News

punetimes: Employees affiliated to five workers unions in the state electricity distribution, transmission and generation companies will go on a three day state-wide strike from August 22 to protest against outsourcing and franchisee system and to press for pension and jobs to heirs of deceased employees.

Addressing a news conference here on Monday, Kishor Ahivale, vice-president of the Backward Class Employees Union, said the employees would go on strike from midnight on August 21. Besides the backward class employees, workers affiliated to Workers’ Federation, Subordinate Engineers’ Association (SEA), INTUC and Veej Kamgar Mahasangh will participate in the strike under the banner of employees action committee.

Ahivale said there would be no discussion with the state government as the government did not fulfil promises given on two occasions (in December 2006 and May 2007), following which strike calls were withdrawn.

SR Kulkarni, joint secretary SEA, said the number of employees in the three power utilities was fast dwindling while the number of consumers was going up. “From an initial strength of 1.2 lakh, the number of employees has gone down to 80,000 which was adversely affecting the quality of service.”

punetimes: Following the Mumbai pattern of introducing pay-and-park system under flyovers, the Pune Municipal Coporation (PMC) is planning to introduce vehicle parking under the E-Square flyover soon.

Beautification of land under the flyovers at University chowk and Agriculture college and a police chowky under the Baner-Pashan leg of University chowk flyover are also underway.

PMC’s garden superintendent Yashwant Khaire said fencing of the land under the flyover has already begun. “After it is done, the beautification work will begin.’’

“We cannot develop parking place under the University and Agriculture college flyovers due to their single pillar structure,’’ a PMC official said.

A parking area for around 30 four-wheelers would be developed under the E-Square flyover while the remaining space would be beautified.

“The fencing work has begun three weeks ago. Presently, the area under the Agriculture college flyover is being layered,’’ the official said.

Khaire said the PMC would develop the area under the Agriculture college flyover, while Bilcare Pharma would sponsor beautification of University and E-Square flyovers. The designs were finalised in a recent meeting of PMC officials, traffic branch and the police.

punetimes: The Pune postal region office has made separate arrangements for the disposal of rakhi mail at 16 post offices across the city.

In a statement released here, SC Jarodia, postmaster general, Pune region, said the arrangements will remain in place till September 6 to clear the rush. The Raksha Bandhan festival falls on August 28.

Separate collection trays for rakhi mail have been installed at Pune head office, Pune City, Khadki, Deccan Gymkhana, Shivajinagar, Ganeshkhind, Pimpri, Hadapsar, Market Yard, Parvati, Model Colony, Ex-servicemen’s Colony, SP College, Swargate, Yerwada and Chinchwad east.

Jarodia has suggested that rakhi mails be posted in thick envelopes instead of in ordinary embossed ones. The envelopes should be securely sealed with gum. Special rakhi covers are also available at the head post office and other important post offices.

Mail-senders are advised to write the pin code number of the destination and not include coins or currency notes with the rakhis.
 

techtree: Lenovo has reportedly unveiled it’s 3000 Y410 NB with multimedia features and an Audio DJ capability that enables users play music when their laptops are turned-off.

The notebook weighs around 2.54 kg, and features a 14.1-inch wide-screen, front facing Dolby Home Theater speakers, integrated microphone, integrated Webcam, integrated recordable drive and shuttle center, and the latest edition Audio DJ.

The notebook incorporates a 5-in-1 multi-card reader, three USB ports, IEEE1394 interface for high speed communication between two devices, and Easy Capture that is a multimedia software application for easy photo editing, etc.

Powered by Intel Core 2 Duo T7100 processor 1.8Ghz, the notebook features 2GB RAM, 160 GB HDD, and discrete graphic nvidia GeForce Go 8400M GS.

It comes pre-loaded with Microsoft Vista Home Basic and the Premium edition, and offers connectivity options including integrated 802.11 a/b/g wireless LAN, 10/100 Ethernet, and Blue tooth.

