An Interview With Techno-romantic Thriller Author Denise Robbins on Merging Technology and Fiction

Denise Robbins, a software engineering manager by day, integrates her knowledge of computers and technology into all her techno-romantic thriller novels. Her published works include It Happens in Threes and Killer Bunny Hill with Connect the Dots and Never Tempt Danger scheduled for release in 2010.

I saw down with Denise and asked about the unique combination of technology and fiction.

Your computer background has obviously been a big factor in the plots of your books. How did you become interested in technology?
It all started when I was a kid. In elementary school we went on a field trip to an electronics shop. In there, we saw all kinds of cool gadgets like small calculators, electronic games, and then. . .a computer. Holy cow! I could play chess on the computer.

About that same time, my dad brought home a modem. I'm not talking the modems you pick up today that fit in the palm of your hand, we're talking a behemoth of a machine that looked like a typewriter with a phone coupler attached to it.

Some readers may not understand the significance of computers in fighting crime. Explain how important an understanding of new technologies can be in staying ahead of the bad guy.
Computers are used a great deal more than people think in regards to fighting crime. One simple example is the FBI's website that gives the public information on some of the criminals they are searching for. This website not only informs the public, but now there are large numbers of people on the lookout for the 'bad guys.'

Local police departments have computers in every patrol car, which can be used in different scenarios. Remember the last time you were pulled over? The police officer can put your license plate into the computer and check if the car was stolen, your driving record, or even your car registration. A police officer making a routine stop may not seem like any big deal or use for computer technology, but what you may not realize is that the same computer that told the officer the car was stolen, can also provide arrest and warrant information. Information attained via the computer by the officer makes him/her more capable of making the right decision of how to approach the situation.

Computers also give law enforcement the resources and technology needed to keep up with modern day criminals in the cyber world. Some criminals steal people's identities or purchase goods with someone else's credit cards over the Internet. Internet felons commit all sorts of crimes such as downloading child pornography, even trying to convince minors to meet them somewhere, which could result in abduction. Without computers, it would be nearly impossible to catch felons of this nature. Through computers law enforcement agencies can watch these actions and make the web safer.

Because of computers and instant access to large amounts of information, law enforcement agents have the power to turn a possible dangerous situation into a much safer one sooner rather than later.

Explain a little about nanotechnology and its current uses.
Nanotechnology is a technology based on the manipulation of individual atoms and molecules to build structures to complex, atomic specifications. The nanoscale is about a thousand times smaller than micro that is, about 1/80,000 of the diameter of a human hair.

Items already available in the marketplace include: burn and wound dressings, water filtration, dental-bonding agent, coatings for easier cleaning glass, bumpers and catalytic converters on cars, protective and glare-reducing coatings for eyeglasses and cars, sunscreens and cosmetics, stain-free clothing and mattresses, ink, longer-lasting tennis balls, and lightweight and stronger tennis rackets.

A ski jacket produced by Franz Ziener GmbH&Co is based on nanotechnology. The windproof and waterproof properties are not obtained by a surface coating of the jacket but by the use of nanofibres.

The company InMat makes long-lasting tennis-balls by coating the inner core with clay polymer nanocomposites. These tennis-balls have twice the lifetime of conventional balls.

What do you see happening with nanotechnology in the future?
Today, we have just scratched the surface on what nanotechnology will do for us. There are many nanotechnology applications in research and development. In the field of medicine, there will be Qdots that identify the location of cancer cells in the body and Nanoparticles that deliver chemotherapy drugs directly to cancer cells to minimize damage to healthy cells. Can you imagine not having to expose the entire body to chemotherapy but only the part that requires the treatment?

Nanotechnology is huge in the science and technology area as well, in particular, manmade diamonds. In recent years, there has been research into producing manmade diamonds, no, not cubic zirconia, but "real" diamonds grown in a lab and not in nature. Manmade diamonds is a huge breakthrough that will only get bigger. The diamond has the largest thermal conductivity of any material. With every improvement in computer chip technology, the machines get faster and hotter. At some point the chips and computer insides will melt. Diamonds are the answer for faster computers without the heat factor. For the same thermal conductivity reason, manmade diamonds could help make lasers of extreme power. The material could allow a cell phone to fit into a watch and iPods to store 10,000 movies, not just 10,000 songs.

I could go on, but you get the idea. Nanotechnology is the next great wave and I'm hoping it hits soon.

