It began with a self-appraisal by the government. The government's mid-term report card of the 10th Plan outlines huge gaps in governance in states and hints at the unfeasibility of meeting development targets. The approach paper to the 11th Plan calls for faster and inclusive growth and is gung-ho about public-private partnerships (PPP).

While infrastructure dominates the Rs 350 billion PPP plans, the 2006 Asian Development Bank report says that state governments have marked water, waste management and health as focus areas. However, there are hurdles in PPP. Civil society is wary of privatisation and inefficient deal-making through such partnerships. Another genre of PPP, however, is proving to be much more effective. These are not government initiatives seeking private contracting partners; on the contrary, they are private initiatives, which are adopted by the government. Innovators of this model have bridged time and distance of India's rural hinterland to take health, education and social sector services to remote villages.

Foundations of Byrraju, Satyam and the Emergency Management Research Institute (EMRI) exemplify this intervention and approach. A call to the EMRI centre triggers the levers of communication that gets doctors and professionals to reach patients to a hospital in 38 minutes. Within seconds, the location of the village from where the call is made is identified on GIS maps. Public and private hospitals located in the vicinity appear on the screen with a drop-down menu showing the hospital's specialty, availability of beds, doctors and preparedness to handle the emergency. The closest team of stand-by ambulances with a ‘pilot' driver and an emergency management technician reach the destination. Expectedly citizens are open to these services. The EMRI has a presence across Andhra Pradesh and handles 23,000 calls per day.

Sixty people asked to chew gum as they prepared a meal had fewer hunger pangs and in fact ate less, reducing their sweet snack intake by 46.5 calories, than those who cooked without chewing on any gum, researchers said.

Several studies have found that chewing food also makes you feel fuller.

A chopped up apple provides a better snack than apple juice or apple puree, which fail to completely satisfy rumbling tummies. "Consuming a whole apple, sliced before lunch, reduced total meal energy intake by 15 per cent," said Julie Flood, of the study carried out by University Park in Pennsylvania.

Although apple juice or puree contain the same number of calories as an apple, around 152, people offered a meal after consuming a sliced apple ate less than those who drank the juice or spooned up the puree.

Australian doctors in a far-north Queensland hospital saved the life of an Italian tourist by putting him on a drip-feed of vodka to flush out the poison he had drunk in a suicide attempt, local media reported Wednesday.

"The patient was drip-fed about three standard drinks an hour for three days in the intensive care unit," physician Todd Fraser said Tuesday. "The hospital's administrators were also very understanding when we explained our reasons for buying a case of vodka."

Fraser told Australia's AAP news agency that the 24-year-old was brought to Mackay Base Hospital after drinking antifreeze, a chemical compound that can cause renal failure and is often fatal.

He was administered pharmaceutical-grade alcohol as an antidote to the poison. Supplies soon ran out and had to be topped up from the local shop. The Italian made a full recovery.

Op Amp Integrator

CIRCUIT

    & nbsp;   &n bsp;   &nb sp;   &nbs p;     ;         OP INT.CIRCUT     & nbsp;   &n bsp;   &nb sp;

The integrator basically works like this: whatever current I you get flowing in R1, gets integrated across capacitor C1. The output voltage Vo is simply the voltage across C1. One great application of the integrator is generating a ramp voltage. You can do this by placing a fixed voltage at VS that forces a constant current through R1. The capacitor then integrates this current creating a ramping voltage. The action is just like a garden hose running water at a constant rate causing the level in a bucket to rise steadily. The smaller the diameter bucket (smaller capacitor), the faster the increase in water level (greater voltage).  The switch is needed to discharge the capacitor (empty the bucket) at the end of a ramping cycle.

RAMP GENERATOR

The circuit essentially integrates the input current Is = VS / R1 across capacitor C1.  After a time interval T, the output is the capacitor voltage described by

If you apply a constant voltage at VS, the output voltage increases steadily (ramp).  You can predict the ramp's voltage at any time T by the simplified equation

 CIRCUIT ANALYSIS   Try the circuit. What is the output voltage V(3) after 100us? With VS= -1, R1=10k and C1 = 10nF, the output should be Vo = -1/1nF x (-1/ 10k) x 100us = 10V.

Look at the switch control voltage VRESET at V(4). VRESET turns the switch OFF (VRESET=0V) and ON (VRESET=5V). Switch S1 is initially OFF.  After 100us, S1 turns ON discharging the capacitor for 10us. Then, the ramping cycle begins again.

 HANDS-ON DESIGN   Design a circuit that ramps faster or slower than the original circuit.  The equation above tells you that you can change VS, R1 or C1 to achieve your goal.  (Example: For a slower ramp that reaches only 5V in 100us, make R1 equal to 2x its initial value. This cuts the current through R1 by ½ decreasing the ramp rate by ½. ) You may have noticed that this is an inverting circuit; a negative VS creates a positive output.  Need to create a create a negative ramp? Apply a positive VS.

SWITCH RESISTANCE

How important are the ON and OFF resistances of the switch in this application? Return the circuit to its original values (R1=10k, C1=1000pF, and VS=-1). 

 CIRCUIT INSIGHT  Suppose you had a switch with an OFF resistance that‘s too small. What would happen to ramp voltage? Reduce the OFF resistance from 10MEG to a smaller value like 1MEG by modifying the switch model statement

    & nbsp; .MODEL  SRES   VSWITCH(VON=0 VOFF=5 RON=100 ROFF=1MEG)

Try the circuit and plot the output V(3). Did the output reach your expected value?  A smaller ROFF may discharge C1 significantly during the ramping interval.

