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indianexpress:  TRAINS are passé, the e-way has been tried and tested and the four flights in a day ferrying nearly 800 passengers grossly inadequate. For the Pune-Mumbai jet-setting crowd, here’s the latest travel option — chopper service.

With the Lohegaon airport runway going to be closed for re-carpeting in September and flight services likely to be affected, private helicopter charter service firms are eyeing the Pune-Mumbai sector. Among the players are Vectra Aviation, Ventura Aviation and United Helicharters Private Ltd (UHPL).
 
“We are waiting for the monsoon to get over to start a Mumbai-Pune chopper service,” said Goa-based Ventura Aviation’s chief operating officer Ajay Sareen. Ventura has already readied a four-seater that they plan to lease out to companies or individuals at the rate of Rs 60,000 per hour.

“Companies have approached us for the service. Frequency of the flights will depend upon demand,” added Sareen. The Pune-Mumbai flight will last 19 minutes.

The trend has been confirmed by Vectra Aviation that leases and sells choppers. “The potential is very high. We are working on moving into the Pune-Mumbai sector with a dedicated service,” said marketing manager Severine Rodosavljevic, adding that a construction company in Pune has already placed an order for the purchase of a chopper that will be delivered in early 2008.

“With Pune getting to be a global business and IT centre, time is of essence for most professionals and we plan to deploy some choppers to cater to this demand,” she said.

indianexpress: Air and sound pollution and increasing slums have made Pune the 13th most polluted city in the country. This was the grim picture painted by the summary of the Environment Status Report (ESR) for 2006-07 tabled in the Pune Municipal Corporation’s (PMC) general body meeting on Tuesday.

The more damaging part for the city, known for its high educational standards, was its child mortality rate for July and August that was higher than the national average. “Pune registered a child mortality rate of 59 and 65 per 1,000 babies born for July and August (respectively) last year, when the average child mortality rate in the country was 49 per 1,000 babies born,” the report states. The PMC however claims that all possible efforts were being made to provide necessary health services to the citizens.

These and several other problems highlighted in the summary — the full report will be tabled on August 22— though accepted by the PMC general body, could not be discussed because of the pandemonium over the Adam Baug dargah issue.

The number of vehicles registered in the city is increasing at a rate of 8-9 per cent every year and the vehicle population has crossed 14 crore. Vehicular traffic, at 16 per cent, was a major contributor to pollution in the city. The sound pollution stood at 30 per cent more than the permissible limit of 65 decibels.

The summary has put carbon dioxide emissions in the city at 79,50,358 ton every year, which the PMC, has said it will take care of by creating awareness on global warming.

indianexpress: SEVERAL elected representatives of the Pune Municipal Corporation (PMC) were at their crassest on Tuesday when they tried muscling their way to get hold of the mayoral mace in the General Body (GB).

The commotion was in reaction to a protest by the Bharatiya Janata Party and Shiv Sena against the civic administration’s apathy to take control of its own land — reserved for parking and a hanging garden near Sarasbaug — from Nagori Muslim Misagar Jamat Trust. NCP corporator Sunil Bankar even got injured in the drama that lasted for half an hour.

Several opposition corporators began ringing bells in the house, wearing saffron colour bands.

Mayor Rajlaxmi Bhosale’s effort to carry out the proceedings amidst the chaos was stalled, even as corporators of the Congress party and the Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) continued to remain tight lipped over the issue.

Then began the two-horse race towards the podium to get hold of the mayoral mace. With no signs of situation cooling down, the mayor adjourned the house after accepting the report on environmental status submitted by the administration.

Leader of opposition Vikas Mathkari said his party would not give up the protest until the civic administration takes control of the land reserved for parking and hanging garden, to which leader of house Anil Bhosale said the Sena should not behave in such a manner as it was part of the ruling alliance, while the BJP needed to realise that it would soon be part of the ruling alliance.

indianexpress: THE Maharashtra State Road Transport Corporation (MSRTC)’s project to have Global Positioning System (GPS) installed in its buses has been shelved for now.

