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indianexpress:  One stage, multitudes of music lovers and nine maestros who brought Indian classical melodies back to life. The most awaited art and cultural event, Sawai Gandharva Sangeet Mahotsav, entered its 55th year at the Ramanbaug High School grounds in Shaniwar Peth today. The highlight, of course, was the presence of Pandit Bhimsen Joshi, who has been maintaining a low profile for two years now.

Gaikwad gharana’ s Gaikwad Brothers from Baroda commenced the festival, lending to their recital different hues of tabla and harmonium, redolent with shehnai, even while they forayed into the bandishein composed by Gangadhar Gaikwad, their late father. In an attempt to present the audience with a bouquet of different cultures, they instilled in their performance harmonious tunes from Gujarat, Maharashtra, Rajasthan and Saurashtra, winding up with Mehendi Rang lagyo , a popular refrain in Gujarati folk music domain.

Anand Bhate from the Kirana gharana then took over. Famous as a singer who renders the Balgandharva style of compositions, Bhate was eulogised for his M. Tech in computer science. Closely associated with natya sangeet as a child, the singer gradually forayed into classical music, while he was learning the art under Pandit Joshi. He started off his performance with raag Yaman, following his bandishein with the bhajan Kanhoba tuzi ghongadi . Balgandharv’s natya geet, Johar mai baap, then pursued, especially on the request of Pandit Bhimsen’s son, Shrinivas, while the former sat throughout Bhate’s recital.

indianexpress: Our of close to 10 lakh ration card-holders in the district, as many as 1.32 lakh hold fake ration cards. What has come to light following inquiry by a squad has been set up by the district collectorate is that the entire lot of fake ration cards hitherto uncovered are in the rural areas of the district.

Given the high percentage of the bogus ration cards, at over 13 per cent, collectorate officials are now conducting an inquiry to expose the errant officials who had issued the ration cards. The crackdown plan also comprises cancellation of the bogus ration cards as well as random checks in urban segments of the district to gauge the extent of the malaise in the city areas.

It is now feared that the case will be no different in the urban areas of the district.

With the state government issuing directives recently that cancellation of fake ration cards should be done in a month’s time, followed by corrective action, district officers are doing the rounds and “conducting surprise checks” in the urban areas.

Additional Collector Vasant Vaidya said a door-to-door survey is on and stringent action will be taken against officials who have issued ration cards without the requisite procedure in the district.

The one-year drive, as instructed by the state government, saw 1,32,000 fake ration cards in the rural areas being exposed. According to the district supply officer Snehal Barge, ration cards were issued to those who’d not even filledthe mandatory application form.

indianexpress:  From eco-friendly ways of pest control to making nutritive fodder from agricultural waste, from saving ships from cyclones to recycling of CDs, solutions to a wide range of environmental problems devised by close to 106 young scientists across the country will be on display at the University of Pune as part of the science fair Initiative for Research and Innovation in Science (IRIS).

On Friday, students will present their innovations, which have been selected from among 2,000 entries across the country on a wide range of subjects including zoology, botany, biotechnology, environmental science, and more. The participants belong to three categories, the first being for students between standard V and VIII, the second for students between standard IX and XII, and the third for college and post graduate students under 35 years.

The fair was inaugurated on Thursday by UoP vice-chancellor Narendra Jadhav, Intel South Asia Corporate Affairs director Rahul Bedi, Inter-University Centre for Astronomy and Astrophysics (IUCAA) director Naresh Dadich, and others.

IRIS has been organised jointly by the Department of Science and Technology (DST), Confederation of Indian Industry (CII), and Intel. It is a merger of two programmes, Intel’s Science Talent Discovery Fair and DST-CII’s Steer the Big Idea. It will be held at the University of Pune on Friday, while the results will be announced on Saturday.

indianexpress: Cloudy weather saw the maximum temperature dipping to 24.4 degree Celsius on Thursday, almost five degrees Celsius below normal for Pune. With the minimum temperature at 13.4 degree Celsius, there was only a 10-degree Celsius span, sending the people of the city on a hunt for their woollens. And the wetaher is likely remain the same for the next two days.

According to met officials such cloud cover is seen in northern parts of the country where ‘cloud formations’ are quite prominent throughout the day. Director Weather Central of the India Meteorological Department Dr Medha Khole said on Wednesday the maximum temperature was 26.9 degrees Celsius.

The chill factor manifested as there was a trough in the easterlies extending from Lakshadweep to South Gujarat coast. With this prominent trough formation, the “weather remained cloudy” Khole said.

indianexpress: Corporators from the ruling and opposition parties in the Pune Municipal Corporation (PMC) are usually found battling each other. On Thursday however, two NCP leaders — one, the husband of a corporator, and another sitting corporator — had a stand-off inside the PMC’s main building over development work in the wife’s ward.
The incident occurred when the husband, himself a former Shiv Sena corporator, entered the office cabin of the senior NCP leader and urged him to ask the civic administration to get development work in his wife’s ward approved. With the administration not clearing it immediately, the husband took Nilesh Nikam, another NCP corporator, to Municipal Commissioner Praveensinh Pardeshi to get the work approved.

