There is, I think, something ethereal about i —the square root of minus one. I remember first hearing about it at school. It seemed an odd beast at that time—an intruder hovering on the edge of reality.

Usually familiarity dulls this sense of the bizarre, but in the case of i it was the reverse: over the years the sense of its surreal nature intensified. It seemed that it was impossible to write mathematics that described the real world in …

I and i

世界経済・社会統計 = World development indicators

J. Appl. Cryst.の発刊に際して

On September 14, 2015 at 09:50:45 UTC the two detectors of the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory simultaneously observed a transient gravitational-wave signal. The signal sweeps upwards in frequency from 35 to 250 Hz with a peak gravitational-wave strain of 1.0×10(-21). It matches the waveform predicted by general relativity for the inspiral and merger of a pair of black holes and the ringdown of the resulting single black hole. The signal was observed with a matched-filter signal-to-noise ratio of 24 and a false alarm rate estimated to be less than 1 event per 203,000 years, equivalent to a significance greater than 5.1σ. The source lies at a luminosity distance of 410(-180)(+160)  Mpc corresponding to a redshift z=0.09(-0.04)(+0.03). In the source frame, the initial black hole masses are 36(-4)(+5)M⊙ and 29(-4)(+4)M⊙, and the final black hole mass is 62(-4)(+4)M⊙, with 3.0(-0.5)(+0.5)M⊙c(2) radiated in gravitational waves. All uncertainties define 90% credible intervals. These observations demonstrate the existence of binary stellar-mass black hole systems. This is the first direct detection of gravitational waves and the first observation of a binary black hole merger.

/pdf/the-observation-of-gravitational-waves-from-a-binary-black-58srpupgg9.pdf

The Observation of Gravitational Waves from a Binary Black Hole Merger

▶ Addresses a wide range of timely environment, economic and energy topics ▶ A forum to review, analyze and stimulate the development, testing and implementation of mitigation and adaptation strategies at regional, national and global scales ▶ Contributes to real-time policy analysis and development as national and international policies and agreements are discussed and promulgated ▶ 94% of authors who answered a survey reported that they would definitely publish or probably publish in the journal again

Mitigation and Adaptation Strategies for Global Change

Fool’s gold or Iron pyrite (FeS2) is a semiconductor comprised of earth-abundant elements that has the potential to be a low cost photovoltaic material with comparatively low toxicity. Despite its promise, photovoltaic modules containing FeS2 continue to show small photo-voltages which have limited power conversion efficiencies to around 3%. Bandgap engineering of pyrite by doping may help in increasing power conversion efficiency by increasing the portion of the solar spectrum absorbed. This may lead to the prospect of tandem device architectures that utilise pyrite as an intrinsic semiconductor

Iron Pyrite (FeS 2 ): Sustainable Photovoltaic Material

Organizations have alfays strived for reduction in delivery time, improved quality, and increased productivity of application development. These goals have assumed more significance keeping in mind tight labor markets and increasing pressure to deliver at a faster and economical rate. This means that realization about importance of mature softfare processes has increased over the past fef years. That is fhy the popularity of the different process improvement techniques has grofn over the past fef years. Pakistan's softfare industry has made its mark globally and has experienced rapid grofth in this time. Notfithstanding its smaller size in global market, Pakistan's softfare industry has established a place for itself in the forld. Pakistan's IT industry is bringing its focus tofards mature processes and quality products. This paper has been authored to find out the current status of local industry regarding improvement of its processes. For this purpose, fe have conducted a survey in industry to gauge the degree of improvement. This survey is spanned over 3 years. Results of survey are encouraging and a visible positive trend can be seen as far as quality softfare development and mature processes initiation in local industry is concerned. This is particularly impressive keeping in mind numerous challenges that local softfare industry is facing in terms of geo-political situation and economic instability.

