News

IndianExpress: THE worst fears have come true with the first heavy rain in the ghat section between Pune and Mumbai. On Monday night, landslide on the expressway at Duke’s Nose near Khandala tunnel cut off the Pune-Mumbai three-lane corridor as huge boulders fell on the road. The Maharashtra State Road Development Corporation (MSRDC) officials said it would take another day before normal traffic was restored on the expressway. ‘‘It is expected to be open only on Thursday,’’ MSRDC officials said.

Though the MSRDC had claimed that they had taken precautions — loose boulder felling, rock bolting and rope netting — to avoid landslides on the sensitive and super-sensitive spots, it did not have any affect.

IndianExpress: CASES of viral fever and bronchitis are on the rise and Out Patient Department (OPDs) at hospitals and private clinics are packed with people suffering from flu. It’s monsoon and worse diseases are on the prowl with . doctors saying that Wadgaonsheri is slowly emerging as a pocket for cases of dengue.

At least 6 patients had been hospitalised for dengue, says KEM Hospital chief Intensivist Dr Rajesh Gadia, adding that he examines at least ten patients down with viral fever and bronchitis every day. ‘‘These are influenza attacks where fever lasts for three-four days followed by coughing episodes for another seven days,’’ says Gadia. It’s the seasonal changes that are responsible for the dullness and lethargy.

IndianExpress:  IN a gradual move towards the evaluation patterns of the Indian Council for Secondary Education and the Central Board for Secondary Education, the Maharashtra State Board for Secondary and Higher Secondary Education has declared that the total number of marks for standard X examination has been reduced from 750 to 650 marks for the academic year 2006-07. Both the ICSE and CBSE board evaluations are for 600 marks.

This has come in the wake of the new subject Environmental Sciences (EVS). Students have to write the Board exam which consists of 100 marks, 60 for theory and 40 for project work.

‘‘This would have been an added burden for SSC students, so we reduced 50 marks each from Science and Social Studies, bringing down the total by 100 marks,” says SSC Board Director Vasant Kalpande.

IndianExpress:  IT’S been seven months since the Rs 14-crore Kothrud TDR (Transfer of Development Rights) scam rocked the Pune Municipal Corporation. Not willing to take any more chances, and in a bid to bring more transparency, the civic administration has come out with a revised guideline for granting TDR. ‘‘The new guidelines are more effective and leave no scope for malpractices,’’ City Engineer Prashant Waghmare said.

As per the revised guidelines, the PMC will grant the Development Right Certificate (DRC) only to the property owner and not to a power of attorney holder as was earlier the case. The civic administration has also made it mandatory for the property owner and the power of attorney holder to submit their photographs along with name, address, Permanent Account Number, signature and thumb prints along with applications for TDR. The applications would be scrutinised by the development plan department.

TheHindu.com: The gigantic Geo-Synchronous Satellite Launch Vehicle (GSLV) will lift off from the newly built second launch pad at Sriharikota, Andhra Pradesh, on July 10 to place INSAT-4C in orbit. The launch time is set between 4.30 p.m. and 6 p.m. on that day. The Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) has codenamed the vehicle GSLV-F-02. The “F” stands for flight.

With the three-stage GSLV-F-02 fully integrated and the satellite mated with the vehicle, the launch campaign is peaking for the ignition on July 10. The vehicle is already on the launch pad.

Filling of the vehicle with fuel will begin T minus 24 hours, that is, 24 hours before the lift-off. The Launch Authorisation Board is scheduled to meet on July 6 to clear the launch.

TechTree.com: Motorola has reportedly signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT), Mumbai.

As per terms of the MoU, Motorola researchers will work with IIT Mumbai faculty to boost R&D initiatives around the application of Gen-Next technologies. Motorola says the association will help strengthen the company’s R&D initiatives within the country.

Motorola and IIT Mumbai are also in the process of jointly setting-up a council to enhance research activity, as also train students of IIT Mumbai
Prof Ashok Misra, director, IIT Mumbai, said that the association with Motorola will give IIT students exposure to real-life technical projects, and provide them with the right platform to harness their knowledge and skills.

BetaNews.com: Security researchers have discovered two new flaws in Internet Explorer. While proof of concept code is available for both, there are no known exploits of either flaw.

The first involves a cross-site scripting issue where an attacker could view information in an open browser window from another that is visiting a malicious site. However, researchers called the issue less serious than the other flaw, saying it requires user interaction, and sensitive data in other browser windows.

“Several handlers have spent a little more time validating this particular issue and while it is a subtle exploit and rated a lower level risk, this issue has raised some of our neck hairs,” Bojan Zdrnja of the SANS Internet Storm Center said on the company’s Web site

TechnologyNewsDaily.com: A Braille mobile phone, from Samsung Electronics Co., Ltd., for the visually impaired (model name: Touch Messenger) won the Gold Award at the Industrial Design Excellence Awards (IDEA), one of the world’s most authoritative design competitions, sponsored by the Industrial Designers Society of America (IDSA) and BusinessWeek. Samsung’s world’s first battery-operated projector (model name: Pocket Imager SP-P300MK) and portable wireless projector (model name: Portable Digital Projector) also won Silver Awards in the Business & Industrial Products and Design Explorations category, respectively.

Samsung won a total of 19 awards in accumulative results during the last five years, according to the IDEA, ranked No.1 Company with largest number of awards.

TechnologyNewsDaily.com:  SDC Systems, the European distributor of embedded technologies have announced the availability of their embedded BIOS solution for the Intel® 3100 Chipset from General Software. The new Embedded BIOS 2000 support module enables designers to build differentiated products around the new chipset. With the server-class memory and I/O controller functions combined in a single component, the Intel 3100 chipset is the first integrated Intel chipset specifically optimized for embedded, communications and storage applications. The chipset addresses the need for high performance, high reliability, and low power designs within a small form factor when combined with Intel processors.

General Software’s new Intel 3100 Support Module is provided as an option for Embedded BIOS 2000 and is licensed in source code form. Developers customize the BIOS to fit the exact needs of the device they are creating. The support module includes full support for the chipset’s key features which include: PCI Express, DDR2 memory devices, and Enhanced Direct Memory Access (EDMA).