Mixing Lines: Considerations Regarding Their Use in Creationist Interpretation of Radioisotope Age Data

Radioisotope daughter/parent ratios may be interpreted on the basis of a model for daughter accumulation, an isochron diagram, or a mixing line. Each of these interpretive treatments is evaluated for its constraint on resolution of apparent disagreement between radiometric age and the chronological specifications in the Pentateuch. A mixing-line interpretation gives no direct specification regarding time, and consequently avoids conflict between Biblical specifications and radioisotope data for minerals associated with fossils and geologic features that were formed after the beginning of Creation Week. However, a mixing line places limits on the model age for the source material components that are required for mixing to form these minerals. Consequently, when a mixing line interpretation is used for radioisotope data associated with geologic features and fossils formed during and following the Flood, i.e., within the last 5500 years, there remains a need for a corresponding treatment of the model age limits indicated by the mixing line. Treatment of radioisotope model ages for inorganic material from a short-chronology (young earth) creationist viewpoint will be determined by the interpreter\u27s exegesis of Genesis 1: 1,2,8-10. One viewpoint constrains the terms heaven and earth, as used in connection with the Creation Account, within the definitions given in Genesis 1 :8-1 0; and allows model ages to have a relationship with time between an uspecified primordial creation and the creation episode described in Genesis. Another viewpoint infers the entire physical universe, or at leastthe Solar System, to be designated by these terms; and requires radioisotope model age relationships to be design features expressed at or subsequent to the beginning of the Genesis One Creation Week

Meteorites and a Young Earth

Major advance in relating a young-earth creationist viewpoint to scientific data has come from recognition that radioisotope age may be a significant characteristic of an object and yet not have direct real-time significance in the history of that object. Igneous and !\u3eedimentary material may have a radioisotope age that is an inherited characteristic and not related to its present placement. It is more difficult to accommodate a young-earth perspective to extraterrestrial objects. High energy atomic nuclei from outer space - cosmic rays - produce cosmogenic nuclides in meteorites and on the surface of the Moon. The accumulation of identifiable cosmogenic nuclides may be related to cosmic-ray intensity to obtain a cosmic-ray exposure age. Cosmic-ray exposure ages that have been determined range from about 900 thousand to about 2.4 billion years. This range has been interpreted to suggest continuing impact of meteoroids on the surface of the Moon, and continuing breakup of large meteoroids into smaller objects. The concepts of cosmic-ray exposure and radioisotope age are particularly well illustrated by the meteorite Asuka-881757, which has been classified as having originated from a meteoroid impact on the Moon. Six independent radioisotope age determinations for Asuka- 881757 average 3843 ±56 (20) million years. Its cosmic-ray exposure age is - 900 thousand years. Five proposals for accommodating these data are considered. At one extreme Asuka-881757 may be classified as an object from outside the Solar System, from a region in the Milky Way galaxy for which 3.9 billion years has the same significance as 4.6 billion years has for radioisotope ages within the Solar System. At the other extreme of the five proposals all radioisotope ages and cosmic-ray exposure ages greater than - 10,000 years are considered to represent initial characteristics that God placed within minerals at their creation

Detection of an Extrasolar Planet Atmosphere

We report high precision spectrophotometric observations of four planetary transits of HD 209458, in the region of the sodium resonance doublet at 589.3 nm. We find that the photometric dimming during transit in a bandpass centered on the sodium feature is deeper by (2.32 +/- 0.57) x 10^{-4} relative to simultaneous observations of the transit in adjacent bands. We interpret this additional dimming as absorption from sodium in the planetary atmosphere, as recently predicted from several theoretical modeling efforts. Our model for a cloudless planetary atmosphere with a solar abundance of sodium in atomic form predicts more sodium absorption than we observe. There are several possibilities that may account for this reduced amplitude, including reaction of atomic sodium into molecular gases and/or condensates, photoionization of sodium by the stellar flux, a low primordial abundance of sodium, or the presence of clouds high in the atmosphere.Comment: 26 pages, 8 figures, accepted by ApJ 2001 November 1

Keynote Speaker Presentations: 5th Annual UMass Center for Clinical and Translational Research Retreat (video)

This video features the full keynote presentations from the 5th Annual UMass Center for Clinical and Translational Science Research Retreat at the University of Massachusetts Medical School (UMMS) in Worcester, MA, on May 20, 2014. Beginning at 12:40 1st Keynote Speaker: Robert H. Brown, Jr., MD, D.Phil, Chair, Department of Neurology, UMMS. “Lou Gehrig Disease: From Mapping to Medicines” Beginning at 1:22:19 2nd Keynote Speaker: Thomas Grisso, PhD, Director, Law and Psychiatry Program and Professor, Department of Psychiatry, UMMS. Recipient, Chancellor’s Medal for Distinguished Scholarship. “Translational Research in Law and Psychiatry” Also included is a brief introductory presentation with updates about the UMass Center for Clinical and Translational Science by Katherine Luzuriaga, MD, Director, UMCCTS

Sequential Bahadur Efficiency

The notion of Bahadur efficiency for test statistics is extended to the sequential case and illustrated in the specific context of testing one-sided hypotheses about a normal mean. An analog of Bahadur\u27s theorem on the asymptotic optimality of the likelihood ratio statistic is seen to hold in the normal case. Some possible definitions of attained level for a sequential experiment are considered