The Y410 has security features such as biometric face recognition technology and one touch recovery, and a battery life of up to 4 hours.

msnbc: A plague carried around the world by travelers, pets and curious teen-agers may show that experts have not taken everything into account when planning for an outbreak of disease, researchers said on Monday.

Luckily, the world involved is an Internet game.

The outbreak of “Corrupted Blood” indicates that specialists trying to predict what the next pandemic will look like might make use of a real-world laboratory — the culture of online gamers.

“It really looked quite a bit like a real disease,” Nina Fefferman of Princeton University, who worked on the report with her then-student Eric Lofgren, said in a telephone interview.

This includes stupid behavior, near-instant international travel and infection by pets.

The outbreak was an accidental consequence of a software challenge added to the “World of Warcraft” game in 2005, Fefferman and Lofgren report in the journal Lancet Infectious Diseases.

The virulent, contagious disease was introduced by maker Blizzard Entertainment Inc. of Irvine, California, as an extra challenge to high-level players. But, just as a real virus might spread, it was accidentally carried out of its virtual containment area.

msnbc: A New Mexico Tech scientist believes he has found a way to head off dangerous climate change. Oliver Wingenter said the idea is simple — fertilize the ocean so that more plankton can grow.

Plankton growing in the ocean emits a gas known as dimethyl sulfide, or DMS, that once in the atmosphere, helps spur cloud formation. That, in turn, would cool the planet and offset some of the global warming caused by human emitted greenhouse gases, he said.

World governments are looking for ways to cut emissions and head off the worst damage such change might cause. Efforts are having limited success, though, so some scientists have begun to advocate counter measures to offset the warming.

Wingenter said his idea has been a tough sell, and it has been a struggle to win funding to further pursue the research.

But as Earth inches toward a climate tipping point of runaway warming, Wingenter said his technique could be used to buy time to make societal changes necessary to cut greenhouse gas emissions.

“I’m just hoping that this is something that will give us a little more time,” he said.

He and a pair of colleagues published the information last month in the scientific journal, “Atmospheric Environment.”

msnbc: The band takes center stage, the fans surge forward and the sheer power of the crowd’s excitement amplifies the sound of their favorite songs — providing enough energy, in fact, to move a train.

It could happen in the Crowd Farm, a conceptual design by two graduate students at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology that seeks to milk the mechanical movement of hundreds or thousands of assembled people to produce electrical power.

In principal, a large-scale version of the setup could harness the collective energy of commuters   bustling toward subway stations, shoppers marching through mega malls or fans dancing at a rock concert. Already, the students have shown how the simple act of sitting on a stool can generate enough power to turn on four LED lights.

James Graham and Thaddeus Jusczyk, graduate students at MIT’s School of Architecture and Planning in Cambridge, Mass., said they envision their Crowd Farm more as a learning tool than an efficient energy source, at least in the near future. Even so, the idea builds upon the emerging consensus that power generation in the coming decades will need to rely on sustainable resources, whether water, wind, the sun or our own bodies.

“We engage with the city in a very physical and bodily way, every day, even though people don’t really think about it like that,” Graham said. “Our project tries to make that connection visible through this balance between capturing and using energy.”

msnbc: Some Nissan cars will soon come with a gas pedal that lifts to warn of possible collisions, while the cars will automatically stop if drivers take their foot off the accelerator in response to the warning.

The technology combines radar sensors and a computer system to assess a car’s speed and the distance to a vehicle in front, Nissan Motor Co. said Monday. Cars with the new safety features will be available this year in Japan, and next year in the U.S.

The idea was to make a car that judges dangers on its own, like a friendly animal, so machine and driver can work together, said Nissan Senior Manager Yousuke Akatsu.

“It is almost like riding a horse, the way the rider can have a dialogue with the horse,” he said.

As soon as drivers lift their foot off the gas pedal, the brakes kick in automatically to bring the car to a stop, Akatsu said. The car will keep going if the driver continues to step on the gas pedal.

Nissan also showed an experimental system that measures alcohol levels in a driver’s sweat from sensors in the gearshift. The system stops short of locking the ignition but issues a warning in an electronic voice.