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indianexpress: The Pune Municipal Corporation’s widely publicised ‘Unwiring Pune’ project, first such initiative in the country, has run into trouble with private parties unwilling to let out their premises for installing antennae, small electronic instruments and other equipment for establishing the network.

“The response for the pilot project has been tremendous as many people are using the service available free of cost now,” said S Kailasanathan, Managing Director of Chennai-based Microsense Private Limited that is implementing the project.

Microsense has now approached the PMC to resolve the issue. Kailasanathan said: “There is hardly anything we can do to convince individual residents and housing societies.”

PMC too is not sure on how to go about it. “We have already made available the civic infrastructure for installing antennae free of cost to the company. But we cannot compel private property owners to do it free of cost,” said PMC chief accountant Ambrish Galinde.

PMC has suggested that Microsense skip those buildings whose owners are unwilling to cooperate and concentrate on those whose owners are more forthcoming.

indianexpress: THE joint efforts of various organisations to ensure uninterrupted power supply in the city and make it free of load-shedding for the past one year were acknowledged on Thursday by the Yashwantrao Chavan Pratishthan.

At a function at Patrakar Bhavan, representatives of the organisations who were a part of the CII-initiative were felicitated for voluntarily agreeing to use their idle generators to draw captive power and mitigate load-shedding.

Present on the occasion were former union minister and environmentalist Mohan Dharia, CII chairman Feroze Padamjee, MSEDCL chief engineer Ramesh Singh Gautam, former CII chairman Pradeep Bhargava and Symbiosis Society founder S B Mujumdar.

Speaking at the event Bhargava said, “The initiative has given us certain lessons like not going to the administration with all our problems, to be a part of the solution, aim only at those problems that can be logically addressed instead of indulging in pseudo socialism and be prepared for the cost that comes with every change.”

Dharia addressed the issue of government’s role in dealing with the power crisis. “Keeping in mind the widening power deficit and rising concern over global warming, there is a need to harness the unconventional sources of power generation,” he said.

He also called for strong steps to eliminate power thefts. Touching upon the ‘virtual non-existence’ of power in the rural areas, Dharia proposed that the idea of ‘decentralised power grids’ could be explored.

indianexpress: E-ticketing is the next big thing from the Pune Municipal Transport. The PMT general manager Subrao Patil has a job on hand as the conductors are by and large opposed to the new gizmos, preferring the old ticket punching system.

“Using the e-ticketing machines is time consuming as we have to press several buttons for a single ticket. It becomes tiresome in case of huge passenger load,” said a conductor at Alandi bus stop.

PMT administration is highlighting easy punching of group tickets and spot tickets at starting points like Swargate and is hopeful for a positive outcome as e-ticketing comes with features that helps the passengers.

“If a passenger has forgotten some material in a bus, they can contact PMT as the ticket bears conductor’s number, date and time,” Patil said.

The administration also feels that the system will help them ascertain passenger trends for adjusting frequency of buses. Even calculation of collection will be easily done with a single command, the officials say.

But there are challenges galore with conductors pointing out many shortfalls in the e-ticketing system where the printing of tickets gets affected, thus providing a reason for conductors to not use it.

indianexpress:  THE Pune Municipal Transport (PMT) is getting ‘bus washing machines’ installed in various depots to give its muddied fleet well-deserved sheen.

The administration feels the routine of washing buses once every four days is proving insufficient with the onset of the monsoon season, and that the machines will be installed at the Pune railway station and Kothrud depots. The Swargate and Narvir Tanaji Wadi depots already have them, while Katraj will get one soon.

The PMT says its buses will now be washed with greater regularity. “It will take just five minutes to clean one bus once these machines become operational,” says PMT general manager Subrao Patil. “They have brushes to clean the body as well as window panes simultaneously.”

Each machine will cost the PMT Rs 5-6 lakh.

indianexpress: FOR students from minority communities seeking admission to technical and vocational educational programmes, the State government has announced an educational loan scheme, in which loans of up to Rs 3 lakh will be given at a low interest rate of 3 per cent. The scheme will provided for students in the age group of 16 to 32 years on a need-cum-merit basis.

Launched by the State Department of Employment’s Maulana Azad Minority Economic Development Corporation (MAMEDC), the scheme aims at providing opportunities for employment-oriented education to students from minority communities. This was conveyed in a letter issued by MAMEDC vocational director Gaffar Sheikh.

