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indianexpress: The anti-encroachment drive of the Pune Municipal Corporation (PMC) on Monday  Bajaj Auto Ltd Managing Director Rajiv Bajaj in a statement on Monday said production at the Akurdi plant came to a halt peacefully and as planned last week.

“Management is satisfied with this win-win situation owing to which workers will continue to receive their wages as if the plant was working, while the company will benefit from the direct and indirect gains of the shutdown. Details of such benefits will shortly be furnished to the concerned authorities once competition sensitive information has been suitably addressed,” he said.
 
Even as Bajaj expressed hope that the authorities concerned will take corrective steps such as the abolishment of the evil of octroi, the statement went on to highlight the company’s continued commitment to the region. “It intends to set up its proposed four-wheeler plant in Chakan in the near future in appreciation of and for the benefit of this region,” he added.

“Although Bajaj belongs to India and not to any one State, 100 per cent of its growth since inception to Rs 10,000 crore as of March 2007 has been in Maharashtra. It has thus not only created thousands of jobs here through itself, its dealers, and its vendors, but has also been instrumental in getting many north and south India based vendors to set up shop in Chakan and Aurangabad,” he said.

As to the reasons why the Akurdi plant workers should not turn up for work, Bajaj said for no useful purpose hundreds of bus trips must be made each day, congesting roads, consuming diesel, and emitting exhaust. Furthermore, this shutdown also curtails the consumption of our most valuable social resources, namely water and electricity.

indianexpress: sparked heated arguments between Congress leaders and Deputy Municipal Commissioner Dnyandev Thube in the office of Pune Municipal Commissioner. After the verbal exchange, the civic administration refused to retreat but expressed its determination to continue with the drive.

The Hawkers’ Union led by Baba Adhav took out a morcha to PMC headquarters to protest against the civic drive. “The PMC should first declare its detailed plan to rehabilitate the hawkers, then go ahead with the action,” Adhav said, addressing the morcha.
 
Despite the protests, Municipal Commissioner Pravinsinh Pardeshi said the drive would continue, but would be restricted to 30 roads that are planned as hawkers free zone. “The drive will continue on the 30 city roads and it will be initiated in the area from where we receive complaints,” he said. Pardeshi said rehabilitation package would be ready in three months.

Earlier, a Congress delegation led by legislator Ramesh Bagwe approached the PMC commissioner urging him to go slow in the action against hawkers in view of the festival season. They demanded that the PMC return the goods seized from the hawkers during the drive so far.

Thube, who was present at the meeting, refused to accede to the demand, asserting that the drive will continue since it was being carried out at the directives of the civic general body meeting. “The PMC will not return the material recovered from hawkers in the anti-encroachment drive,” he said, leading to heated arguments.

indianexpress:  Monday’s Pune Newsline report — highlighting the police inaction which forced women to demolish a wine shop shed in Akurdi — compelled senior police officials to initiate a series of steps to catch the trouble-makers in the suburb. For starters, the police made at least 20 rounds of the road where the wine shop is located to apprehend those who consume liquor and cause nuisance in the area. Police in plain clothes are also being posted in the area to catch the culprits.

In the afternoon, Assistant Commissioner Police M U Karjatkar — who was fuming at the Newsline report — called the women activists from Akurdi to his office in Chinchwad and heard their grievances. During the meeting, Karjatkar promised the women that the police would put an end to the ugly happenings in Akurdi. “We will take serious legal action against those violating the law. Everything will be done to ensure peace in the suburb,” he said.

Trotting out figures, Karjatkar said the police had in the past taken action against those who consume liquor and create trouble in the locality. “As many as 240 cases have been filed in the past eight months. At least nine persons have been put behind bars. Action has been taken in the past and in future it will be intensified,” he told the members of at least ten self-help groups.

Waving the copy of Monday’s Pune Newsline, Karjatkar said the women should have come to him rather than directly going to the press. “I am sitting here to redress your grievances. If my men are not acting on your complaint, tell me. I will take appropriate action against them,” he said.

