Demythologizing and the Philosophia Perennis: Bultmann, Jaspers and Heidegger

Paper by Dr. Niels C. Nielsen, Jr

The Debate Between Karl Barth and Erich Przywara: A New Evaluation of Protestant and Roman Catholic Differences

Introduction: The Beginning of the Debate-- Barth's Position: The Analogia Fidei-- Przywara's Interpretation of the Analogia Fidei-- Pryzwara's Reply to Barth-- The Fundamental Points of Difference-- Conclusions about the Debate-- Note

Ends and Means in Religious Education

Paper by Dr. Niels C. Nielsen, Jr

Coupling constants of D∗DsKD^*D_sK and Ds∗DKD_s^*DK processes

We calculate the coupling constants of $D^*D_sK$ and $D_s^*DK$ vertices using the QCD sum rules technique. We compare results obtained in the limit of SU(4) symmetry and found that the symmetry is broken on the order of 40%.Comment: 4 pages, 3 ps figures. Talk presented in the 18 Workshop on Hadron Interactions, IFUSP, Sao Paulo, Brazil, may 22-24 of 200

The Desorption Kinetics of Methane from Nonaqueous Fluids for Enhanced Well Control

The mass transfer of a dissolved gas evolving to return to the gaseous phase from a liquid is governed by many parameters. This process affects the development of an oil and gas well due to the possibility of gas contamination occurring from either an influx entering the wellbore, or drilling through gas-bearing formations. Once this dissolved hydrocarbon gas circulates up the wellbore, it will begin to evolve from solution and poses a potential risk to drilling equipment, the environment, and personnel at a drilling rig. Being able to predict the behavior of gas desorption based on a known set of variables for a specific fluid/gas combination is critical. In this study, we investigated how changing the starting saturation pressure and fluid type have on the mass transfer coefficient for nonaqueous-based fluids commonly used in drilling operations. The work in this thesis summarizes multiple investigations of these variables which affect the desorption kinetics and relate them to processes involved with well control operations. By designing and utilizing a custom apparatus, we have studied the desorption behavior of two different types of fluids in their pure form and each as an emulsion with water. During our preliminary testing and experimental development, it was determined that the starting pressure that the fluid had been saturated with methane at and the rate at which we allowed the fluid to desorb, through a pressure drop, had the most significant effect on the mass transfer coefficients of desorption. We observed strong relationships between the starting saturation pressure and oil/water ratio in emulsion fluids for the calculated mass transfer coefficients. These observations allow us to predict the coefficient at expanded pressures and different oil/water ratios. This study will lead to the development of more accurate models that will better predict the behavior of gas desorption from nonaqueous fluids for enhancing well control operations

Transformation design and nonlinear Hamiltonians

We study a class of nonlinear Hamiltonians, with applications in quantum optics. The interaction terms of these Hamiltonians are generated by taking a linear combination of powers of a simple `beam splitter' Hamiltonian. The entanglement properties of the eigenstates are studied. Finally, we show how to use this class of Hamiltonians to perform special tasks such as conditional state swapping, which can be used to generate optical cat states and to sort photons.Comment: Accepted for publication in Journal of Modern Optic

Random lattice superstrings

We propose some new simplifying ingredients for Feynman diagrams that seem necessary for random lattice formulations of superstrings. In particular, half the fermionic variables appear only in particle loops (similarly to loop momenta), reducing the supersymmetry of the constituents of the Type IIB superstring to N=1, as expected from their interpretation in the 1/N expansion as super Yang-Mills.Comment: Section 5 which describes contributions of the string measure adde

Teleportation Topology

We discuss the structure of teleportation. By associating matrices to the preparation and measurement states, we show that for a unitary transformation M there is a full teleportation procedure for obtaining M|S> from a given state |S>. The key to this construction is a diagrammatic intepretation of matrix multiplication that applies equally well to a topological composition of a maximum and a minimum that underlies the structure of the teleportation. This paper is a preliminary report on joint work with H. Carteret and S. Lomonaco.Comment: LaTeX document, 16 pages, 8 figures, Talk delivered at the Xth International Conference on Quantum Optics, Minsk, Belaru

On the solution of trivalent decision problems by quantum state identification

The trivalent functions of a trit can be grouped into equipartitions of three elements. We discuss the separation of the corresponding functional classes by quantum state identifications