In a statement issued on Thursday, the district information office said that preference would be given to female and handicapped students for the educational loan scheme. The loan amount will cover the students’ admission charges, tuition fee, books and stationery, examination fees, residential and food expenditure, and so on. The complete loan amount will have to be paid back in monthly installments for three years, which will begin six months after the completion of the course or upon securing a job, whichever comes first.

indianexpress: IN a midnight crackdown, the Bundgarden police arrested 24 pub-hopping youth on Dhole Patil Road as part of a ‘nakabandi’ exercise in the area where some of the prominent pubs in the city are located. However, the police preferred to keep the pubs out of the exercise and the youth were booked for drunken driving.

The crackdown that began around midnight went on till the wee hours of Thursday. The police raised barricades around Ten Downing Street (TDS) and Lush before detaining the youth. Most of the youth were nabbed moments after they kickstarted their two-wheelers or started their cars and reached the barricades. Drivers of nine cars and 15 two-wheelers were caught.

Thereafter the youth were herded to Sassoon General Hospital for a medical check-up and booked under section 185 of the IPC, which deals with drunken driving. They were later lodged at the Bundgarden police station.

Reacting to complaints that the police targeted only men while letting women walk away free, Bundgarden police inspector Mahendra Pardeshi, who led the nakabandi operation, said they did not have women police accompanying them during the crackdown.

The youths were produced with hands tied on Thursday afternoon before Judicial Magistrate First Class (Motor Vehicle Court) S N Rukme, who ordered their release against a surety of Rs 1,000 each.

Advocate Abhijit Bidkar, who represented one of the pubs and 15 of the youth, said that the police could have utilised the provision of ‘gate zamanat’ and released the youth at the police station itself instead of holding them in custody the entire night. “They were unnecessarily kept in police custody,” he alleged.

bbc: Roboticists are using the lessons of a 1930s human physiologist to build the world’s fastest walking robot.
Runbot is a self-learning, dynamic robot, which has been built around the theories of Nikolai Bernstein.

“Getting a robot to walk like a human requires a dynamic machine,” said Professor Florentin Woergoetter.

Runbot is a small, biped robot which can move at speeds of more than three leg lengths per second, slightly slower than the fastest walking human.

Bernstein said that animal movement was not under the total control of the brain but rather, “local circuits” did most of the command and control work.

The brain was involved in the process of walking, he said, only when the understood parameters were altered, such as moving from one type of terrain to another, or dealing with uneven surfaces.

dailytech: Logitech today announced its latest MX Air mouse for desk and couch uses. The new rechargeable MX Air sports 2.4 GHz wireless technology with 30 feet of operating range. When placed on a desk, the MX Air uses laser tracking technology to precisely track movements. It functions no differently than other mice on solid surfaces.

When laid back on a couch, the MX Air uses free space motion sensing, allowing users to control systems with hand gestures. The hand motions are translated into various controls including cursor, volume and playback with simple waves and flips of the wrist. Logitech claims the MX Air can also distinguish between intentional and unintentional hand movements.

“The MX Air mouse offers a radically new way for people to control their PC entertainment,” said Rory Dooley, Logitech senior vice president and general manager of the Control Devices business unit. “It’s for any of the millions of people using the Internet to browse and watch videos on sites such as YouTube or Grouper. And it’s for people with a living-room computer or media PC who want to navigate their media content on their terms.”

msnbc: Chinese scientists have developed a “Wing-In-Ground” (WIG) aircraft which can fly long distances just a few feet above the sea surface, state media said on Wednesday.

The plane can fly as low as half a meter (1 ft 7 ins) off the surface, hitting speeds of up to 180 miles per hour and can carry up to 4 tons on takeoff.

“It’s as safe as ships, although five or six times faster,” associate professor Xu Zhengyu, vice-president of the research team at Tongji University in Shanghai, was quoted as saying.

“And it can carry much more weight than ordinary planes while costing half as much and using half as much fuel.”

Wing In Ground effect refers to the reduction in drag experienced by an aircraft as it approaches a height approximately twice a wingspan’s length off the ground or other level surface such as the sea.

Xu said the plane could be flown for military use and border control.

Tongji University planned to develop a 50-seat WIG by 2013, with 200 prototypes capable of carrying 200 to 400 tons scheduled for 2016 or 2017.