What are some of the challenges in blending cutting-edge technology with fiction?
The challenge in creating techno-fiction is knowing how to keep the story moving at the same time giving enough of a visual picture of the technology so the reader understands without dumping boring information on top of their head.

It seems like the field of technology is more of a man's world. How did you end up in the field and why do you think there aren't more women involved?

I think since my dad was in technology, not the same as I am involved today, I was destined for computers.

Taking a job with a government contractor for the Department of Defense hooked me on technology. I was part of a team that built software for use in military medical facilities. It was when I taught computer programs and programming to adults that I found my love for all that 'geeky' computer stuff. There is nothing like watching the spark in somebody's eyes as the light bulb goes on inside their head after they have learned to write code and see the result.

Why there are not more women in science and technology is a question that has been asked quite a lot in recent years. One simple answer is how parents and teachers present information technology professions and other occupations to their daughters and students. It is about encouraging and providing role models.
Another explanation for the lack of women in information technology careers is misconception and preference. Why do I say that as if they are com-mingled? Many people believe working in IT is solitary. They imagine someone sitting in front of a computer eight hours or more a day with no one to talk with. Ask any of the engineers that work for and with me and they will let you know that is not the case.

In general, women prefer to work with people while men prefer to work with things. With the solitary misconception out there, many women are choosing other careers.

Do you have a lot of male readers because of your interesting plots? How do you draw them in?
To be honest, I am not certain that I have too many male readers yet, but I have a few and I want more. I think once the guys know that my novels are based on interesting and real technology, have suspense and mystery woven in with action and adventure that they will want to read them. All it takes is a few good men. . .to spread the word.

While my novels are fiction, when my hero or heroine is shooting a weapon, all readers should know that I have done the research and had the experience several times. My first time shooting anything, but a shotgun at skeet (of which I am a very good shot), was when I wrote It Happens in Threes. I had to know what it felt like. I contacted a friend who taught me all the various right and wrongs and who enjoyed seeing me struggle filling a clip and always forgetting to take the safety off.

Right now, my attempt at "drawing them in" is to give a guy I see a copy of the book, ask him to read it, and let me know what he thinks. So far, the response has been positive. The other little tidbit that helps draw the men in as that I have other men review and edit my novels for the male perspective. It always helps me when Steve or David say, "No guy would say that." Then they wrinkle their noses and slash away at my work. I am very grateful. I also have friends who are former military and they correct some of my ideas as well.

How do you handle the fine line between giving too much technological information and making the story flow?
This is an excellent question. Computer stuff can be very dry and boring, take it from me. What I do is take technology and introduce the readers to it in small pieces, like breadcrumbs of information, so that technology is part of the mystery or part of the solution in the puzzle. I take the technology and break it down so my characters show you just enough to make you understand, and at the same time get curious. Wait until you find out about nanotechnology in Killer Bunny Hill. I'll give you a hint - Diamonds aren't just a girl's best friend.

Where do you come up with your story ideas?
My story ideas come from various places and most the time it is just a matter of sitting down with pen and paper and asking myself about the particular characters I have just identified in my mind. Sometimes, as in the case of my second novel Killer Bunny Hill, the seed for novel will just hit me while flying across the country on a plane. In the case of my fourth novel Never Tempt Danger, the idea came from a dream. Those are just the beginnings, now I have to construct a story line and that takes a little more effort.

Sometimes I take from my own experiences with technology, but that is still limited in scope. So what do I do? Well, here is my answer.

I did some research once for work when I accidentally ran across an article on 'manmade diamonds' and using them as computer chips. As I continued to read the story, I found out about an organization known as DARPA, Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency. This agency is the central research and development office for the Department of Defense. They fund all kinds of technology research in order to keep our military technologically superior and in turn keep us safe and military personnel safe. Cool stuff!

Benefits of Home Solar Power Technology

Sunlight is one of the few things that people can enjoy for free. With that, the ingenuity employed in the creation of solar power generators for homes made sunlight one of the agreeable alternatives to fuel and coal-based energies. Not only does sunlight provide electricity to operate home appliances, architects and engineers are now taking advantage of its thermal properties to create solar homes as their way of effectively reducing the need for air conditioning units, giving home and building owners the chance to cut down energy costs in maintaining comfort in every room.

Solar energy is one of the most popular alternative sources of energy. Even the government supports the utilization of solar power in average American homes. In its move to promote awareness on the environmental and economic benefits of renewable and pollution-free sources of energy, incentives are now given to families who compensate their need for electricity with home solar power generators.

