What is Liquid Crystal?

A state of matter that is neither pure solid nor pure liquid but combines in itself certain properties of both liquids and solids. The molecules in a liquid crystal are arranged in a kind of long-range order (a property of solids) but are not completely fixed as they are in solids. Liquid crystals also have the ability to form droplets and to pour (a property of liquids).

The arrangement of molecules in a liquid crystal can be changed by applying an electric or magnetic field or by heat. This change in arrangements alters the optical properties of liquid crystals-they may change colour or may change from transparent to opaque. Because of this property, liquid crystals are also used as displays in digital wristwatches, calculators, panel meters, thermometers and industrial products.


What is RDX?

RDX is a soft, pliable, odourless, highly explosive chemical. It is chemically known as cyclotrimethlene trinitramine and is one and a half times more powerful than the TNT(trinitrotoluene) used in military explosives. As an explosive it is usually used in mixtures with other explosives and plasticizers or desensitizers.
It is stable in storage and is considered one of the most powerful and brisant of the military high explosives. RDX forms the base for a number of common military explosives: Composition A, Composition A5, Composition B, Composition C, Composition D, HBX, H-6, Cyclotol and C4.
RDX was widely used during World War II, often in explosive mixtures with TNT such as Torpex. RDX was used in one of the first plastic explosives. RDX is believed to have been used in many bomb plots including terrorist plots.
It is obtained by reacting concentrated nitric acid with hexamine.
Formal Chemical Name (IUPAC)

World Wide Web

World Wide Web (invented by Tim Berners Lee), which allows a point and click navigation without the help of formidable computer commands. Then came Marc Anderson who wrote a program, Mosaic, to add colourful pictures, sound and video to the web. The web is the most impressive internet application. It uses a concept called hypertext, displaying text and images in relation to each other on a web page where individual words or pictures act as electronic links to other (related) documents.
A simple mouse click on a word can take the user to that word’s definition, an illustration, or another related web page. The web documents are written in a computer language called hypertext mark up language (HTML) and transferred by a protocol called hypertext transfer protocol (HTTP). The web pages are identified by unique uniform resource locators (URLs).
The web would have been very difficult to operate but for the hypertext concept. Now one simply types the URL of the page one wants to visit. The computer then displays the page which is an HTML documents with texts, pictures, sounds etc. As the user reads the page, certain words can act as hyperlinks pointers to the URL of other web pages with related information.

What is E mail?

The domain name which comes after the symbol@, may also include an extension other than .com which stands for commercial business. It may be on educational institution ‘edu’, on organisation ‘org’ or government departments ‘gov’. Domains are classified as non geographics and geographic, countires have fixed domain names: eg. the domain name of the UK is .uk and that of India is .in. There may be sub domains that correspond to organisations such as NASA.

What is Robotics?

Manufacturing technology, a key factor in attaining high levels of productivity, is going through, what may be called, the third Industrial Revolution, benefitting from the rapid programs achieved in the areas of computers, robotics expert systems, intelligence sensors and controls, and information and communication technology.

Applications- Industrial robots are being used in several engineering applications including manufacturing. Tasks such as welding, spray painting, matching, loading, material handling and assembly constitute the major uses of robots on the factory floor.

What is Linking up?

Special programmes known as GOPHERS provide menus of available files and help users find the exact information they seek. One key to the rapid expansion of the internet was the development of special programmes known as BROWSERS.
Browser is the software that allows easy display of web pages and their navigation. Browsers is the software that allows easy display of webpages and their navigation.
Newsgroups- The internet provides forums for people to share information more informally through newsgroups. Newsgroups are email variation where messages are posted to a news server rather than an individual user. Anyone can subscribe to the newsgroup, download a list of message titles onto their computer, then select the information they want.

What is Impulse?

In recent years, studies have linked impulsiveness to higher risks of smoking, drinking and drug abuse. People who attempt suicide score highly on measures of impulsivity, as do adolescents with eating problems. Aggression, compulsive gambling, severe personality disorders and attention deficit problems are all associated with high impulsiveness, a problem that affects an estimated 9 percent of Americans, according to a nationwide mental health survey completed last year.
Now researchers have begun to resolve the contrary nature of impulsivity, identifying the elements that distinguish benign experimentation from self-destructive acts. The latest work, in brain research and psychological studies, helps explain how impulsive tendencies develop and when they can lead people astray. A potent combination of genes and emotionally disorienting early experiences puts people at high risk, as do some very familiar personal instincts.
“What we’re seeing now,” said Charles S. Carver, a psychologist at the University of Miami in Coral Gables, Fla., “is a rapid convergence of evidence indicating that when the prefrontal cortical areas of the brain, the brain’s supervisory management system, are not functioning well, this interferes with deliberative behavior, and the consequences are often unpleasant.”
Few experts dispute that impulsiveness pays off in some situations and, perhaps, had evolutionary benefits. When life is short and dangerous, and resources are scarce, there is a premium on quick response. In studies of baboons and monkeys, researchers have found that animals that are impulsive as adolescents often become dominant as adults, when they moderate their confrontational urges.
In humans, impulsive behavior typically peaks in adolescence, when the prefrontal areas of the brain continue to develop, or soon after, in the young adult years, when it is culturally expected that people will test their limits, psychologists have found.
Yet new research suggests that a taste for danger or conflict is not enough to produce persistent, ruinous impulsivity.

What is Intellectualisation?

Jargon is often used as a device of intellectualization. By using complex terminology, the focus becomes on the words and finer definitions rather than the human effects.
A person told they have cancer asks for details on the probability of survival and the success rates of various drugs. The doctor may join in, using ‘carcinoma’ instead of ‘cancer’ and ‘terminal’ instead of ‘fatal’.
A woman who has been raped seeks out information on other cases and the psychology of rapists and victims. She takes self-defense classes in order to feel better (rather than more directly addressing the psychological and emotional issues).
A person who is in heavily debt builds a complex spreadsheet of how long it would take to repay using different payment options and interest rates.
Intellectualization protects against anxiety by repressing the emotions connected with an event. It is also known as ‘Isolation of affect’ as the affective elements are removed from the situation.
Freud believed that memories have both conscious and unconscious aspects, and that intellectualization allows for the conscious analysis of an event in a way that does not provoke anxiety.
Intellectualization is one of Freud’s original defense mechanisms.
When people treat emotionally difficult situations in cold and logical ways, it often does not mean that they are emotionally stunted, only that they are unable to handle the emotion at this time. You can decide to give them space now so they can maintain their dignity, although you may also decide to challenge them in a more appropriate time and setting.
When you challenge a person who is intellectualizing, they may fight back (which is attack, another form of defense) or switch to other forms of defense.