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indianexpress: Pune’s traffic is among the worst in the country—too heavy, too unruly and increasing by the minute. The Pune Municipal Corporation (PMC) and successive municipal commissioners have tried ways to bring some method in the traffic madness. While the metro rail and the skybus ideas never really took off, road widening and the Bus Rapid Transit System have a limited scope.

The latest idea bounced by municipal commissioner Pravinsinh Pardeshi is the imposition of a vehicle tax to discourage people from using vehicles. There are over 20 lakh vehicles in the city which could rake in at least Rs 50-70 crore annually for the PMC.

The idea could work well if there is a suitable, effective and quick public transport system in place. But the Pune Municipal Transport (PMT), with its 900-odd fleet, of which 50 per cent are over 10 years old, and at least 150 buses that cannot run on the roads on any given day, can hardly qualify. Commuters, who find the PMT’s infrequent service, poor maintenance and citizen-unfriendly image a big put-off, prefer private transport and personal vehicles.

Which is why the likely imposition of vehicle tax has found critics.

“There is a lobby of politicians and businessmen in Pune which for decades has ensured that there is no good public transport and people buy two and four-wheelers. These vested interests have benefited from the bad public transport since the lobby benefits,” said Maj Gen (Retd) SCN Jatar, president of Nagrik Chetana Manch, an NGO working in traffic and transportation.

He felt the PMC should finalise parking, traffic and transportation policies and strengthen public transport before imposing a vehicle tax. “No one is opposed to reducing the use of personal vehicles. But Pune’s traffic problem cannot be compared with foreign cities. What could be suitable in London will not work here,”said Jatar.

indianexpress: Only 15 per cent of the 60 lakh metric tonne of lime grown in the state fetches a good price. The rest is either dumped or sold at throwaway prices by farmers during winter, according to Maharashtra State Lime Growers’ Research & Training Association president Appasaheb Bhujbal.

He was speaking at the inaugural function of the association held at the College of Agriculture campus on Saturday. A workshop on ‘Kagzi lime quality production and processing technology’ was also held.
 
To salvage the 30 per cent of the annual lime produce which comes to the market during winter, the association will encourage farmers to use growth regulators from August to September. “This will delay the flowering process long enough for the plants to bear fruit during summer, when they fetch good prices,” said Bhujbal. The association would strengthen the prospects for processing of lime and guide farmers regarding subsidies from the National Horticulture Board, Bhujbal added.

“As an association, we want to make farmers aware of conservation of raw material qualitatively as well as quantitatively. The association can help them branch out into production of pickles, lemon tea, lime powder, juice, a polymer called pectin, citric acid and ascorbic acid. Lime can also be used in detergents and other by-products,” said Vasant Pawar, head of department for animal product technology at the College of Food Technology. He was present at the workshop as an expert.

Pawar said that the bumper lime crop could be used for processing by farmers instead of selling it at a throwaway price. For the processing industry, the quality of lime has to be excellent and the farmers should ensure this, he stressed.

indianexpress: The Pune Cantonment Board’s (PCB) website is anything but helpful. The presentation is poor, half the links don’t open, information is woefully inadequate, the contents are poor and full of spelling mistakes. What should have been a snazzy portal, showcasing the PCB’s achievements and the board’s futuristic plans has descended into a poor show. The PCB spent Rs 12,000 to set up the website.

To get over the embarrassment, the PCB has decided to scrap the website and planned a new one at the cost of Rs 1 lakh which will go online in a month’s time. The orders to dump the present website were issued by Cantonment Executive Officer S K Sardana at an internal meeting last week.

Sardana was scathing in his remarks about the website which he said was full of “glaring spelling mistakes.” He pulled up staff members for not updating the website and asked them to redesign a new one tailormade to suit the needs of cantonment residents which would be easily accessible.

The new website is expected to offer detailed information on the PCB ‘s history, profiling schools run by the board, staff strength of all departments ranging from hospital, dispensaries, fire brigade, motorwork shop, electric and PWD departments. The website will also showcase the board’s organisation chart, development projects and the amount allocated for projects and their current status, taxation policy, vehicle entry tax including pdf files on the new Cantonment Act, 2006.

indianexpress: Pune rural police rounded up over 300 people on Sunday on charges of causing public nuisance. According to the rural police, they were picked up mostly from Lonavla, Khadakvasla, Mulshi and Paud areas of the district.

The action follows specific instructions issued by Superintendent of Police Vishwas Nangre Patil and Additional Superintendent of Police Ashok Morale about public nuisance caused by the youth. Of the 300, 210 alone were picked from Lonavla while 74 were from Sinhagad Road. The process of arresting them continued till late into the night.
 
Nangre Patil said, “Over 150 policemen fanned out in various parts of the district to arrest the youth who were found to be indulging in eve-teasing and causing public nuisance on the roads. The youth were drunk and pestering the public and hence we decided to take strict action against them. Public nuisance will not be tolerated at any cost,” he said.

Recently, in a lecture on curbing drug abuse at a one-day discussion at Modern Law College, Nangre Patil had made it clear that such acts will not be tolerated when he said that youths in the age group of 17-21 were found to be misbehaving in public. “Rapid globalisation has ushered in a series of changes which has paved the way for youth to experiment with new things,” he said.

Referring to the rave party bust, Patil stressed the need for integrated efforts by parents, teachers and the society to create awareness. The rural police have formed special teams to keep a vigil on those causing public nuisance in the district.

indianexpress:  The use of English instead of Marathi in all official correspondence of the Maharashtra Pollution Control Board (MPCB) and the Ministry of Environment has attracted flak from environmental researcher and consultant Chandrashekhar Vibhute, who feels that this has disadvantaged small-time entrepreneurs who cannot understand technical terms used in the documents.

