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IndianExpress:  While the State education department is toying with the idea of making mathematics an optional subject at the secondary school level, efforts are on in other states to boost mathematics learning.

At least 15 state boards in the country are taking up the initiative to switch to a practical, activity-based approach to mathematics by setting up laboratories to dispel the fear and generate interest in children.

Concerned, officials of the National Council for Education Research and Training (NCERT) have called upon the State to follow other states to promote the subject. With the National Curriculum Framework 2006 highlighting maths and science as a crucial component of futuristic learning, there is a growing emphasis across the country on the need to move away from the chalk and talk method of teaching to a more constructive-activity based approach.

IndianExpress: Three days after first lot of five Volvo buses for Pune Municipal Corporation’s Rs 65 crore Bus Rapid Transit System (BRTS) pilot project arrived in the city, the Pune Municipal Transport on Tuesday carried out a trial run on one stretch of the Pune-Satara corridor.

Another 15 buses are expected by December-end, which is the deadline for beginning regular BRTS service on the 5.9-km Swargate-Katraj stretch on the Pune-Satara Road.

The trial run on the 2.5-km BRTS corridor between Hotel Panchami and Dhankawadi was far from smooth as a group of vendors who were evicted from the dedicated corridor to facilitate the BRTS work stopped the bus near City Pride theatre for nearly half an hour.

IndianExpress:  The convocation ceremony for the 278 graduating cadets of 111th course at the National Defence Academy was held on Tuesday morning at Habibullah Hall. Gurbachan Jagat, chairman, Union Public Service Commission (UPSC) conferred the BA, BSc and BCS degrees from the Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU) to cadets.

A total of 87 cadets received BSc (Computer Science) degrees while BSc and BA degrees were conferred upon 136 cadets and 55 cadets respectively. Cadets, their parents and the officers of the Academy were present during the formal convocation ceremony prior to the Passing-Out-Parade on Wednesday.

Jagat, who has served as the Jammu and Kashmir DGP and the DG BSF prior to his appointment with UPSC, stressed on the importance of cohesion among the Army, paramilitary forces and the civil administration in tackling internal security situations in the country

IndianExpress: A short spell of unexpected showers caused temperatures in the city to dip on Wednesday evening leading to waterlogging on several roads and traffic snarls. Also, several areas faced power cuts.

The city received 2. 1 mm of rainfall till 8.30 pm and IMD officials have predicted that similar conditins may continue for the next two days.

“Rainfall at this time is not very common but the building up of a trough on the western coast from Kerala to Maharashtra has resulted in the showers. Till the trough remains in the area, the city is likely to receive rainfall,” IMD director ( weather forecasting) RR Lele said.

IMD officials said rainfall was likely in the evenings due to the gradual building up of moisture in the atmosphere.

IndianExpress: Two years ago, the Property Tax Department of the Pimpri-Chinchwad Municipal Corporation (PCMC) introduced a free accident insurance policy for all those who paid their taxes on time as an incentive, and to increase their tax collections.

This year, only 9,000 have applied for the insurance — it is worth Rs 25,000 — cover. About 20,000 people had applied in the previous year.

Assistant Municipal Commissioner Sahebrao Gaikwad said that though the scheme had been in force for two years, the response had been lukewarm. “Last year, 20,000 property tax payers applied for the policy, but only 9,000 have so far sought the policy this year,” said Gaikwad, who is also in-charge of the Property Tax Department.

TechTree: Xerox researchers have developed an experimental printing technology, which they call “erasable paper” that creates images to last only a day, and the paper can then be reused.

Though still in a preliminary state, this technology blurs the line between paper documents and digital displays, and could ultimately lead to a significant reduction in paper use.

The “erasable paper” technology is developed by Xerox Research Centre of Canada (XRCC), in collaboration with PARC (Palo Alto Research Center), a wholly-owned subsidiary of Xerox. The company has already filed for patents on the technology.

The company believes this technology will someday replace printed pages that are used for just a brief time before being discarded. According to estimates by Xerox, two out of every five pages are printed in the office for a single viewing that consist email, Web pages, and other reference materials.

TechTree: Sainul Abideen, a 24-year old Indian engineering student, has reportedly developed a new video storage method called “Rainbow Video Disk” (RVD).

Under the new method, colored geometric shapes instead of zeros and ones are stored in dense patterns on paper. Using this method, 256GB of data can be stored on an ordinary sheet of A4-size paper or a plastic sheet.

The files containing text, images, sounds, and video clips are encoded in the “Rainbow Format” as colored circles, triangles, and squares. They are then printed as dense graphics on paper at a density of 2.7GB per square inch. The encoded content can be read through a specially developed RVD scanner, and then decoded into the original digital format. However, the encoding and decoding procedure has not been revealed as yet.

Interestingly, the same data when transferred to a DVD could exceed the storage densities of Blu-ray or HD DVD media and store up to 450GB of data.

BetaNews: For the past few years, mobile phone development has followed a PC-like, “top-down” model, where new technologies and concepts are tried at the high end first. For Motorola’s next act, however, it’s trying the reverse angle: a sweeping new architecture for significantly lower power consumption, using the same display technology that premiered in the Sony Reader device, in a form factor that could deliver as much as 450 minutes of continuous talk time or 400 hours of standby, on a single charge.

At just 9mm thick, Motorola’s new Motofone series debuts today, with the first F3 models to be connected to India’s GSM network. It’s important to note that this is a basic phone, although it does include texting.

But one key to its astoundingly thin design is its E-ink display, which also gets credit for dropping its power consumption. Preview models tested reveal its astoundingly clear readout even without backlighting, though Motofone will be the first monochrome phone to emerge from Motorola in quite some time.