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Archive for May 2, 2007

Aerospace engg charts flight path to Baramati

May 2, 2007 at 8:10 am

· City

indianexpress: Hitherto known as the auto-component hub of India, Pune has upped its ante and staked claim as the new backroom for aerospace engineering. The trigger for this foray has come in the shape of the ongoing boom in the civil aviation industry and it’s the city-based Bharat Forge Limited (BFL) – already a global player in the auto-components sector – that has stepped in to fill the newly created space with a Rs 350-crore facility - Centre for Advanced Manufacturing - at Baramati in Pune district.

The plant will have forging capacity of 30,000 tonnes a year, manufacture one lakh machined crankshafts and will engage 1,200 workers. With global aviation majors Boeing and Airbus looking to source components from India, Bharat Forge is all ready to board their vendor list. The plant will start commercial production in April 2008 and is looking at a turnover of Rs 350 crore in the first 18 months.
 
Baba Kalyani, chairman, BFL said, “This is how China built its own civil aviation industry - by using the offset programme and the technology flows that came with it over 15 to 20 years”. Bharat Forge will start with structured parts and landing gear while aerospace engine parts will come next.

The Baramati plant will have arguably what will be the world’s largest closed die manufacturing capacity with a 80-tonne hammer that can produce pieces, that weigh 2.5 tonnes each and are 4.5 metres long. “The best we make currently is 350 kg so the new plant will make eight times bigger product in size,” Kalyani said.

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‘Stop unloading cement in goods shed’

May 2, 2007 at 8:09 am

· City

indianexpress: AUNDH Road-based Laboni Towers Co-operative Housing Society Ltd has threatened legal action if the Central Railways (CR) declined to stop unloading cement at the Khadki goods shed.

A press communiqué issued by the society has said they have taken up the issue with the Pune railway division authorities as well as the Maharashtra Pollution Control Board (MPCB), citing that work at the shed was polluting the environment. “It has been observed recently that the unloading of cement (at the shed) was causing serious health hazards to citizens staying in these (neighbouring) areas,” the communiqué said on Tuesday.

It added that the MPCB had also advised the railway authorities against the same. The society has said it would resort to legal help in case the railway authorities failed to adhere to the MPCB’s advice.

When contacted, a senior Divisional Operating Manager (DOM) Atul Rane denied having received any such advice from the MPCB.

“We are building terminals at Saswad and Loni. However, the traffic in the division has increased considerably, so the Khadki goods shed is a requirement,” he said.

Railway officials have said the society’s building should not have been built close to shed in the first place. “The shed was built years ago when it was in outskirts of the city,” one official said. He said the shed would be unable to function without three to four openings for free movement of its vehicles.

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650 pages of incidents that moulded Maharashtra

May 2, 2007 at 8:08 am

· City

indianexpress:  May 1, 1960: Yashwantrao Chavan takes an oath as the first chief minister of Maharashtra with Mumbai as its capital.
1960: The introduction of the path-breaking Panchayati Raj system.
1992: Women were given representation in the Panchayati Raj.

After Maharashtra was established as a separate state 47 years ago on May 1, 1960, events such as these became landmarks in its history. Today, these events and more have been recorded for posterity in the Maharashtra Dinvishesh, a 650-part encyclopaedia of all major incidents and personalities in the state. The book, which contains date-wise information on all events from 1601 to 2006, was released on Tuesday on the occasion of Maharashtra Day by Marathi scholar Hari Narke.

“Even after the formation of an independent state, a lot more needs to be done for development of the Marathi language and culture,” said Narke. For this, he stressed the need to boost the encyclopaedia literature, comparing it to encyclopaedias in the English language.

While there have been encyclopaedias compiled in Marathi, like the Dnyan Kosh prepared by Shridhar Venkatesh Ketkar, or the Samaj Vijnana Kosh by SM Garge, Narke said, “The richness of a language depends on its encyclopaedias, which act as insurance for the language,” said Narke, lauding the Maharashtra Dinvishesh compiled by V N Honap and Ganesh Raut.

“Incidents like the Namantar Andolan for the renaming of the Marathwada University had a lasting impact, since it was a major agitation that created awareness among the backward classes and contributed to their empowerment,” said Narke.