“Even after 60 years of Independence, these government agencies continue to carry out official communication in the language of the British. This is a shame, considering that the Environment Ministries in other states like Karnataka, Gujarat, Andhra Pradesh have been using regional languages for official documents,” said Vibhute who has been a consultant for Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) reports in industries.

Vibhute said that this has a negative impact especially on smaller enterprises, since such entrepreneurs are unable to understand technical jargon in English. Because of this they remain unaware of the procedure expected. “This ignorance is then exploited by government officials and these small enterprises suffer financial losses,” Vibhute said.

He has now sent a letter to State environment minister Ganesh Naik and MPCB member secretary Sanjay Khandare demanding that all documents should be in Marathi in the future.

indianexpress: The monsoon activity is expected to increase in the next two days in Pune city. “A low pressure area has developed in North West Bay which will strengthen the monsoon current and increase the rainfall activity,” said A B Majumdar, Deputy Director General of India Meteorological Department (IMD). Pune can expect more than just a few spells, he said.

Meanwhile, Khadakvasla dam continued to release water. The discharge was over 14,000 cusecs on Sunday. The water release from Panshet and Varasgaon dams was over 2,000 cusecs each.
 
The discharge level at the Bund Garden was around 13,000 cusecs which may increase due to rainfall in the catchment areas.

bbc: Robots are cool but we do not really use them, do we? So are they just for fun or will they ever be anything more than toys?

Navigation is a challenge for the firefighting robot

The challenges of inventing homebots 

Countries like Japan and South Korea are synonymous with robots. There, domestic machines have started to make inroads.

In the West, the homebot industry is years behind. But there are people with a mind to change that.

“I think you’ll see more robots in the service industry, more things in handicapped and elderly care,” said Bob Allen of OLogic.

OLogic has designed a service robot to help people with walking difficulties carry out every day tasks. Called Follow-me, the robot follows a beacon which could be sewn into a piece of clothing, or worn on a belt loop.

“Our robot would follow them around carrying their laundry or dishes and be a kind of companion.”

cnet: At least 20,000 police surveillance cameras are being installed along streets here in southern China and will soon be guided by sophisticated computer software from an American-financed company to recognize automatically the faces of police suspects and detect unusual activity.

Starting this month in a port neighborhood and then spreading across Shenzhen, a city of 12.4 million people, residency cards fitted with powerful computer chips programmed by the same company will be issued to most citizens.

Data on the chip will include not just the citizen’s name and address but also work history, educational background, religion, ethnicity, police record, medical insurance status and landlord’s phone number. Even personal reproductive history will be included, for enforcement of China’s controversial “one child” policy. Plans are being studied to add credit histories, subway travel payments and small purchases charged to the card.

Security experts describe China’s plans as the world’s largest effort to meld cutting-edge computer technology with police work to track the activities of a population and fight crime. But they say the technology can be used to violate civil rights.

The Chinese government has ordered all large cities to apply technology to police work and to issue high-tech residency cards to 150 million people who have moved to a city but not yet acquired permanent residency.

cnet: You’ve heard of air pollution and noise pollution? Don’t look now, but another depressing form of toxicity is taking the fun out of life: ad pollution.

That’s the creeping commercial crud that has sapped the pleasure out of TV, faxes, e-mail and, of course, radio. These days, it seems as though AM radio has 52 minutes of ads an hour.

But you have an alternative. Internet radio stations offer an endless smorgasbord of audio entertainment. Some of it is a simultaneous broadcast of what’s on from NPR, ESPN, the BBC and so on; others are Internet-only stations that serve both mainstream and niche tastes. The variety is staggering, all of it is free, and it is largely uncluttered by ads.

Trouble is, to listen to Internet radio, you pretty much have to sit at your computer all day. Why doesn’t somebody invent a physical radio that can tune in all of this streaming goodness? Not a stereo component or computer peripheral, but a true-blue old-time tabletop console, with a row of preset buttons and built-in speakers?

Somebody finally has. Several somebodies, actually. Companies like Roku, Com One, Revo, Terratec and Tivoli have all produced tabletop or bookshelf radios that are freaky hybrids of the old and new. You tune into radio shows just as you have for decades, but the radios’ antennas are internal Wi-Fi receivers that connect to a wireless home network. Talk about good reception: these radios can pull in any of 10,000 Internet radio stations from all over the world, without a single pop of static.

cnet: In the last 70 years, researchers at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory in California have smashed molecules, analyzed cosmic rays and used supercomputers to simulate the earth’s climate.

Now, scientists there have created a device that, though it can be built out of scrap metal, has the potential to alleviate suffering for some of the 2.2 million displaced people in Sudan’s troubled Darfur region.

The device is a wood-fired stove, meant to replace the traditional campfire over which the refugees–mostly women and children–typically boil water and cook powdered grain into bread.

These fires are so inefficient that for many refugees, each day has meant a new struggle to find, or buy, enough wood to survive.

That’s where Ashok Gadgil comes in.

The Indian-born physicist told Reuters that when he learned about the refugees’ plight, he was gripped by a vision of a more efficient stove that could reduce the number of exhausting wood-seeking journeys on which women are vulnerable to attack.

“How can you not work to solve a problem when you have a solution in your back pocket, and you see somebody is under abysmally harsh conditions, suffering agony?” he said.

Three years and countless prototypes later, Gadgil and a small group of volunteers have given birth to an angular, oddly shaped contraption that wouldn’t look out of place in a junkyard.