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Archive for February 12, 2007

Gloomy days ahead for weather research in India

February 12, 2007 at 8:17 am

· City

indianexpress: The Indian Institute of Tropical Meteorology (IITM) has launched its largest recruitment drive in the last decade but is finding it hard to locate and recruit the right scientists — a problem that is now threatening to slow down the pace of crucial research work here.

The IITM is keen to hire 50 experts over the next five years to add to the existing 133, but officials say the target is unlikely to be met. “I have put in advertisements to fill up 15 positions immediately and am targeting Indian nationals in over 100 organisations abroad. The response has not been great so far and we will be happy even if five vacancies are filled up,” says IITM director B N Goswami. The institute is searching for experts to conduct research on their climate modeling projects.

The staff crunch is likely to get even more pronounced as 15 scientists are set to retire this year, while another 10 will leave next year. The IITM will have to scout for suitable replacements for these employees, in addition to the 50 planned recruits.

According to Goswami, failure to find the right talent will dent research plans of the institute, which, among other things, is entrusted with providing climate change data to SAARC countries. “Through our various projects, we are trying to enhance the weather forecast capability of the country. If we don’t find the right experts, the pace of research will definitely be hit,” he says, adding that IITM will not hire unless the candidate has the requisite expertise and experience.

What is making the task of identifying and enrolling suitable scientists is the opening up of ‘climate change’ jobs worldwide. While IITM requires 50 scientists, other leading institutes like India Meteorological Department (IMD) and National Centre for Medium Range Weather Forecasting also need over 200 scientists in the near future.

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Now, wireless exhibits to wire Pune

February 12, 2007 at 8:16 am

· City

indianexpress: When most communication networks fail in times of crises, it is usually the police wireless system that keeps the forces updated about the situation on the ground.

And it is precisely this that instigated Director General of Police P S Pasricha to have a museum set up on the evolution of communication. Pune, being the headquarter of Police Wireless in the State, was the ideal choice to house the museum that will commemorate the 60th anniversary of police wireless. The museum will be inaugurated on Monday by Pasricha.

Additional Director General of Police and Director General Police Wireless P T Lohar said: “The sole aim behind having the museum is to provide an insight on how communication systems evolved and how it helped the police forces across the world to keep a tag on various events and crimes. The museum gives interesting facts about the communication system right from the era when pigeons were used for communication to the personal digital instrument or the mobile phone.”

“Pune is, probably, the first city in India to have such a museum. There are a few abroad but none here,” he added.

The work on the museum was started in June 2006 and is it located at Police Wireless Headquarters, Pashan. The Wireless Museum, as it is called, has three rooms. While one has photographs collected from all over the world on who invented what and and how it was used, the other two comprise of communication models from those used during World War II to mobile phones.

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Industry seeks sops for pesticides

February 12, 2007 at 8:15 am

· City

indianexpress:  With pesticide usage standing at just 500 gm per hectare, the Agrochemicals Policy Group (APG) — an industry body that represents over 200 crop protection companies in India — has submitted a pre-budget memorandum to the Finance Ministry that would make agrochemicals more affordable to small farmers.

The group has asked for pesticides to be completely exempted from excise duty and VAT, on par with other agricultural inputs. Said S Kumarasamy, chairman of APG, ‘‘For every Rs 100 that a farmer pays to buy pesticides, Rs 36 goes on taxes like excise duty, VAT and octroi. With this, the net excise outgo of the Rs 3,500 crore pesticide industry amounts to Rs 160 crore. We have made an appeal to the Centre and to the State to exempt pesticides from excise duty and VAT, which would make it possible to increase the area treated by pesticides to about 550 lakh hectare from the current 350 lakh hectare.’’ This would generate additional income of Rs 10,000 crore over the next two to three years, he added.

Additionally, the body has also called for a waiver of Fringe Benefit Tax (FBT) on travel, besides incentives to encourage research and development in the industry. According to Kumarasamy, the pesticides industry is currently charged over 33 per cent FBT on 20 per cent of the expenses on conveyance, travel, boarding and lodging, while the pharma industry is charged the 33 per cent FBT on only 5 per cent of such expenses. ‘‘The marketing, sales and technology personnel of pesticide companies would have to travel extensively and hence such expenses should be taxed on par with the pharma industry,’’ said he.

