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IndianExpress:  One of the most difficult things each cadet passing out of the National Defence Academy (NDA) faces is keeping track of his friends who get scattered across the world after retirement from the services. Now, with a little help from the virtual world, the 30,000-odd alumni of the academy will be brought together on an online community being hosted on NDA’s new website.

The primary feature of the new user-friendly portal, being launched later this month to take the ‘entire NDA community into cyberspace’, will be a virtual meeting place for the alumni. The community will enable
 
‘ex-NDA’s’ to search the entire alumni database to find old friends and interact with them in online discussion forums. It will also enable each alumnus to update his profile, add photographs and give updates on life. The portal will also have message boards for alumni to share information.

IndianExpress: The Centre is debating the possibility of setting up Special Economic Zones (SEZ) for universities, said Minister of State in the Prime Minister’s Office (PMO) Prithviraj Chavan, speaking to reporters on the sidelines of a seminar held at Symbiosis today.

“A private institute has expressed the interest to set up such a zone, on the lines of the SEZs. This is now being debated in the Prime Minister’s Office, and a decision still has to be taken on it,’’ said Chavan.

University Grants Commission Chairman Sukhdev Thorat, and Pune University Vice-Chancellor Narendra Jadhav were also present at the seminar. Thorat delivered the lecture on Higher Education and Emerging Trends, which was the topic for the seminar.

IndianExpress: Municipal Corporation the target of criticism. Waking up to the need to find out the reasons for the deteriorating road conditions, the civic body has decided to follow Indian Road Congress (IRC) norms on carrying out various tests to ascertain worthiness of roads.

The civic authorities have began undertaking California Bearing Ratio (CBR) laboratory test and Benkelman Beam Deflection Test (BBDT) to ascertain the condition of several roads. According to IRC norms, CBR tests must be carried out whenever a new road is constructed. Similarly, the BBDT is required when a road is resurfaced.

These tests are meant for strengthening of existing and newly-laid roads. However, the civic body never carried out such tests except for those being reconstructed under PMC’s Integrated Road Development Project.

IndianExpress: Deere & Company is planning to add 400 people to its technology centre in Pune in the next two years. Besides, work on expanding the capacity of the Deere factory in Sanaswadi by 50 per cent is underway.

This was revealed by Deere & Company vice-president for strategic manufacturing and engineering, global tractor & implement sourcing Adel Zakaria. He however refused to give the details of investment made to increase the production at Sanaswadi.

The technology centre in Pune has 400 people at present and provides services in the areas of IT, engineering, supply management, embedded systems and technical authoring for the company’s operations worldwide. At present the factory manufactures around 19,000 tractors annually.