83308 research outputs found
Sort by
Why philosophers should read <i>Paradise Lost</i>
No full textThis article reinterprets John Milton’s Paradise Lost as a contribution to contemporary analytic philosophy of religion. Milton offers a novel free-will defence, similar to Alvin Plantinga’s, grounded in original philosophical accounts of God, creation, freedom, and meta-ethics. Milton’s monist God creates worlds and creatures ex deo out of God-self. God – and everything else – is animated matter: one substance both material and spiritual. Milton rejects materialism, dualism, and idealism. Only animist monism delivers the libertarian freedom that Milton’s free-will defence demands. God has agent-causal libertarian freedom. God’s reasons don’t necessitate God’s choices. God freely chooses which worlds to create, which commands to issue, which hierarchies to institute. God radically transcends creatures – especially in relation to God’s meta-ethical power. Milton’s implicit meta-ethic, rejecting both voluntarism and intellectualism, resembles Robert Adams’s theist meta-ethic, where God’s nature determines excellence and God’s actual commands determine obligation. God also plays another meta-ethical role – instituting hierarchies where some creatures command others. Satan’s fall is epistemic and meta-ethical. He refuses to recognise God’s meta-ethical transcendence – to believe that God is God. Belief in God always requires a leap of faith beyond evidence and argument – because even perfect creatures cannot comprehend God’s transcendence. Creaturely epistemic freedom means there is no explanation why some angels fall while others stand
Evaluating the risk of collision of seals swimming within metres of operating tidal turbines
No full textWe used imaging sonar to continuously monitor wildlife at an operational tidal turbine in the Pentland Firth, Scotland, between May 2022 and June 2023. Of 704 detected seal tracks, 347 occurred during turbine operation and 122 of these were detected directly upstream of the rotating blades in the horizontal plane. Using a series of repeatable and objective questions in asemi-automatic assessment, we characterised factors that were associated with a higher likelihood of collision and assessed theassociated risk of collision between each seal track and the rotating blades. Thirty-five tracks (10% of tracks during operation)approached the rotor swept area within 10m and 16 of these passed through the rotor swept area in the horizontal plane. There isstrong evidence to suggest that most of these high-risk tracks passed above, around or possibly through, the turbine without collision. As well as providing useful data to assist in the prediction of collision risk, this approach provides a standardised method toevaluate similar data from other tidal energy sites or species. These outcomes can help inform the consenting process and supportthe sustainable development of the tidal energy industr
Potential pitfalls in the making on the way to 2030? Intersecting the Scottish and Australian experiences on fair access to HE
No full textMulti-parameter crossdating for sub-fossil and historical samples
No full textCrossdating of sub-fossil or historical samples almost exclusively involves the use of a single tree-ring (TR) parameter such as ring-width (RW), Blue Intensity (BI) or stable isotopes. This paper details a new method that combines the information from multiple TR parameters – in this case specifically using RW, earlywood BI and latewood BI – to enhance our ability to identify a robust correct date of a single timber (i.e. a sub-fossil sample) or a set of internally crossdated timbers (i.e. an historical building phase chronology). The approach builds on standard approaches where sliding correlations are used to identify the position of maximal correlation to denote the correct temporal date. For the multi-parameter dating approach, the time-series of these sliding correlations are averaged to maximise the correct highest correlation temporal position, which should be common for all parameters, while minimising spurious correlations that individual parameter may express through time. The correlation time-series for the individual parameters, as well as their average (the COMBO variant), are then transformed to t-values with the degrees of freedom being adjusted lower by considering the autocorrelation structure of the Reference and Undated chronologies while the inter-correlation of the parameter chronologies is further used to adjust the COMBO degrees of freedom down. The multi-parameter COMBO method shows great promise for combining information from individual TR parameter series (single or multiple timbers) by increasing the chance of dating timbers that individually may express relatively weak signals, or for dating short-sequenced samples by increasing the effective degrees of freedom
Nudging church funding
No full textFundraising involves designing mechanisms through which funds are requested and collected. This matters as donation decisions are inevitably influenced by how the funding ask is presented. A subtle change in the design can nudge a donor to choose differently. For churches, practical concerns of financial sustainability need to be balanced against the non-monetary implications of funding mechanisms, including theological considerations. This article explores the links between nudges and funding in various contexts – namely, congregational donations, giving technology and worship; pricing access to cathedral sacred space; church taxes and member participation; and the principle of tithing. Concepts from behavioural science including framing, defaults, inertia, anchoring, priming, social influences and mental accounting are used to address these reflections on church funding
PRIMER & JADES reveal an abundance of massive quiescent galaxies at 2 < z < 5