Home Solar Technology
Along with the advancement of the technologies involved in harnessing solar energy, a number of energy-efficient home appliances have been created to replace conventional fuel energy-dependent home appliances. For instance, there are now solar heating systems that are integrated in keeping swimming pools warm during colder months. We can now see a number of home air conditioning components such as vents and blowers that operate independently, thanks to their built-in and power-generating solar panels.

Benefits of Residential Solar Power
When it comes to home aesthetics, solar lightings and fountains are now gaining popularity because of their energy-efficient and wireless features. All of which are easy to install for they depend on their built-in solar power generators to operate. Aside from providing greener alternatives to powering home amenities, it relieves the families of the agonies of bearing with the ever increasing electric costs.

When talking about the environmental implications of utilizing solar power for homes, its main benefit is its lack of pollution. Unlike fuel and coal-based energy sources, solar energy does not give off noxious gases or substances that add up to the many forms of environmental pollutions.

And since they operate cleanly, there is no need for maintenance when it comes to solar powers for homes. Also, since they operate cleanly, the equipment used in generating solar power are not subject to damage. This ensures long-term service even with absolutely no maintenance.

Using Solar Energy For Homes
While it is never cheap to go green, return of investment on solar energy generator for homes is fast. On the average, a home solar power generator costs around $2,000 to $15,000. This will translate to a lot of savings in the long run as it relieves you of the outrageous electric bills that you pay on a monthly basis.

And while you gain independence in terms of energy, the excess amount of energy that your home power generators produce can be sold to a local energy provider. Hence, it keeps you from being constantly worrying on your monthly electric bills every time regular fuel rates increase.

Establishing solar power for the home presents a guiltless alternative to energy consumption. Its main source of energy is readily available, pollution-free and can be used free of charge. To make the shift to solar power more appealing to American families, most states are now implementing financial stimuli in adapting solar power technologies among American homes.

With the tax incentives given by the state government, adopting solar energy generators proposes a great way of earning substantial savings throughout the life of the solar system.

Earth - Solar Technologies and Countries

Everything alive on Planet Earth is exposed to the Sun. Sun radiation is everywhere, more near the equators less near the poles. Instead of looking downward into coal mines and crude oil drilling sites we better look upward to the Sun.

Although it is a well known fact that the Sun can provide all our energy needs, the shift toward renewable energy resources is at the very beginning. It will take time for the process to accelerate, we are still heavily invested in electrical Power Plants working on coal, crude oil and gas, we still have hundreds of millions of cars with internal combustion engine and fossils are still cheaper than solar power.

What we need is the right combination of green oriented political forces and the technology development of simpler more cost effective solar systems. Politics is driven by the will of aware people; technology is driven by scientists and engineers. Automated mass production, using cheaper than Silicon materials and Concentrated Solar will eventually lead to price reduction of Photovoltaic systems.

Earth Solar Power Plants Technologies
The most appropriate locations for Solar Power Plants are in desert areas. A Solar Power Plant is sitting on a relatively large piece of land and it requires lots of Sun radiation. Desert land is cheaper, doesn't have many other land usage alternatives and inherently gets a lot of solar radiation while cloudy days are rare. The two competing technologies are:

• Photovoltaic Power Plants
• Heating Water to get high pressure high temperature steam to drive electrical production turbines

Sun is the power behind winds and wind turbines farms are becoming a viable solution for large scale electricity production. The turbines are becoming larger in capacity (1 Megawatt and more), the towers are becoming taller and the cost become cheaper. Again, desert and arid areas with adequate wind flows are good locations. The Wind Farms sites are usually scrutinized by environmentalists and regulators to make sure they don't interfere with unique landscape features and that they don't interfere with bird migration habits and air traffic.

Solar power plants and wind turbine farms are by nature remote from the population centers, the actual consumers. This imposes added operational cost and increases the energy distribution losses due to long power lines

In attempt to get closer to the consumers, residential scale and medium scale "power plants" are available to home owners, small business buildings and suburban communities. To list a few:

• Residential Photovoltaic Systems; a lot of research is done to reduce the price of these systems (cheaper materials, automated production lines, mass production volume)
• Solar thermal water heaters and space heaters
• Rural areas and off grid small wind turbines
• Community Wind Turbines

Earth Solar Countries
World Solar development is observed everywhere. Solar Countries are countries that have awareness to solar, have proportionally to their population size a noticeable solar electric and solar thermal production capacity and that are leaders in solar and/or wind technologies.

