News

indianexpress: Even as the union government is to take a stand on the Pune Municipal Corporation (PMC) proposal to construct three tunnels in the city to ease its flow of traffic, city environmentalists and experts have opposed the concept saying it has been prepared without a detailed project report (DPR), nor any study on its impact on environment.

“The growing vehicular congestion in the city can only be resolved through better public transport system. Construction of roads, flyovers or tunnels will not help tackle the problem,” traffic expert Sujit Patwardhan told reporters after a visit to the proposed tunnel site. The visit was organised by Bharatiya Janata Yuva Morcha (BJYM) president Sandeep Khardekar on Thursday.

However, PMC superintending engineer Vinay Deshpande said the civic administration has already appointed Infrastructure Leasing and Financial Services (IL&FS) to prepare a DPR within four months.

IL&FS Project Head S K Soni said the company will soon undertake a detailed study of the project, including the expected traffic flow through the tunnel.

According to town planner Aneeta Benninger, it will be difficult for the PMC to prepare necessary approach roads to the tunnels, given the presence of residential localities in the area. The PMC needs to prepare an environment impact report before going ahead with the project, she said.

indianexpress: When cities turn fertile grounds for growing sandalwood, then thieves who usually look to forests for their sustenance turn their focus on the urban spreads. And this has led inter-state and district level gangs of sandalwood thieves to look at Pune with renewed interest with as many as 37 thefts being reported in the city during the past one year. The city police have cracked six cases so far and have traced gangs operating from as far as Madhya Pradesh and Karnataka as also the nearby districts of Satara,Sangli and Aurangabad.
 
However, detection is proving to be tardy as the police are in the dark about the location of the trees. According to the data on sandalwood thefts compiled by the crime branch, 37 sandalwood thefts estimated to be worth Rs 3.44 lakh were reported from different parts of the city and detection was possible only in six cases. Detections were possible in Deccan, Bund Garden, Samartha, Vishrantwadiwadi and Wanavdi police stations where sandalwood estimated to be worth Rs 90,700 was recovered.

Out of the 37 cases, a maximum of 11 thefts took place under the jurisdiction of Wanavdi police station and 10 under Bund Garden police station whereas four thefts were reported at Deccan, two each at Swargate and Samartha, three at Bharati Vidyapeeth and one each at Vishrantwadi, Chatuhshrungi, Yerawada and Sahakarnagar police stations.

Explaining the modus operandi, a crime branch official said the thieves usually arrived late in the night, cut off the trunk with electric saw, load it into a tempo or truck and escape before the break of dawn.

indianexpress: ELABORATE precautionary arrangements have been made to ensure a smooth Ramazan and Ganeshotsav said Pune Police Commissioner Jayant Umranikar on Thursday.

Anti-sabotage checking, watch towers, special squads comprising policemen in plain clothes to nab pickpockets and chain snatchers, special patrolling on the outskirts of the city to prevent dacoities are some of the efforts the police have initiated. “Around 3,000 police personnel, 200 senior officers, 500 homeguards as well as 1,200 volunteers will be involved. Quick Reaction Teams have been deputed at nine spots and preventive arrests have also been undertaken. So far around 3 people have been externed while externment proceedings against several others are underway,” said Umranikar.

He also added that the police will keep a strict check on those areas with temples and mosques and said that the mandals and mosques have been urged to refrain from playing religious songs in a loud manner with the sole purpose of competing against each other.

“People should keep in mind that IPC and Criminal PC will be effective during festivals too,” said Umranikar exhorting people to maintain tolerance during the time.

indianexpress: The Pune division of Central Railway will run an additional train between Pune and Lonavla to clear the extra rush of passengers during Ganesh festival from September 20 to 26.

An official press note said, the special train will depart from Pune at 1.15 am and reach Lonavla at 2.55 am. It will stop at: Shivajinagar (1.21 am), Khadki (1.26), Dapodi (1.31), Kasarwadi (1.35), Pimpri (1.38), Chinchwad (1.42), Akurdi (1.47), Dehu Road (1.52), Begdewadi (1.56), Ghorawadi (1.59), Talegaon (2.04), Vadgaon (2.09), Kanhe (2.14), Kamshet (2.18) and Malavli (2.26 am).

indianexpress: Seven touts were caught red-handed and 23 others fined at Pune Railway Station on Thursday as part of a drive against touts, unauthorised vendors and those without platform tickets.

The touts caught included Rupesh Dashrath Ghodke (21), Santosh Manoranjan Kritonia (34), Jhonny Ramachandra (34), Shafi Rahman Siddique (30), Chandraprakash Parmanand Ojha (50) and Vinod Lalla Singh (34). Twenty nine tickets worth Rs 42,769 and cash totalling Rs 44,400 were also recovered besides 19 filled reservation forms, according to a press note issued by the Pune division of Central Railway here.

While legal action is being initiated against the touts, the 23 unauthorised people were sent to a magistrate and fined Rs 1,000 each.

Authorities have urged rail users to purchase tickets only from authorised agencies, since tickets sold by the touts — with fake names and ages — were creating unnecessary hassles. “If such rail users are caught, they will be treated as travelling without tickets and charged a penalty. In case of any eventuality, no compensation would be paid to them,” said the press note.

The drive against unauthorised people is being conducted by assistant security commissioner A T Tayade under the supervision of divisional security commissioner Rajendra Rupnawar of the Railway Protection Force.

indianexpress:  The Swargate Police on Wednesday issued a notice to Rameshchandra Pandey, the mahout for elephant Lakshmi, that was spotted begging near the Parvati Darshan area. Lakshmi, around 50 years old and partially blind, had recently been released by a District and Sessions Court after Pandey presented the ownership papers.

