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indianexpress: IF Wednesday’s thunder shower ensured just some parts of the city remained without power for several hours, a majority of the city went without electricity on Thursday after a transmission shutdown at the 220 KV Phursungi substation.

The Maharashtra State Electricity Distribution Company Limited (MSEDCL) officials said there was no power in many parts of the city on Thursday. MSEDCL engineers were working till late in the evening to restore supply. Thursdays are reserved for maintenance work by the MSEDCL.

“Power cuts in the city were the result of a transmission shutdown in the Phursungi substation. The 220 KV line from the substation is being repaired,” said Shrihari Choudhari, superintendent engineer of Rasta Peth circle.

The Peth areas under the Rasta Peth circle were most affected by the breakdown. Several localities in Wanavdi and Kondhwa too faced power cuts for the entire day. Areas in Deccan and Prabhat Road had power cuts ranging from 1 to 3 hours.

The MSEDCL’s state of readiness for the monsoon was exposed on Wednesday after a pre-monsoon thunder shower lashed the city. Restoration work continued even on Thursday in many parts of the city.

Agitated citizens flooded MSEDCL officials at the Rasta Peth office with complaints. Dozens called up newspaper offices to say the MSEDCL complaint centres were attending to their calls.

“The entire MSEDCL network has collapsed after the pre-monsoon shower. This shows the apathy of MSEDCL towards its consumers. If the MSEDCL is energetic enough to slap power bills they should also provide efficient service,” said Siddharth Patole from Rasta Peth.

indianexpress:  A FEW years hence, builders in the city will be provided with a map that will show them whether the land they propose to develop is capable of supporting structures. A detailed mapping by the Geological Survey of India (GSI) to be undertaken for the city, will mark the vulnerable areas.

The GSI will check hard and soft rock layers, ground water levels and their depth, arrangement of rocks and type of soil. Builders have been relying on the soil analysis report till now.
 
The GSI had done a pilot project for Jabalpur in Madhya Pradesh before it decided to cover Mumbai, Pune and Satara. The microseismic zonation mapping for Mumbai is nearing completion. Pune and Satara will be mapped in October. Pune lies in the seismically active zone of the Koyna region, which is about 100 km south of Pune.

The project, initiated by the GSI nearly three years ago after an earthquake shook Jabalpur in 1997, assesses and identifies vulnerable areas. It acts as a guide for town planners to grant permission for high rises and other constructions said GSI deputy director general (central region) KS Mishra. “We demarcated nine areas as hazardous and less hazardous in Jabalpur. Town planners are now working on how to take precautions and marking out areas which come under hazardous zones by strengthening the structures,’’ he added.

Mishra said Mumbai and Pune were selected as they were growing fast and Satara was picked up due to its proximity to Koyna. “In seismic zones, if the building is constructed on hard rock, its stability is high.The mapping of Pune and Satara is likely to be completed in two to three years,’’ he added.

indianexpress: DEVDAS, Pakeezah, Umrao Jaan — all through time, popular movies have contributed to the collective imagination of dancing girls as hapless victims with dreams of escaping from the trap of exploitation and abuse. Yet, breaking this common stereotype is Pakistani women’s rights activist Fauzia Saeed, whose book Taboo portrays the life of ‘nauch’ girls from a new perspective.

Based on Saeed’s research on sex workers in Pakistan, Taboo explores the social structure of red-light areas. Speaking about her book at a function organised by Padmagandha Publications in the city, Saeed said that popular cinema had done a great disservice to sex workers.
 
“Such women are depicted in melodramatic fashion where they are either immoral or tragic victims to be pitied. This is a kind of hypocrisy where society wants to be the patroniser, and make these women the victims,” said Saeed, who wanted to explore the fine line between performing arts and the flesh trade.

Saeed said that women in red-light areas were aware of this stereotype, but had no sense of bitterness. “Rather they feel a sense of pity towards women unlike them, who are married and live a socially accepted life, because they point out that cases of abuse are rampant in those settings, sometimes even by their own husbands and relatives,” said Saeed.

In fact, Saeed said that there were more similarities in the socialisation and behaviour of these women than is commonly perceived. “Here there is a clear difference between the brothel systems and these shahi mohallas, where the women feel a sense of empowerment and security, and do not feel the need to break out of it,” said Saeed.