Analysis of softfare process improvement efforts in Pakistan

Project management has gained a lot of application in software development activity in the past two decades. It is now considered to be one of the most critical component of software development lifecycle. Project management is traditionally defined as the discipline of planning, organizing, and managing activities and resources for successful execution and completion of project goals and objectives. In this respect, project management holds a key position in satisfactory completion of projects. That is the reason that we have a complete knowledge domain we know as software project management (SPM). The main purpose of SPM is to achieve all the project goals and objectives while working within the constraints posed by project environment and stakeholders. These constraints include (but not limited to) time, scope, resources, resource allocation and optimization etc. Successful project planning involved careful selection and synchronization of resources in order to achieve satisfactory completion of projects. These resources include human resource, rime, infrastructure etc. While planning software projects, it is natural to be confronted with various conflicts in resource allocation. It becomes a very time consuming activity to identify and sort out these conflicts when project size is large and time constraints are severe. A good project management activity is one which can effectively foresee these conflicts and resolve them in an optimal fashion. Computationally intelligent techniques are a good candidate to be used for the purpose of automation of this task. In this paper, a genetic algorithm based technique for conflict identification and resolution for project activities has been proposed. The effectiveness and utility of such a technique has also been discussed in this paper. The technique has been subjected to extensive experimentation and results have been presented.

Project scheduling conflict identification and resolution using genetic algorithms (GA)

Herein, we reported the development of tetramethoxyphenylporphyrin (CoTPP)/reduced graphene (rGO)/multiwalled carbon nanotubes (MWCNTs) composite via an ultrasonic treatment. The engineered composite was characterized by different analytical techniques like scanning electron microscopy (SEM), energy dispersive X-ray (EDX), ultraviolet–visible spectroscopy (UV–Vis) and Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy (FT-IR). The synthesized composite was tested for the catalytic degradation of methylene blue (MB) under solar irradiation and the electrochemical performance of the CoTPP/rGO/MWCNTs was also investigated in alkaline media by using cyclic voltammetry (CV). The photodegradation efficiency of prepared CoTPP/rGO/MWCNTs composite is 92% degradation of MB in water within 60 ​min irradiation. The results of the cyclic voltammogram showed that the onset potential value was -0.4 ​V while peak potential value of CoTPP-rGO/CNTs was -0.59 ​V. The high onset peak potential values and the current values of the CoTPP/rGO/MWCNTs make it a promising candidate as a catalyst for ORR.

Catalytic degradation of methylene blue using a newly engineered composite and its electrochemical performance

In the title compound, C15H11FN4OS, there are three independent molecules, each with a disordered 3-fluorophenyl group [occupancy ratios = 0.547 (17):0.453 (17), 0.645 (5):0.355 (5) and 0.626 (15):0.374 (15)] and displaying dihedral angles of 4.2 (3), 25.2 (6) and 32.4 (5)° between the 2-oxoindoline and fluoro-substituted phenyl rings. Strong intramolecular N—H⋯N and N—H⋯O and weak intramolecular C—H⋯S hydrogen bonds complete S(5) and S(6) ring motifs, while strong intermolecular N—H⋯O hydrogen bonds interconnect the three independent molecules through R 3 3(12) ring motifs. The three-molecule units are in turn linked into polymeric sheets via C—H⋯F and C—H⋯S hydrogen bonds and π–π interactions [centroid–centroid distances in the range 3.520 (2)–3.820 (9) Å].

https://journals.iucr.org/e/issues/2010/10/00/bg2363/bg2363.pdf

Muhammad Ramzan

Papers

Iron Pyrite (FeS 2 ): Sustainable Photovoltaic Material

Analysis of softfare process improvement efforts in Pakistan

Project scheduling conflict identification and resolution using genetic algorithms (GA)

Catalytic degradation of methylene blue using a newly engineered composite and its electrochemical performance

4-(3-Fluorophenyl)-1-(2-oxoindolin-3-ylidene)thiosemicarbazide