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Hindustan Times
2 days ago
- Business
- Hindustan Times
Bengaluru's Yellow Line Metro gets crucial safety clearance, opening expected soon: Report
Bengaluru's long-awaited Yellow Line is finally nearing its launch, with the Bangalore Metro Rail Corporation Limited (BMRCL) receiving a critical safety certification for its train and signalling systems. The certification was issued by Italcertifer, a state-owned Italian firm tasked with evaluating the safety of the system. (PTI File) According to a report by Deccan Herald, the Independent Safety Assessment (ISA), mandatory for driverless train operations, was submitted to BMRCL on Thursday evening. The certification was issued by Italcertifer, a state-owned Italian firm tasked with evaluating the safety of the system. 'We'll go through the report and then submit it to the CMRS,' an official with direct knowledge of the matter told DH. The ISA certification had faced delays due to software glitches in the signalling system developed by Siemens India Limited in collaboration with Siemens AG, the report further added. These glitches affected datasets that control key train operations. Engineers had to fix and field-test the software before re-verification, which pushed back the timeline. (Also Read: Bengaluru man lures 9-year-old with ice cream, held for sexual assault inside bakery: Report) The BMRCL adheres to Safety Integrity Level 4, the highest standard in metro rail safety, and required the ISA clearance before seeking a statutory inspection by the Commissioner of Metro Railway Safety (CMRS). The CMRS for the Southern Circle, AM Chowdhary, is expected to conduct a detailed inspection of the Yellow Line, including its tracks, stations, viaducts, and other infrastructure, later this month. The inspection process will likely span three to four days. Once the CMRS report is submitted, typically within a week and often with conditions, BMRCL will work on meeting those requirements before requesting clearance from the state government. The final approval will also involve the union government, a joint partner in the Namma Metro project. In early July, BMRCL Managing Director M Maheshwar Rao had announced that the Yellow Line was expected to open by August 15. Currently, the metro authority has three trains ready to operate on the line, with a fourth trainset expected to be dispatched from Kolkata-based Titagarh Rail Systems Limited (TRSL) by the fourth week of July. TRSL is expected to supply two new trains per month starting in September, with all 15 trainsets to be delivered by March 2025, the publication reported. (Also Read: Woman killed, four injured as BMTC electric bus rams into canteen in Peenya)


BBC News
2 days ago
- Science
- BBC News
UK scientists melt 'world's oldest ice' to reveal Earth's ancient history
A sample of the world's oldest ice has arrived at a research station in the UK, ready for ice was extracted from the deep ocean in East Antarctica earlier this year and is thought to be around 1.2 million years old. Scientists are now melting the ice, in the hope that it will reveal more about the Earth's environmental history. It's also hoped that by studying historic temperature and greenhouse gas levels, it will be possible to predict future climate change. What's the latest? For the next seven weeks, a team based in the UK city of Cambridge will slowly melt the Antarctic it's not the ice itself the scientists are interested in, it's what's trapped within will release ancient dust, volcanic ash, and even tiny marine algae that were locked inside when water turned to materials can help scientists better understand what wind patterns, temperature, and sea levels were like more than a million years are excited about what the melted ice could Liz Thomas, head of ice core research at the British Antarctic Survey explained: "This is a completely unknown period of our Earth's history"Our climate system has been through so many different changes that we really need to be able to go back in time to understand these different processes and different tipping points," Dr Thomas air and other particles formed hundreds of thousands of years ago, which scientists hope could provide us with important information about the Earth's thought it could also help solved one of the major mysteries in our planet's climate history. How was the ice extracted? The ice was extracted by an international team of scientists, which was led by the Italian Institute of Polar Sciences and included 10 European at temperatures of -35C, the team drilled a 1.7 mile-long piece of ice from deep within the same length as just over 26-and-a-half professional football pitches!The ice was chopped into one metre blocks and was carefully transported by boat from Antarctica and then by road to various scientific laboratories in Europe - including the UK, Germany and Switzerland.