Moving on to the larger issue of women’s rights in society, Saeed said that the basic standards for morality in society were skewed. “The most puzzling aspect of the issue of violence against women is that the victim gets the stigma while the perpetrator rarely comes in public view, and is shielded by society and even by the victim, who is forced to hide,” said Saeed.

indianexpress:  WITH more passengers keen to travel after sunset these days, officials of the Maharashtra State Road Transport Corporation’s (MSRTC) find themselves busier at night than in the day.

In fact, such has been the rush post-dusk, that the occupancy — or percentage of people travelling divided by the number of seats on a bus — of night buses has increased by three per cent, surpassing that of a corresponding rise in the day. Divisional Controller P P Nimsarkar attributes this trend to the passengers’ preference to save the day for work, besides avoiding the summer heat.
 
“We have asked our officers to take rounds between 8 pm and 2 am to clear the rush and help the passengers accordingly,” says Nimsarkar. Orders have been sent to officials of three Pune region depots — Shivajinagar, Swargate and Pimpri-Chinchwad.

Statistics show that the daytime occupancy of MSRTC buses on long routes — to Nagpur, Amravati, Aurangabad, Beed, Parbhani and Nanded — was 63 per cent in 2005-06, which went up by two per cent in 2006-07. But the nighttime occupancy rose from 57 per cent in 2005-06 to 60 per cent in the last fiscal, marking a three per cent surge. Moreover, the duration of day time occupancy is about 12 hours, while nighttime is just six hours.

MSRTC officials say there is less rush at the Shivajinagar and Swargate stands during the day. After 7 pm though, the rush increases as the stands are packed to the capacity. “Once we see the rush, we direct officers to make rounds at stands,” says Nimsarkar.

Officials from the Shivajinagar stand say that the rush gets magnified on the weekends. “Many passengers go to far-flung as Latur, Barshi, Gulbarga and Beed from here,” says Prakash Khandale, Shivajinagar’s senior depot manager. “The junior depot managers make rounds to keep a tab on passengers and inform them of the timings.”

indianexpress: THE Pune Municipal Corporation (PMC) is framing a policy on shifting of authorised religious structures which obstruct traffic or for road widening purposes.

Mayor Rajlaxmi Bhosale told Newsline on Thursday: “The PMC will moot a policy for authorised religious structures which have become a problem for traffic or road widening. If the land is owned by trusts, the PMC will consult the trustees and offer them alternative sites and bear the cost of construction.” She stressed that the issue involved sentiments of citizens.
 
The move follows the controversy over the demolition of a temple at Wakdewadi on Pune-Mumbai highway on Wednesday to facilitate road widening. The PMC has now allotted a site meant for a pumping station to the temple.

“The pumping station was not in use and hence the place was given for the temple,” said Leader of the House Anil Bhosale.

indianexpress: PUNE’S real estate boom is seeing no respite despite the talk of rise in interest rates slowing down the market.

Take for instance the City Corporation Limited-promoted Amanora Township project — a Rs 9,000-crore township across 400 acres and 14.3 million sq feet — which has already found takers. Even before formal bookings were declared, the mere announcement of the project was enough to set the cash register ringing. Aniruddha Deshpande, managing director of City Corporation Limited, said 50 apartments were sold in one week at an average rate of 3,600 per sq ft. These are apartments in the 1,200 sq ft to 3,900 sq ft range with price tags from Rs 50 lakh to Rs 1.5 crore. The first flat will not be ready even 20 months from today. Amanora is a 16,000-apartment project, yet selling doesn’t seem a problem. 
 
As the township will have its own infrastructure including water, power, other utility services, schools and hospitals, Amanora is working out agreements for this. The company is talking to Tata Power and Reliance Energy for 120 MW of power. For hospitals, the company is setting up a new 75:25 JV company: Amanora Healthcare in a JV with six UK-based doctors. Amanora Catering is taking off with 40 women joining the company with 25 per cent stake. The company has picked up 25 acres of land at Saswad to have is own landfills to dump its garbage, according to Deshpande.

The City Group plans two more integrated township projects — in Wagholi across 200 acres and near the Pune-Mumbai Expressway spread over 500 to 600 acres — Deshpande said.

techtree: Stealth Computer, a leading manufacturer of PCs and peripherals, has released a Core 2 Duo small form factor mini PC, which it says is so small that it can fit in the palm of a user’s hand.

Sporting a small rugged chassis design, the new Mini PC, ‘LPC-450′, promises up to five times faster performance than its predecessor.

The ‘LPC-450′ measures 5.7-inch x 9.9-inch x 1.65-inch, and is based on Intel’s Core 2 Duo processor. The company claims its about the size of a hard cover novel, yet surpassing the performance of most desktop and notebook PCs available today.

