Playing games with EPR-type experiments

An approach towards quantum games is proposed that uses the unusual probabilities involved in EPR-type experiments directly in two-player games.Comment: Submitted to the J. Phys. A: Maths & Gen., revised in the light of referees' comments, 14 pages, no figur

Managing Malaysian water resources development

Water is a gift of God and Malaysia is rich in water resources. Water development has fueled socio-economic development of the country during the past decades.Dams and thousands of kilometres of pipes and canals divert water from the rivers to sustain domestic, industrial and agricultural needs. Lately, the water situation for the country has changed from one of relative abundance to one of relative scarcity.The population growth and the expansion in urbanisation, industrialisation and irrigated agriculture are imposing rapidly growing demands and pressure on the water resources, besides contributing to the rising water pollution. Water management is becoming increasingly comprehensive and complicated due to larger concentrations of population, commercial activities and industries around the cities and towns, increasing water consumption, increasing water pollution, increasing land use conflicts and climate changes. At the same time, development of new water resources to meet the ever increasing water demand is facing opposition from the environmentalists. Therefore, the preferred water supply management approach,whereby new supply sources are tapped to meet increasing demand should be replaced by water demand management approach, whereby efforts are directed towards managing the demand to keep it within available supply sources. Water demand management monitors and improves the efficiency of the supply system and all water users need to adjust their needs to the available water. The way forward to a prosperous and sustainable future is by keeping development to a level that is kept within the carrying capacity of the river basin while protecting and restoring the environment. As such, the water demand management should be practised within the broader context of integrated water resources management (IWRM). IWRM is an approach towards integrating and effectively coordinating policies, programs and practices addressing the water related issues which takes into consideration the aspects of socio-economic development and the conservation of the environment. The comprehensive management of water resources will cover three components namely,the management of water as a precious resource, the management of wastewater and water pollution, and the management of water related hazards such as floods, droughts and landslides. Whilst water related problems are essentially local issues,the solutions to such problems must be tackled from a broader perspective. These will require improved professional capability, and increased financial, legislative,managerial and political capacity

Tax Pilferage—Causes and Cures

“Tax pilferage” is an English equivalent of the well-known Urdu phrase “Tax Chori”. The formal expression is tax evasion. To begin with, we draw a distinction between tax evasion and tax avoidance. Tax evasion is defined to include all illegal acts of omission and commission which result in tax loss to the exchequer. According to the United Kingdom Royal Commission on the Taxation of Profits and Income, the term “evasion” To be more specific, evasion refers to the nonpayment of tax as a result of failure to submit a return without reasonable excuse, or underpayment of tax, by submitting an incorrect return where incorrectness is due to gross neglect or fraud, or due to omission, or understatement of income or the deduction of an inadmissible or a fictitious expenditure, or loss.

Scientific Realism and Primordial Cosmology

We discuss scientific realism from the perspective of modern cosmology, especially primordial cosmology: i.e. the cosmological investigation of the very early universe. We first (Section 2) state our allegiance to scientific realism, and discuss what insights about it cosmology might yield, as against "just" supplying scientific claims that philosophers can then evaluate. In particular, we discuss: the idea of laws of cosmology, and limitations on ascertaining the global structure of spacetime. Then we review some of what is now known about the early universe (Section 3): meaning, roughly, from a thousandth of a second after the Big Bang onwards(!). The rest of the paper takes up two issues about primordial cosmology, i.e. the very early universe, where "very early" means, roughly, much earlier (logarithmically) than one second after the Big Bang: say, less than $10^{-11}$ seconds. Both issues illustrate that familiar philosophical threat to scientific realism, the under-determination of theory by data---on a cosmic scale. The first issue (Section 4) concerns the difficulty of observationally probing the very early universe. More specifically, the difficulty is to ascertain details of the putative inflationary epoch. The second issue (Section 5) concerns difficulties about confirming a cosmological theory that postulates a multiverse, i.e. a set of domains (universes) each of whose inhabitants (if any) cannot directly observe, or otherwise causally interact with, other domains. This again concerns inflation, since many inflationary models postulate a multiverse. For all these issues, it will be clear that much remains unsettled, as regards both physics and philosophy. But we will maintain that these remaining controversies do not threaten scientific realism.Comment: 52 pages. An abridged version will appear in "The Routledge Handbook of Scientific Realism", ed. Juha Saats

Evolutionary stability in quantum games

In evolutionary game theory an Evolutionarily Stable Strategy (ESS) is a refinement of the Nash equilibrium concept that is sometimes also recognized as evolutionary stability. It is a game-theoretic model, well known to mathematical biologists, that was found quite useful in the understanding of evolutionary dynamics of a population. This chapter presents an analysis of evolutionary stability in the emerging field of quantum games.Comment: 38 pages, 2 figures, contributed chapter to the book "Quantum Aspects of Life" edited by D. Abbott, P. Davies and A. Pat

Gauging Fine-Tuning

We introduce a mathematical framework for quantifying fine-tuning in general physical settings. In particular, we identify two distinct perspectives on fine-tuning, namely, a local and a global perspective --- and develop corresponding measures. These measures apply broadly to settings characterized by an arbitrary number of observables whose values are dependent on an arbitrary number of parameters. We illustrate our formalism by quantifying fine-tuning as it arises in two pertinent astrophysical settings: (i) in models where a significant fraction of the dark matter in the universe is in the form of primordial black holes, and (ii) in scenarios that derive the fraction of protons in habitable dark-matter halos from underlying models of cosmic inflation.Comment: 13 pages, 6 figure

The effect of flower-like tatania towards characteristics and performance of polysulfone mixed matrix membrane

For ages, the polymeric membrane such as PSf is widely used in liquid separation for various application as the polymer itself offer versatile and attractive properties. However, due to strong hydrophobic nature of PSf property that create serious fouling problem to most of the separation process, thus modification of membrane by integrating strong hydrophilic particles is always practically used among industries and researchers. In this research, the effect of FLT as an additive in the PSf membrane was investigated. With consideration of the FLT that offer larger specific surface area as compared to ST that able to generate better performances and properties of polymer MMM. In this work, the polymer MMM of PSf/FLT and PSf/ST membranes were prepared via phase inversion method at five different concentrations of additive. Membrane characterization involved several observations such as cross-section area, particle distribution, surface roughness, hydrophilicity property, mean pore size, mechanical strength and porosity. Meanwhile, membrane performances were evaluated in terms of HA rejection, PWF, antifouling, antibacterial activity and photocatalytic properties based on self-cleaning antifouling efficiency. From the result, the addition of FLT was strongly influenced overall structure and characteristics of the membrane compared to ST. With a larger surface area of FLT and homogenous distribution inside membrane structure have resulted in better hydrophilicity effect thus improved the membrane performances. The PWF result was increased from 61.33 L/m2h to 137.81 L/m2h for PSf/ST and 155.46 L/m2h for PSf/FLT as increased additive to 3 wt%. Same results were obtained by rejection analysis where the PSf/FLT membrane able to reject more than 96% of HA and improved antifouling and self-cleaning efficiency. It is clearly shown that the present of higher specific surface area of FLT has improved overall characteristics and performances of the membrane compared to ST especially at 3 wt% of concentration