On Wednesday evening, Lakshmi was spotted begging by People for Animals (PFA) animal welfare officer Dheeraj Jain, who received a tip-off from an anonymous caller. “Thereafter we lodged a complaint at the Swargate police station under various acts including the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals Act and the Bombay Beggary Prevention Act, since using an animal for begging is prevented under these acts,” said PFA animal welfare officer Manoj Oswal, who claims that Lakshmi’s eyesight had deteriorated after her release.

Confirming that a notice had been issued, Swargate PI V N Bhandare said, “The notice is a formality after a complaint has been lodged, wherein we have directed the mahout to keep the elephant off the streets.” He added that no action could be taken immediately since the case was sub-judice

techtree: Expanding its lineup of external hard drives, Western Digital (WD) will now offer all models of its My Book dual-drive storage appliances in capacities up to 2 TB (terabyte).

WD claims that these new huge capacity models also feature extra data protection. Users can set the system to reserve half of its capacity to mirror users’ data in real time using RAID technology - in this case, the RAID 1 setting.

According to Sharad Srivastava, sales director (South Asia and India) of Western Digital, “The explosive growth in devices that create rich multimedia content - from digital cameras to music players to digital video camcorders - continues to drive consumers’ insatiable demand for more storage capacity.”

The new 2 TB capacity is available on 3 models comprising My Book World Edition II, My Book Pro Edition II, and My Book Premium Edition II models.

Each model of the My Book family solves the storage needs of a variety of consumers and their respective purposes.

The unique remote-access of the World Edition II storage appliance offers a simple and secure way to access and share data, even when the local computer is off. On the other hand, the Pro Edition II and Premium Edition II are the easiest way to add extra storage to a PC or Mac and offer plenty of room to back up and store data, the company said.

techtree:  Microsoft has unveiled a new rechargeable Notebook (NB) mouse with 1 GB of flash memory built right into the transceiver.

Mobile Memory Mouse 8000 is designed to prevent shortage of USB port. This three-in-one tool allows users simultaneously to work wirelessly, save important files with 1 GB of storage, and recharge the mouse without deficiency in performance - all through 1 USB port.

The magnetic charging system allows users to continue working while the mouse recharges. The charging cord magnetically connects at one end to the underside of the mouse, and the other to the tip of the transceiver.

The included AAA rechargeable battery offers more than 3 weeks of battery power on a full charge.

The wireless technology allows users to choose how they want to connect with 2.4 GHz wireless or Bluetooth. The 2.4 GHz transceiver is capable of connecting to all NBs.

Meanwhile, users can also connect directly with the help of a switch on the bottom of the mouse, thus eliminating the need of the transceiver.

Besides, the mouse creates a seamless connection between hardware and Windows Vista with access to the Windows Flip 3D feature. With the press of a button, users can flip through open windows in a stack and quickly switch between applications.

With the black high-gloss surface and metal finish, the mouse features proprietary HD Laser Technology, a Tilt Wheel, and 2 side buttons (magnifier and back).

bbc: The hidden content in ancient works could be illuminated by a light source 10 billion times brighter than the Sun.
The technique employs Britain’s new facility, the Diamond synchrotron, and could be used on works such as the Dead Sea Scrolls or musical scores by Bach.

Intense light beams will enable scientists to uncover the text in scrolls and books without having to open - and potentially damage - them.

The research was presented at the British Association science festival.

Iron gall ink, which is made from oak apples, has been in use from the 12th Century, but causes parchment to deteriorate rendering precious documents unreadable.

There are some parts of the Dead Sea scrolls which have not been unrolled

Professor Tim Wess 
Both paper and parchment - thinly stretched skins from cows, sheep or goats - contain collagen, which reacts with iron ink to become gelatine.

When dry, gelatine is very brittle; but as soon as it gets wet, it turns into jelly, destroying some documents if they are disturbed.

Unrolling the scroll

Now, scientists from the University of Cardiff have developed a technique that uses a powerful X-ray source to create a three-dimensional image of an iron-inked document.

The team then applies a computer algorithm to separate the image into the different layers of parchment, in effect using the program to unroll the scroll.

msnbc: IBM Corp. researchers are touting one of the tiniest pieces of art ever made — an image of the sun made from 20,000 microscopic particles of gold. The precision required is a breakthrough that heralds ultra-miniature sensors, lenses and wires inside nanoscale circuits of the future.

The sun painting, which was a 17th-century alchemist’s symbol for gold, was etched on a silicon chip “wafer” with a technique that manipulated gold particles each just 60 nanometers in diameter. That’s 60 billionths of a meter; a human hair is about 80,000 nanometers wide.

Scientists at IBM and elsewhere have been working to manipulate super-small circuits in an effort to continue improving the performance of electronic devices well into the future. Indeed, today’s most advanced microprocessors already involve components even smaller than 60 nanometers. And IBM researchers long ago showed they could spell out the company’s name in individual atoms.
But the new research, published this month in Nature Nanotechnology, is different because the tiny particles were manipulated directly into their desired places with a method that could be economically reproduced in other nano-scale construction projects, even those with features as small as 2 nanometers. (Beyond that, the physical properties of individual atoms likely would get in the way.)

For example, IBM researchers said the finely controlled placement of nanowires would be necessary for high-performance transistors in molecular-scale chips. Or the tiny arrays someday could be used to test for exceedingly small traces of a disease.