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Police bust petrol adulteration racket

February 12, 2007 at 8:14 am

· City · Crime

indianexpress: The Pune rural police on Saturday evening busted a major petrol adulteration racket operating in Loni Kalbhor and arrested 12 people. The police have also seized eight tankers and two pick-up vans containing 50,000 litres of adulterated petrol, estimated to be worth Rs 95 lakh.

The police officials suspect the racket to be run by an organised syndicate operating in Sheval Wadi, Kavdi Path, Kunjirwadi and Kadamvasti areas of Loni Kalbhor for past many months. Officials said the racket could be worth crores of rupees.

The 12 people were caught red-handed by a team of Crime Branch officials led by inspector Bhausaheb Andhalkar outside Bharat Petroleum and Hindustan Petroleum premises at Loni Kalbhor when they were pumping kerosene into the tankers after taking out petrol from it.

“The accused were under surveillance of the Crime Branch team ever since complaints of sale of adulterated petrol in the market was reported to the police headquarters. We had also got a complaint about adulterated petrol being delivered at the Indian Oil Pump at Wagholi

The accused are part of an organised syndicate engaged in pilferage and adulteration of petrol on a very large scale. They adulterated pure petrol stolen from the company tankers and sold it in the market at cheaper rates. It is a big racket and might have a statewide network. We are probing all the angles in the case and the remaining people will be arrested soon,” Nangare Patil said.

Explaining the modus operandi, Nangare Patil said they break the delivery seals of the tankers, pump out petrol and refill it with kerosene.

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Cops bust flesh trade racket

February 12, 2007 at 8:13 am

· City · Crime

indianexpress:  A Crime Branch team of the city police on Saturday night carried out raids on Amrut and Kshitij lodges in Baner and arrested 21 girls and three managers for engaging in the flesh trade.

According to the crime branch officials, manager of Kshitij lodge Datta Shiram Pagade provided girls for the flesh trade from Mumbai on a contract basis. Meanwhile, the police have launched a massive manhunt to arrest Pintya, the prime accused in the case.

DCP (Crime) Anil Kumbhare said, “We were tipped off by an informant about the mushrooming flesh trade in the two hotels. We will arrest Pintya soon.”

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One killed, two injured

February 12, 2007 at 8:12 am

· City · Mishaps

indianexpress: One person was killed and two others injured when a mini bus rammed into a roadside wada pav stall at point 11,000 on the Sinhgad fort on Sunday afternoon. Rajkumar Prithviraj Dhamane (23), a resident of Hingane Khurd, was killed on the spot while Ali Asgar Saleem (22) and Nayan Jagdish Taneja (23) were injured in the mishap.

According to police, the mini bus that was carrying students from Amrutvahini Model School in Sangamner Taluka of Ahmednagar District who had come for a picnic to the Sinhagad fort, was on its way down when its brakes failed and the driver lost control ramming it into the kiosk.

The 28 students and 2 teachers in the bus however had a narrow escape.

Meanwhile, the police has arrested the bus driver Babsaheb Misal and charged him for rash and negligent driving.

Haveli Police Inpector Sanjay Pawar said, “Dhamane, Saleem and Taneja were eating wada pav at the kiosh when the speeding minibus rammed into the kiosk killing Dhamane on the spot. It is an unfortunate incident. However, the bus did not cross the side fence of the road, other wise it would have fallen into the valley,” Pawar said.

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Scrollable displays set to debut

February 12, 2007 at 8:09 am

· Technology

bbc:  One of the first mobile devices with a scrollable screen will go on sale in Italy later this year.
Billed as a PDA, electronic book and music player the Readius device has onboard a flexible LED screen that unrolls to 12.7cm (5in) across.

Polymer Vision, the creators of the gadget, claims the high-contrast black and white screen is as readable as printed paper.

Telecom Italia has signed an exclusive deal to sell the gadget.

Although unable to make phone calls the Readius uses several wireless technologies, including wi-fi and 3G, to allow data to be shipped in and out.