I will eventually add a page for each of these Solar countries, so if you return in a couple of months to my site, it is highly probable you find the full list.

• South Pacific: Australia
• Europe: Denmark, the wind turbines leader
• Europe: Germany
• Middle East: Israel
• Europe: United Kingdom
• Europe: Spain
• America: United States
• Emerging Asia Solar Countries: China, South Korea

State of CAD and Engineering Workstation Technologies

Abbreviations

• CAD is Computer Aided Design
• CAE is Computer Aided Engineering
• CEW is Computer aided design and Engineering Workstation
• CPU is Central Processing Unit
• GPU is Graphics Processing Unit

Hardware for CPU-Intensive Applications

Computer hardware is designed to support software applications and it is a common but simplistic view that higher spec hardware will enable all software applications to perform better. Up until recently, the CPU was indeed the only device for computation of software applications. Other processors embedded in a PC or workstation were dedicated to their parent devices such as a graphics adapter card for display, a TCP-offloading card for network interfacing, and a RAID algorithm chip for hard disk redundancy or capacity extension. However, the CPU is no longer the only processor for software computation. We will explain this in the next section.

Legacy software applications still depend on the CPU to do computation. That is, the common view is valid for software applications that have not taken advantage of other types of processors for computation. We have done some benchmarking and believe that applications like Maya 03 are CPU intensive.

For CPU-intensive applications to perform faster, the general rule is to have the highest CPU frequency, more CPU cores, more main memory, and perhaps ECC memory (see below).

Legacy software was not designed to be parallel processed. Therefore we shall check carefully with the software vendor on this issue before expecting multiple-core CPUs to produce higher performance. Irrespectively, we will achieve a higher output from executing multiple incidences of the same application but this is not the same as multi-threading of a single application.

ECC is Error Code Detection and Correction. A memory module transmits in words of 64 bits. ECC memory modules have incorporated electronic circuits to detect a single bit error and correct it, but are not able to rectify two bits of error happening in the same word. Non-ECC memory modules do not check at all - the system continues to work unless a bit error violates pre-defined rules for processing. How often do single bit errors occur nowadays? How damaging would a single bit error be? Let us see this quotation from Wikipedia in May 2011, "Recent tests give widely varying error rates with over 7 orders of magnitude difference, ranging from 10−10−10−17 errors/bit-hour, roughly one bit error per hour per gigabyte of memory to one bit error per century per gigabyte of memory."

Hardware for GPU-Intensive Applications

The GPU has now been developed to gain the prefix of GP for General Purpose. To be exact, GPGPU stands for General Purpose computation on Graphics Processing Units. A GPU has many cores that can be used to accelerate a wide range of applications. According to GPGPU.org, which is a central resource of GPGPU news and information, developers who port their applications to GPU often achieve speedups of orders of magnitude compared to optimized CPU implementations.

Many software applications have been updated to capitalize on the newfound potentials of GPU. CATIA 03, Ensight 04 and Solidworks 02 are examples of such applications. As a result, these applications are far more sensitive to GPU resources than CPU. That is, to run such applications optimally, we should invest in GPU rather than CPU for a CEW. According to its own website, the new Abaqus product suite from SIMULIA - a Dassault Systemes brand - leverages GPU to run CAE simulations twice as fast as traditional CPU.

Nvidia has released 6 member cards of the new Quadro Fermi family by April 2011, in ascending sequence of power and cost: 400, 600, 2000, 4000, 5000 and 6000. According to Nvidia, Fermi delivers up to 6 times the performance in tessellation of the previous family called Quadro FX. We shall equip our CEW with Fermi to achieve optimum price/performance combinations.

The potential contribution of the GPU to performance depends on another issue: CUDA compliance.

State of CUDA Developments

According to Wikipedia, CUDA (Compute Unified Device Architecture) is a parallel computing architecture developed by Nvidia. CUDA is the computing engine in Nvidia GPU accessible to software developers through variants of industry-standard programming languages. For example, programmers use C for CUDA (C with Nvidia extensions and certain restrictions) compiled through a PathScale Open64 C compiler to code algorithms for execution on the GPU. (The latest stable version is 3.2 released in September 2010 to software developers.)

