Delhi launches SDI portal

Posted on December 11, 2009 by Rashid Faridi

Delhi Spatial Data Infrastructure portal that provides detailed information on the capital’s overground and underground utilities has been launched on 27 November 2009.The underground utilities comprising water, sewer, telephones, power lines etc have been mapped for the first time using state-of –the- art technology. The availability of underground utilities in digital form would enable the concerned line departments to undertake preventive maintenance programmes as well as locate the fault in the underground utility with precisionaccording to Delhi Chief Minister Ms. Dikshit said.The common data base will be made available to various government departments for design, planning, execution and monitoring of all infrastructure projects. This would help improve efficiency and productivity of all city services by reducing conflict of interest and cost of duplication of work.For the first time in India an entire city had been mapped on a large scale (1:2000) using aerial photography to produce an accurate base map, capture and overlay all overground and underground utilities, create a 3-D city model and undertake property survey of all dwelling units.

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The Future of Energy Storage: Printable, Moldable Batteries Made From Paper

Posted on December 9, 2009 by Rashid Faridi

Simply coating a sheet of paper with ink made of carbon nanotubes and silver nanowires makes a highly conductive storage device, said Yi Cui, assistant professor of materials science and engineering.Scientists have made batteries and supercapacitors with little more than ordinary office paper and some carbon and silver nanomaterials. The research, published online December 7 in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, brings scientists closer to lightweight printable batteries that may one day be molded into computers, cell phones or solar panels.

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Posted in Alternative Energy | 2 Comments

Balancing Protein Intake, Not Cutting Calories, May Be Key to Long Life

Posted on December 6, 2009 by Rashid Faridi

Getting the correct balance of proteins in our diet may be more important for healthy ageing than reducing calories, new research funded by the Wellcome Trust and Research into Ageing suggests.

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Hawaiian Hot Spot

Posted on December 4, 2009 by Rashid Faridi

For geologists Hawai has long been a puzzle. Plate tectonic theory readily explains the existence of volcanoes at boundaries where plates split apart or collide, but mid-plate volcanoes such as those that built the Hawaiian island chain have been harder to fit into the theory. A classic explanation, proposed nearly 40 years ago, has been that magma is supplied to the volcanoes from upwellings of hot rock, called mantle “plumes,” that originate deep in the Earth’s mantle. Evidence for these deep structures has been sketchy, however. Now, a sophisticated array of seismometers deployed on the sea floor around Hawaii has provided the first high-resolution seismic images of a mantle plume extending to depths of at least 1,500 kilometers (932 miles)…

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