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indianexpress: WHEN environmentalists, civic officials and citizens groups met on Monday, the point of discussion had little to do with infrastructure. Instead, voices were raised for a people’s movement against global warming that could have serious implications right here in our city.

From small measures like checking air filters and tyre pressure of vehicles, using solar water heaters and compact fluorescent lamps (CFL), recycling waste, and ensuring that water is not wasted while brushing one’s teeth, speakers related these activities to global warming.
 
Organised by former mayor Vandana Chavan under the Association for Leadership, Education, Research and Training (ALERT), the programme talked about a comprehensive action plan detailing how climate change can be mitigated at the civic administration, organisational and individual level. Municipal commissioner Pravinsinh Pardeshi and Vanrai founder Mohan Dharia were the chief guests.

Presentations on climate change, its impact, and possible solutions followed. Bharati Vidyapeeth Institute for Environmental Education and Research (BVIEER) director Erach Bharucha spoke about the impact of climate change on Pune, which included floods and increased risk to diseases like dengue and malaria.

While environmentalist Sanskriti Menon spoke about the initiatives needed at the civic administration level, Ajay Ojha gave a presentation on how citizens could contribute to reducing carbon emissions through individual initiatives.

A monthly calendar, wherein a specific issue would be taken up every month for a year, with joint involvement of children, youth, senior citizens, civic administration, and NGOs was drawn up.

indianexpress:  To put a stop to power thefts, over 50 Maharashtra State Energy Distribution Company Limited officials accompanied by policemen carried out a drive in Dandekar Pul area of the city.

Teams of MSEDCL officials comprising engineers, technical staff and accounts department staff equipped with ladders, rubber boots and gloves fanned into Survey No 131 and 132 of the area and cut off illegal electricity connections, removed tampered meters and collected long pending arrears on the spot .

A total of 100 applications seeking new electricity connections were received by the MSEDCL during the drive. Photos by Pavan Khengre

indianexpress: AS telecom players extend their mobile footprints to the hinterland, they are staring at challenges they never faced while rapidly rolling out services in urban areas — grappling with unreliable and erratic power supply.

For uninterrupted power and maintaining network quality, companies are forced to use diesel gensets and inverters. But with inverter battery requiring power to recharge and availability and storage being issues with diesel, the industry is experimenting with alternative technologies like wind, solar and biofuels to expand its reach in remote areas.

Reliance Communications and Hutchison Essar are to be looking at solar-wind hybrid systems to power their remote networks while Idea Cellular, Ericsson and the GSM Association’s Development Fund have got together to set up four mobile base stations in the state powered by locally produced biofuels.

Says Tom Phillips, Chief Government and Regulatory Affairs Officer of the GSMA, the global trade association for mobile operators, “Exploring alternative power solutions, such as biofuels, is key to the development of cost-effective ways to extend mobile networks to the 20 per cent of the world’s population that doesn’t have coverage today.”

Reliance has approached city-based solar-wind panel manufacturer Machinocraft to deploy panels on 10,000 sites in the country. Hutch has also approached the company and is exploring options for these panels. Says Omkar Wagh, technical director, Machinocraft, “The inverters can be recharged using these panels. They cost around Rs 20 lakhs. But service providers are willing to pay for the uninterrupted power supply.” Machinocraft will deploy these panels on a trial basis at the towers.

However there are some who express sceptisim over the use of solar panels. Says B P Singh, CEO, Hutch - Maharashtra & Goa. “Solar panel is an option but it is not very effective as it is climate dependent & cannot provide the desired capacity. But it is effective for upcountry locations.”

indianexpress: THE Maharashtra State Energy Distribution Company (MSEDCL)’s anti-power theft drive at Dandekar Pul on Monday to reduce energy losses and increase revenues went off smoothly. As many as 114 illegal electricity connections were cut off, nearly 400 meters were checked and Rs 1.5 lakh was recovered as arrears.

MSEDCL deputy chief PRO Sudhir Jadhav said: “It was a multipurpose drive aimed at theft reduction and collecting arrears from defaulters as part of our campaign — Mahavitaran at your doorstep. The drive went off peacefully.”

indianexpress:  The Pune Municipal Corporation (PMC) has yet again tabled the proposal to set aside Rs 10 crore in its annual budget towards the MSRDC’s estimated toll income.

On August 8, 2005, the standing committee had objected to the MSRDC’s plan to establish 14 toll collection centres saying they were located within the city limits and would force citizens to shell out huge amounts towards toll.

The civic general body had on March 30, 1999, passed a resolution allowing the MSRDC to construct flyovers and railway over bridges in the city including the flyover on Shankarsheth Road; Hadapsar Gadital flyover on Solapur Road; Engineering college chowk flyover on Bombay-Pune highway; Aundh bridge Wellesly bridge etc. In 2005, the MSRDC argued that as per its agreement with the PMC, it should be allowed to collect the toll since it had already accomplished 25 per cent of the work.

An agreement was then made as per which the PMC was to set aside Rs 10 crore per year towards the MSRDC’s estimated toll income.

The civic body was expected to make this payment until the MSRDC recovers its expenses on the flyovers and bridges. However the standing committee had sent back the proposal to the committee.

Now, the additional municipal commissioner has yet again tabled the same proposal before the standing committee scheduled to meet on Thursday

indianexpress: THE results of Secondary School Certificate (SSC) examination held in March 2007 will be declared on June 26. In a statement issued on Monday, the Maharashtra State Board of Secondary and Higher Secondary Education said the results will be on its website, and given to the respective schools at the collection centres at 11 am.

