operate at lower redshifts z<6, and may have already been indirectly detected in the spectral line shape of observed Lya emission lines.Comment: 11 pages, 7 figures, Accepted to MNRAS. Appendix added that discusses level populations. References adde

Trans-ethnic study design approaches for fine-mapping.

Studies that traverse ancestrally diverse populations may increase power to detect novel loci and improve fine-mapping resolution of causal variants by leveraging linkage disequilibrium differences between ethnic groups. The inclusion of African ancestry samples may yield further improvements because of low linkage disequilibrium and high genetic heterogeneity. We investigate the fine-mapping resolution of trans-ethnic fixed-effects meta-analysis for five type II diabetes loci, under various settings of ancestral composition (European, East Asian, African), allelic heterogeneity, and causal variant minor allele frequency. In particular, three settings of ancestral composition were compared: (1) single ancestry (European), (2) moderate ancestral diversity (European and East Asian), and (3) high ancestral diversity (European, East Asian, and African). Our simulations suggest that the European/Asian and European ancestry-only meta-analyses consistently attain similar fine-mapping resolution. The inclusion of African ancestry samples in the meta-analysis leads to a marked improvement in fine-mapping resolution