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indianexpress: Sample this: No less than 89 per cent of a total 982 college girls in Pune have been found to be anaemic, with haemoglobin levels far below the desired level of 12, some as low as five.

These shocking findings were made during a study conducted by University of Pune’s (UoP) Student Welfare Board and Poona Serological Institute Blood Bank last month. Based on these findings, UoP will now launch a massive programme in all 433 affiliated colleges across the districts of Pune, Ahmednagar and Nashik. As part of this, over 1.72 lakh girls’ health and lifestyle will be studied to determine the extent and causes of anaemia among college girls.

Haemoglobin (Hb) is an iron-containing protein that transports oxygen from the lungs to the rest of the body. A low Hb count is the result of iron deficiency that causes fatigue, weakness, giddiness and low immunity.

The study of Hb levels in college girls had its roots in a National Service Scheme (NSS) camp conducted in 2006 for college girls at a small village called Dongarg Niphad in Nashik district, when a blood test and health check-up was conducted. “We discovered that a whopping 82 per cent of the girls were anaemic. This triggered an initiative to create awareness among the girls and encourage healthy eating habits among them,” said Students Welfare director Sambhaji Pathare. The recovery programme included generating dietary awareness among the girls and distributing vitamin and iron supplements.

indianexpress:  Even before the State government appointed high-level committee begins its work on resolving the city’s traffic problem, Guardian Minister Ajit Pawar has decided to go all out to mitigate Pune’s traffic woes with available resources. He has roped in State Director General of Police P S Pasricha to help city planners and police draft an immediate plan to overcome traffic bottlenecks and congestion on main roads. Pasricha is expected to hold the first meeting next month and begin with a review of existing one-ways and consider new ones.

“In a recent meeting in Mumbai with Deputy Chief Minister R R Patil attended by Pasricha, it was decided to use the expertise of the latter to streamline Pune’s traffic,” Pawar told The Indian Express.

Pawar said Pasricha, during his visit to the city, would discuss the existing traffic plan in detail and try to plug loopholes. “The State government has appointed a committee to look into the city’s traffic problems. But we also need to look for immediate solutions with available resources to decongest the roads. New one-ways, flyovers and road widening are on the cards,” said Pawar.

indianexpress: Even as Ganeshotsav is celebrated across the country with much fanfair every year, this one is especially close to every Puneite’s heart. For a start, it was not just any religious affair on Saturday when the entire city was wrapped under the spell of Lord Ganesh and the chants of “Bappa Moraya.”

At the auspicious moment, citizens carried home idols for installation. People swarmed the idol stalls as several versions of Lord Ganesh dotted the city, symbolising the conquest of evil. Some 2,000 mandals organised processions to take the idols to their pandals. Five manache Ganpati — or the respected five that include Kasba Ganeshotsav mandal, Tambadi Jogeshwari Ganeshotsav mandal, Guruji Talim Ganeshotsav mandal, Tulsibaug mandal and Kesriwada Ganesh mandal — installed their idols.

People queued every Ganesh temple in the city since morning for darshan. Cooperative minister Patangrao Kadam inaugurated the replica of Swaminarayan Temple put up by the Shrimant Dagdusheth Halwai Sarvajanik Ganpati Trust.

The city market was abuzz with activity, with sweet shops and flower markets bursting at their seams. In mid-city areas including the Phule mandai, Shaniwarwada, Tilak and Laxmi roads, traffic virtually came to a halt.

indianexpress: Pune Municipal Corporation that was ranked first for the month of July in the premier edition of the progress card that keeps track of the physical progress of Jawaharlal Nehru National Urban Renewal Mission (JNNURM) projects begun by the state Urban Department (UD) has slipped to third position in the very next month. Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation continues to languish at the last but one slot among the seven municipal corporations of the state that’s being rated by the state government.

The August progress card that has been put out this week shows the municipal corporation of Thane emerging on top, closely followed by Nagpur, while Pune fetches up third. The seven municipal corporations are Mumbai, Pune, Thane, Nagpur, Nashik, Pimpri-Chinchwad and Nanded. While it was Nanded that got stuck with the wooden spoon in July, in August it was the turn of Nashik. Pimpri-Chinchwad came fourth on both occasions.

“PMC had an overall rating of `B` (70-80 per cent) for August as against an `A` rating (80-90 per cent) a month ago. BMC continues to be in the sixth position second month running and has scored `F` rating (below 50 per cent) that also stands for failed,” T C Benjamin, Principal Secretary, UD, told The Indian Express on Saturday.

indianexpress: Puneites can look forward to Padmavibhushan Pandit Jasraj’s performance of Vande Mataram — a tribute to 60 years of Independence and a presentation of Ganesh Vandana by Hema Malini and her daughters at the inaugural ceremony of the 19th Pune Festival at Shri Ganesh Kala Krida Rangmanch on September 21. Union Minister for Power Sushilkumar Shinde will be chief guest.

While the Ganesh idol was installed on Saturday, the inauguration will take place on September 21.