In its bid to go hi-tech, the MSRTC had in 2004 initiated trials on five long routes including Nagpur-Pune, Nagpur-Chandrapur, Nagpur-Gadchiroli, Nagpur-Pandharpur and Nagpur-Gondia on a package designed by Centre for Development of Advance Computing (C-DAC). A senior C-DAC officer, on condition of anonymity, however said they did not receive any communication from the MSRTC once the trials were concluded.
 
While admitting the system would have been useful, MSRTC spokesperson Neera Asthana said the administration had not received satisfactory results from the trials. “The (GPS) exercise would have helped us track buses and to find out if they were running on time, for instance,” Asthana said. “But due to bad connectivity of the GPS network and telephone services, we were unable to trace our vehicles.”

She said the corporation had specifically chosen long distance routes so that the system got the maximum load, adding they had had no problems with estimating the budget for the hi-tech service. “But currently, we don’t plan to install GPS. We will think about the project in the future,” she said.

indianexpress:  WITH four deaths in July alone, malaria is ringing alarm bells among health officials. On Tuesday, B S Gaikwad , a resident of Chandannagar succumbed to plasmodium falciparum malaria, the most common cause of severe and life threatening malaria, at Sassoon General Hospital (SGH).

Till July, there have been eight deaths due to malaria, SGH officials said. “There were a total of 104 cases of malaria till July this year unlike 177 cases of malaria last year. The high number of plasmodium falciparum (PF) malaria cases as against cases of plasmodium vivax malaria is worrying. Of the eight deaths, two patients were from PCMC areas while two were from city areas. The remaining were from other areas of the district. Last year, there were 17 deaths due to malaria,” said SGH medical superintendent Dr P S Pawar.
 
District Malaria Officer Dr S Patil said migrant labourers from outside the state were more affected. “In July, at least 133 labourers had malaria at Rahatni in Pimpri-Chinchwad. Of these, 67 patients had PF malaria. There have been outbreaks in seven villages. Till June, Pune district has had 396 cases of malaria of which 68 had plasmodium falciparum.”

PF malaria, which can be fatal, can cause dramatic complications and treatment may be rendered difficult by resistance to antimalarial drugs. “We have conducted surveillance activities and sprayed over 60 villages. Patients often delay treatment as they initially seek advice from private practitioners and then go to government hospitals,” said Patil.

indianexpress: THE Maharashtra State Road Transport Corporation (MSRTC) will start operations between Pune railway station to Mantralaya from Wednesday. The corporation will also kick-start a service from Sahar airport at Santacruz to Pune railway station starting from the same day.

MSRTC spokesperson Neera Asthana said the bus would leave from the railway station at 6 am every day, while the return journey from Mantralaya will begin at 6 pm. “Several commuters from Pune shuttle down to work at Mantralaya,” she said.

The corporation will cash in on the opportunity by running a ‘Mahabus’ during the launch. Its frequency will be increased if the demand goes up. The charges include Rs 195 for adults and Rs 105 for children. “The Mantralaya bus will take the Wadala route via Chembur and Priyadarshini to avoid traffic snarl-ups. The bus will reach Mantralaya at 9:30 am,” said Pune’s divisional controller P P Nimsarkar.

The MSRTC will also start Volvo bus operations to ferry passengers from Sahar Airport at Santacruz to Pune. “We have received requests to start such operations. Many passengers wanting to reach Pune are stranded at airport. The service will start at 5 am from Sahar,” Asthana said.

The MSRTC estimates around 1,200 passengers are stranded at Sahar Airport to reach Pune everyday. Currently, they will run just one bus from Sahar till they receive more demands.

techtree: HP India has launched its newest business notebooks (NBs) that come in four categories; namely standard (s), professional (p), business (b), and workstation (w).

HP believes that by using simple alphabets, customers will be able to better choose the right NB.

And to make the process of notebook selection even more specific, HP is basing its model numbers on three groupings; Ultra-Light (2000), Balanced Mobility (6000), and High Performance (8000).

