Between Me and 'YOU'..

German engineering seems to remain always in the champion division of the entire industry. As an example, this successful country maintains their great reputation as the top exporter of machinery and industrial equipment.
The quality is always superb and the skill shown is great. Craftsmanship is combined with quality engineering to achieve widely acclaimed and high-performance products.

German Engineering Is Leading The World

In 2004, Germany was the market leader in twenty-one out of thirty-one branches of the entire world’s engineering industry! At the time it represented a quarter of the entire world market.
Although most of the German engineering industry is dominated by small and medium sized businesses, that doesn’t at all hinder its success. In more than half of all exported items, computer and electronic expertise is included within the products manufactured.
You have to think about those wonderful German cars you purchase, like BMWs or Porsches. It’s not only the cars themselves that are engineering wonders, but over 25% of the value of the car is in the electronics and software these days. It makes for a good opportunity to work in the industry as the demand is high for excellent employees.
That is why Germany has become a very attractive place to come to train in computer and electrical engineering. You will find you can achieve a Bachelor’s degree, a Masters or PhD in a German university. Then you simply go out and apply for a job, and find one with ease. :-)
Upon conducting some surveys, it was found that engineers in Germany don’t just work in research and development. This area is a good place to enter, but many engineers work in production and even management. Prospective employers are looking for accomplished graduates every day.
Germany has often been dubbed a land of thinkers. This is true within the German engineering field, too. Many accomplishments can be traced to individuals who originated from here. And the intellectual accomplishments of Germans have helped to shape the world.
Some examples of Germany’s great minds are Wilhelm Conrad Röntgen and the X-rays he discovered (and won the Nobel Prize in Physics for). Heinrich Rudolph’s work led to the telecommunications of modern day.

German Engineering And Its World Renowned Products

Then you can’t forget the incredible worldwide products stemming from top German companies. There’s the sleek and beautiful BMW, the luxurious Mercedes, and of course, Audi and Porsche. These companies are known and respected the world over.
Another global powerhouse is Siemens AG, producing in the energy and healthcare areas. They have been working at giving us high quality products for over 125 years. Hearing aids are just one of the most popular that they make. These hearing devices have been deemed the most technologically advanced and fit all.
And then you have Bosch, a corporation that is the largest manufacturer of power tools and accessories in the world. They have branches in other parts of the world as well, such as North America.
Krupp and BASF are other German leaders in engineering. Krupp makes coffee makers as well as espresso machines and blenders, toaster ovens and mixers. BASF manufactures chemicals used in fibers, resins and finishing compounds.

There’s no doubt that German engineering has been a top contributor to our industrial successes, and has helped us have the best in products for our ease and pleasure. We will see more to come in the future. Of that there’s no doubt.

Thinks About It..

Dealing With the Impact of Modern Gadgets on our Lives

Whether we like it or not, electric appliances and gadgets have occupied a major position in our day to day lives. Though they were invented to make life better for us in the first place, it is an undeniable fact that many of the gadgets have a negative influence upon the quality of our lives in some ways. As we cannot live without them in this modern world and they are a necessary evil, we have to find ways to reduce the negative impact of those modern appliances. Let us see some of the gadgets that we commonly use, the problems arising out of their use, and the ways of minimizing the negative effects arising from their use.

Television:

Though it might be considered as a good source of family entertainment and a good way to wind-down after a hectic day, too much television viewing can be very bad for us. The American Academy of Pediatrics recommends that children below the age of 2 years should not see any TV and those above 2 years should be restricted to 2 hours of viewing per day. However researches indicate that if Video games/ DVD watching is also included there are some teens who average about 35 hours per week (more than double the recommended maximum view time!) in front of the tube. This definitely eats into the time that can be spent on more productive activities.

The scenes witnessed in TV programs even in so-called family programs or soaps are often not recommended for teen-viewership when they are highly impressionable. For instance, there are studies to prove that children exposed to repeated scenes of violence (fight sequences) did not appreciate the physical harm that such acts can cause to others and were found to be insensitive to the trauma of victims of violent incidents. This is explained by a phenomenon called “Psychological overload” where the mind learns to accept scenarios to which it is repeatedly exposed and thus prevents the person thus exposed from experiencing “strong feelings like sympathy” in situations similar to that. Similarly, unrealistic portrayal of characters or stereotyping that is common in most programs can blunt a young adult’s ability to evaluate persons/ situations from realistic perspectives.

Even discounting the psychological effects of such a viewing pattern, on a very gross level we find that family members have very little time to talk and understand each other better due to the amount of time they spend in front of the screen. The warmth of relationship is something that the distant tube cannot provide; but we have a generation of children which has grown up not knowing how much they are missing in terms of a joyous family interaction by merely sitting glued to television programs for hours together.

The solution to this lies in reducing TV viewing time to a great extent, and in spending the time in family chatter instead. We have much to learn from each other as persons and no artificial media can substitute human warmth and interaction when it comes to improving emotional intelligence. So, we should put our foot firmly down and reduce the TV viewing time of the family in the best interests of everyone.

Computers:

Though computers have become almost indispensable today, too much time in front of the screen can be damaging to the eyes. Dryness of eyes, weakening of optical nerves, blank stares developed as a result of staring at the screen for hours together, idiopathic head-aches, and mood swings are some of the negative effects that arise due to spending too much time in front of the computer continuously. Lap tops have the added “honour” of even reducing fertility of men (due to the high temperature arising out of constant usage).

The solution lies in taking a break from the screen at least for at least 3 mins for every one hour of computer usage. We can simply close our eyes or walk out of the work-station and train our eyes on distant greeneries so that the “blank stare” syndrome is avoided. Laptops are best used keeping an insulating medium like a wooden plank or a file folder between our laps and the laptop to avoid exposing our body to the “heat” of the gadget.

