GPS – Leading the way

Posted on March 21, 2008 by Rashid Faridi
Go left or is it right? If you are afraid to ask, you can depend on these GPS devices.
GPS - Leading the way
New Delhi: Global positioning system (GPS) devices have begun making inroads, although the progress is slower than one would expect in India.

The recent additions to the list include MapmyIndia’s navigator and SatNav’s personal navigation device (PND). Both the devices claim to provide turn-by-turn navigation, besides sporting an average music player, an image viewer, and a calculator (for reasons best known to the company).

MapmyIndia’s navigator is primarily a small form factor device that uses the SiRF star III chipset, which is a mark of quality for pulling in the sometimes-tough satellite signals.

Priced at Rs 21,000 for the Delhi and NCR region and Rs 22,000 for rest of the country, MapmyIndia’s device might look pricey but nonetheless a must-have gadget for all those who hate taking roadside directions.

There are two models introduced by MapmyIndia, Delphi NAV200 and AMAX 06GP5A. The NAV200 comes equipped with maps connecting 55,000 villages and town points, 150 cities and 18 major cities containing complete set of streets, localities, sub-localities and landmarks.

The NAV200 can take up to 2GB SD memory card as opposed to the usual 1GB found on competing products.

This extra memory enables the NAV200 to store 200,000 points of interest (POIs). Now, the disadvantage is that the NAV200 fills the card almost completely with data, leaving you only about 60-90MB for your music/pictures/movies.

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Delhi to have intelligent traffic system by 2010

Posted on March 21, 2008 by Rashid Faridi

The capital’s traffic system is in for a major overhaul before the Commonwealth Games in 2010, with Delhi Police planning to put in place an IT-driven Intelligent Traffic System (ITS) which will monitor and streamline vehicular movement.

Dedicated lanes for athletes for traveling from Games village to various venues, live monitoring of vehicular flow, installation of ”intelligent” cameras at intersections — police believe this state-of-the-art system will help them solve the problems of congestion.

The capital’s police has already identified 55 major roads, measuring 217.96 km, and about 200 intersections to be covered under the system which could provide better solutions for traffic management.

”The ‘Intelligent Traffic System’ proposes to provide IT-driven solutions for the management of traffic in view of the Commonwealth Games which will be held two years later,” a senior police official said.

Day and night online monitoring of traffic on roads and intersections will be the main thrust of the ITS using high resolution cameras, the official said, adding road events like cycling, marathon and walkathon also require close monitoring.

”Athletes and games family would be provided dedicated lane to ensure hassle free movement from the village to training venues, hotels and other places of tourist interest,” he said.

A software would be developed for analysing video from the camera for definite incident detections and its management, the police official said, adding cameras would have the capacity of reading the registration number in Indian conditions.

The system could also identify disasters or accidents and response thereon, he added.

According to the official, the ITS will be helpful in ensuring and monitoring the movement of athletes, officials and visitors as it helps in the professional management of traffic in the city.

The ITS also envisages setting up of centralised command and control centre with facility of online real time display on video wall slides.

The video wall should be able to indicate the volume of traffic on the roads, flagging of accidents, availability of traffic police vehicles on GPS and vehicle-tracking system.

The official said the road network in the capital measures up to 31,083 kms and is managed through 701 signalised traffic junctions and 458 minor traffic blinkers.

The proposed ITS system will incorporate the existing infrastructure, the official said, adding a mechanism will be put in place to monitor and control traffic from regional and central traffic control room

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Global Warming Bringing Spring Earlier

Posted on March 21, 2008 by Rashid Faridi

Washington, D.C.’s famous cherry trees are primed to burst in a perfect pink peak about the end of this month. Thirty years ago, the trees usually waited to bloom until around April 5. In central California, the first of the field skipper sachem, drab little butterflies, was fluttering about on March 12. Just 25 years ago, that creature predictably emerged there anywhere from mid-April to mid-May.

And sneezes are coming earlier in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. On March 9, when allergist Donald Dvorin set up his monitor, maple pollen was already heavy in the air. Less than two decades ago, that pollen couldn’t be measured until late April.

For biologists, these trends are a worrying sign of the ominous effects of global warming.

The fingerprints of human-caused climate change are evident in seasonal timing changes for thousands of species on Earth, according to dozens of studies and last year’s authoritative report by the Nobel-prize winning Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.

More than 30 scientists told The Associated Press how global warming is affecting plants and animals at springtime across the country, in nearly every state.

“The alarm clock that all the plants and animals are listening to is running too fast,” Stanford University biologist Terry Root said.

Visible From Space

Spring officially arrives on the vernal equinox, which this year occurred today at 1:48 a.m. Eastern time.

But biological timing, known as phenology, has sped up considerably as the world has warmed on average in recent years.

Phenology data goes as far back as the 14th century, when people began tracking the harvest of wine grapes in France. The considerable amount of information shows that while there is a change in the timing of fall, the change is biggest in spring.

In the 1980s in particular there was a sudden, big leap forward in spring blooming, scientists noticed. And spring keeps coming earlier at an accelerating rate.

source:http://news.nationalgeographic.com 

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Hundreds of Salt Deposits Spotted on Mars

Posted on March 21, 2008 by Rashid Faridi

Evidence of a dense brine that once oozed on Mars could bring new vigor to the search for salt-loving life-forms on the red planet. Mikki Osterloo of the University of Hawaii and colleagues have discovered hundreds of small depressions that appear to be filled with the kinds of salt deposits that form on Earth when water evaporates.

The find gives more credence to theories of a wet Martian past—and it confirms the presence of chloride minerals on Mars, which some researchers have suspected for years but only now have the tools to find.

“I think the most exciting aspect of the results of this initial study is that we are continuing to discover new materials on the Martian surface,” Osterloo said.

And that opens doors in the search for life uniquely adapted to Mars.

Saline minerals are particularly exciting, the researchers say, because life as we know it depends on salt.

Osterloo’s team presents its findings in this week’s issue of the journal Science.

Dotting the Surface

The research team found the chloride deposits by studying images taken in 2001 by the Mars Odyssey Thermal Emission Imaging System (THEMIS), as well as supporting data from the Mars Global Surveyor and the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter.

These spacecraft are sending back the highest-resolution data yet from Mars, and scientists have been improving their techniques for teasing out subtle differences in surface composition from these images.

(See the first hi-res color images of Mars taken by the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter.)

So far the team has found about 200 deposits, all of which are smaller than 10 square miles (26 square kilometers). The features appear to be widespread across the Martian globe.

source:http://news.nationalgeographic.com

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