The GPGPU website has a preview of an interview with John Humphrey of EM Photonics, a pioneer in GPU computing and developer of the CUDA-accelerated linear algebra library. Here is an extract of the preview: "CUDA allows for very direct expression of exactly how you want the GPU to perform a given unit of work. Ten years ago I was doing FPGA work, where the great promise was the automatic conversion of high level languages to hardware logic. Needless to say, the huge abstraction meant the result wasn't good."

Quadro Fermi family has implemented CUDA 2.1 whereas Quadro FX implemented CUDA 1.3. The newer version has provided features that are significantly richer. For example, Quadro FX did not support "floating point atomic additions on 32-bit words in shared memory" whereas Fermi does. Other notable improvements are:

• Up to 512 CUDA cores and 3.0 billion transistors
• Nvidia Parallel DataCache technology
• Nvidia GigaThread engine
• ECC memory support
• Native support for Visual Studio

State of Computer Hardware Developments

Abbreviations

• HDD is Hard Disk Drive
• SATA is Serial AT Attachment
• SAS is Serial Attached SCSI
• SSD is Solid State Disk
• RAID is Redundant Array of Inexpensive Disks
• NAND is memory based on "Not AND" gate algorithm

Bulk storage is an essential part of a CEW for processing in real time and archiving for later retrieval. Hard disks with SATA interface are getting bigger in storage size and cheaper in hardware cost over time, but not getting faster in performance or smaller in physical size. To get faster and smaller, we have to select hard disks with SAS interfaces, with a major compromise on storage size and hardware price.

RAID has been around for decades for providing redundancy, expanding the size of volume to well beyond the confines of one physical hard disk, and expediting the speed of sequential reading and writing, in particular random writing. We can deploy SAS RAID to address the large storage size issue but the hardware price will go up further.

SSD has turned up recently as a bright star on the horizon. It has not replaced HDD because of its high price, limitations of NAND memory for longevity, and immaturity of controller technology. However, it has found a place recently as a RAID Cache for two important benefits not achievable with other means. The first is a higher speed of random read. The second is a low cost point when used in conjunction with SATA HDD.

Intel has released Sandy Bridge CPU and chipsets that are stable and bug free since March 2011. System computation performance is over 20% higher than the previous generation called Westmere. The top CPU model has 4 editions that are officially capable of over-clocking to over 4GHz as long as the CPU power consumption is within the designed limit for thermal consideration, called TDP (Thermal Design Power). The 6-core edition with official over-clocking will come out in June 2011 timeframe.

CurrentState & Foreseeable Future

Semiconductor manufacturing technology has improved to 22 x 10-9 metres this year 2011and is heading towards 18 nanometres in 2012. Smaller means more: we will get more cores and more power from a new CPU or GPU made on advancing nanotechnology. The current laboratory probe limit is 10-18and this sets the headroom for semiconductor technologists.

While GPU and CUDA are having big impacts on performance computing, the dominant CPU manufacturers are not resting on their laurels. They have started to integrate their own GPU into the CPU. However, the level of integration is a far cry from the CUDA world and integrated GPU will not displace CUDA for design and engineering computing in the foreseeable future. This means our current practice as described above will remain the prevailing format for accelerating CAD, CAE and CEW.

The Coolest Technologies And Gadgets In The Market

In the last few years, the personal technology industry has suddenly exploded with a special segment of innovative gadgets. These gadgets utilize existing technologies and create very interesting use cases for them. So here are some of those cool new things that are happening in the Technology market right now.

Touchscreen Technology
It has been around for quite some time now but it was Apple who suddenly came out with the multi touch iPhone. There statement was very bold - a smartphone with only one physical button. This sparked a revolution in the market and we are finally reaping the benefits in the form of multiple touchscreen based portable devices. There are touchscreen PMP's, touchscreen tablets/slates and of course - the new generation touchscreen phones and their respective mobile OS.

GeoLocation
For a lot of people, life without letting people know where they had their coffee would feel incomplete. And with geolocation built right on to your phone, it is easy to do that. The current crop of GPS/AGPS enabled smartphones with their collection of smart location based apps like FourSquare and GoWalla are completely changing how our real world activities interact with the virtual world.

Low Power Consuming, High Performance CPU's
These are mostly mobile processors like the ones made by ARM (e.g. Cortex A9) that run the modern day handheld devices. They run at amazing speeds that touch 1Ghz and also have multiple cores. These are the CPU's that have made sure that we can achieve futuristic ideas right now. The amount of power that we can now fit into the palm of our hands is amazing. This makes sure that all the other miniature technologies have access to enough processing power to do great things.