Polymer Vision said the device could be used to read newspapers, e-books, news feeds or location-sensitive maps while on the move.

The company said it could also be used to listen to podcasts, music or audio books.

Although the monochrome screen on the first Readius can only display up to 16 shades of gray, Polymer Vision said it was working on versions with colour screens that can also handle moving images.

The device has 4GB of memory, a mini-USB port and is expected to last 10 days between battery charges. Polymer Vision has not said how much it will cost nor when exactly it will go on sale.

The device will be on show at the 3GSM mobile conference that takes place in Barcelona from 12-15 February.

 

 

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Telescope mirror nears completion

February 12, 2007 at 8:08 am

· Technology

bbc: A giant mirror that will fly on the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) - Nasa’s next space observatory - is a step closer to completion.
Engineers have finished making the 18 hexagonal elements that will come together to form the telescope’s 6.6m primary mirror.

The size of a mirror determines how much light a telescope can collect, and therefore how much detail it can see.

JWST is seen as the heir to the hugely successful Hubble Space Telescope.

JWST will study every phase in the history of our Universe.

Its large primary mirror will help it “see” further into the cosmos than other telescopes, to detect some of the first stars to emerge in the Universe.

JWST could even shed light on the origins of life in other planetary systems.

The orbiting observatory is due to launch in 2013 on an Ariane 5 rocket from Kourou in French Guiana.

The primary mirror will consist of 18 lightweight elements like this

JWST’s primary mirror will be 6.6m (22ft) in diameter, compared with Hubble’s 2.4m (7.9ft) mirror.
Hubble’s primary mirror was made in one piece. JWST’s primary mirror consists of 18 different elements, allowing it to be folded up into the rocket that will carry it into space.

This design also gives the telescope more flexibility in space, because each segment can be moved by ground controllers to tweak up its performance.

 

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Martian moon ‘could be key test’

February 12, 2007 at 8:06 am

· Technology

bbc: Mars’ moon Phobos could be the target for a technology trial that would seek to return rock samples to Earth.

A UK team is developing a concept mission that aims to land a spacecraft on the potato-shaped object and grab material off its surface.

These small rock fragments would then be despatched to Earth in a capsule.

“It is being seen as a technological demonstrator for an eventual Mars sample return,” said Dr Andrew Ball from the Open University.

Those aspects of the mission that worked well could be incorporated into a full-scale assault on the Red Planet.

Successful technology from the mission could be taken forward
Both Europe and the US have made the objective of bringing back Martian rocks to Earth laboratories a top priority for their space programmes. A joint venture is likely to occur within the next 15-20 years.

But getting on and off a large planet will be extremely difficult, and the British satellite manufacturer Astrium is proposing to test the required technologies on the low-gravity target of Phobos first.

“It would be a three-year mission. We’re looking at a 2016 launch,” said Marie-Claire Perkinson, a principal mission systems engineer at the Stevenage company.

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Intel shows off 80-core processor

February 12, 2007 at 8:05 am

· Technology

cnet: Intel has built its 80-core processor as part of a research project, but don’t expect it to boost your Doom score just yet.

Chief Technical Officer Justin Rattner demonstrated the processor in San Francisco last week for a group of reporters, and the company will present a paper on the project during the International Solid State Circuits Conference in the city this week.

The chip is capable of producing 1 trillion floating-point operations per second, known as a teraflop. That’s a level of performance that required 2,500 square feet of large computers a decade ago.

Intel first disclosed it had built a prototype 80-core processor during last fall’s Intel Developer Forum, when CEO Paul Otellini promised to deliver the chip within five years. The company’s researchers have several hurdles to overcome before PCs and servers come with 80-core processors–such as how to connect the chip to memory and how to teach software developers to write programs for it–but the research chip is an important step, Rattner said.

A company called ClearSpeed has put 96 cores on a single chip. ClearSpeed’s chips are used as co-processors with supercomputers that require a powerful chip for a very specific purpose.

Intel’s research chip has 80 cores, or “tiles,” Rattner said. Each tile has a computing element and a router, allowing it to crunch data individually and transport that data to neighboring tiles.

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