The sigmatic future and the genetic affiliation of Venetic: Latin faxo 'I shall make' and Venetic vha.g.s.to 'he made'

Latin has a so-called sigmatic future faxo 'I shall make'. Scholars are divided as to the origins and antiquity of faxo; some believe it to go back to desideratives, others to aorists, and some argue that the formation arose within Latin, others that it can be traced back to Proto-Italic. Closely connected with these problems are the questions whether Venetic is an Italic language and whether its past ('aorist') tense vha.g.s.to 'he made' is related to fax (o) over bar. I intend to show that fax (o) over bar is based on inherited s-aorists, not on desideratives, that the formation arose late, within Latin itself rather than within Proto-Italic, and that there was never a past indicative beside it. Because of the last two reasons, vha.g.s.to must be independent of fax (o) over bar. Venetic may still be an Italic language, but the form vha.g.s.to cannot be used as an argument in favour of such a connection

The meaning of adherence when behavioral risk patterns vary : obscured use- and method-effectiveness in HIV-prevention trials

Peer reviewedPublisher PD

New algorithms and new results for strong coupling LQCD

We present and compare new types of algorithms for lattice QCD with staggered fermions in the limit of infinite gauge coupling. These algorithms are formulated on a discrete spatial lattice but with continuous Euclidean time. They make use of the exact Hamiltonian, with the inverse temperature beta as the only input parameter. This formulation turns out to be analogous to that of a quantum spin system. The sign problem is completely absent, at zero and non-zero baryon density. We compare the performance of a continuous-time worm algorithm and of a Stochastic Series Expansion algorithm (SSE), which operates on equivalence classes of time-ordered interactions. Finally, we apply the SSE algorithm to a first exploratory study of two-flavor strong coupling lattice QCD, which is manageable in the Hamiltonian formulation because the sign problem can be controlled

On the Origin of Very Wide Lyα\alpha-Absorption-Lines in Quasar Spectra

We present a new explanation for the very wide absorption features in quasar spectra. In our model, a very wide absorption feature will originate, when the line of sight crosses a bubble wall tangentially. We demonstrate this on the quasar pair (2138-4427), (2139-4434). Both show two very wide absorption lines in their spectra at the same redshift. The bubble wall model can explain these observations in low density Friedmann-Lemaitre models with spherical metric. It contradicts models with euclidian or hyperbolic metric.Comment: Latex, 6 pages, Figures available at [email protected]

Topological Susceptibility from Slabs

In quantum field theories with topological sectors, a non-perturbative quantity of interest is the topological susceptibility chi_t. In principle it seems straightforward to measure chi_t by means of Monte Carlo simulations. However, for local update algorithms and fine lattice spacings, this tends to be difficult, since the Monte Carlo history rarely changes the topological sector. Here we test a method to measure chi_t even if data from only one sector are available. It is based on the topological charges in sub-volumes, which we denote as slabs. Assuming a Gaussian distribution of these charges, this method enables the evaluation of chi_t, as we demonstrate with numerical results for non-linear sigma-models.Comment: 23 pages, 8 figures, 6 table

A surprise with many-flavor staggered fermions in the strong coupling limit

It is widely believed that chiral symmetry is spontaneously broken at zero temperature in the strong coupling limit of staggered fermions, for any number of colors and flavors. Using Monte Carlo simulations, we show that this conventional wisdom, based on a mean-field analysis, is wrong. For sufficiently many fundamental flavors, chiral symmetry is restored via a bulk, first-order transition. This chirally symmetric phase appears to be analytically connected with the expected conformal window of manyflavor continuum QCD. We perform simulations in the chirally symmetric phase at zero quark mass for various system sizes L, and measure the torelon mass and the Dirac spectrum. We find that all observables scale with L, which is hence the only infrared length scale. Thus, the strong-coupling chirally restored phase appears as a convenient laboratory to study IR-conformality. Finally, we present a conjecture for the phase diagram of lattice QCD as a function of the bare coupling and the number of quark flavors