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indianexpress: The telegraph museum, slated to come up at the Central Telegraph Office (CTO) near General Post Office to exhibit rare pieces of India’s communication history, in all likelihood, has been shelved.

The space, all 2,000 sq ft of it, will now be converted into an office for A K Bhatia, a senior official with the vigilance and telecom cell of Department of Telecommunications, said telegraph office assistant and union leader Kazi N Ahmed. When contacted, Bhatia said, “So far, the office has not been allotted. The department is preparing to give it to me. I did not ask for it,” he said.

This means, the Morse Key, the first telegraphy equipment in India, the cyclostyled copy of the first telegram sent from Delhi to Ambala apprising British officers about the “uprising” in 1857 in Meerut, machines like Johnson Exchange, Stowger Exchange, Relay Machine, PCUT cables, the first Indian-made teleprinters by Hindustan Teleprinters Ltd and several other instruments will be shifted.

Many of these instruments, collected from telegraph offices from Mumbai, Kolkata, Delhi and Nagpur, may never go on display.

Other equipment like the earliest of teleprinters used by AP, Wheatstone Bridge (used for finding the exact location of fault in the wires), the first of the manual telephone machines, Relay Machine (used for boosting signals) are also among the lot kept in boxes or covered with dust as the proposal awaited clearance.
 

indianexpress: The BSNL directory edition for 2007, due for release by July, is still another two to three months away from getting published according to BSNL’s Principal General Manager D K Maheshwari. The directories would not be home delivered this year, he added.

A letter on April 23 received by BSNL subscribers from general manager (marketing) P K Hota asked customers to update their details. “BSNL Pune Telecom District is the only telecom service provider providing updated telephone directories every year. As a customer service-oriented initiative, we have scheduled the publication of the 2007 edition of the main telephone directory containing customers’ details. The compilation work of the database for this comprehensive edition is in the final phase. The directory edition is likely to be published by July 2007,” said the letter.

The letter added that in light of the ‘overwhelming response’ of customers ‘ in communicating the requirement of the directory for door delivery last year’, the scheme was going to be continued this year too. While Maheshwari denies any knowledge of the door delivery initiative, the letter did state: “We intend to continue similar exercise this year also and see that the directory reaches your door step.”

“We will inform the media when the directory is ready to be distributed and the subscribers will be asked to collect it themselves. There are definitely no plans of home delivery,” said Maheshwari.

While the letter pegs the last date for subscribers to give their details before May 25, Maheshwari said. Subscribers can still forward their details within a week.

indianexpress: Bhosari’s Mane Electricals have devised a remedy to long-drawn and expensive construction procedures. Using German technology they have developed a technique to construct readymade, lightweight thermocol-concrete sandwich houses, which can be erected in four hours. The concept was unveiled on July 21.

“While this technique is being used by the Germans for years, this is the first Indian experiment,” said company’s director Ramdas Mane. He added that this technology can be used to make houses and toilets in a very short time, not only during emergencies like earthquakes or floods but also for rural cleanliness and development activities.

The poor often have to garner materials for constructing a small house from various sources, which spirals the cost and also delays the construction, said Mane, adding that these lighweight houses can be erected at the cost of Rs 9,000.

“Thermocol which is a good conductor of sound and heat is sandwiched within the concrete slab. The thermocol neither lets the house get too cold during winter, nor too hot during summer and is rain-resistant,” said factory in-charge Abhijit Mane. “Every house has a warranty,” he added.

This concept can aid the Sant Ghadge Baba Gram Swachhata Abhiyan undertaken by the State Government. “We have already received orders to construct toilets in three villages,” said Mane. “Gram panchayats of Wadapuri in Indapur, Dahiwadi village near Pandharpur and Lodhawade village near Maswad have approached us with orders to construct around 100 toilets in their villages.” he added.

indianexpress: Stung by last year’s incident and the Supreme Court’s directions that those indulging in ragging should be treated as criminals, the BJ Medical College (BJMC) authorities have launched a slew of measures to prevent any such happening this year.

With the academic year set to begin in the first week of August, an entire hostel building has been evacuated to accommodate freshers while the Bund Garden police have been requested to deploy staff at the hostel round-the- clock.

Last year, 17-year-old Akhilesh Shukla, a first year MBBS student from Raipur, was hospitalised with a renal problem after he was forced by senior students to do sit-ups at the college hostel.

The Supreme Court has held that ragging, much like crimes against women like cruelty or dowry-related offences. should be treated as a criminal offence and put the onus on educational institutions to initiate legal action by filing a criminal case against the perpetrators of ragging if the victim or the parents failed to do so.

“We have evacuated the entire D-block which can accommodate 150 students of the total 200 admissions. The senior students have been shifted to the other three blocks. We have put down strict rules that the students will either have to stay in the hostel or at home. They will not be allowed to stay together in a separate flat,” said dean Arun Jamkar.

indianexpress:  Pune’s development plan (DP) for the coming decade will have a futuristic approach with provisions for promoting eco-housing and extra floor space index (FSI) corridors, said Pune Municipal Corporation (PMC) city engineer Prashant Waghmare. He was speaking at a seminar on ‘Climate Change: Mitigation and Adaptation in respect of Development Plan and Development Control Rules’, organised by the Association for Leadership, Education, Research and Training (ALERT) here.

Referring to the civic body’s move to allow skyscrapers with a maximum height of 100 metres in the city in a month’s time, Waghmare said: “The higher they go, more the space for implementing eco-housing concepts.”

