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indianexpress:  The new Holkar bridge project at Khadki — which is aimed at easing the daily traffic snarls — will take off only in February. The positive signal has emanated from the Pune Municipal Corporation after the Army communicated its decision to a give a permanent no objection certificate to the civic body.

Early this month, the Army had declared that it would lease out defence land for bridges that would help in improving the traffic situation in the city. “PMC has already submitted proposal about the new Holkar bridge to us, and it has our full support,” said Pune Sub Area Commander Brig R J Sharma. “However, the NoC paperwork is bound to take time as the final go-ahead is given at the government-level. In view of this, we have already submitted a letter to them conveying our decision to give them the NoC. Now the ball is in their court… whatever delay is there, it will be due to their internal problems,” he said.

“The bridge is expected to reduce the traffic load by almost 50 percent and considering the public requirement, the Army will give all the necessary support, to have the new bridge ready, as soon as possible,” said Sharma.

When contacted, Pune Municipal Commissioner Praveen Pardeshi confirmed that the corporation had received the letter from Brig Sharma, but said the work will take off only next year. “While we have already started the tender process and are in the midst of making plans, the actual construction won’t begin before February, as the new bridge requires a lot of detailed planning,” he said.

indianexpress: For a city witnessing a realty boom in all corners, shockingly, the basic amenities like public urinals and toilets are woefully inadequate. Health norms say there should be at least one public urinal per hundred people. In reality the number is one public urinal for every 9,000 people. What is even more shocking is that there is absolutely no public urinal for women and disabled people in the city.

These facts came to light in response to a Right to Information Act (RTI) application filed by activist Vijay Kumbhar. “Despite the health norms being in place, PMC is clearly apathetic towards providing basic health amenities like public urinals. The norms say that there should be one public urinal every 100 people. However, there are only 352 urinals in Pune, which has crossed a population of 30 lakh.”

He said the situation was still worse as there were no public urinals for women and the disabled. Kumbhar said on several major roads in the city, no public urinals could be found at long stretches. “On many major roads in the city, like Sinhgad Road and Bajirao Road, only one urinal could be found for kilometers. For example, no urinal exists between the stretch of Wakdewadi and Deccan Gymkhana bus stand. The same is true in case of University chowk to Aundh or Baner.”

In Pune, there are 772 pay-and-use public toilets with 11,319 seats, out of which, 5,731 are for men and 5,588 for women. “Most of these pay-and-use are for slum-dwellers and not on the public roads for general public. So in this case, if someone relieves himself in open space, PMC’s nuisance detection squad might fine that person for dirtying the city. When there is lack of public sanitation facilities, the civic administration should not be charging fine from poor people.” Kumbhar said that he would soon be serving a notice to the PMC in this regard.

indianexpress: The loss-making Pune Mahanagar Parivahan Mahamandal Ltd (PMPML) has undertaken a series of ‘cost saving’ measures which include transfer of mechanics from the main Swargate depot, experimenting with new horns and scrapping old buses. It has also put forth a proposal to change the mild steel (MS) metal structure used for buses to aluminum.

“To avoid replication of work, we shifted 32 mechanics from Swargate to ten other depots last month. It has reduced some congestion at the main depot as well as given different tasks to the mechanics,” said chief engineer of PMPML Sunil M Burse.

Also, this year for the first time PMPML took a policy decision to scrap old buses. Out of its current fleet of 1,131 around 500 buses are 10-16 years old and are prohibited by rule from plying on road. However, 62 were scrapped in the last four months and over 100 buses are going to be scrapped in the next six months. “Old buses consume more diesel, have more breakdowns and their repairing takes about a month when it should not take more than three days. We are pushing the concept of scraping buses older than seven years,” said Burse. Also, the company has experimented with electric horns.

What is really going to improve efficiency according to Burse is the shift to aluminum from MS. “Aluminum is light and will improve efficiency drastically. Buses will no more require melding and will be easy to repair. We will also get more money when they are sold off as scrap,” said Burse.

However, aluminum is expensive. While an MS bus costs Rs 6.5 lakh, aluminum one costs at least 20 per cent more. Currently, the revenue earned by the company from advertisements, renting of its premises and ticket sales is Rs 29 per km while its expenditure amounts to Rs 35 per km.

indianexpress:  The Khadki police on Monday booked Vilas Guhaji Shirolkar, deputy director of finger prints, department of state Criminal Investigation Department (CID) for allegedly producing a fake caste certificate at the time of joining the service. Ramchandra Maruti Charvilkar (55), Superintendent of Police and Director of Finger Print’s Department, has lodged a police complaint in this case.The complaint states that Shirolkar, who is currently posted at Kalyan in Thane district, submitted a fake caste certificate to join the service in 1980 under the scheduled caste quota. According to the police, Shirolkar got promoted four times in the last 27 years of his service. An offence was lodged against him following a complaint made by a retired officer from his department.
 