Some new features have been introduced to the festival’s latest edition: Haaysabhushan, a comic act competition for instance, has received 90 entries of which 18 names have been finalised. Each finalist will get seven to eight minutes to put up an act with a winner chosen at the end. This year, the vintage car and motorcycle fiesta will see participation from modern cars as well.

Pune Festival 2007 awards, given to individuals who have achieved the highest success in their respective fields, will be presented to vocalist Prabha Atre and music director Bhaskar Chandavarkar.

Other highlights of the ceremony include the performance of a scene from Shivshankar Babasaheb Purandare’s Jaanata Raja titled Tuljabhavani Gondhal, besides an informative session on the tradition of Ganesh pooja. A Lawni medley choreographed by Nikita Moghe will also be presented, while Shivraj Mitra Mandal in Nanapeth will be felicitated for completing 100 years.

indianexpress: After raising the issue of charging Ganesh mandals for digging roads during the 10-day festival, Pune Municipal Corporation (PMC) has now decided to initiate action against advertisements put up without civic administration permission near the pandals of various mandals.

“Legal action will be taken against the advertisements displayed in front of mandals without taking permission by paying charges for it,” PMC deputy commissioner Suraj Mandhare told Newsline. He added that the decision to initiate action was taken after it was noticed that many advertisers have already put up their hoardings in front of pandals without taking permission of PMC.

“The mandals will initially be urged to pay a fee for advertisements before the pandals, failing which action will be taken against the ads, Mandhare said.

Meanwhile, the civic administration coming under political pressure withdrew its decision to charge mandals for digging roads, saying no action will be taken against mandals paying for the digging. In fact, it later came to their notice that their General Body had passed a resolution in 1995 that disallows the civic administration from charging any fee from mandals during the festival.

bbc: Technology that translates spoken or written words into British Sign Language (BSL) has been developed by researchers at IBM.

The system, called SiSi (Say It Sign It) was created by a group of students in the UK.

SiSi will enable deaf people to have simultaneous sign language interpretations of meetings and presentations.

It uses speech recognition to animate a digital character or avatar.

IBM says its technology will allow for interpretation in situations where a human interpreter is not available.

It could also be used to provide automatic signing for television, radio and telephone calls.
 

msnbc: DigitalGlobe, provider of imagery for Google Inc.’s interactive mapping program Google Earth, said a new high-resolution satellite will boost the accuracy of its satellite images and flesh out its archive.

The new spacecraft, dubbed WorldView I, is to be launched on Tuesday.

Together with the company’s existing Quickbird satellite, it will offer half-meter resolution and will be able to collect over 600,000 square kilometers of imagery each day, up from the current collection of that amount each week, Chief Executive Jill Smith told Reuters in a telephone interview.

Smith said the launch, to be broadcast live on the Internet at http://www.boeing.com/defense-space/space/bls/missions/worldview -1/, and the planned launch of a second Worldview II satellite in late 2008, were critical milestones for the company.

Privately held DigitalGlobe is still working toward an initial public offering in the next few years, Smith said. She declined to say this could come before the launch of the second WorldView satellite.

“The business is as strong as we had hoped,” Smith said, adding, “The key is to continue to hit the milestones that we’ve set.”

Once its third satellite is launched, DigitalGlobe said it will be collecting more than 1 million square kilometers per day of high-resolution imagery.

msnbc:  Federal agencies are starting to tap into an ambitious project that is gathering DNA “barcodes” for Earth’s 1.8 million known species — a project that could help shoppers avoid mislabeled toxic pufferfish and show pilots how to steer clear of birds.

A consortium of scientists from almost 50 nations is overseeing the building of a global database made from tiny pieces of genetic material. Called DNA barcoding, the process takes a scientist only a few hours in a lab and about $2 to identify a species from a tissue sample or other piece of genetic material.

David Schindel, a Smithsonian Institution paleontologist and executive secretary of the Consortium for the Barcode of Life, said the purpose is to create a global reference library — “a kind of telephone directory for all species.”

“If I know that gene sequence, I can submit it as a query to a database and get back the telephone number,” he said. “I can get back the species name.”

msnbc: If a picture’s worth a thousand words, then how much is a smiling photo worth? About $350 based on Sony’s new “smile shutter” cameras.

Using face-detection technology, the 8-megapixel, DSC-T70 and DSC-T200 Cyber-shot cameras won’t snap a high-definition picture until a selected subject smiles.

Even with more than a handful of people in a picture, a photographer can designate which face to focus on by touching an LCD panel with a special pen.

“Using the smile-recognition shutter function selected by the touch panel, you can pick which of up to eight people is the key smile,” said Sony Product Development’s Akira Tokuse.

“In a parents and baby shot, you could select the baby.”

The so-called “Say Cheese” technology has three setting levels, from a slight grin to a belly laugh.

Japan sales start next week and global shipments this month.

Sony’s smile technology joins Japan’s Omron Corp, which developed “smile check” software that analyses happiness by facial features like mouth and eye wrinkles or lip separation.