Clifford, William Kingdon

W.K. Clifford’s famous 1876 essay The Ethics of Belief contains one of the most memorable lines in the history of philosophy: "it is wrong always, everywhere, and for anyone, to believe anything upon insufficient evidence." The challenge to religious belief stemming from this moralized version of evidentialism is still widely discussed today

Sceptical Theism and the Paradox of Evil

Given plausible assumptions about the nature of evidence and undercutting defeat, many believe that the force of the evidential problem of evil depends on sceptical theism’s being false: if evil is..

Approximate dual representation for Yang-Mills SU(2) gauge theory

An approximate dual representation for non-Abelian lattice gauge theories in terms of a new set of dynamical variables, the plaquette occupation numbers (PONs) that are natural numbers, is discussed. They are the expansion indices of the local series of the expansion of the Boltzmann factors for every plaquette of the Yang-Mills action. After studying the constraints due to gauge symmetry, the SU(2) gauge theory is solved using Monte Carlo simulations. For a PONs configuration the weight factor is given by Haar-measure integrals over all links whose integrands are products of powers of plaquettes. Herein, updates are limited to changes of the PON at a plaquette or all PONs on a coordinate plane. The Markov chain transition probabilities are computed employing truncated maximal trees and the Metropolis algorithm. The algorithm performance is investigated with different types of updates for the plaquette mean value over a large range of $\beta$s. Using a $12^4$ lattice very good agreement with a conventional heath bath algorithm is found for the strong and weak coupling limits. Deviations from the latter being below 0.1% for $2.5 < \beta < 3$. The mass of the lightest $J^{PC}=0^{++}$ glueball is evaluated and reproduces the results found in the literature

Lactobacillus crispatus as the etiological agent in cytolytic vaginosis

Introduction: Lactobacillus spp. dominate the vaginal niche but can also be involved in other vaginal dysbiosis, such as cytolytic vaginosis (CV), which remains poorly studied. It is characterized by a cryptic symptomatology, that often confounds the clinic. Goals: The aim of this work was to search for the etiological agent of CV, by studying the vaginal microbiome and metabolomics of women afflicted with this disease and compare it with women with other clinical diagnostic. Methods: Twenty-one vaginal washes have been collected from women attending a gynaecology consultation of a private clinic. The samples were categorized according with clinical diagnosis at the time of sampling (CV, 11; vulvovaginal candidosis, 8; Healthy, 2). The distribution of bacterial species, and their prevalence was assessed by next-generation sequencing of the 16S V4 region. In addition, total lactate D-lactic acid and L-lactic acid was quantified in all washes by a commercial kit, as well as lactate dehydrogenase (LDH) activity. Results: L. crispatus was dominant (>70%) in all CV samples. Lactate was increased in CV in comparison with other cases. The presence of D-lactic acid isomer was associated with presence of L. crispatus. LDH activity was increased in vaginal washes that tested positive for the presence of L. crispatus, however no direct association was found with CV cases. Discussion/Conclusions: The microbiome of women afflicted with CV was dominated in all cases by L. crispatus, contrarily with the results obtained for women diagnosed with other clinical symptomatology. In addition, the finding that an increase in D-lactic acid is associated with CV patients can be related to the role of L. crispatus in CV. The determination of LDH activity did not correlate exclusively with CV cases. On the other hand, D-lactic acid and total lactate quantification could be used as a valuable biomarker to diagnose this cryptic vaginal infection.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio