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indianexpress:  For the past two months, the embittered residents of Griha Rachna Sansha, a registered housing society located in Kharadi, Chandan Nagar have been trying to get various departments of the state government to shift a country liquor shop out of the housing society’s premises. Even as the residents blame the government’s licensing procedures, the authorities find nothing illegal or untoward in the presence of the liquor outlet there.

“The liquor shop that was started on April 11, immediately caught the fancy of the workers of a sand crushing site that operates across the road,” said V K Deomare, the owner of the building that houses the liquor shop.

The residents had sent an RTI application to the State Excise Department on May 7, seeking details to which the reply said the liquor shop licence was in the name of Anitabai Gulzar Shikotre. It also confirmed that Shikotre had been sanctioned the permission to shift her shop from Rasta Peth to Chandan Nagar. An excise department official ensured that there were no worship sites, educational institutions, bus-stand or railway station within 50 metres of the shop site, the letter said. Even the police had assured that the liquor shop would not inconvenience the residents in any way, it said.

Patil who is the owner of the shop rubbished the residents’ complaints. “The collector’s permission was procured before opening the shop. I also paid Rs 1,36,000 as shifting charges. The police did come and inquire about the shop but I have done everything legally,” he said. The shop is located along the frontal area of the building meant for commercial use, whereas the apartments are located behind, he said.

When asked, Collector Prabhakar Deshmukh said, “Umpteen people approach the collectorate with cases and appeals, I cannot keep track of individual cases.”

Ramchandra and Shakuntala Dhumal who run a medical shop in the building adjoining the liquor shop complained that the shop owner pushes the drunken people away from the shop around closing time. “These drunkards wander around and pass out in front of the building entrance. Only last week one of them had slept atop the shielded drain hindering the residents’ movements,” Dhumal said.

indianexpress: With a continuous concern for increasing concentrations of ozone in the atmosphere and the need to assess it, city-based Indian Institute of Tropical Meteorology (IITM) has developed an instrument that can assess the changes of ozone levels in the atmosphere.

The instrument put up in the premises of the institute, has cleared the trials and is all set to be used for data simulation. In fact, the paper on the development of the technique has also found place in the ‘Measurement of Science and Technology’, a UK journal. “This is the first of its kind technique to assess the ozone content in the atmosphere, especially the vertical distribution which will help assess the effects of ozone in climatology,’’ said PCS Devara, project director who has developed the equipment with his team. The data in conjunction with other atmospheric and oceanic data will provide a better input to the existing models for simulation, assessment and prediction of ozone amounts over different places in the country,he said.
 
Sponsored by the Department of Science and Technology (DST) and now under the Ministry of Earth Sciences, the Rs 40 lakh project was undertaken in 2003-04 and went through several tests and trials and it is only recently that the equipment stands ready to help in data collection.

The advanced laser-based instrument will help assess the ozone concentration at different altitudes in the atmosphere. “This being a very sensitive experimental technique, it has a high potential to monitor the variations in the atmospheric ozone. The technique falls in the category of remote sensing and one can obtain the height variations in the atmospheric ozone continuously during night time,’’ Devara said.

indianexpress: The mistakes in the standard X Marathi textbooks have been rectified and the modified textbook copies are now available in the market, said a Maharashtra State Board of Secondary and Higher Secondary Education statement released on Thursday after a high-level meeting conducted on June 20.

Errors brought to light in the textbooks for standard X Marathi and geography subjects had led to protests by political parties, since the printing errors had delayed the production of the textbooks, leading to their unavailability in the markets ahead of the new term.

The board has now constituted an inquiry committee to look into the matter and the inquiry is underway.

The board also conducted a review of all textbooks from standard IX to XII, taking into consideration the errors highlighted in both the geography and Marathi textbooks in the past. Based on this review, some spelling errors were found in the old edition of the standard IX Kumarbharati textbook, which was printed for the academic year 2006-07.

“These errors have now been corrected in the newly printed edition for the year 2007-08,” the board statement said. Apart from the rectification of spellings, some changes have been made in content as well. The chapter ‘Siddhartha Buddha Zala’ has been replaced with the chapter ‘Angulimaal Navachya Darodekhorachi Dhammadeeksha’.

For those students who are using the old printed edition of 2006, the board will be providing a supplement comprising the newly added chapter. “Efforts are now on to make these supplements available at the schools through the education officers concerned. Regarding the spelling errors in the old edition, a corrigendum will be sent to the schools,” the statement said.

indianexpress: Activists of Bhartiya Janata Yuva Morcha carried out a sting operation on the pay-and-park contractors at Pune Railway Station on Thursday. The sting operation was carried out after some citizens approached the morcha with complaints of overcharging happening at the parking.

The railway authorities have fined the contractor Rs 5,000 and issued him a warning. When contacted, the office of Senior Division Manager (SDM), Pune Railway confirmed that the contractor had been fined.
 
According to morcha president Sandeep Khardekar, the sting operation exposed the illegal business of the contractors who were found charging Rs 10 instead of the mandatory Rs 5 for four-wheelers and Rs 3 or 4 instead of Rs 2 for two-wheekers as charges for six hours.

“Citizens are being taken for a ride by these pay-and-park contractors.

This will not be tolerated and we appeal to citizens to contact us in case they find parking contractors overcharging them anywhere in the city,” he said.

indianexpress: Four persons were killed and three injured when the car they were travelling in rammed into a rock on the side of the road 75 km from city on Mumbai-Pune Expressway.

The accident occurred near Gaudgaon, Wadgaon Maval at 7.30 am on Thursday. The deceased were identified as Prashant Shivajirao Dhumale (25), a resident of Islampur, Sangli; Raju Avatadekar (38), a resident of Andheri, Mumbai; Sachin Prataprao Shinde (25), a resident of Jamgaon, Satara; and Kushal Singh Sundarde (25), a resident of Aurangabad.
 
The injured were Ravindra Pandhre, Arun Patil and Mahesh Barakpare. They were rushed to Lokmanya Hospital. Their condition was critical, rural police said.

PSI Balkrishna Sawant, the investigating officer, said: “There were seven persons in the Indigo car that was on its way to Pune.The driver lost control of the steering and rammed into a rock on the side of the road. The impact was such that the car turned turtle, killing four persons on the spot and injuring the other three. All those travelling were employees of Mumbai-based Unity Info Projects Limited, a realty firm located in Prabhadevi. Avatadekar was the manager of the firm and the other three deceased were engineers.”

indianexpress: Feelings are mixed. Almost like they were in October last year. For even then excitement levels at Sind Co-op Housing Society in Aundh had an undercurrent of anxiety, as the quiet and peaceful locality suddenly became the cynosure of all eyes when crew of A Mighty Heart descended on it, straight from Hollywood, to shoot the film based on the assassination of Wall Street Journal scribe Daniel Pearl.

And today, with the movie all set for a release in the US this Friday, it’s déjà vu time for the society residents and other locals associated with the shoot.
 
This time round though the excitement of seeing their lanes, homes and indeed their own selves—as in the case of many locals who were picked up for bit roles—on-screen is clouded by the disappointment of the film not being released in India at the moment. Nevertheless with promos and trailers of the film already on the Internet, there are ample scenes visible to everyone that showcase both Pune and Mumbai backdrops, right from the University of Pune to the grocery store in Aundh to the sylvan tree-lined lanes of the Sind Society and the Gateway of India and Taj Hotel framing the lead pair.

“It should be good to see our society on screen even though I see it everyday here,” says Mangat Malhotra, who had granted permission for the shoot as part of the management committee of Sind Society, only to regret it later. “We did not bargain for the kind of frenzy it created and were seriously worried about our security given the film’s controversial storyline and terrorist threats the crew apparently faced. I was relieved to see them go,” says Malhotra, who however has granted producers permission to use the society’s name in acknowledgments. “Other than that I have requested them not to showcase the locality too obviously and I hope they have kept it at that,” he says.

techtree: Nvidia has launched a new class of products based on its newest GPU, with which the company hopes to make its debut in fields such as the geosciences, molecular biology, and medical diagnostics.

Nvidia will offer its new family of GPU computing products under the brand name ‘Tesla’ that promises to transform mere workstations into ‘personal supercomputers’, the company said.

The ‘Tesla’ family will encompass products ranging from PCs to large scale server clusters.

According to Jen-Hsun Huang, president and chief executive officer of Nvidia, “Today’s science is no longer confined to the laboratory; scientists employ computer simulations before any single physical experiment is performed. This fundamental transition to computational methods is forging a new path for discoveries in science and engineering.”

“By dramatically reducing computation times, ‘Tesla’ represents the single most significant disruption the high-performance computing industry has seen since Cray 1’s introduction of vector processing.”

Out of the ‘Tesla’ family of products, the GPU computing processor is capable of scaling multiple ‘Tesla’ GPUs inside a single PC or workstation. The processor has 128 parallel processors, and delivers up to 518 gigaflops of parallel computation. It can be used in existing systems along with high-performance CPUs.

Another ‘Tesla’ product, the Deskside Supercomputer, is a scalable computing system that includes two ‘Tesla’ GPUs, and attaches to a PC or workstation through an industry-standard PCI Express connection.

cnet: A raft of subsidies and other incentives is making Ontario a hot spot for solar panel manufacturers and others in alternative energy.

This week, the province’s government announced a $610 million fund to develop a green technology industry and attract carmakers and solar panel makers. Municipalities will also be able to dip into a separate $206 million fund for retrofitting buildings.

Additionally, the province has unfurled programs that eliminate sales tax on Energy Star-rated lightbulbs and appliances for a year, offer homeowners up to about $4,689 to install energy-efficient appliances, and set a goal to see 100,000 homes go solar. A pilot program will also extend zero-interest loans to homeowners who install renewable energy systems. These build on other programs designed to increase solar power demand.

Overall, Ontario wants to reduce greenhouse gas levels to 6 percent below 1990 levels by 2014, 15 percent below those levels by 2020, and 80 percent below 1990 levels by 2050.

Unlike Manitoba, which has a surplus of hydroelectric power, Ontario faces an energy problem. The province needs about 30,000 megawatts of energy capacity, said a representative for the Ontario Power Authority. That figure will rise to 36,000 megawatts over the next 20 years. At the same time, about 8,000 megawatts of coal plants will be decommissioned.

Under the government’s plan, it will try to save 6,300 megawatts through conservation and find 15,000 through renewable energy. Most of the remainder will come from nuclear power. Coal, which accounts for 20 percent of Ontario’s power now, will be phased out.

pcworld: Google Inc. said it wants to do its part to control climate change and has decided to become carbon-neutral by the end of the year.

“This is an important step in our long-term pursuit of holistic environmental solutions,” said Urs Hoelzle, senior vice president of operations at Google, in his blog. “Our plan to neutralize Google’s carbon footprint includes three basic strategies: reduce energy consumption by maximizing efficiency; invest in and use renewable energy sources; and purchase carbon offsets for the emissions that we can’t reduce directly.”

Hoelzle said the company first calculated how much carbon it released into the atmosphere by taking into account emissions from purchased electricity, employee commuting, business travel, construction and server manufacturing. Then to offset those emissions, Google decided to invest in projects in other parts of the world that cut the amount of greenhouse gases released into the air.

“By investing in projects elsewhere in the world that cut the overall amount of greenhouse gases, we can help reduce climate impact now while we develop more sustainable strategies for the future,” he said.

Hoelzle said Google decides what projects to invest in by looking into how much a project will help the environment, if its results can be monitored and verified and whether Google’s investment will further the goal of the project.

“In other words, we want to make sure that our offset funding directly enables the project, and that the carbon savings of the project are real,” he said.

dailytech: BD Plus now available to help prevent Blu-ray piracy

Blu-ray Disc is getting another layer of content protection with the availability of BD Plus (BD+). The system, from BD+ Technologies LLC, is now complete and available to all Hollywood movie studios and content developers for implementation in Blu-ray Disc media.

Issued by BD+ Technologies are system specifications, key management rules, test specifications and various agreements. Also launched are a key issuing center, testing centers for players, and testing facilities for disc playability.

With the recent compromises to the Advanced Access Content System (AACS), BD Plus represents a new DRM scheme in hopes to thwart piracy. The BD+ system is believed to play a part in several Hollywood movie studios’ choice of which high-definition optical format to support. As the HD DVD specification does not account for BD+, movie studios such as Fox may have sided exclusively with Blu-ray Disc for its extra levels of protection.

The attacks on the AACS have also had a noticeable effect on the release of movies from Blu-ray-exclusive studios. Neither Fox (which holds the Star Wars movies) nor MGM (has the entire 007 catalog) have released any Blu-ray movies since April. The release of the new BD+ system, however, may soon change that.

BD+ differs from AACS in its complexity. Effectively an embedded virtual machine inside player hardware, BD+ allows content providers to include executables on Blu-ray Discs to perform specific, content protecting functions. For example, the BD+ virtual machine could run diagnostics on the host environment to see if the disc player has been modified, or to verify that the keys have not been changed.