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Six PCB staff to man grievance cell 24×7

May 2, 2007 at 8:07 am

· City

indianexpress:  THE Pune Cantonment Board (PCB) has appointed six employees as Officers on Special Duty (OSD) to attend to the complaints of Cantonment residents as a part of the Grievance Redressal Mechanism, a new initiative of the board.

The OSDs include revenue superintendent DV Patil, revenue inspectors S A Kadam, Vijay Nair, tax collectors Sanjay Makwana, Robert Jacob, D Subbairadu and Rupesh Bandisode, will work on all days irrespective of holidays between 2 pm and 10 pm.

The six OSDs have been placed under the direct supervision of the chief revenue superintendent (CRS) , cantonment executive engineer and chief health superintendent. The Cantonment Executive Officer has earmarked specific tasks to the OSDs which comprise checking hawker and beggar menace, encroachment on Cantonment land and attending to public grievances against excesses of pay and park contractors.

The officers have been asked to maintain a register to record the duties performed by them on a daily basis. They will also maintain a separate register for the impounded goods.The report of raids conducted will be submitted by the CRS.

The OSDs have been instructed to take necessary police help during raids, anti encroachment and demolition drives as a protective measure.

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Abolish contract system of work: Labour organisations

May 2, 2007 at 8:05 am

· City

indianexpress: ON the occasion of the 48th Labour Day, labour organisations across the city gathered at Kamgar Putla to demand abolishment of the contract system of work, and justice to labourers. Members of over 34 labour organisations carried a morcha to protest against the injustice meted out to labourers.

Members stated that the UPA government at the Centre has assured to make the common minimum programme a law. However there is a delay in its approval. “Labourers contribute to 62 per cent of production of the country, yet there is no law or policy to protect their interest,” one member said.
 
The organisations have demanded formation of laws pertaining to pension, accident cover, life insurance, maternal leave for women, medical insurance and other social security covers, and their immediate implementation with budgetary allocation.

Members also stated that of late the number of organisations including public, Centre and State Government have begun hiring labourers on contract. Critisising the system, they said that contract labourers are made slaves of organisations and therefore the contract law of 1970 should be scrapped.

Meanwhile, the Pune Municipal Corporation (PMC) felicitated its workers. The civic body had also organised functions and programmes at Balgandharva Rangmandir to celebrate Labour Day.

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One-third of seats in Pune Cantt for women

May 2, 2007 at 8:04 am

· City

indianexpress:  ONE-third of the seats in the Pune and Dehu Road Cantonment Boards will now be reserved for women. The two boards recently received a letter from the Central Defence Estate office in New Delhi asking the respective cantonment executive officers to reserve their seats accordingly.

The parliamentary committee for defence and defence estates has passed a resolution granting one-third reservation of wards for women. With this directive, the Pune Cantonment Board (PCB), which has recently carved out the delimitation exercise, will now have three wards reserved for women, while the Dehu Cantonment Board will have two women members out of the seven yards.

PCB’s CEO SK Sardana said they were waiting for the final notification for the reservation exercise. “Right now, we are going according to the directives we have received in connection with the reservation for women,” he said.

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Population, competition can cause diabetes: Study

May 2, 2007 at 8:03 am

· City · Health

indianexpress: TWO Pune researchers have reinterpreted the origin of diabetes and tried to look at insulin resistance from an ecological perspective.

The new hypothesis says high population density, highly competitive social environment, greater rich-poor divide, sedentary life and reducing immune challenges along with the type of diet and lack of exercise are important predisposing factors.

Dr Milind Watve, head of the department of microbiology at Abasaheb Garware College, and Dr C S Yajnik, diabetologist at KEM hospital, have, in the recent issue of the journal BMC Evolutionary Biology, reinterpreted data to show that the traditional view about insulin resistance evolving as a mechanism to combat periodic starvation was grossly inadequate.

So Watve, an evolutionary ecologist, joined hands with Yajnik, a diabetologist, to pursue some fundamental unanswered questions.

“It is popularly believed that the diabetic tendency (technically called insulin resistance) developed as an adaptation to seasonal starvation. Our physiology is adapted to store fat in the days of plenty and then reutilized when faced with starvation. This has been termed as a ‘thrifty gene’ — an adaptation to ‘feast and famine’ conditions. Today, in the days of ‘feast and feast,’ the ‘thrifty gene,’ which was once adaptive, is turning detrimental,” Watve said.

