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indianexpress: Flagrant violations of laid-down norms, unending negligence and tons of “howlers.” The 8,000-page audit report of the Pimpri-Chinchwad Municipal Corporation for the years 2002-2003 and 2003-2004 tells its own story.

The report, prepared by chief auditor Sudhir Rajdarkar and his 42-strong staff, raises objections to tune of Rs 6 crore. But that’s only for two years. There are also objections regarding Rs 212 crore that go as far back as 1982 and have not been answered. “We have prepared the audit report for two years where we have raised objections to the tune of Rs 6 crore. The rest of the objected amount — Rs 212 crore — is carried forward from previous audits,” the auditor says. The report was submitted to municipal commissioner Dilip Band last month

When contacted, Band said he hasn’t yet decided as to what action is to be taken. “Officers have been told to provide the papers asked by the audit report…but I haven’t yet decided anything,” he said.

For the two years, there are 4,000 objections, taking the aggregate, since 1982, to 35,000. “The figure is staggering. All these objections need answers from the authorities as they make clear that rules and regulations have been violated over the years by nearly 60 per cent,” says Rajdarkar.

indianexpress: Expersts gathered at the Indian Institute of Public Administration on Monday to participate in a discussion on ‘Human security’ organised by city-based Pune Local Branch, switched over to an academic note with Police Commissioner Jayant Umranikar analysing the issue through the lens of Maslow’s Theory of Needs.

Taking a holistic view of human security, the police commissioner in his inaugural address stressed the need to maintain a fine balance between freedom and equality. Referring to hierarchy-based needs of Maslow’s theory, Umranikar compared the physiological needs to physical threat, belongingness to social threat, esteem to human rights and self actualisation to religious threat.

Commenting on the concept of state, the police commissioner said that the state architecture kept on expanding till it came to a point from where there was no return and that it was welfare state which balances the threat to the existence of state.

Former Director General of Police (DGP) B J Misar in his speech outlined the need for human security based on three planks namely physical needs, health and social security.

indianexpress: NITIN and his father Ramesh Chavan, an ice cream vendor, need not feel lost or alone. Even as the 12-year-old is lying on a bed in Sassoon General Hospital’s ward no 3 unable to move after he fell from a 20-foot human pyramid during dahihandi celebrations in Umbraj village in Satara district recently, help has begun pouring in.

Doctors preparing for a surgery on Tuesday said it is a case of quadriplegia and Nitin may not be able to move again. Pune Newsline’s report on his plight on Monday grabbed the attention of a Mundhwa-based Ganesh mandal which has decided to curb its festivities to help Chavan while a social activist has offered to adopt Nitin.

Santosh Jadhav of Akhil Ganesh Baugh Mitra Mandal in a letter said, “We are shocked and crestfallen after reading about the medical case of quadriplegia of this 12-year-old kid. Indeed destiny has played a cruel joke on him.”

indianexpress: Potholed roads, an election plank on which the Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) and the Shiv Sena with support from the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), rode to power in the Pune Municipal Corporation (PMC) six months ago, have made the alliance partners sing a different tune in this festival season.

The parties have now openly supported Ganesh mandals that have dug up city roads for erecting pandals. When the civic administration has announced fining of mandals digging up the roads, the ruling alliance has put it in a corner by offering to shell out money on behalf of the mandals to repair the roads after Ganeshotsav. Now, officials, who have supervised resurfacing of the roads so that citizens are not inconvenienced during the monsoon, can do precious little.

Among the three, the city BJP is at the forefront opposing any fine on Ganesh mandals for digging roads. As many as 26 of its corporators have said they will pay Rs 25,000 each from the corporators’ funds to repair the roads.

indianexpress: A TEACHER and a peon attached to the chemistry lab of DY Patil College located in Masulkar Colony in Pimpri were injured in a blast around 1 pm on Monday. The injured, identified as chemistry professor Santosh Babar and peon Santosh Pinjar, sustained burns and have been admitted to a nearby private hospital. Their condition was stable, the police said.

College administrative officer Anuradha Yadav said none of the students were present in the lab when the blast occurred. Babar and Pinjar were preparing solutions for practicals for standard XI students slated for Tuesday.

Yadav said, “We suspect that the duo may have mistakenly added some water into the potassium nitrate solution, due to which the blast happened. The mixture may have contained some concentrated sulphuric acid. Since potassium nitrate is a red solution when it fell on the victims it was mistaken for blood. The intensity of the blast was high which caused some panic among the staff and students”

indianexpress: IN a bid to spread awareness about water pollution during Ganeshotsav and Durga Puja celebrations, environmental action group, Kalpavriksh and Delhi-based information, outreach and environmental advocacy organisation, ToxicsLink have jointly compiled a factsheet enlisting the environmental and toxic impact of immersion practises.

A press release from Kalpavriksh mentioned that the study, which has used scientific works and related literature available, also suggests eco-sensitive alternatives while celebrating the festivals.