The professional (p) range comprises three models; HP Compaq 2710p, HP Compaq 2510p, and HP Compaq 6910p.

All of 1.65kg weight, the sleek 2710p has a unique feature. With the twist of the screen, it turns from a NB PC into a pen-based tablet. HP’s NightLight on the keyboard helps to improve visibility in low light.

At 1.3kg, the 2510p is supposedly HP’s smallest and lightest business NB, and comes with an integrated optical drive, and a touchpad with both — a scroll zone and a point stick for greater flexibility.

The last of the professional range, the 6910p, weighs 2.0kg, has a battery life of up to five hours and 45 minutes, and is designed for on-the-move productivity.

In the business (b) range, the notebooks include the HP Compaq 2200 series, the HP Compaq 6500 series, and the HP Compaq 6700 series.

The 2200 series NBs boast a 12.1-inch diagonal wide-screen display, and come with a built in DVD writer; the 6500 series NBs feature a 14.1-inch diagonal wide-screen display that according to HP offers much more viewing content than standard 15-inch diagonal XGA displays.

techtree: Zebronics recently launched it’s first mainstream motherboard, the Nvidia MCP61 based AMD socket AM2 motherboard.

The Nvidia MCP61S IGP combines North- and South- bridge on a single chip, based on C51 and MCP51, with some simplification.

Pradeep Doshi, director of TopNotch Infotronix, said the launch of this motherboard marks Zebronics’ entry into the mainstream motherboard market. Doshi said they are targeting the value-for-money segment and that soon, more boards would follow with different configuration and performance levels.

Nishant Goyal, manager - sales, South East Asia, Nvidia, commended the move by Zebronics, saying Nvidia motherboard GPUs have best-in-class 3D performance and great graphics compatibility to play top games the way they are meant to be played.

The core of the graphics part of MCP61S (MCP61 - 405) is Nvidia GeForce 6. It supports DirectX 9, Shader Model 3.0, Pure Video, and PCI-E, and is fully Windows Vista Premium compliant. The South bridge acts similar to nForce 410, with SATAII supporting RAID 0, 1, and JBOD, built-in 10/100 Ethernet, 8 USB 2 interface, and 7.1 HD audio.

bbc: For two weeks during the summer of 2008, an army of autonomous robots will march across the Wiltshire countryside.
The machines will compete in the UK Ministry of Defence Grand Challenge, a competition to find new technology to support ground troops in urban areas.

Fourteen teams have now been picked as finalists to go head to head in a range of trials next year.

Winning designs include a swarm of miniature helicopters and a host of sensor-laden unmanned aerial vehicles.

“Technology plays a huge role in our forces, It often makes the difference between success and failure - and sometimes life and death,” said Defence Procurement Minister Lord Drayson on announcing the winners.

“The challenge is to produce a semi-autonomous system that can detect, identify, monitor and report a range of physical threats in an urban environment.”

The winner of the competition will win the R J Mitchell Trophy, named after the “father of the Spitfire” WWII fighter plane and also funding from the Ministry of Defence (MoD).

bbc: The distinctive swimming technique of a bony fish is being used to develop agile, propellerless submarines.
US researchers have created prototype mechanical fins that mimic the movements of the bluegill sunfish.

The robo-fins could recreate the fish’s powerful forward thrust and its manoeuvrability, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology team said.

Further work is being carried out to see how other sunfish movements could help to improve underwater vehicles.

The hope is that in the future propellerless, fish-like submarines could carry out a range of tasks, such as mapping oceans, surveying shipwrecks or sweeping for mines, with more agility and speed than current autonomous underwater vehicles (AUVs) controlled by propellers.

James Tangorra, a researcher at MIT’s Bio-instrumentation Laboratory and a professor of mechanical engineering at Drexel University, said: “If we could produce AUVs that can hover and turn and store energy and do all the things a fish does, they’ll be much better than the remotely operated vehicles we have now.”