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indianexpress: Sanjay Dutt’s smoking habits inside Yerawada Central Prison has prompted Chandigarh-based Right to Information (RTI) activist Hemant Goswami to file an application on August 2 with the Central Public Information Officer, Office of the Inspector General of Prisons located at Central Building in Pune and Maharashtra government seeking information on reasons for allowing Dutt the concession.

The RTI query concerns use of life-threatening toxic chemicals generated from tobacco smoke that has the potential to cause death and it concerns the life of persons, said Goswami who wanted the information to be provided within 48 hours as per the provisions of Section 7(1) of the Act.

The RTI query filed through email, fax and speed post, has sought reasons for the decision by the prisons department for not adhering to the Cigarette and Other Tobacco Products Act 2003 and not enforcing the provision of the law in the prisons under its control.

It questions the department for not making the jail premises and compound free from tobacco smoke and prevent everyone including policemen, prison officials and prisoners from smoking as stipulated under the Act.

The query has also sought information on why prison officials at Arthur Jail, in Mumbai and other prisons where Sanjay Dutt has been imprisoned allowed him to smoke in violation of the Tobacco Act. It has also questioned the sale of cigarettes to prisoners and officials for consumption within jail premises and sought reasons from the prisons department for not initiating action against the department officials, who allowed smoking of cigarettes within jail premises.

indianexpress: Vanaz Engineers Limited launched its first auto LPG dispensing station in the city on Friday. While Pune has eight other LPG dispensing stations — all by government-owned companies — this is the first private station.

“Vanaz is setting up four more stations in Pune — at Fursungi, Nagar Road, Katraj and Bhurgaon — to be operational in 12 months,” said senior project management coordinator Rajesh Date, adding that the uneven geographical distribution of auto LPG dispensing stations across the city had prompted them to set their first station at Kothrud.

Vanaz has tied up with SHV Energy Pvt Ltd, a Dutch multinational for the continuous supply of LPG to its stations. The company has initiated talks with Shell Gas India and Indian Oil Petronas as well. Date said the installation work for its 32 stations — in Gujarat, Maharashtra, Andhra Pradesh, Rajasthan, Chattisgarh and Goa — was underway. These stations are expected to be operational by August 2008.

indianexpress: City-Based coin enthusiast Sanjay Gaikwad became the first person in Pune to own the new Rs 5 coin bearing Lokmanya Tilak’s image. “I got the coin on Wednesday,” said Gaikwad, a mechanical engineer who has a collection of rare coins and notes that he has been collecting for the past six years.

Early this year a letter was dispatched by the Finance Ministry to the Tilak family apprising them about the government’s decision to mint around 20 lakh coins. The despatch of the coins was held up due to a fault in the plate.

The Rs 5 coins minted to commemorate Lokmanya Balgangadhar Tilak’s 151st birth anniversary are in demand in Pune with the Tilak family requesting as many as three lakh coins from the RBI. Tilak’s great-great-grandson and trustee of Kesari Maratha Trust Rohit Tilak had told Newsline on Friday that the coins are in demand from private collectors, businessmen, shopkeepers and citizens.

“I had gone for a numismatic exhibition at Balgandharva a few years ago which evoked a poor response. That left a deep impact and I decided to collect rare coins,” said Gaikwad who has got over 15,000 notes of various denominations of unique numbers from all over the world.

On July 23 Prime Minister Manmohan Singh had unveiled the commemorative coins in New Delhi, an important event, considering Lokmanya Tilak’s contribution towards the country’s freedom movement. The idea to mint a coin bearing Lokmanya’s image was the Central government’s. The government had approached the family for the design and the one forwarded by the family was accepted without any change.

indianexpress: Women’s rights’ activists in the city have welcomed the Delhi court ruling allowing women to seek relief under the Protection of Women from Domestic Violence Act, 2005 for atrocities committed even before the statute came into force.

“This means pending cases on matrimonial disputes or maintenance under other Acts filed before the enforcement of the Domestic Violence Act on October 26, 2006 can ask for civil remedies under this Act . These are related to protection, residence or custody order, monetary relief or compensatory claims,” said ILS Law College reader Jaya Sagade.

Sagade said this retrospective effect was due to the interpretation as per Section 26 of the Act and that women would be able to move the court for relief in pending cases under the Act. Section 26 says,”Any relief available under sections 18-22 may also be sought in any legal proceedings before a civil court, family court or a criminal court affecting the aggrieved person and respondent whether such proceeding was initiated before or after the commencement of the Act.”

Advocate Asuntha Pardhe of Chetna Mahila Vikas Kendra, said this ruling should benefit aggrieved women. “We have filed cases under the Act only in instances where women suffered violence after the Act was enforced. With this judgment, those who have suffered before the Act came into force can claim compensation,” she said.

indianexpress: The Hadapsar police on Sunday arrested a school principal for unauthorisedly running an English medium school in Keshavnagar in Mundhwa.

Police said Pauline Lopez was found to be officiating as principal of Apostle English School, though the mandatory permission of the State government’s education department had not been sought by the school authorities. The police also booked school official Shreeram Khomane and director Prakash Kondre.

According to PSI GS Katke, investigating officer, the school authorities had duped the State government by starting a school without seeking mandatory permission. The school authorities admitted 15 students. Five students were admitted in Class I, one in Class II, four in Class III, three in Class IV and two in Class V.

