Believing in Others

Suppose some person 'A' sets out to accomplish a difficult, long-term goal such as writing a passable Ph.D. thesis. What should you believe about whether A will succeed? The default answer is that you should believe whatever the total accessible evidence concerning A's abilities, circumstances, capacity for self-discipline, and so forth supports. But could it be that what you should believe depends in part on the relationship you have with A? We argue that it does, in the case where A is yourself. The capacity for "grit" involves a kind of epistemic resilience in the face of evidence suggesting that one might fail, and this makes it rational to respond to the relevant evidence differently when you are the agent in question. We then explore whether similar arguments extend to the case of "believing in" our significant others -- our friends, lovers, family members, colleagues, patients, and students

Homoeopathy

Homoeopathy is a system of treating patients using very low dose preparations according to the principle: "like should be cured with like". This paper summarises the research evidence presented in a recent issue of Effective Health Care on the effectiveness of homoeopathy. Increasing numbers of patients are seeking information on complementary medicines from NHS health professionals. Results of a 1998 survey of use and expenditure on complementary medicine in England suggested that 28% of respondents had either visited a complementary therapist or had purchased an over the counter herbal or homoeopathic remedy in the past year. From this survey it was estimated that there could be over 470 000 recent users of homoeopathic remedies in England

Mechanisms in Adaptive Feedback Control: Photoisomerization in a Liquid

The underlying mechanism for Adaptive Feedback Control in the experimental photoisomerization of NK88 in methanol is exposed theoretically. With given laboratory limitations on laser output, the complicated electric fields are shown to achieve their targets in qualitatively simple ways. Further, control over the cis population without laser limitations reveals an incoherent pump-dump scenario as the optimal isomerization strategy. In neither case are there substantial contributions from quantum multiple-path interference or from nuclear wavepacket coherence. Environmentally induced decoherence is shown to justify the use of a simplified theoretical model.Comment: 10 pages, 3 figures, to be published in Phys. Rev. Let

Consistent 3D Quantum Gravity on Lens Spaces

We study non-perturbative quantization of 3d gravity with positive cosmological constant (de Sitter space being the prototype vacuum solution, whose Euclideanization of course gives the three sphere) on the background topology of lens space, which is a three spheres modulo a discrete group. Instead of the strategy followed by a recent work \cite{Castro:2011xb}, which compares results in the second and first order formulations of gravity, we concentrate on the later solely. We note, as a striking feature, that the quantization, that relies heavily on the axiomatics of topological quantum field theory (TQFT) can only be consistently carried by augmenting the conventional theory by an additional topological term coupled through a dimensionless parameter. More importantly the introduction of this additional parameter renders the theory finite.Comment: New section and references added. Accepted in Phys. Rev. D for publicatio

Field Dependence of the Superconducting Basal Plane Anisotropy of TmNi2B2C

The superconductor TmNi2B2C possesses a significant four-fold basal plane anisotropy, leading to a square Vortex Lattice (VL) at intermediate fields. However, unlike other members of the borocarbide superconductors, the anisotropy in TmNi2B2C appears to decrease with increasing field, evident by a reentrance of the square VL phase. We have used Small Angle Neutron Scattering measurements of the VL to study the field dependence of the anisotropy. Our results provide a direct, quantitative measurement of the decreasing anisotropy. We attribute this reduction of the basal plane anisotropy to the strong Pauli paramagnetic effects observed in TmNi2B2C and the resulting expansion of vortex cores near Hc2.Comment: 8 pages, 6 figures, 1 tabl