The complainant has also mentioned that Shirolkar’s caste certificate had only the tehsildar’s stamp but not his signature. Shirolkar, was however, not arrested till reports last came in. The investigation officer of the case, Assistant Police Inspector S V Pawar said that further course of action will be decided after verifying the genuineness of Shirolkar’s caste certificate.

indianexpress: Sugarcane farmers need to adopt low-cost input models instead of switching over to a different crop, said chairman of Rena Sugar Cooperative, Latur Yashwantrao Ganpatrao Patil at the Vasandata Sugar Institute (VSI), today. “Because of the excess production last year and the one expected this year farmers are hesitating to plant sugarcane and hopping to other crops,” he said.

“In 2003-04, sugar procured from crushed cane was 22 lakh tonnes, In 2006-07, it has increased to 91 lakh. Because of excess production, the procurement prices have come down. Next year, fewer farmers will plant sugarcane. It is a cycle which happens every three years,” he said.

Instead of this kind of a cycle, farmers should adopt some organic practices like bio fertilizers, vermicompost, manure etc besides using chemical fertilizers and lower their input costs, so that they get a better margin, he said.

The workshop at VSI for the next five days is a training session for farmers on new farming techniques. Around 70 farmers attended the first day.
 

techtree: SatNav Technologies based in Hyderabad has launched a Global Positing System (GPS) Bluetooth receiver for smart phones, under its SatGuide brand.

It’s a GPS SiRFIII based Bluetooth device and a total solution of GPS Bluetooth wireless technology. This is a device for users that carry portable gadgets like PDAs, smart phones, and laptops.

The receiver has maximum 10m operational range from the parent device. It’s a sensitive device with 159dBm tracking that according to the company can counter any weather condition to locate any destination.

It works in sync with the mobile phones. It acts as a receiver of the signals transmitted via satellites that are converted into words on to the mobile phones.

This matchbox shape device measures 61.5×43.8×21.5 mm in dimensions and weighs around 55.2 grams (with battery).

The device has 0.1s reacquisition time with built-in ceramic patch antenna and a rechargeable Li-Ion battery. With 4 hours charging, the battery can offer nonstop 10 hours usage with 710mAh battery.

techtree: Transcend has announced the arrival of its new SD/MMC card reader S5 in the country.

S5, a portable card reader comes in an all-white design with multi-format convenience and built-in USB connector. It can be plugged directly into any USB 2.0 (or 1.1) port and has a data transfer rate of up to 480Mb/s.

In addition, the new card reader supports the latest SDHC standard for hi-end large capacity memory cards.

The card reader allows users to access data from newer, mini-size mobile phone memory cards — such as miniSD, microSD, and MMCmicro via an adapter.

The bright LED display on the device indicates card insertion and data transfer. It’s compatible with Windows 98SE/Me/2000/XP/Vista, Mac OS 9.X or later, Linux Kernel 2.4 or later

techtree: HP has launched its latest Quad-Core workstation models in the country.

The new range including xw8600, xw6600, and xw4600 workstation series promises to deliver optimal power to meet the high-end computing demands of businesses.

The xw8600 and xw6600 workstation series are powered by 2 next-generation Quad-Core and Dual-Core Intel Xeon processors.

Meanwhile, the xw4600 workstation offers a choice between next-generation Intel Core 2 Duo and Quad-Core processors.

According to HP, the workstations are 90% recyclable by weight and come standard with more than 80% efficient power supplies, thus saving businesses money by reducing power requirements.

These workstations will cater to a wide range of applications including software design, architecture, high-definition video, game development, scientific imaging, and oil exploration, the company said.

usatoday: If you find it unnerving when robots interact with humans on menial tasks, Honda is raising the stakes: On Tuesday it rolled out two humanoid robots that work in pairs.

The Associated Press reports that at a demonstration in Tokyo, two child-sized Asimo robots served tea and performed other tasks in coordination with each other.

Honda says its new robot buddy system allows the humanoids to share information about each other’s location and what each is doing.

During the demonstration, the 51-inch tall robots, which resemble tiny astronauts, made their way around the room, pushing a refreshments cart and picking up and setting down drink trays.

Honda say upgrades allow robots to recognize drink choices and carry a tray with a thirst-quencher to the person who ordered it.

Perhaps the most unsettling of all, the Asimo can analyze and predict the movement of real humans so that the robots don’t get in the way.