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indianexpress: Conservancy workers have to pay a heavy price as sweeping the city’s streets and unclogging manholes and choked sewers expose them to a high risk of contracting diseases like leptospirosis, viral hepatitis, typhoid fever and yes, even instant death due to gaseous asphyxiation—if they fail to wear protective gear.

Low immunity is common among conservancy workers due to the nature of their work, says Dr A L Kakrani, Head of the Department of Medicine at Sassoon General hospital. Clearing garbage can be back breaking. With several workers perpetually in debt and exposed to muck and filth, the sweepers resort to heavy drinking.

According to Sassoon hospital officials out of 850 Class IV employees, at least 3-4 succumb to alcohol related ailments every year. Liver cirrhosis is common due to habitual drinking. Interestingly the Sassoon hospital doctors observed that chronic alcoholics died of leptospirosis and have recorded six such deaths in Pune this year.

Even as ‘sickness’ has been recorded as the reason for deaths of 70 conservancy workers in the Pune Municipal Corporation in the last two years, medical experts are cautious to link a cause effect relationship.

According to PMC fire brigade chief Devendra Pothode, instant death can occur if the conservancy worker is exposed to methane gas in the underground sewers.

indianexpress:  Putting up a massive show of strength under leadership of Rajan Nair, working president of Indian National Trade Union Congress, various workers unions in Pune and Pimpri-Chinchwad on Sunday appealed to Union Agriculture Minister Sharad Pawar to “pressurise” Rahul Bajaj to restart the Bajaj Auto Ltd (BAL).
“Pawar is an all-rounder leader. If he wants something to happen, he will make it happen. He has the capacity to transform things and therefore we appeal to him to put pressure on Bajaj to save workers,” said Nair, addressing a workers’ rally in front of the Bajaj Auto Ltd at Akurdi.

Alleging that Bajaj wanted to exploit the massive factory land for commercial usage like IT centre and multiplexes, Nair said, “If Bajaj succeeds with his ploy to close the profit-making factory for personal gains, others will follow suit. All parties should join hands to combat the dictatorial capitalist mentality.”

Exhorting workers to boycott any VRS schemes by the company, Nair said the agitation against illegal shut down by Bajaj should be tackled peacefully. “It seems Bajaj wants to top the list of rich by impoverishing workers,” said Nair.

Madhav Roham of the Pune Employees’ Union said, “Even after 42 days of closure of the factory, things have not moved ahead. Meetings after meetings have yielded nothing. The State Government is keeping mum in the matter.”

Chhagan Dhavale, secretary of the Vishwakalyan Kamgar Sanghatana that represents a majority of BAL workers, said, “Now workers should realise that the government is not initiating any move to restart the factory though it has right to order management to revoke its decision.”

indianexpress: When last year Municipal Commissioner Dilip Band floated the idea of renaming Pimpri-Chinchwad as New Pune, he had drawn severe flak from across the twin industrial township. Band has since avoided speaking on the topic in public. Now, District Guardian Minister Ajit Pawar, whose party is ruling Pimpri-Chinchwad Municipal Corporation (PCMC), has hinted at renaming Pimpri-Chinchwad as New Pune.
 
“Like Navi Mumbai, there should be a New Pune. Pimpri-Chinchwad is not known and gets little importance,” he said last week during a function to celebrate 25 years of the PCMC. Pawar however said the decision to rename Pimpri-Chinchwad should be left to the citizens.

But citizens, activists, industrialists and politicians have reacted angrily to Pawar’s suggestion. The Pimpri-Chinchwad Congress has described Pawar’s utterance as “an attempt to destroy the separate identity of the town.”

Party chief Bhausaheb Bhoir said: “This is a political move and an attempt to play with the sentiments of the local population. We will oppose it tooth and nail.”

