The influence of negatively charged heavy ions on Alfven waves in a cometary environment

Alfven waves are important in a wide variety of areas like astrophysical, space and laboratory plasmas. In cometary environments, waves in the hydromagnetic range of frequencies are excited predominantly by heavy ions. We, therefore, study the stability of Alfven waves in a plasma of hydrogen ions, positively and negatively charged oxygen ions and electrons. Each species has been modeled by drifting distributions in the direction parallel to the magnetic field; in the perpendicular direction the distribution is  simulated with a loss cone type distribution obtained through the subtraction of two Maxwellian distributions with different temperatures.  We find that for frequencies  ( andbeing respectively the Doppler shifted and hydrogen ion gyro-frequencies ), the peak growth  rate increases with increasing negatively charged oxygen ion densities. On the other hand, for frequencies (being the oxygen ion gyro-frequencies) the region of wave growth increases with increasing negatively charged oxygen ion densities

The Arguments Favoring Epistemic Justification of Religious Belief: A Critique

In the epistemological trajectory of Philosophy of Religion, contemporary religious epistemologists seem to have undertaken the task of attestation of religious beliefs, their defence, ascertainment and justification, resorting to sanctioned methods of epistemic justification. The models of epistemic justification of religious beliefs they have adopted were intended to bring in a kind of objectivity into religious realm and make meaningful assertions on shared experiences.  The acclamation of such esteemed epistemic attempts should be viewed as   feverish attempts made by religious epistemologists to subject religious beliefs to standard epistemic treatment. In this paper, three contemporary models of justification of religious beliefs by three outstanding religious epistemologists, namely, Alvin Plantinga whose theory of proper basicality and the warrant, the epistemological holism with the application of Lakatosian principle in Philosophy of Science by Nancey Murphy and the cumulative case evidentialism by Richard Swinburne are critically analyzed using the parameters of logical consistency, methodological acumen, norms of  belief formation, the role of subjectivity, features of religious language and the hermeneutic dynamics