They were charged fees ranging from Rs 200 to Rs 250. Despite knowing that they were violating government rules, the school authorities began functioning and prepared rubber stamps in the name of the principal. They also created bogus records, Katke added.

indianexpress: The Mechanical Engineering Department of city-based Cummins College of Engineering, exclusively for women, was formally inaugurated on Friday at the hands of Leela Poonawala, the first lady engineer in Asia. Poonawala said with improving technology, women in the 21st century stood a better chance in landing jobs in mechanical engineering stream. “The focus is now more on brains rather than brawn, which will aid women,” she said.

Prakash W Wani, dean of the engineering faculty at the University of Pune said the policy of 33 per cent reservation for women in engineering colleges had been instrumental in bringing more women into engineering streams

techtree: Gigabyte India has released it’s GA-P35C-DS3R motherboard that allows customers use existing DDR2 memory, while enjoying myriad new features and technologies. Then when ready, high-speed DDR3 memory can be simply slotted-in to enjoy a second upgrade from the same motherboard.

The P35C-DS3R supports Intel’s P35 chipset, with support for the latest multicore processors up to FSB 1333 MHz, and Intel’s upcoming 45nm platform.

The motherboard will also support Intel Turbo Memory, Windows Vista Premium, and high definition formats including Blu-ray and HD DVD.

According to Gigabyte, the P35C-DS3R sports an ultra durable design, including Low RDS (on) MOSFETs that run cooler than other MOSFETs, Ferrite Core Chokes that are more power efficient, and Japanese-manufactured SMD (Solid Mount Device) for extended system durability.

Which translates into cooler operation and greater system reliability during over clocking and PC gaming, according to Gigabyte.

tgdaily: Recommend article:Chelmsford (MA) – If you are planning to do a lot more with the Playstation 3 than playing games, then here is an opportunity to use the console as a high-performance computing platform.

Mercury Systems said that it has releases its “MultiCore Plus SDK for PS3 - Base Package” just ahead of Siggraph and will follow up with a more elaborate version on August 6. Provided you have not just casual development experience, Mercury promises that the kit offers the tools to dive into the processing power of the Cell processor in an “affordable” way and simplify the transition to multi-core programming for developers.

According to the company, the SDK will run (YellowDog) Linux on the PS3 without overhead, data movement and computation automatically, and fine-tune application performance. Included in the $399 per seat software is a trace analysis tool, which monitors dynamic multiprocessor and multi-core interactions and detects performance bottlenecks and visualizes deadlocks (both functions require an x86 PC as host.)

Pricing for the upcoming “MultiCore Plus SDK for PS3 - Scientific Algorithm Library Add-on Package” has not been announced. However, Mercury promises the software to include “over 600 functions for use in compute intensive applications” and “over 100 image and signal processing functions optimized specifically for the Cell architecture.”

The Playstation 3 has been at the center of third party applications virtually from the beginning of its release. The Folding@Home PS3 project, announced back in March of thsi year, has emerged as one of the most popular third-party and supercomputing uses for the platform.

cnet: The orange safety bracelet that connects a driver’s wrist to the ignition key on the Zero X motorcycle resulted from customer feedback, Zero Motorcycles founder Neal Saiki explained.

The Zero runs on lithium-ion batteries rather than gas. As a result, the engine doesn’t make any noise. Before the safety bracelet, riders would dismount, forget they left the engine running, and send the bike on a ghost ride after accidentally twisting the throttle. The bracelet flips the key to the off position.

I handled the throttle with extreme caution on my test ride. I almost ran over Saiki, but that was due to driver incompetence. More on that later.

The Scotts Valley, Calif.-based company hopes to ride the growing interest in green vehicles with a line of electric two-wheelers. The company’s first model, the Zero X for dirt bikes, can already be bought directly from the company for around $6,900. Google co-founder Larry Page bought one.

Video: Battery-run motorcycle speeds to 60 mph
CNET News.com’s Michael Kanellos stops by to take a look at one of Zero Motorcycles’ bikes and take it for a test drive.
In the next few months, Zero Motorcycles will try to come out with a street-legal commuter motorcycle that will be slightly larger and more powerful than the Zero X (along with having the lights and turn signals necessary for street riding). Later, it will follow with a scooter.

technewsworld: Two software companies offering Windows virtualization products are vying for Mac users’ dollars. Next week, VMware will release Fusion, which lets Mac users run operating systems simultaneously with Mac OS X without the need to reboot the computer. SWsoft, which makes the competing virtualization product Parallels, has developed an update now available in beta.

The HP ProLiant DL360 G5 server pinpoints problems earlier with Systems Insight Manager software. And Integrated Lights-Out Management lets you manage multiple operating systems remotely. Learn more.

Software maker VMware announced its Mac virtualization product, Fusion, will be available on Aug. 6, while competitor SWsoft just released a new Parallels beta update that offers similar features.

Until now, Fusion was in extensive beta testing — to the tune of 250,000 users, according to the company.

Fusion allows users to run operating systems other than Mac OS X  simultaneously with the Mac OS on their Intel-based Macs. The virtualization platform supports Linux and Solaris, in addition to Windows. It includes, according to VMware, support for USB 2.0  and Bluetooth  for connecting to peripherals and read and write capabilities for CDs and DVDs.