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Showing posts from June, 2020

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Granada

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Granada   ANDALUSIAN SPAIN Granada The bus journey from Madrid to Andalusia was strangely inviting. Andalusia is the southernmost part of Spain, also known as the Iberian Peninsula. The bosky landscape around was wild and cultivated. Cultivated with fleeting patches of olive orchards, which at some places spread far into the horizon? Traversing through the heart of Spain and somewhere at the back of my mind the landscape triggered the swashbuckling identity of the historical country. In search of El Dorado maybe one of the reasons why the Moors from Africa invaded Andalusia after crossing the strait of Gibraltar in the early 8 th century. They ruled this part of Spain till the 15 th century. Spain’s heartland, known as the Meseta, is a large plateau with an average elevation of six hundred meter above sea level is located in the centre of the Iberian Peninsula. Since Madrid lies on this plateau most of the journey up to Granada was through this fascinating and partly a

An Invisible War – Overview on the role of UV-C in fighting COVID-19

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UV-C vs COVID 19 The invisible pathogen COVID 19 has suddenly taken our entire planet by surprise at the beginning of 2020. The invasion was so sudden that even the World Health Organization (WHO) took time to declare this as a pandemic. At a time when the entire world is trying to arrive at plausible solutions to arrest the spread of this rampaging virus, our Lighting fraternity has joined the fight by concentrating more on studies of non-visual impacts of light. An invisible part of the optical radiation spectrum, ultraviolet radiation has more energy than its visible counterpart due to its shorter wavelengths. The ultraviolet spectrum comprises UV-A (400 nm to 315 nm); UV-B (315 nm to 280 nm); UV-C (280 nm to 100 nm) – classification as defined by CIE. Whenever ultraviolet radiation is used for germicidal purposes, it is known as GUV (Germicidal Ultraviolet ) radiation. It has been found to be highly effective in deactivating or killing viruses,

Heidelberg

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at a cute little University town in Germany         Almost two decades that I first stepped into this romantic little University town of Germany. On an assignment at Nijmegen, Netherlands, I had decided to spend a few days at my brother-in-law’s house in Dreieich – a quiet suburb, around 10 km from Frankfurt International Airport. The museum dedicated to Count Ferdinand von Zeppelin, inventor of the first rigid airship ‘Zeppelin’ is located in Dreieich. The day my niece Tanya drove me down to Heidelberg, about 100 km from Frankfurt, I was naturally excited. The main reason being I longed to see the place which boasted of the oldest university in Germany and one of the oldest surviving universities in Europe. The Schloss, a romantic twelfth-century castle. overlooking the university town below, the river Neckar (a tributary of Rhine), and the hills beyond were breathtaking views. Enough to instill a feeling of love at first sight. No wonder Heidelberg is known as an ‘epitome of