He later barged into the cabin of the senior NCP leader and engaged in a scuffle. The administration staff had to intervene and cool things off.

indianexpress: The Maharashtra State Board of Secondary and Higher Secondary Education on Thursday announced the websites where the results for the Secondary School Certificate (SSC) and the Higher Secondary Certificate (HSC) examinations will be put up at 11 am on Friday. The results will be released on the internet simultaneously as they are given out to the schools and junior colleges.

Students who appeared for the HSC examination can avail of their results at www.mh-hsc.ac.in, while the results for the SSC examination will be put up on www.mh-ssc.ac.in.

Meanwhile, the results as per individual centres and the eight divisions Pune, Nagpur, Aurangabad, Mumbai, Amravati, Kolhapur, Nashik and Latur will be available at www.msbshse.ac.in.

All the information on the results can be downloaded from these websites. For further details on the results, students can contact their respective secondary schools or junior college.

pcworld: Supercomputers may soon be the same size as a laptop if IBM brings to market research detailed on Thursday, in which pulses of light replace electricity to make data transfer between processor cores on a chip up to one-hundred times faster.

The technology, called silicon nanophotonics, replaces some of the wires on a chip with pulses of light on tiny optical fibers for quicker and more power-efficient data transfers between cores on a chip, said Will Green, research scientist at IBM.

The technology, which can transfers data up to a distance of a few centimeters, is about 100 times faster than wires and consumes one-tenth as much power, Green said. The lower power requirement should reduce operational costs for supercomputers, he said.

“The silicon nanophotonic effort is a high-bandwidth, low-power technology for cores to communicate,” Green said.

The technical basis of this research is the same science that led to the development of optical fiber and Internet communications. Silicon nanophotonics brings similar optical communication on chips for centimeters instead of miles, Green said.

The improved data bandwidth and power efficiency of silicon nanophotonics will bring massive computing power to desks, Green said. “We’ll be able to have hundreds or thousands of cores on a chip,” Green said. Users will be able to render virtual worlds in real-time and have a better gaming experience, he said.

techtree: Microsoft Hardware has recently unveiled its Mobile Memory Mouse 8000, which the company claims, delivers outstanding performance, control, and convenience.

The Mobile Memory Mouse 8000 is an all-in-one transceiver, combining wireless freedom, 1GB flash memory, and a magnetic connection for easy recharge. It is the first of its kind to have 1GB flash memory built into the transceiver. The mouse can be recharged while working, using the bundled USB transceiver.

Overall, the mouse is ergonomically designed to be more responsive and precise besides offering smoother tracking. The advanced magnifier button allows enlarging and editing details; the wireless connection allows accessing the PC up to a 30-feet range; while the scrolling system can be moved from side to side and up and down.

The Mobile Memory Mouse is available across computer hardware retail stores for Rs 6,100, and comes in an elegant casing.

techtree: Riding on the success of its HTC Touch, HTC Corp has launched the HTC Touch Dual that sports a sliding keypad design and 3.5G wireless connectivity among others.

Like the HTC Touch, the HTC Touch Dual features HTC TouchFLO gesture recognition technology, with the added ability to view photo slide shows using on-screen controls plus zoom-in and rotate images with just a hand.

TouchFLO technology enables enhanced finger touch scrolling and browsing of Web pages, documents, messages, and contact lists.

Salient features of the HTC Touch Dual include: a robust Qualcomm MSM7200 chip running at 400MHz, and Windows Mobile software.

Apart from the HTC Touch Dual, HTC has also announced an additional color variant and a free full-screen virtual keypad for the original HTC Touch.

techtree: Samsung Electronics has launched the “Metal 5″ in India, claimed to be the world’s slimmest 5 mega pixels camera phone.

A metallic finish slider, the “Metal 5″ provides complete imaging solutions, ranging from image correction to capturing the widest view with panorama shots.

The shots can be viewed on a 2.2-inches LCD screen with 16 million colors, or played directly on TV with TV Out, or wirelessly printed through Bluetooth printing.

“Metal 5″ has a host of multimedia features for people on the move. For music lovers, there’s an embedded MP3 player and stereo FM radio. Bluetooth capabilities allow users enjoy music seamlessly through the wireless stereo headset. The NetFront Browser v3.4 (for PC-like browser capabilities on mobile) enables improved Internet browsing.

Besides, the “Metal 5″ is equipped with a mobile tracker, emergency SMS alert, and privacy lock.