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Alcatel-Lucent, NEC to build new cable

May 2, 2007 at 7:59 am

· Technology

zdnet: Alcatel-Lucent and NEC will jointly deploy the Asia America Gateway (AAG), a high-bandwidth optical fiber submarine cable system linking Southeast Asia to the United States.

According to a statement Friday, Alcatel-Lucent and NEC will design, manufacture, install, integrate and commission the AAG network, which will span 20,000km. The network will cost US$500 million to build and is expected to be completed by the end of 2008.

First mooted in June 2006, the AAG will complement existing cable systems like the APCN2 (Asia Pacific Cable Network) and the Japan-US Cable Network which currently connect the Southeast Asia region to North America via North Asia and pass through areas most prone to seismic activity.

In December 2006, an earthquake off Taiwan measuring 7.1 on the Richter scale damaged seven submarine cable systems including the APCN2 and Asia Netcom’s East Asia Crossing. Although Internet communications across Asia suffered a complete blackout or severe network congestion, services were quickly restored in a few days.

In a separate release Friday, Singapore’s StarHub became the latest telco to join the 17-member AAG consortium. The telco will manage and operate a cable landing station in Singapore, connecting the island-state to the AAG.

Other operators in the AAG consortium include AT&T in the United States, Bharti in India, CAT Telekom in Thailand, Eastern Telecommunications in the Philippines, PT Indosat in Indonesia, PCP in Cambodia, Saigon Postel Corporation in Vietnam, Telstra in Australia, Telkom Indonesia and Telekom Malaysia, among others

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ClearSpeed expands math accelerator line

May 2, 2007 at 7:56 am

· Technology

cnet: ClearSpeed has added a second option to its line of add-in cards that boost a computer’s computational power with a special-purpose processor.

The company’s first Advance X620 card plugged into servers’ PCI-X slots, the last of an older generation of input/output technology. The newer model, called the e620, uses the PCI Express technology common on mainstream servers and also in PCs and workstations.

The new model costs the same–$8,000, before volume discounts–and offers about the same performance, said Peter Ffoulkes, a marketing director at ClearSpeed. That price may seem steep, but the company argues that it’s cheaper than the alternative–buying extra servers–and the power consumption is lower, Ffoulkes said.

However, the new model arrived later than the start-up had hoped. “We are a little bit behind on that one,” Ffoulkes said.

ClearSpeed is trying to tap into two trends in high-performance computing. The first is the use of compute clusters, groups of interconnected servers that collectively tackle calculation challenges such as processing three-dimensional oil reservoir data or simulating the interactions of drugs and human cells.

The second trend is the use of special-purpose hardware to accelerate such clusters. That type of hardware–which also includes the Cell processor from IBM, Toshiba and Sony, repurposed graphics chips from Nvidia and AMD’s ATI division, and field-programmable gate array (FPGA) chips that can be configured to run all sorts of tasks–can boost performance, but software must be adapted to take advantage of them.

 

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Ozzie’s quiet revolution at Microsoft

May 2, 2007 at 7:55 am

· Technology

cnet: newsmaker Ray Ozzie, Microsoft’s chief software architect, is not one to take extreme views or make outlandish claims. But he is adamantly sure of one thing: a combination of software and online services is the future.

And so far, Ozzie’s contention that the industry is going through a disruptive shift from software to services is bearing out.

Desktop software heavyweight Adobe Systems is increasingly introducing online services. Even Web companies like Amazon.com and eBay are building desktop services, like gadgets or applets, to complement their Web services.

Microsoft detractors say that the company has been slow to develop ad-supported Web software because of its fixation on its massive on-premises software business.

But Ozzie says that the transition to software and services is under way and going well. For a taste, take a look at Silverlight Streaming, a service introduced at the Mix ‘07 conference in Las Vegas where Microsoft will store and stream video clips into Web pages at no cost.

Another key piece to building a services business is creating a platform and tools for programmers. Also at Mix, Microsoft said that .Net developers can build applications for Silverlight, its cross-platform browser plug-in.

Backstage after his keynote speech at Mix on Monday, CNET News.com spoke to Ozzie about the company’s ongoing transition from the age of desktop software to a new era.


 

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