There will be no merit list of state toppers. A booklet on students who will receive awards instituted by the board and donors will be submitted to the schools, along with marksheets, and the summary of marks

techtree: According to reports, Bharti Airtel, along with High Tech Computer (HTC) has introduced the “HTC Touch” touted as the world’s first mobile phone with ‘TouchFLO’ technology.

“HTC Touch” operates on ‘TouchFLO’, an intuitive touch-screen navigation technology, and will be now exclusively available to Airtel users.

Featuring a 2.8-inch LCD touch-screen with backlight and 240 x 320 resolution, the “HTC Touch” is a stylish, versatile handset with a wide variety of capabilities that enable mobile consumers to balance work and play.

The phone comes with an internal memory of 128 MB, and microSD expandable slot. It integrates a 2.0 megapixel CMOS color camera, a built-in microphone, and 3-in-1 speaker, as well as connectivity options including Bluetooth and WiFi.

According to HTC, the new phone is capable of recognising and responding to the sweep of a finger across the screen. It promises enough intelligence to be able to distinguish between finger and stylus input, and respond accordingly.

The “HTC Touch” will be available next week onwards exclusively for Airtel users in ten cities, including Delhi, Mumbai, Chennai, Bangalore, Kolkata, Pune, Chandigarh, Ahmedabad, Hyderabad, and Jaipur. It will come for a price of Rs 19,900.

cnn: A year from now, capturing a crisp, clear image of a candlelit birthday party could be a piece of cake — even with a camera phone.

Eastman Kodak Co. said Thursday it has developed a color-filter technology that at least doubles the sensitivity to light of the image sensor in every digital camera, enabling shutterbugs to take better pictures in poor light.

“Low light can mean trying to get a good image indoors of your kid blowing out the birthday candles. It can mean you want to take a photograph on a street corner in Paris at midnight,” said Chris McNiffe, general manager of the photography company’s image sensor business. “We’re talking about a 2-to-4-times improvement in (light) sensitivity.”

Analyst Chris Chute doesn’t doubt that the new filter system, intended to supplant an industry-standard filter pattern designed by Kodak scientist Bryce Bayer in 1976, represents a breakthrough in boosting photo quality — especially when light conditions are not ideal.

“It’s often the most simple concepts that can have the most profound impact,” said Chute of IDC, a market research firm near Boston. “This could be revolutionary in terms of just changing that very simple filter on top of the sensor and basically allowing companies to use it in all different kinds of cameras.”

Kodak expects to provide samples of its new technology to a variety of camera manufacturers in the first quarter of 2008. The technology is likely to be incorporated first in mass-market point-and-shoot cameras and camera-equipped mobile phones beginning sometime next year.

“Typically new features like this would be more likely to show up in high-end products and then trickle down,” said analyst Steve Hoffenberg of Lyra Research Inc. “But I think the biggest potential benefit of this may come in the camera phone environment. Camera phones are using smaller sensors to begin with and smaller sensors generally mean smaller pixels, which means lower sensitivity.”

msnbc: Whether you’re more used to flying in an airliner or in a private jet, you may feel you’re getting more than your share of flight delays.

It’s not just you. Delays are mounting as air traffic increases, particularly in the United States. A big part of the problem is that the U.S. air traffic control system is based on ground-based radar technology that is increasingly incapable of handling the growing volume of traffic — particularly in bad weather.

But new navigation, communication and display technologies being installed in the flight decks of today’s airliners and business aircraft are helping solve the problem. These technologies help pilots fly their aircraft more efficiently and safely and help controllers keep flights on time.

Radar signals degrade over distance, so determination of an aircraft’s position becomes less reliable the further away it is. To preserve safety, controllers must keep aircraft well apart.

The faster aircraft are flying, the farther apart they must be kept. In radar-controlled areas, aircraft cruising at the same high altitude must be separated by 5 miles. Over oceans, where radar coverage doesn’t exist, aircraft at the same altitude are kept 50 miles apart, said FAA spokesman Paul Takemoto.

Bad weather conditions exacerbate the problem and force controllers to increase separations.

By 2025, U.S. passenger numbers will more than double from today’s 740 million. “We need to transition from the ground-based radar system,” said Takemoto. “It’s decades old and it’s totally maxed out.”

msnbc: Cheap, skinny aluminum foil lamps may soon illuminate our lives instead of big, bulky light bulbs.

Researchers at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign made the low-cost lamps by treating aluminum foil bought at the grocery store with an acidic bath. The new light source, which is lighter, brighter, and more efficient than incandescent light, is described in the June issue of the Journal of Physics D: Applied Physics.

“We wanted to make this technology as inexpensive as we possibly could,” said physicist Gary Eden. “Expensive technology can be interesting, but the opportunity for using it is limited.”

Eden’s team is just one of many around the world working on more efficient, longer-living, mercury-free alternatives.

Thomas Edison’s light bulb legacy is more than a hundred years old, and has remained essentially unchanged since its incandescent inception. The slightly younger fluorescent tube contains low amounts of mercury, which accumulate into hazardous levels in landfills.

“There’s not a suitable alternative right now, but hopefully there will be soon,” said Eden.

The alternative light source developed by Eden and colleagues is built of foil bathed in acid so that its surface is full of tiny holes. The acid also converts the foil into sapphire, a type of aluminum oxide, which creates a robust structure that allows volts to travel across the thin layer of aluminum without breaking it down. The tens of thousands of cavities are filled with gas and wired together, and the whole device is sealed between two pieces of glass or something similar.

All assembled, the device is less than 1 millimeter thick, and most of that girth comes from the glass. The light can be flexible and hang on curved surfaces. Because aluminum is lightweight, the light is also.

The flexible lamps not only have potential to light up homes and businesses, they may help treat diseases too.