He said that it was time to get over the phobia against granting more FSI. “Many countries had successfully implemented this concept of allowing high rises thus creating space for eco-housing and this will go in our DP,” Waghmare also said.

indianexpress:  On Monday, school representatives will meet at Garware Balbhavan where they will discuss representation of schools in the children’s task force —Balsena. District Collector Prabhakar Deshmukh has instructed Zilla Parishad’s education department to ensure that there are representatives from all schools.

The collector has also ordered that regional committees be set up in each area to tackle child rights’ issues.

The Balsena, an initiative of the child rights organisation Childline Pune, was started in September. It comprises children from all sections of society and aims at empowering them so that they stand up for their rights.

At a meeting in December 2006, the Childline city advisory board (CAB) had appreciated the Balsena activities. The CAB comprises the district collector, police commissioner, representatives of police and railway police, heads of the Pune Municipal Corporation and Zilla Parishad education departments, Juvenile Justice Board and Child Welfare Committee members and representatives from the Women and Child Development Ministry.

“The CAB recommended that Balsena chapters should be set up in every school, following which the collector issued instructions to that effect,” said Childline director Anuradha Sahasrabuddhe.

cnet: Houston-based Trulite is developing a portable hydrogen-powered generator, the KH4. Pour water into the unit, and it will crank out 150 watts of power, and 200 watts at its peak. While that won’t run your house, it’s enough to recharge power tools or a laptop or run a small appliance, according to company CEO John Goodshall.

A target audience for the device will be contractors, particularly ones who work on downtown skyscrapers. Power tools regularly sap their batteries. (That’s why Powergenix and other start-ups are trying to market new types of batteries for them.)

To get around the problem, contractors either carry spare batteries, which can be expensive, or recharge them with gas generators. The fumes and noise of the gas generators, however, are often incompatible with downtown building requirements. Thus, Trulite hopes that contractors will opt to carry its unit instead.

And for those people who bring a generator to a campsite to watch TV? A portable hydrogen generator will eliminate the noise.

The active ingredient in the fuel cell is sodium hydride. The material splits water molecules into hydrogen and oxygen. The hydrogen is then pushed through a membrane that extracts electrons. The sodium hydride also stores hydrogen safely. Others are also working on similar solid storage systems for hydrogen.
 

msnbc:  While young people embrace the Web with real or virtual friends and their mobile phone is never far away, relatively few like technology and those that do tend to be in Brazil, India and China, according to a survey.

Only a handful think of technology as a concept, and just 16 percent use terms like “social networking,” said two combined surveys covering 8- to 24-year-olds published on Tuesday by Microsoft and Viacom units MTV Networks and Nickelodeon

“Young people don’t see “tech” as a separate entity — it’s an organic part of their lives,” said Andrew Davidson, vice president of MTV’s VBS International Insight unit.

“Talking to them about the role of technology in their lifestyle would be like talking to kids in the 1980s about the role the park swing or the telephone played in their social lives — it’s invisible.”

The surveys involved 18,000 young people in 16 countries including the UK, U.S., China, Japan, Canada and Mexico.

Download and burn
Terms most frequently used by the young when talking about technology related to accessing content for free, notably “download and “burn.”

The surveyors found the average Chinese computer user has 37 online friends they have never met, Indian youth are most likely to see mobile phones as a status symbol, while one-in-three UK and U.S. teenagers say they cannot live without games consoles.

“The way each technology is adopted and adapted throughout the world depends as much on local cultural and social factors as on the technology itself,” said Davidson.

msnbc: Toyota Motor Corp. said Wednesday it has developed a plug-in hybrid vehicle for public road tests in Japan and plans tests for the U.S. and Europe.

Plug-in hybrids, whose batteries can be recharged via a standard wall outlet, are also being developed by other major automakers like U.S.-based General Motors Corp. and Ford Motor Co.

Like most hybrids now on sale, which are powered by electric motors and gasoline engines, the new model — called Toyota Plug-in HV — also gets recharged by converting energy from braking and when the wheels spin.

But the advantage of the plug-in variety is that it runs longer on electricity than regular hybrids. Electric cars use no gas and emit no pollution.

Toyota is the first manufacturer to receive government approval to conduct tests for a plug-in hybrid on Japanese public roads, it said, and will collect information about the tests from eight plug-in vehicles for the government about emissions and fuel efficiency.

Masatami Takimoto, the Toyota executive in charge of technology, declined to say when Toyota will bring a plug-in hybrid to market. Innovation in battery technology is needed, he said.

msnbc: U.S. researchers on Monday unveiled a computerized prosthetic ankle and foot that could change the lives of a growing number of amputees returning from battle in Iraq and Afghanistan.

The prosthesis has a built-in power source and multiple springs to mimic a real human ankle, giving amputees more propulsion when walking, while reducing the limping and back pain commonly associated with existing prosthetic devices.

Garth Stewart, a 24-year-old U.S. soldier who lost his left leg below the knee in a roadside explosion in Iraq in April 2003, demonstrated the device at the Veterans Affairs Medical Center in Providence, Rhode Island, and showed almost no sign of a limp

“Once you get used to it,” he said, “it feels like you have your leg back.”

Improvised explosive devices and other bombs have caused a surge in limb-loss injuries among U.S. troops in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Hugh Herr, a professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology who led the research, said the apparatus produces a sensation like that of a moving airport walkway.

“It’s a smoother ride, if you will,” said Herr, whose legs were amputated below the knee due to a mountain climbing accident when he was 17. The ankle-foot prosthetic has been tested on eight amputees so far, he added.