No full textWe select a mass-complete sample of 225 quiescent galaxies at z > 2 with M∗ > 1010 M☉ from PRIMER and JADES photometry spanning a total area of ≃ 320 sq. arcmin. Our analysis is restricted to only area with optical coverage in three Hubble Space Telescope (HST) ACS filters, which we show is important for selecting the most complete and clean samples. We investigate the contamination in our sample via James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) NIRSpec spectroscopy, Chandra X-ray imaging, and ALMA interferometry, calculating a modest contamination fraction of 12.9+4.0−3.1 per cent. The removal of HST data increases star-forming galaxy contamination by ≃ 10 per cent and results in a ≃ 20 per cent loss of candidates recovered from HST + JWST data combined. We calculate massive quiescent galaxy number densities at 2 < z < 5, finding values three times larger than pre-JWST estimates, but generally in agreement with more-recent and larger-area JWST studies. In comparison with simulations, we find that most can now reproduce the observed number density at 2 < z < 3; however, they still increasingly fall short at z > 3, up to ≃ 1 dex. We place 14 of our z > 3 massive quiescent galaxies on the BPT and WHaN diagrams using medium-resolution spectroscopic data from the EXCELS survey, finding a very high incidence of weak active galactic nucleus (≃ 50 per cent), consistent with recent results at cosmic noon. This is interesting in the context of ‘maintenance-mode’ feedback, which is invoked in many simulations to prevent the re-ignition of quenched galaxies. To properly characterize the evolution of early massive quiescent galaxies, greater coverage in optical filters and significantly larger spectroscopic samples will be required
Linking enhanced star formation and quenching to faint tidal features in galaxies
No full textGalaxy mergers and interactions have long been suggested as a significant driver of galaxy evolution. However, the exact extent to which mergers enhance star formation and AGN activity has been challenging to establish observationally. In previous work, we visually classified a sample of galaxies with various types of faint tidal features in DECaLS images. In this paper, we crosscorrelate this sample with SDSS-derived data to investigate how the presence and specific nature of these features correlates with intense star formation and AGN activity. Averaged over all tidal classes, we find that our 688 tidal feature galaxies are 6.6 ± 0.9 times more likely to be in a starburst phase and 19.6 ± 5.0 times more likely to have rapidly quenched (post-starbursts) than a sample of 4073 controls matched in both stellar mass and redshift. Examining differences between tidal classes, galaxies with arm features were ∼1.3–4.0 times more likely to be starbursting than the other categories, while those with shell features were ∼2.3–5.3 times more likely to be in a quiescent state. In a similar analysis, we identify which galaxies show evidence of AGN activity (from a sample of ∼2100) and find no significant difference between those with or without tidal features. Overall, our results reinforce the notion that mergers play an important role in driving star formation and rapid quenching in galaxies, and provide some of the first empirical evidence that the strength of this effect has a dependence on the detailed nature of the interaction, as traced by the tidal feature morphology
A millimeter methanol maser ring tracing the deceleration of the heat wave powered by the massive protostellar accretion outburst in G358.93–0.03 MM1
No full textWe present multiepoch, multiband Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array imaging of the new Class II millimeter methanol masers excited during the accretion outburst of the massive protostar G358.93−0.03 MM1. The highest angular resolution image (24 mas ≈160 au) reveals a nearly complete, circular ring of strong maser spots in the 217.2992 GHz (vt = 1) maser line that closely circumscribes the dust continuum emission from MM1. Weaker maser emission lies inside the eastern and southern halves of the maser ring, generally coincident with the centimeter masers excited during the outburst but avoiding the densest parts of the hot core gas traced by high excitation lines of CH3CN. Using a variety of fitting techniques on the image cubes of the two strongest maser lines, each observed over three to four epochs, we find the diameter of the ring increased by ≳60% (from ≈1100 to ≈1800 au in the 217 GHz line) over 200 days, consistent with an average radial propagation rate of ≈0.01c, while the maser intensity declined exponentially. Fitting the angular extent of the millimeter masers versus time yields a power law of index 0.39 ± 0.06, which also reproduces the observed extent of the 6.7 GHz masers in the first very long baseline interferometry epoch of R. A. Burns et al. 2020 This exponent is consistent with the prediction of radius versus time in the Taylor–von Neumann–Sedov self-similar solution for an intense spherical explosion from a point source (R ∝ t2/5). These results demonstrate the explosive nature of accretion outbursts in massive protostars and their ability to generate subluminal heat waves traceable by centimeter and millimeter masers for several months as the energy traverses the surrounding molecular material
Diversity in the haziness and chemistry of temperate sub-Neptunes
No full textRecent transit observations of K2-18 b and TOI-270 d revealed strong molecular absorption signatures, lending credence to the idea that temperate sub-Neptunes (equilibrium temperature Teq = 250–400 K) have upper atmospheres mostly free of aerosols. These observations also indicated higher-than-expected CO2 abundances on both planets, implying bulk compositions with high water mass fractions. However, it remains unclear whether these findings hold true for all temperate sub-Neptunes. Here we present the JWST NIRSpec/PRISM 0.7–5.4-μm transmission spectrum of a third temperate sub-Neptune, the 2.4 R⊕ planet LP 791-18 c (Teq = 355 K), which is even more favourable for atmospheric characterization thanks to its small M6 host star. Intriguingly, despite the radius, mass and equilibrium temperature of LP 791-18 c being between those of K2-18 b and TOI-270 d, we find a drastically different transmission spectrum. Although we also detect methane on LP 791-18 c, its transit spectrum is dominated by strong haze scattering and there is no discernible CO2 absorption. Overall, we infer a deep metal-enriched atmosphere (246–415 times solar) for LP 791-18 c, with a CO2-to-CH4 ratio smaller than 0.07 (at 2σ), indicating less H2O in the deep envelope of LP 791-18 c and implying a relatively dry formation inside the water-ice line. These results show that sub-Neptunes that are near analogues in density and temperature can show drastically different aerosols and envelope chemistry and are intrinsically diverse beyond a simple temperature dependence
Access Repository Dashboard
Do you manage University of St. Andrews - Pure? Access insider analytics, issue reports and manage access to outputs from your repository in the CORE Repository Dashboard!