BY THE BOOKS

The Plymouth Public Library is in full swing with Sunday hours at the South Street location. The library will be open Sundays from 12:30 to 5 p.m. through June. Enjoy a quiet read in the periodicals section, browse the Internet, check out the latest books and audio/video materials, or do your homework with the aid of the library’s vast resources available through its extensive Reference Department.

The Plymouth Public Library is pleased to announce that it now offers the Mango Languages online language-learning system to its patrons. This online resource is available free of charge to all Plymouth Public Library cardholders, and can be accessed from home over the Internet.

Mango Languages offers a fast and convenient solution for our community’s increasing language-learning needs. Each lesson combines real life situations and audio from native speakers with simple, clear instructions. The courses integrate components of vocabulary, pronunciation, grammar and culture. Two levels of courses are offered: Mango Basic, which teaches everyday greetings, goodbyes and helpful phrases in a short period of time, and is designed to appeal to a beginner in a new language. The Mango Complete courses are designed to provide a deep understanding of a language and its culture.

The Library’s subscription to Mango Languages covers eight foreign language and four English-as-a-second-language (ESL) courses. The foreign languages include French, Italian, Russian, Spanish, Mandarin Chinese, Arabic, Farsi (Persian) and Japanese. ESL courses are available for Brazilian Portuguese, Spanish, Arabic and Mandarin.

Recognizing the importance of real-time data on meteorological and oceanographic data for various operational weather and other advisory services, the Ministry has substantially augmented the observations networks during the last 3 years. As a part of modernization meteorological Services, Atmospheric Observing Systems has been  strengthened through installation of 1500 state-of-the-art systems in various parts of the country for real-time monitoring meteorological parameters which include 955 Automatic Rain gauges and 552 Automatic weather stations in various parts of India. Ten Doppler Weather Radars have been installed in various cities viz., Delhi airport, New Delhi, Nagpur, Jaipur, Hyderabad, Lucknow, Patna, Patiala, Agartala, Mohanbari, Bhuj and Mumbai which has contributed for now casting.  The augmentation of Ocean Observation Networks in the seas around India includes deployment of 19 moored buoys including 10 Tsunami buoys, 150 Argo Floats, 55 drifters, 7 wave rider buoys etc., for acquisition of real-time data from the seas around India.

Under the Meteorological Services, a district-level agro-meteorological advisory service, providing a 5-day weather forecast for farmers, in 585 districts, has been made operational.  About 3,500,000 farmers have subscribed for the information through mobile for planning their agricultural activities. A location-specific weather and air quality forecast 24 hours in advance was provided successfully for the Commonwealth Games 2010 in National Capital Region, Delhi.  Under the  Ocean Science and Information Services,  a unique system of Fisheries Advisories based on identification of potential fishing zones using remote sensing technology has been made operational along with a new Tuna fishery advisory to deep sea fishing industry. A Coral Bleaching Alert System has been set up for providing bimonthly status on 5 major coral environments of India viz., Andaman Nicobar, Lakshadweep, Gulf of Mannar, Gulf of Kutchchh.  Under Disaster Mitigation Support, a state-of-the-art Tsunami Warning System was set up, in September 2007, which has been recognized as a Regional Tsunami warning centre for the Indian Ocean countries which has been recognized as a Regional Tsunami Service Provider for the Indian Ocean Region and started operation to the Indian Ocean Rim countries.  Under the framework of Regional Integrated Multi-hazard Early warning System, a data-sharing arrangement has been established with the nine countries to provide 24 hour accumulated rainfall forecast for 3 days.  The countries include Bangladesh, Bhutan, India, Lao People’s Democratic Republic, Maldives, Mongolia, Myanmar, Nepal, and Sri Lanka. The departments of irrigation, agriculture, and other primary users of weather information also have become major beneficiaries.

Towards human resource development, an Advanced Training School was established with self contained facilities for training and research at Pune. The second batch of 20 students was inducted in August 2011 through a national selective process. To process the huge volume of data and run the weather forecasting models, the computation facilities have been substantially augmented by commissioning of a set of 4 High Performance Computing systems in various centres of the ministry which has a total combining capacity of 120 Tflops.   The Third Station in Antarctic in the Larsemann Hills area has been completed. A dedicated centre for Climate Change Research was established at Pune to address various scientific issues relating to climate change. Setting up of National Knowledge Network connection to all the centres of MoES was accomplished for efficient communication and data transfer useful for various information services being rendered by the ministry. A dedicated Oceansat Satellite Ground Station was installed at Indian National Centre for Ocean Information Services , Hyderabad for real time direct reception of satellite data for various operational Ocean Information Services

The progress of the ministry is satisfactory both in quantitative and qualitative terms. The performance of the ministry has been monitored objectively by the Performance Monitoring and Evaluation System of the Cabinet Secretariat. The Results-Framework Document submitted by the ministry for the years 2010-11 and 2011-12, had been evaluated and the performance were estimated to be 95.07% and 92.48% respectively. The efforts made by the ministry towards augmentation of observational networks and computation capability have lead to improved prediction of weather, and climate services. According to a recent survey, various services such as agromet for farmers, potential fishing zone for fisherman, ocean state forecast for shipping, aviation services, public weather services, etc., have been extremely useful and beneficial for society at large.