He said Pimpri-Chinchwad is a historical city with religious importance too. “Besides, in the last four-five decades, it has emerged as a leading auto and IT hub. It is here that auto giants like Bajaj Auto, Tata Motors, Force Motors, engineering units like Sandvik Thermax, Alfa Laval, KSB, Atlas Copco and SKF have their headquarters and are a global name.”
 

indianexpress: Portions of a 100-year-old building, which was in a dilapidated state, collapsed on Sunday afternoon at Centre Street in Camp. No injuries were reported, but a car parked in the vicinity was damaged.
Chandan Motichand, the owner, a resident of Bhavani Peth, said that he had written to the Pune Cantonment Board (PCB) a number of times to undertake repair works but neither did the Board respond nor did it give him permission to undertake repairs. The Cantonment firemen had cleared the rubble by late evening.

Meanwhile, the pandal of Akhil Paud Road Navratra Utsav Samiti located at survey no 44 Kelewadi was gutted in a fire around 5.30 pm on Sunday due to a suspected short circuit.

Nobody was injured as the volunteers of the mandal cleared the area before the fire could spread. It took two hours for the Erandwane fire brigade to douse the fire.

Pune Municipal Corporation (PMC) officials from Karve Road and Ghole Road ward offices rushed to the spot and even shifted the idol to a nearby temple, according to a press note issued by the PMC.

indianexpress: It was only in seventh standard that visually-impaired Kishore Gohil (35) stepped out of familiar environs without parental supervision. “Twice a week we had classes in school in seventh standard on mobility training. We were taught to walk on the road independently, take a bus, cross the road and various daily life skills,” said Gohil. His mother followed him the first two times; since then Gohil has been able to travel alone with his cane. Fortunately for Gohil, he studied in Mumbai in an institute, which had mobility instructors.

“None of the government-funded or aided training institutes for visually-impaired in Pune have mobility instructors. This is the case across Maharashtra, except for isolated institutes in Mumbai where awareness levels are high,” said Atul Tukaram Bamankar,(38) a freelance mobility instructor in Pune. “To my knowledge, I am probably the only one in Pune,” he said. Bamankar, whose father founded the Pune Blind Men’s Association, has applied in vain to various schools teaching the visually-impaired in Pune and across the State.

“If we cannot move independently, we have a double handicap. The schools refuse to think about the child’s future, about how they will cope once they leave the sheltered environment,” said Gohil, who is also on the executive committee of the National Federation for Blind, Mumbai.

Mobility training teaches the visually-impaired to be as independent as their situation permits. Children are taught to leverage their other sense. They learn tasks which the sighted take for granted like shaving, ablution, daily skills like dressing and folding their clothes, surviving on the roads, eating in restaurants and cooking, taking public transport to even finding a dropped coin. “Chances of making a mistake are reduced when these things are taught in school with proper methodology. Visually-impaired children do pick up these skills with time by trial and error. Sometimes, these errors can be costly,” Gohil said.

indianexpress: Photographer, nature lover and amateur botanist Shrikant Ingalhalikar has come up with a novel project. He is going to document 100 heritage trees of Pune in a bid to ensure their continuity and conservation.

“Pune has metamorphosed from a historical city, education centre, automobile hub and now to an IT city. The roadside trees have been the most unfortunate victims of this rapid change. Many of them have fallen to the mortality of urban planning rather than to natural reasons. At the juncture when the city is poised for unabated growth, it has become necessary to take care of them as they are struggling to survive in the smoke filled airs of Pune,” says Ingalhalikar, who has already penned four books based on nature.

Citing the example of a very special Palash tree that stood on the eastern side of the road from Gunjan Cinema to Yerawada Jail and which was hacked for road widening, Ingalhalikar says, “Instead of the usual glory of orange blossoms, this precious Palash had gorgeous golden coloured flowers that bloomed every summer. This was an example of a genetic mutation which happens naturally once in a million trees. Unfortunately, due to sheer ignorance this magnificent tree was cut down instead of being transplanted for road widening,” he says, adding that it is still never too late to show concern for such beautiful denizens of the roads of this historic city, that still adorn the roadsides in spite of a complete lack of attention to them.

techtree: India Digital Life Style Distributors (IDLDPL) has introduced the ‘Logic 3 i-station Traveler’ iPod speaker system in the country.

Measuring about 5 x 3.25 x 3.25-inches, the Traveler fits into any pocket upon folding, and makes for a stylish and portable speaker system.