Ed Boutilier, President and Chief Executive Officer, Stealth Computer, said, “The Stealth ‘LPC-450′ is the most powerful little PC we have ever offered. We believe it offers the most processing power per square inch of any personal computer available today.”

The ‘LPC-450′ features a multitude of I/O connectivity options such as Gigabit LAN, Serial, 3-USB 2.0, FireWire, Video, Audio, PS/2 Mouse, and Keyboard ports.

It has a built-in 2.5-inch shock resistant hard drive, with up to 160GB of storage space for archiving data. There is also an optional Solid State Hard Drive or Flash Drive for applications requiring extra high shock.

Besides, the mini PC also packs a slim DVD/CD-RW optical drive with an optional DVD burner.

The Core 2 Duo-based ‘LPC-450′ is compatible with Microsoft Vista, XP, and Linux operating systems, and can be custom configured to meet the exact needs of OEMs/end users

techtree: Moser Baer India has reportedly announced the development of its Gen-Next optical media format, the high-speed 8x Blu-ray disc (BDR).

The company, along with the recently acquired OM&T, former R&D subsidiary of Philips, has developed what it claims is the world’s first 8X BDR.

It is learnt that Moser Baer was also the first company in the world to ship the blue laser based HD DVD-R product to global OEM customers.

According to Ratul Puri, Executive Director of Moser Bear, this is a major achievement, and gives a significant advantage in the fast growing next generation optical format market.

With the latest innovation, consumers can record a 2-hour transmission equivalent of high definition (HD) quality data, in less than 15 minutes. Typically, next generation formats have capacities ranging from 15 GB to 50 GB, and offer more than 5 to 10 times the data storage capacity of standard DVD media.

The new high speed Blu-ray disc format was presented at the recently-concluded 4th Blu-ray Disc Association (BDA) meeting in Fukuoka in Japan.

While the BDR market is generally witnessing developments in the 1x-4x recording speed discs, Moser Baer, with its innovative technology, has demonstrated new benchmarks in the 1x-8x speed disc category.

According to Moser Baer, the 8X BDR discs are compatible with Version 1.2 book specifications, and can be recorded on at low speed.

The company believes these next generation formats offer an ideal solution for reliable business backup, including medical and government imaging, photography, videography, as well as HD video recording.

itwire: Your mobile phone is already a music player, a camera, a games console and an Internet access device, so why not make it a lightning detector too? That’s the plan set out in a Nokia patent application.

The idea relies on the way lighting generates electromagnetic noise across a very wide range of frequencies (10Hz to 5GHz) that can be received at distances of 30km or more.

Having detected that noise in both the channel used by the phone and another band (eg, FM radio, RFID, Wi-Fi or Bluetooth), software in the phone could calculate how far away the strike had occurred and warn the user.

It would even be possible to use the different receivers in a tri-band phone to cover a sufficiently broad range of frequencies,

Such a capability could be useful for outdoor workers, golfers and others spending a lot of time outside in areas prone to thunderstorms.
 
An interesting aspect of the patent application is the idea of using a low-power receiver (eg RFID) to wake up the next stage of the circuit when it detects signals that could be lightning. This monitoring mode would consume more energy, but would give accurate lightning detection. Finally, when the device is confident that a strike has been detected, it switches to full operation allowing the most accurate measurements. Nokia engineers suggest that a simpler implementation could go straight from the initial monitoring mode to full measurement.

itwire: Your mobile phone is already a music player, a camera, a games console and an Internet access device, so why not make it a lightning detector too? That’s the plan set out in a Nokia patent application.

The idea relies on the way lighting generates electromagnetic noise across a very wide range of frequencies (10Hz to 5GHz) that can be received at distances of 30km or more.

Having detected that noise in both the channel used by the phone and another band (eg, FM radio, RFID, Wi-Fi or Bluetooth), software in the phone could calculate how far away the strike had occurred and warn the user.

It would even be possible to use the different receivers in a tri-band phone to cover a sufficiently broad range of frequencies,

Such a capability could be useful for outdoor workers, golfers and others spending a lot of time outside in areas prone to thunderstorms.
 
An interesting aspect of the patent application is the idea of using a low-power receiver (eg RFID) to wake up the next stage of the circuit when it detects signals that could be lightning. This monitoring mode would consume more energy, but would give accurate lightning detection. Finally, when the device is confident that a strike has been detected, it switches to full operation allowing the most accurate measurements. Nokia engineers suggest that a simpler implementation could go straight from the initial monitoring mode to full measurement