Proposal to Encode the Mahajani Script in ISO/IEC 10646

This is a proposal to encode the Mahajani script in the international character encoding standard Unicode. This script was published in Unicode Standard version 7.0 in June 2014. Mahajani is a script that was used across northern India until the mid-20th c. It was used to write Hindi, Marwari, and Punjabi. The script is no longer in general use

Final Proposal to Encode the Khudawadi Script in ISO/IEC 10646

This is a proposal to encode the Khudawadi script in the international character encoding standard Unicode. This script was published in Unicode Standard version 7.0 in June 2014. Khudawadi is an historic script, used to write the Sindhi language, which is spoken in Pakistan and India. In the 1860s it was selected to be the standard for education and administration. In late 19c, Arabic became the official writing system for Sindhi. In India, Sindhi is also written in the Devanagari script

Does information entropy play a role in the expansion and acceleration of the Universe?

We propose an interpretation of the expansion and acceleration of the Universe from an information theoretic viewpoint. We obtain the time evolution of the configuration entropy of the mass distribution in a static Universe and show that the process of gravitational instability leads to a rapid dissipation of configuration entropy during the growth of the density fluctuations making such a Universe entropically unfavourable. We find that in an expanding Universe, the configuration entropy rate is governed by the expansion rate of the Universe and the growth rate of density fluctuations. The configuration entropy rate becomes smaller but still remains negative in a matter dominated Universe and eventually becomes zero at some future time in a $\Lambda$ dominated Universe. The configuration entropy may have a connection to the dark energy and possibly plays a driving role in the current accelerating expansion of the Universe leading the Universe to its maximum entropy configuration.Comment: 4 pages, no figures, minor revision, Accepted for publication in MNRAS Letter

Phase-resolved XMM-Newton and swift observations of WR 25

We present an analysis of long-term X-ray and optical observations of the Wolf-Rayet binary WR 25. Using archival data from observations with the XMM-Newton and the Swift observatories spanning over ~10 yr, we show that WR 25 is a periodic variable in X-rays with a period of $208 \pm 3$ days. X-ray light curves in the 0.5-10.0 keV energy band show phase-locked variability, where the flux increased by a factor of ~2 from minimum to maximum, being maximum near periastron passage. The light curve in the soft energy band (0.5-2.0 keV) shows two minima indicating the presence of two eclipses. However, the light curve in the hard energy band (2.0-10.0 keV) shows only one minimum during the apastron passage. The X-ray spectra of WR 25 were explained by a two-temperature plasma model. Both the cool and the hot plasmas were constant at 0.628+/-0.008 and 2.75+/-0.06 keV throughout an orbital cycle, where the cooler plasma could be due to the small scale shocks in a radiation-driven outflow and the high temperature plasma could be due to the collision of winds. The column density varied with the orbital phase and was found to be maximum after the periastron passage, when the WN star is in front of the O star. The abundances of WR 25 were found to be non-solar. Optical V-band data of WR 25 also show the phase-locked variability, being at maximum near periastron passage. The results based on the present analysis indicate that WR 25 is a colliding wind binary where the presence of soft X-rays is attributed to individual components; however, hard X-rays are due to the collision of winds.Comment: 12 pages, 7 figures, 5 tables, Ap