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indianexpress: EVEN as the state transport has turned to Volvos and Chinese King Long buses to replenish the luxury end of its fleet, it may not have to look elsewhere to shore up its `bread-and-butter` regular buses. The Maharashtra State Road Transport Corporation (MSRTC) Central Workshop in Dapodi, considered for long a has-been centre as far as bus body building goes, has suddenly put up its hand and is ready to be counted.

In May, the workshop has rolled out 90 buses, up from around 50 that it normally does. As against around 770 buses that the Dapodi centre produced in 2006-07, the target for this financial year is 900.
 
The strategy behind the turnaround is an incentive system introduced for the employees in April, wherein their salaries have been linked to output, with the benchmark for the finished product being the ‘painted out’ bus. “On an average the employee take-home has gone up by Rs 3,000 in May. Against this, the unit has been able to put out 40 more buses,” said Works manager, S P Jadhav.

The workshop, that assembled vehicles during the Indo-China war and once considered among the best manufacturing workshops in Asia, presently makes three buses a day. This is over and above reconditioning some five bus engines and retreading around 80 tyres a day.

Unlike in the assembly line or the paint shop in any modern automobile manufacturing plant, many such being there in Pune itself, the dapodi workshop is not automated. It is entirely a manual operation supported by a 900-strong workforce.

indianexpress:  Watch out for complications arising from chikungunya, warn doctors who are treating patients with high fever with joint pains.

“The infection is transmitted by the bite of the aedes aegypti mosquito. In this season it is essential to rule out other diseases like malaria, dengue and typhoid before starting treatment for chikungunya,” said Dr Pallavi Bhargava, infectious diseases specialist at Deenanath Mangeshkar hospital
 
The symptoms of chikungunya incude high fever coupled with joint pains and rashes. “We don’t need to admit the patient in the hospital unless the fever leads to other complications,” Bhargava said.

There could also be neurological complications — infection of the brain (meningitis) — or even urinary retention. According to Dr Rajesh Gadia, chief intensivist at KEM hospital, clinical features of the disease include high fever that settles down after taking paracetamol.

However it is the joint pains that are troublesome and can last up to a year. Non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs are given to relieve joint pain, Gadia said.

“We’ve also seen complications like patients losing consciousness. This needs to be treated in a hospital,” he said.

indianexpress: LONAVLA-based Kaivalyadhama Yoga Institute which is on a mission to ensure no one else lays claim to ancient Sanskrit scriptures devoted to yoga has successfully completed an English transliteration.

Selected by the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare, Department of AYUSH, for its ambitious project titled Traditional Knowledge Digitalised Library (TDKL), the institute is a part of the government’s move to prevent blatant commercial misuse of traditional Indian knowledge in other countries.
 
“We have forwarded the work. Now the concluding technicalities are to be completed by the government. Since our institute is among the oldest and the only one to possess a full-fledged speciality department for ‘philosophico literary research’ in yoga, I suppose we were chosen for the task,” said Kaivalyadhama administrator Subodh Tiwari.

He said several attempts have been made by the West to stake claim to traditional Indian wisdom, with a couple of modifications — which at times, even negate and contradict the founding principles. “Take for instance, the patent granted to a sequence of yoga called hot yoga. The very act of having people perform asanas at 104 degree Fahrenheit goes against the basic premise of the asana, as defined by the Patanjali Yogasutra — the authority on yoga. To be an asana, an action has to contribute to a person’s stability and well-being, whereas hot yoga is a trying act,” he says.

Quoting the example of Yogacharya BKS Iyengar who has been using props to simplify yoga for his students, Tiwari says, “At no point has he ever denied its origin or claimed the knowledge as his own. But in the West, some yoga teachers having wine tasting in yoga classes, yoga for dogs and so on. This is absurd.”

indianexpress: In a joint effort by Traffic branch, Regional Transport Office and Pune Municipal Corporation (PMC), action was taken against six-seaters and luxury buses for illegal practices on Thursday.

A press communiqué issued by the Traffic police said the six-seaters were plying excess passengers in the rear side. According to the permit provisions, the six-seaters are allowed to carry four passengers and their rear end should be covered by iron grills.
 
Officials obstructed the six-seaters in Hadapsar and Sinhagad Road and around 52 of them were fitted with iron grills and six thrown out of city limits.

PMC’s anti-encroachment officials also took action against 46 luxury buses standing at the Maharashtra State Road Transport Corporation (MSRTC) bus stops at Swargate, Pune Railway Station and Shivajinagar and collected a fine of Rs 2.30 lakh, the release said.

The six-seaters and luxury buses are said to be eating into the revenue of PMT and MSRTC.

PMT faces a loss of around Rs 2 lakh daily due to six-seaters eating up revenue on Pune-Hadapsar, Pune-Kondhwa and PMC-Kothrud routes.

indianexpress:  A DAY-LONG workshop on ‘Leveraging innovation for SME competitiveness’ has been organised in the city on June 21.

Sponsored by the department of Scientific and Industrial Research, Government of India and Bank of Baroda, the seminar will focus on aspects such as knowledge networking for innovation, government support measures etc.
 
The workshop will benefit Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs), industry executives, research scholars and academicians.

For details, contact Pramod Patil, MITCON, Agriculture College Campus, Shivajinagar or call 9823401030.

indianexpress: MUNICIPAL Commissioner Pravinsinh Pardeshi has proposed a transparent and speedy citizens’ grievance system wherein all that citizens need to do is SMS the ward-level officers, who are expected to take immediate action.