What about an ON resistance that's too large during the reset interval? Return ROFF to its initial value and increase RON from 100 to 1000.

    & nbsp;   &n bsp;  .MODEL SRES VSWITCH(VON=0 VOFF=5 RON=1000 ROFF=10MEG)

Run the circuit. Did capacitor C1 discharge fully in the reset interval? What happens if RON is even larger like 10000?

SIMULATION NOTE

SPICE's source statement named PULSE is a convenient way to generate a repeating pulsed waveform according to syntax

    & nbsp; PULSE( {v1} {v2} {tdelay} {trise} {tfall} {width} {period} ).

So the statement

    & nbsp;   &n bsp;  VRESET  4  0  PULSE(0V 5V 0 0.1US 0.1US 100US 110US)

creates a repeating pulse from VRESET that's defined by 0V for 100us and 5V for 10us for a total period of 110us. The rise and fall times are 0.1 us.

The Global Positioning System (GPS) is a network of 24 Navstar satellite aorbiting Earth at 11,000 miles. Originally established by the U.S. Department of Defence (DOD) at a cost of about US$13 billion, access to GPS is free to all users, including those in other countries. The system�s positioning and timing data are used for a variety of applications, including air, land and sea navigation, vehicle and vessel tracking, surveying and mapping, and asset and natural resource management. With military accuracy restrictions partially lifted in March 1996 and fully lifted in May 2000, GPS can now pinpoint the location of objects as small as a penny anywhere on the earth�s surface.

GPS System Segments

    The Global Positioning System is comprised of three segments: satellite constellation, ground control/monitoring network and user receiving equipment. Formal GPS Joint Program Office (JPO) programmatic terms for these components are space, operational control and user equipment segments, respectively.

1. The satellite constellation contains the satellites in orbit that provide the ranging signals and data messages to the user equipment.
2. The operational control segment (OCS) tracks and maintains the satellites in space. The OCS monitors satellite health and signal integrity and maintains the orbital configuration of the satellites. Furthermore, the OCS updates the satellite clock corrections and ephemerides as well as numerous other parameters essential to determining user position, velocity, and time (PVT).
3. Lastly, the user receiver equipment performs the navigation, timing or other related functions (e.g. surveying).

Location of GPS ground stations

The two possible locations

GPS System Operation

    The basic idea behind GPS is to use satellites in space as reference points for locations on earth. With GPS, signals from the satellites arrive at the exact position of the user and are triangulated. This triangulation is the key behind accurate location determining and is achieved through several steps.

Well it isn't some strange form of tooth decay as you might initially imagine. Bluetooth is the name of a new technology that is now becoming commercially available. It promises to change significantly the way we use machines.

1  Take a look around

     Look around you at the moment, you have your keyboard connected to the computer, as well as a printer, mouse, monitor and so on. What (literally) joins all of these together?, they are connected by cables. Cables have become the bane of many offices, homes etc. Most of us have experienced the 'joys' of trying to figure out what cable goes where, and getting tangled up in the details. Bluetooth essentially aims to fix this, it is a cable-replacement technology
 

2  How?

    Conceived initially by Ericsson, before being adopted by a myriad of other companies, Bluetooth is a standard for a small , cheap radio chip to be plugged into computers, printers, mobile phones, etc.A Bluetooth chip is designed to replace cables by taking the information normally carried by the cable, and transmitting it at a special frequency to a receiver Bluetooth chip, which will then give the information received to the computer, phone whatever.
 

3  How about ?

    That was the original idea, but the originators of the original idea soon realised that a lot more was possible. If you can transmit information between a computer and a printer, why not transmit data from a mobile phone to a printer, or even a printer to a printer?. The projected low cost of a Bluetooth chip (~$5), and its low power consumption, means you could literally place one anywhere.
 

4  Ideas, ideas...

    With this viewpoint interest in Bluetooth is soaring, lots of ideas are constantly emerging, some practical and feasible e.g.: Bluetooth chips in freight containers to identify cargo when a lorry drives into a storage depot, or a headset that communicates with a mobile phone in your pocket, or even in the other room, other ideas not so feasible: Refrigerator communicating with your Bluetooth-enabled computer, informing it that food supply is low, and to inform the retailer over the internet.
 

5  The future

    Whatever the ideas, Bluetooth is set to take off. To be honest it's going to be forced down the consumers necks, whether they want it or not, as too many companies have invested in it. This website is generally geared towards the technical issues surrounding Bluetooth, and its implementation in real life. But free feel to have a look around anyway, and see why this technology will have such a big impact on our lives. 

6  Looking after your teeth

    By the way if, you're wondering where the Bluetooth name originally came from, it named after a Danish Viking and King, Harald Bl�tand (translated as Bluetooth in English), who lived in the latter part of the 10th century. Harald Bl�tand united and controlled Denmark and Norway (hence the inspiration on the name: uniting devices through Bluetooth). He got his name from his very dark hair which was unusual for Vikings, Bl�tand means dark complexion. However a more popular, (but less likely reason), was that Old Harald had a inclination towards eating Blueberries , so much so his teeth became stained with the colour, leaving Harald with a rather unique set of molars. And you thought your teeth were bad...