Children should never be allowed to immerse themselves in computer games that have too vivid graphics because it curtails their ability to visualize things for themselves. The mental imagery that is developed when reading novels or stories or while listening to good story-tellers is much more vivid than even the best designed graphics. But repeated to exposure to good quality graphic games makes the child blind to such joys of the mind where the young mind imagines things, and recreates wonderful scenarios merely from vivid descriptions depicted in stories. Cultivation of active reading habits is better than passive viewing of graphic models/ games.

In fact, there are parents who feel proud that their tiny tot will not trouble anyone and will sit silently for hours if its favourite computer game is loaded on to the system. This is not correct. Children should be allowed to make a “nuisance” of themselves – to run around the house, to break things, to ask uncomfortable questions to adults, to shout, and in short – they should be allowed to be children – wild and active. By restricting them to the screen at young age, we are encouraging sedentary and passive life-style which will be manifest as myriad problems when they grow up.

Chemical Reaction

 A chemical reaction is a process that leads to the transformation of one set of chemical substances to another.^[1] Chemical reactions can be either spontaneous, requiring no input of energy, or non-spontaneous, typically following the input of some type of energy, such as heat, light or electricity. Classically, chemical reactions encompass changes that strictly involve the motion of electrons in the forming and breaking of chemical bonds, although the general concept of a chemical reaction, in particular the notion of a chemical equation, is applicable to transformations of elementary particles (such as illustrated by Feynman diagrams), as well as nuclear reactions.
The substance (or substances) initially involved in a chemical reaction are called reactants or reagents. Chemical reactions are usually characterized by a chemical change, and they yield one or more products, which usually have properties different from the reactants. Reactions often consist of a sequence of individual sub-steps, the so-called elementary reactions, and the information on the precise course of action is part of the reaction mechanism. Chemical reactions are described with chemical equations, which graphically present the starting materials, end products, and sometimes intermediate products and reaction conditions.
Different chemical reactions are used in combination in chemical synthesis in order to obtain a desired product. In biochemistry, series of chemical reactions catalyzed by enzymes form metabolic pathways, by which syntheses and decompositions impossible under ordinary conditions are performed within a cell.

RadioActive Decay

Radioactive decay is the process by which an atomic nucleus of an unstable atom loses energy by emitting ionizing particles (ionizing radiation). The emission is spontaneous, in that the atom decays without any physical interaction with another particle from outside the atom. Usually, radioactive decay happens due to a process confined to the nucleus of the unstable atom, but, on occasion (as with the different processes of electron capture and internal conversion), an inner electron of the radioactive atom is also necessary to the process.
Radioactive decay is a stochastic (i.e., random) process at the level of single atoms, in that, according to quantum theory, it is impossible to predict when a given atom will decay.^[1] However, the chance that a given atom will decay is constant over time. For a large number of identical atoms (of the same nuclide), the decay rate for the collection is predictable to the extent allowed by the law of large numbers, and is easily calculated from the measured decay constant of the nuclide (or equivalently from the half-life).
The decay, or loss of energy, results when an atom with one type of nucleus, called the parent radionuclide, transforms to an atom with a nucleus in a different state, or a different nucleus, either of which is named the daughter nuclide. Often the parent and daughter are different chemical elements, and in such cases the decay process results in nuclear transmutation. In an example of this, a carbon-14 atom (the "parent") emits radiation (a beta particle, antineutrino, and a gamma ray) and transforms to a nitrogen-14 atom (the "daughter"). By contrast, there exist two types of radioactive decay processes (gamma decay and internal conversion decay) that do not result in transmutation, but only decrease the energy of an excited nucleus. This results in an atom of the same element as before but with a nucleus in a lower energy state. An example is the nuclear isomer technetium-99m decaying, by the emission of a gamma ray, to an atom of technetium-99.
Nuclides produced by radioactive decay are called radiogenic nuclides, whether they themselves are stable or not. There exist stable radiogenic nuclides that were formed from short-lived extinct radionuclides in the early solar system.^[2][3] The extra presence of these stable radiogenic nuclides (such as Xe-129 from primordial I-129) against the background of primordial stable nuclides can be inferred by various means. Presently-radioactive nuclides are from three sources: many naturally-occurring radionuclides are short-lived radiogenic nuclides that are the daughters of ongoing radioactive primordial nuclides (types of radioactive atoms that have been present since the beginning of the Earth and solar system). Other naturally-occurring radioactive nuclides are cosmogenic nuclides, formed by cosmic ray bombardment of material in the Earth's atmosphere or crust. Finally, some primordial nuclides are radioactive, but are so long-lived that they remain present from the primordial solar nebula. For a summary table showing the number of stable nuclides and of radioactive nuclides in each category, see radionuclide.
Radioactivity was discovered in 1896 by the French scientist Henri Becquerel, while working on phosphorescent materials. During experiments to see if phosphorescent materials would expose photographic materials through black paper in the manner of the recently-discovered X-rays, which produced fluorescense, Becquerel used a phosphorescent uranium salt and eventually found that it blackened the plate through paper wrapping, in a desk drawer over a weekend, even without application of light, or production of its phosphorescence. These penetrating radiations, accidently discovered emanating from uranium minerals, were first called Becquerel rays.
The SI unit of radioactive activity is the becquerel (Bq), in honor of the scientist. One Bq is defined as one transformation (or decay) per second. Since sensible sizes of radioactive material contains many atoms, a Bq is a tiny measure of activity; amounts giving activities on the order of GBq (gigabecquerel, 1 x 10⁹ decays per second) or TBq (terabecquerel, 1 x 10¹² decays per second) are commonly used.

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