The cellphone numbers of junior engineers at 14 ward offices would be made public soon, said a senior civic officer. “In case the junior engineers fail to redress the grievance, the citizens will be advised to approach the higher-ups — the ward officers and department heads,” the officer added.
 
Pardeshi has also mooted a plan wherein citizens’ complaints can be registered on the PMC website.

techtree: Philips Electronics has launched its Ambisound HTS8100 home theatre system that promises a complete surround sound experience in a sophisticated one-piece design.

The HTS8100 sports a futuristic design, and packs all audio components into a single central sound bar, effectively doing away with clutter and obstruction of speaker wires.

According to Philips Electronics, HTS8100 uses a host of technologies including array processing, precise driver positioning, and psycho-acoustic innovation to achieve that complete surround sound experience.

The system features 5 amplifiers integrated into a single horizontal sound bar. It features a 3-band equalizer and DoubleBASS deep bass for superior audio quality and clarity.

The speakers have soft dome tweeters for additional audio clarity, and are designed for full midrange performance, according to the company.

The Smart Surround feature enables correct surround sound settings while playing music or movies. And, the sound bar is capable of a superior viewing experience with Faroudja DCDi and HDMI 1080p picture quality.

Speaking on the occasion, Gunjan Srivastava, Director of Entertainment Solutions, Consumer Electronics Division, Philips Electronics India, said, “Philips is always committed to creating customer centric innovations. Our user need analysis shows that customers look for a real cinematic experience from their home theatre, without the clutter of having multiple speakers in their living room. Incorporating these inputs, Ambisound HTS8100 features a single central sound bar and sub woofer, leaving no cluttered space or obstruction of speaker wires.

techtree: Possibly inspired by Nicholas Negroponte and his $100 laptop, Intel is reportedly now planning to bring its range of low-cost ‘classmate PCs’ to India.

It was sometime around the middle of 2006 that Intel brought the first 60 classmate PCs to India for a pilot test. By the end of the current year however, Intel plans to ship about 100 more such classmate PCs.

The first pilot test was conducted in December 2006 at the Delhi Public School, Vasundhara. The company will start the second round of pilots most likely at Navodaya Vidyalaya, also in Delhi.

A small laptop based on Intel’s 900MHz Celeron-M processor, the classmate PC features a flash disk memory instead of a hard disk. As the name suggests, it is designed particularly for school going children.

Significantly, sporting a price tag as low as between Rs 9,000 and Rs 11,000, Intel’s classmate PC is definitely seen as a direct and dangerous competitor to the AMD-powered One Laptop Per Child (OLPC) project.

And, the original price of a classmate PC is learnt to be around $285 but as the company expects to manufacture in volume, prices are also expected to fall to about $200. Meanwhile, OLPC’s laptop is currently estimated to cost around $175.

According to sources at Intel, bringing classmate PCs to India is part of the company’s World Ahead Program where Intel works in conjunction with federal and local governments to be able to reach the next 1-billion PC and Internet users

techtree: What could be called the world’s largest commercially available LCD TV has been unveiled by Samsung Electronics in Korea.

The new 70-inch full high-definition LCD TV deploys Samsung’s unique local dimming technology enabling the LED backlight to be turned-off in dark image areas, thus delivering a contrast ratio of up to 500,000:1, at the same time reducing power consumption by a good fifty percent, Samsung claims.

According to Samsung, the new TV boasts the very best of it’s image enhancing technologies where the conventional bar-shaped cold cathode fluorescent lamp (CCFL) backlight is replaced by a LED backlight, constituted by hundreds of light sources.

With this, the lighted parts of the on-screen image are brightened to the maximum, while all light is shut out from darkened areas resulting in the ultimate contrast ratio, the company says.

And by default, reduction in brightness of dark areas succeeds in cutting down power consumption by half.

Meanwhile, Samsung’s LED scanning eliminates flicker and ghosting problems that are typically associated with large-screen LCD TVs.

JongWoo Park, President of Digital Media Business, Samsung Electronics, said, “I am pleased to introduce the 70-inch full high-definition LCD TV with innovative local dimming technology. Samsung will continue to strengthen its LCD TV leadership, enhancing its full HD and large screen LCD TV line up.”

Sporting a high-gloss Piano Black Bezel and Titanium Chrome trim, and featuring dual hidden speakers and a rear woofer, the new LCD TV is intended to be put on the market worldwide sometime in the second half of this year.

techtree: In a bid to empower the common man with affordable computing technology, Acer India has announced the launch of its Aspire 3680 series. The company says these are the lowest priced notebooks yet from a major MNC vendor.

Acer’s Aspire 3680 series notebooks use a Celeron M 430 (1.73 GHz) processor or above for enhanced power and performance. They feature 256mb of system memory, a 14.1-inch wide-screen, and combo drive, among others.

With Linux operating system, the notebooks are immediately available for Rs 19,999 (exclusive of taxes and carry case).

Acer has a special limited period offer of Rs 2,500 as cash back on purchases made till June 25th, 2007, or till stocks last, whichever happens earlier.

Speaking on the occasion, S Rajendran, General Manager of Sales & Marketing, Acer India, said, “The Aspire 3680 series is part of Acer’s initiative to make mobile computing more affordable. We have been following the market closely, and have evaluated the requirements of the Indian consumer before tailoring such a product.”