The Traveler is powered by 4 AAA batteries, and is compatible with virtually any portable audio player. It can play media files via the 3.5mm stereo line-in cable.

It can be adjusted to hold iPods, MP3 players, PSPs, and mobile phones. For mobile phones, it comes with a 3.5 mm to 2.5 mm stereo converter for easy connecting.

Available in five colors including Black, Silver, Blue, Red, Pink, and Green, the Traveler is priced at Rs 1,999. A good gifting option, IDLDPL has launched it ahead of this festive season.

msnbc: EBay’s Skype is working with British cell phone service operator 3 to produce a handset that will allow users in Britain to make free calls on the Internet, a spokesman for the company said on Friday.

A spokesman for 3 confirmed that the group was working to make Internet calls mobile but would not confirm any further details or who it was working with.

The phone is expected to work in the normal way but to include a Skype function to contact other Skype customers.

Skype uses an Internet connection to place a voice call, cutting out the telephony network for which telecoms operators charge by the minute. Skype calls to other broadband-connected Skype users are free.

The Skype spokesman did not give any further details but said the phone would be out later this year.

3 is the British cell phone business of Hong Kong conglomerate Hutchison Whampoa.

cnn: If your hipbone is connected to your BlackBerry or your thighbone is connected to your cell phone, those vibrations you’re feeling in the car, in your pajamas, in the shower, may be coming from your headbone.

Cell phone users are reporting feeling vibrations even when their phones aren’t ringing.

 Many mobile phone addicts and BlackBerry junkies report feeling vibrations when there are none, or feeling as if they’re wearing a cell phone when they’re not.

The first time it happened to Jonathan Zaback, a manager at the public relations company Burson-Marsteller, he was out with friends and showing off his new BlackBerry Curve.

“While they were looking at it, I felt this vibration on my side. I reached down to grab it and realized there was no BlackBerry there.”

Zaback, who said he keeps his BlackBerry by his bed while he sleeps, checks it if he gets up in the middle of the night and wakes to an alarm on the BlackBerry each day, said this didn’t worry him.

“As long as it doesn’t mean a tumor is growing on my leg because of my BlackBerry, I’m fine with it,” he said. “Some people have biological clocks, I might have a biological BlackBerry.”

Some users compare the feeling to a phantom limb, which Merriam-Webster’s medical dictionary defines as “an often painful sensation of the presence of a limb that has been amputated.”

“Even when I don’t have the BlackBerry physically on my person, I do find myself adjusting my posture when I sit to accommodate it,” said Dawn Mena, an independent technology consultant based in Thousand oaks, California “I also laugh at myself as I reach to unclip it (I swear it’s there) and find out I don’t even have it on.”

Research in the area is scant, but theories abound about the phenomenon, which has been termed “ringxiety” or “fauxcellarm.”

infoweek: If you grow old in Japan, expect to be served food by a robot, ride a voice-recognition wheelchair or even possibly hire a nurse in a robotic suit — all examples of cutting-edge technology to care for the country’s rapidly graying population.

A woman demonstrates a robotic exoskeleton at a home care and rehabilitation convention Wednesday.

 With nearly 22 percent of Japan’s population already aged 65 or older, businesses here have been rolling out everything from easy-entry cars to remote-controlled beds, fueling a care technology market worth some $1.08 billion in 2006, according to industry figures.

At a home care and rehabilitation convention in Tokyo this week, buyers crowded round a demonstration of Secom Co.’s My Spoon feeding robot, which helps elderly or disabled people eat with a spoon- and fork-fitted swiveling arm.

Operating a joystick with his chin, developer Shigehisa Kobayashi maneuvered the arm toward a block of silken tofu, deftly getting the fork to break off a bite-sized piece. The arm then returned to a preprogrammed position in front of the mouth, allowing Kobayashi to bite and swallow.

“It’s all about empowering people to help themselves,” Kobayashi said. The Tokyo-based company has already sold 300 of the robots, which come with a price tag of $3,500.

“We want to give the elderly control over their own lives,” he said.

The rapidly aging population here has spurred a spate of concerns: a labor shortage, tax shortfalls, financial difficulties in paying the health bills and pensions of large numbers of elderly.