The factsheet focuses on the impact of Plaster of Paris, as well as paints used for making the idols, and describes their impact on the water bodies as well on the health of the idol-maker. Inhalation, ingestion and contact with Plaster of Paris affects the skin, eyes and the respiratory system while immersing it in water bodies makes the water hard and deteriorates its life carrying capacity, the factsheet points out.

The study also mentions alternatives and guidelines to be followed during immersion, suggested by the Central Pollution Control Board (CPCB) such as marking of specific areas for immersion and related activities to prevent indiscriminate disposal, retrieval of reusable materials, creation of temporary ponds, disposal of pond water after immersion.

techtree: Couch potatoes take cheer! Samsung has unveiled it’s new full HD LCD TV with a 70-inches screen for you to sit back and enjoy your favorite shows/movies from the comfort of your home.

Samsung claims this is the first LCD TV in the country to utilize LED SmartLighting Technology, which deploys multiple LED backlight units for the screen to sense TV signals, as also adjust brightness levels by turning on or off the right combo of units to produce a contrast ratio of 500,000 to 1.

The company also claims that the new technology makes the new LCD TV one of the most environmentally friendly TV options available to consumers.

The LCD TV features a full HD 1080p super clear LCD panel, and Wide Color Enhancer to deliver superior HD quality with more vivid colors, the company said. It incorporates TruSurround XT stereo system along with 2 built-in subwoofers for better sound quality.

According to Samsung, the design of the speaker unit separates the tweeters and allows for a wider frequency range, delivering deeper bass and higher treble.

Meanwhile, the TV comes with Wiselink USB 2.0 for handy connections to digital cameras and MP3 players, and 3 HDMI connections that allow users take advantage of the full HD capability.

techtree: Going by reports, chipmaker Intel has announced buying Havok, a well known developer of digital media creation software and services. Terms of the deal remain undisclosed.

Which makes Havok a wholly-owned subsidiary of Intel, with business to continue as usual, the companies said. And Intel able to develop its footprint in visual computing and graphics, while continuing to develop products for all computing platforms.

Of the acquisition, Havok chief executive officer, David O’Meara, said Intel’s scale of technology investment and customer reach would only help them grow more rapidly into newer market segments with newer products than they could have ever hoped to achieve by themselves.

Intel vice president and general manager (software and solutions group), Renee J James, spoke of Havok’s proven expertise in physics technology for gaming and digital content. James said this would now become a key element of Intel’s visual computing and graphics efforts.

Havok, founded in 1998, is based out of Dublin, and is well known for helping game developers simulate real world physics in their games. Simply put, Havok tools are known for making objects appear to move in a more realistic manner — in games — and as special effects in movies.

techtree: Supercomputers are no longer a rarity in this country…

According to reports, Wipro Infotech (a division of Wipro Limited) is partnering exclusively with California-based Z Research to build from grounds up “Supernova”, a range of supercomputers with ’super’ storage capacity.

Elaborating on this achievement, Ashutosh Vaidya, vice president (personal computing) of Wipro, said the price of a fully-functional teraflop supercomputer is in the region of Rs 25 lakhs, and that “Supernova” is the answer to the crying market need for an affordable supercomputer.

Vaidya said that while the company would be mainly targeting engineering colleges, corporates, and seats of higher learning, “Supernova” would be made affordable to huge segments of the population.

Headquartered out of the garden city, Wipro claims “Supernova” comprises a range of supercomputers that have an entry-level configuration capable of delivering one trillion mathematical calculations per second, scaling up to hundred thousand trillion calculations per second. And a claimed super storage capacity that can be escalated to multiple hundred petabytes.

“Supernova” promises super fast data crunching and super duper storage to meet the needs of high-end scientific research in several industry verticals.

cnet: In baseball, amassing a single, double, triple and home run in the same game is known as hitting for the cycle. AMD will try for the chip industry equivalent next year.

The company announced plans Monday to introduce a desktop PC processor with three cores in the first quarter of 2008. The three-core chip will carry the same Phenom brand name that AMD plans to attach to its quad-core desktop chips due to ship to PC companies by the end of this year.

Bob Brewer, corporate vice president of marketing and strategy, said that AMD’s move was made in recognition that demand for quad-core chips has been tepid. There’s simply not a lot of desktop software that can take advantage of four cores, and most of the growth in the PC market right now is in the notebook section, where quad-cores haven’t yet made an impact.

But PC owners can still take advantage of multiple cores if they’re running several applications at once, Brewer said. Therefore, AMD wants to offer the choice of buying a three-core processor for perhaps a little less than a quad-core chip.

Now, for the real reason AMD’s doing this.

The three-core Phenom chip is basically the same as the quad-core one, it just has one less working core, Brewer confirmed. One disadvantage of the monolithic quad-core design that AMD chose for its quad-core chips is that just one manufacturing defect on part of the chip can knock out an entire quad-core processor. But if you invent a category for three-core chips, suddenly you can make money off those chips that would otherwise have to be discarded because of a defect that disabled one core.