The Standard
2 days ago
- Science
- The Standard
From Antarctica to Brussels, hunting climate clues in old ice
An aerial view of the 200-foot-tall (60-meter-tall) front of the Getz Ice Shelf with cracks, in Antarctica, in this 2016 handout image. NASA/Handout via REUTERS


France 24
2 days ago
- Science
- France 24
From Antarctica to Brussels, hunting climate clues in old ice
Trapped inside the cylindrical icicles are tiny air bubbles that can provide a snapshot of what the earth's atmosphere looked like back then. "We want to know a lot about the climates of the past because we can use it as an analogy for what can happen in the future," said Harry Zekollari, a glaciologist at Vrije Universiteit Brussel (VUB). Zekollari was part of a team of four that headed to the white continent in November on a mission to find some of the world's oldest ice -- without breaking the bank. Ice dating back millions of years can be found deep inside Antarctica, close to the South Pole, buried under kilometres of fresher ice and snow. But that's hard to reach and expeditions to drill it out are expensive. A recent EU-funded mission that brought back some 1.2-million-year-old samples came with a total price tag of around 11 million euros (around $12.8 million). To cut costs, the team from VUB and the nearby Universite Libre de Bruxelles (ULB) used satellite data and other clues to find areas where ancient ice might be more accessible. Blue ice Just like the water it is made of, ice flows towards the coast -- albeit slowly, explained Maaike Izeboud, a remote sensing specialist at VUB. And when the flow hits an obstacle, say a ridge or mountain, bottom layers can be pushed up closer to the surface. In a few rare spots, weather conditions like heavy winds prevent the formation of snow cover -- leaving thick layers of ice exposed. Named after their colouration, which contrasts with the whiteness of the rest of the continent, these account for only about one percent of Antarctica territory. "Blue ice areas are very special," said Izeboud. Her team zeroed in on a blue ice stretch lying about 2,300 meters (7,500 feet) above sea level, around 60 kilometres (37 miles) from Belgium's Princess Elisabeth Antarctica Research Station. Some old meteorites had been previously found there -- a hint that the surrounding ice is also old, the researchers explained. A container camp was set up and after a few weeks of measurements, drilling, and frozen meals, in January the team came back with 15 ice cores totalling about 60 meters in length. These were then shipped from South Africa to Belgium, where they arrived in late June. Inside a stocky cement ULB building in the Belgian capital, they are now being cut into smaller pieces to then be shipped to specialised labs in France and China for dating. Zekollari said the team hopes some of the samples, which were taken at shallow depths of about 10 meters, will be confirmed to be about 100,000 years old. Climate 'treasure hunt' This would allow them to go back and dig a few hundred meters deeper in the same spot for the big prize. "It's like a treasure hunt," Zekollari, 36, said, comparing their work to drawing a map for "Indiana Jones". "We're trying to cross the good spot on the map... and in one and a half years, we'll go back and we'll drill there," he said. "We're dreaming a bit, but we hope to get maybe three, four, five-million-year-old ice." Such ice could provide crucial input to climatologists studying the effects of global warming. Climate projections and models are calibrated using existing data on past temperatures and greenhouse gases in the atmosphere -- but the puzzle has some missing pieces. By the end of the century temperatures could reach levels similar to those the planet last experienced between 2.6 and 3.3 million years ago, said Etienne Legrain, 29, a paleo-climatologist at ULB. But currently there is little data on what CO2 levels were back then -- a key metric to understand how much further warming we could expect. "We don't know the link between CO2 concentration and temperature in a climate warmer than that of today," Legrain said. His team hopes to find it trapped inside some very old ice. "The air bubbles are the atmosphere of the past," he said. "It's really like magic when you feel it." © 2025 AFP
Yahoo
3 days ago
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
Dive into the story of hockey great Guy Lafleur at Gatineau pop-up
To beat the heat, CBC Ottawa's Hallie Cotnam soaks up stories from the ice at a pop-up exhibit for hockey great Guy Lafleur.