News

IndianExpress:  THE Maharashtra State Road Development Corporation (MSRDC) wants to join the race as consultant for Pune Municipal Corporation’s Rs 1,900 crore road infrastructure project under the Centre’s Jawaharlal Nehru Urban Renewal Mission (JNNURM).

The PMC has already moved a proposal to appoint Infrastructure Leasing and Financial Services (IL&FS) as consultant which has been stalled after a controversy over its appointment. However, Public Works Department (PWD) minister Anil Deshmukh on Friday indicated that the MSRDC is interested in the job. ‘‘The Pune Municipal Corporation has never approached the MSRDC,’’ he said.

IndianExpress: THE Pune Cantonment Board’s (PCB) Traffic Mobility Committee that will meet on Monday will discuss a host of traffic-related issues like the hawker nuisance around Shivaji market, unauthorised parking and the traffic system on M G Road and relocation of the Golibar Maidan police chowki.

The meeting will be chaired by PCB president Brigadier N M Rasquinha and will be attended by Deputy Commissioner of Police (traffic) Mahesh Ghurye, Assistant Commissioner of Police (traffic) Pradeep Babar, Pune Municipal Corporation’s traffic advisor Srinivas Bonala, president of Pune Camp Merchants’ Association Sanjeev Brar and Sujit Patwardhan from INTACH.

IndianExpress: After IT and software, its lighting technology that’s creating new career opportunities for engineering students.

With projects worth Rs 8,000-Rs 9,000 crore on the anvil over the next few years in India alone, this is a new revolution in the making resulting in a rising demand for qualified engineers in the field.

And rising to the challenge is the Maharashtra Association for Engineering Education and Research (MAEER), Maharashtra Institute of Technology’s latest degree course in Lighting Technology, which will provide practical, vocational training in all aspects of lighting, from ultraviolet light to laser design, invention, research and development and applications.

IndianExpress: FIVE days after the ragging incident at BJ Medical College surfaced, the Bund Garden police on Friday arrested second year MBBS student Nikhil Sahu (19) for alleged involvement in ragging first year MBBS student Akhilesh Shukla (17). Sahu was later granted bail.
Shukla was admitted to Sassoon Hospital following renal failure and underwent dialysis . He lodged a complaint last Sunday naming Sahu. Sahu was not arrested since he was at a private hospital for a shoulder surgery

TechTree: Apple Computer introduced the new Mac Pro, a Quad Xeon 64-bit desktop workstation, at an event held in Mumbai today.

The company says that the newly-designed Mac Pro, with advanced performance, greater expansion, superior graphics options, and better customization is the ideal system for the most demanding of users.

The new Mac Pro features two new 2.66 GHz Dual-Core Intel Xeon processors, each with 4MB of shared L2 cache, independent 1.33 GHz front-side buses, and new system architecture that is up to twice as fast as the Power Mac G5 Quad. The Mac Pro includes 1GB of 667 MHz DDR2 fully buffered ECC memory, which is expandable up to 16 GB.
 

TechNews: Intel this week touted the availability of its vPro technology, a package of hardware and software which the chip giant said can cut energy use and costs for enterprise IT shops while giving them more advanced remote management and security control. Hardware vendors including Cisco, HP and Microsoft have announced plans to incorporate vPro into upcoming products.

Claiming vPro can deliver business IT organizations cost savings of as much as 40 percent, Intel said the technology would draw on the advantages of its Core 2 Duo processors to harden security and bolster manageability when incorporated into products from Cisco (Nasdaq: CSCO) , Hewlett-Packard (NYSE: HPQ) , Microsoft (Nasdaq: MSFT) , Symantec (Nasdaq: SYMC)  and other vendors that plan to use the technology.

ITWire: IBM has started shipping the processors that will power the next generation Nintendo console. The chips, code-named Broadway and manufactured in New York, are based on on IBM’s Power architecture using 90 nanometer fabrication.

IBM claims the underlying technology of the chips called silicon-on-insulator will deliver significantly more power with a 20% energy saving.

While Nntendo has not yet given an exact shipping date for Wii, it has committed to delivering 6 million units by March 2007, the same number promised by Sony for PlayStation 3.

TechTree: Recently, Philips Semiconductor changed its name to NXP, Europe’s second largest semiconductor company and amongst the global top 10 players.

The announcement came after Royal Philips sold 80.1 percent of its stake to a group of private equity investors, including Kohlberg Kravis Roberts, Bain Capital, Silver Lake Partners, Apax, and AlpInvest Partners.

Commenting on the re-christening, Frans van Houten, chief executive officer, Philips Semiconductors, said “Today we take control of our own destiny and start to shape the future of the semiconductor industry. We enable our customers to build better products, based on our next generation vibrant media technologies. NXP stands for Next Experience. In order to emphasize the rich heritage which NXP gained from 53 years as part of Royal Philips, the NXP name will be supported by the tagline founded by Philips.”