When women activists asked him as to how a wine shop was permitted in a residential area, Karjatkar said in this case the licensing authority is the State Excise Department. “We can’t close down the wine shop. It is the Excise Department which is supposed to take action.” He however said Deputy Chief Minister R R Patil has issued directives that if 50 per cent of women in an area are opposed to a wine shop, then it should be closed. Karjatkar said the shed was an encroachment and it was the civic body’s job to demolish it. “When our help was sought by PCMC, we wasted no time in providing them with police security for razing the shed,” he said.

indianexpress: City-Based entrepreneur Avinash Vaidya’s invention — ‘sensor device for measuring frequency and amplitude of varying force signals’ — has been recognised and accepted by the United States Patent and Trade Marks office.

“This device was developed as a part of our ongoing research and development effort, where we continuously try to improve the performance of our products to the best possible extent,” said Vaidya.

A Masters in Electronics Engineering, Vaidya is the chief promoter of Inconel, which manufacturers vortex flow meters, which are used to measure the flow of air, gas, water and other types of fluids.

According to Vaidya, the vortex flow meters manufactured utilising this device have many advantages over the other flow meters including the orifice type. These include reduction of power consumption, wide measuring range and higher overall accuracy.

Vaidya pointed out that the sensor device developed by him has applications not only in flow meters but also in CNC machining, robotics and other areas where reliable monitoring of parameters and signals is required.

Upbeat about the receipt of the US patent, Vaidya is now aiming at high growth and looks to companies from the US and Europe for possible tie-up for manufacture and sale of flow meters with this unique sensor device. He was assisted by Mohan Dewan, a city-based patent attorney in obtaining the US and Indian patents.

indianexpress: Academic expertise, accepting new challenges and a touch of fate provided two city professors a window to international fame. For Gautami Pawar and husband Dr Manik Kadam, it was like achieving an academic milestone, when the couple presented research papers at the fifth International Conference of Humanities at Paris recently.

Pawar who heads the English Department of the Abasaheb Garware College presented a paper titled ‘The key to social transformation through self-realisation’ focusing on the lives of Dalit Women while Kadam, a professor at the Bharati Vidyapeeth College, presented a paper on ‘The uses of internet for a professional college student.’
 
The journey up to Paris was not without it share of hurdles. At the Rajur village in Ahmednagar where Pawar hails from, the rate of school dropouts was high and the state of English language that was taught in the schools was poor. So, it was nothing less than an achievement when she managed to complete her masters in literature and has now submitted a thesis for doctorate at the Unversity of Pune.

For Kadam, a son of a school peon in Sangamner, education was not easy considering that a reputed school in Pune preferred to admit the son of a big shot over him and he had to return to Sangamner to complete his schooling. Therefore, the M Sc and M Phil in Chemistry degrees as well as MBA and PhD in Computer Management that Kadam holds have come in after relentless hard work.

Pawar said she was pleasantly shocked when her paper was accepted and was invited to Paris. “I was happy, but feared travelling abroad alone. That’s when I forced my husband to submit a paper too. Luckily, his paper was selected as well,” she said. Products of a humble rural upbringing, it was their first trip abroad and that too by an airplane.

indianexpress: The University of Pune (UoP) may be rated as having the highest number of foreign students in the country, but at the ground level, the foreign students do not seem to be happy. Nearly a year after the launch of a single window for visa extension at the varsity’s International Students Centre (ISC), students continue to be harassed and asked for bribes by officers at the Foreign Regional Registration Office (FRRO) and local police while extending their student and research visas.

With over 14,000 international students from nearly 90 countries coming in for study and research purposes, UoP accounts for 40 per cent of the total international student intake in the country. Following student complaints of harassment and corruption at the FRRO office while applying for visa extensions, the varsity set up a single window at the ISC in October 2006. This acts as a facilitation centre wherein an official from the FRRO visits the varsity every Monday to receive applications for extensions of student and research visas, which are then to be processed and cleared within two weeks. The centre does not seem to have fulfilled its said purpose, as students claim they are still being made to run from pillar to post. “The FRRO officials make us go to the local police, where we are harassed and asked for money,” said Kenyan student Jude Omondi.

For example, a second-year Masters student from Cambodia, who had applied for extending her student visa, was instructed by the FRRO to go to the Chatuhshringi police. “There I was asked for money. When I asked for a receipt, the police did not respond, and I was made to go back to the FRRO at the ISC. Since then I have made repeated trips for nearly six weeks, and I still haven’t got my extension,” said the student, who has come through the Indian Council for Cultural Research (ICCR) scholarship programme. Rude behaviour and red-tapism are also common complaints.

bbc: The UK’s big five mobile phone firms have switched on a payment system that turns handsets into digital wallets.
Called PayForIt, the scheme is designed for those buying goods and services with a value of up to £10.

The industry hopes it will be used to pay for ringtones, train tickets, parking fees and eventually as a payment system on web shops and sites.

Any cash spent via the scheme will automatically be added on to a customer’s phone bill.

The scheme standardises the way phones can be used to make payments so the process is the same no matter which operator a customer has signed up for or which handset they are using.

Mike Short, chairman of the Mobile Data Association, said PayForIt had been developed as an alternative to other systems such as premium rate SMS.

Many people, said Mr Short, were unhappy using that payment system because of past uncertainty about how much they would pay and who they turn to if things go wrong.

“It’s for those customers who have not felt comfortable with mobile transactions or payments,” he said.

techtree: That Google recently added Google Sky to it’s Google Earth application, we know. What we don’t know is that the updated Google Earth also comes embedded with a hidden feature — a flight simulator of sorts.

To activate the flight simulator, users can type Ctrl+Alt+A (keyboard shortcut) else Command+Option+A on OS X.

Once the feature is turned-on in Google Earth menus, users can either get a F16 ‘Viper’ or SR22 plane to fly. They can select a start position with the Kathmandu runway as default option. Using the keyboard or mouse, users can control their aircraft. Even joysticks are supported. Getting the hang of controls is a bit tricky however once the plane is stabilized, users can get a nice view of say the Himalayas out on the horizon.

To re-enter flight simulator mode, users can choose Tools > Enter Flight Simulator.

And going by reports, while the simulator has airports covered fairly well, the aircraft selection seems in want of an overhaul. Besides, the simulator does not afford any view whatsoever of the aircraft…

techtree: Micro-Star International (MSI) has launched its P35 Diamond mainboard based on the Intel P35 Express chipset and new generation DDR3 structure.

MSI claims the new mainboard has exclusive features such as a fanless cooling design called ‘Circu-Pipe’ and ‘MSI SkyTel’ that allows using a common phone set to make Internet calls using Skype.

The mainboard supports the latest Intel FSB1333, and upcoming 45nm multi-core processors that include Core 2 Quad/Duo/Extreme and other Intel processors based on Core architecture.

In addition, the mainboard supports next generation DDR3 memory structure, providing more possibilities in terms of performance and overclocking.

The current frequency of DDR3 starts from 1,066 MHz and goes higher, at the same time consuming less power than DDR2.

The mainboard is equipped with ‘Circu-Pipe’, which according to the company is an original heat-pipe design offering heat reduce efficiency of more than 20 percent after 2 hours full-load operation as compared to former heat-pipe designs.

The P35 mainboard comes with the SoundBlaster X-Fi Xtreme audio card with Creative hardware, and audio codec that fully supports 24-bit Crystalizer giving better sound than CDs.

techtree: Sharp Corp has reportedly unveiled a prototype of what the company calls the world’s thinnest LCD TV with a main display section that is only 20mm thick.

Speaking ahead of the IFA electronics fair, Mikio Katayama, president of Sharp, said that the TV weighing 25kg is designed with digitalization and Web-based TV in mind as consumers are increasingly looking for high definition models that can be mounted on walls.

Katayama also said that the 50-inch LCD TV would consume 140 kilowatts of power per year, based on a typical household’s consumption pattern, as compared to the consumption of 233 kWh by the company’s current model, the 37-inch LC-37 P55E.

However, he did not say when the super thin TV would be available on the market.