Solar Technology
This technology has also been around for quite some time now but only recently has it developed enough to makes its way in to really cool gadgets. We now have solar chargers for our cell phones. Solar powered small fans are also quite common. But the best solar panel that I have seen so far is one that is foldable like a cloth and charges your laptop in bright sun light.

Pico Projectors
This one is mainly thanks to Texas Instruments and their groundbreaking miniature DLP engine. This engine, along with miniature LCoS engine brought about the pico projector revolution. Now projectors can be small enough to fit inside your phone, digital camera and more. And even though they are not very bright now, that is changing fast.

Thin Speakers, Really Thin
How thin do you think speakers can go? Well, the thinnest so far are speakers made out of cloth. Yes, Yamaha has made cloth speakers that are 1 'millimeter' thin. It is thin enough to be easily wrapped up and transported. And if you print on it, it will look like any other piece of printed cloth. But it can emit sound that can be heard when standing directly in front of it. It is still not commercially available but it will hopefully be in the market soon.

Solar Power Technology and International Relations

Solar power technology is an exciting and developing field of study. Articles in both scientific and mainstream news frequently highlight its latest advancements. Notable events over just the last year include discoveries of new coating options, structural designs, storage methods, and material choices which all work toward creating solar cells that are more efficient as well as more affordable.

This level of interest in alternative energy should come as no surprise. In the world of today, many people and communities are finding themselves concerned about the condition of the environment. For this reason, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) was formed.

This scientific body focuses on the risks involved in anthropogenic, or human-caused, climate change. Specifically, it has the task of assessing those risks as well as determining methods of addressing them. A formidable amount of science academies, societies, and other scientific organizations support the conclusions of the IPCC.

These concerns for the environment have encouraged steps to be taken on an international level to stabilize the concentrations of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere. One such step was the creation of the Kyoto Protocol, which entered into force in the year 2005. This protocol established legally binding commitments for the reduction of harmful emissions.

The treaty uses a cap and trade system with carbon credits and emissions quotas. Nations which fall under their emissions quotas may sell their credits. There are also opportunities for earning credits with different development projects. Such projects often deal with alternative energies like solar power.

While over 180 countries have ratified the treaty, the United States only signed it. A statement given by President George W. Bush on why it was not being submitted for ratification cited the economy. Also mentioned was the fact that China had signed it with many exemptions. At that time, China was the second-largest emitter of greenhouse gases after the United States. Its exemptions were not viewed as being in line with the protocol.

The first commitment period of the Kyoto Protocol is set to expire in 2012. Discussions about the next period have been ongoing. The role of the United States in the next treaty remains to be seen.

Of course, the U.S. does recognize the need for change. While President Bush did not attempt to ratify the agreement, he clarified that it wasn't due to a lack of support for the principles of the Kyoto Protocol.

All of this has set the tone for great environmental achievements to be made between countries. As the top carbon dioxide emitters, agreements between U.S. and China stand to benefit the rest of the world. Both nations are part of the Asia Pacific Partnership on Clean Development and Climate.

Recent news has highlighted agreements made between the Chinese Academy of Sciences' Institute of Electrical Engineering (IEE) and the American National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL). These are two of the largest solar power research institutes in the world. Both have signed a memorandum of understanding, or MOU.

Under this agreement, Chinese and American scientists will focus on photovoltaic (PV) battery and component testing. It also emphasizes that research and development of technology will be shared. This allows for quicker and more effective communication between the researching groups.

The vice president of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, Jiang Mianheng, has said that the deal represents great headway being made between the two institutes, and has great hopes for solar energy development. The NREL Web site points out that the MOU expands collaboration between the world's largest economies and energy consumers. Events such as these are smaller gestures within the greater movements that define a political as well as physical climate of change.

Profession of Electrical Engineering

The modern world has affected tremendously from the inventions in the field of electronics that have changed and continue to change our lifestyle. Today, our lives are directly affected by electricity without which we cannot perform most of our day-to-day tasks. The advancement in the field of electrical engineering has definitely created wonderful opportunities for professionals linked to this field. Geniuses like Nikola Tesla and Thomas Alva Edison made lives easier when they gifted mankind fantastic inventions. Similarly today's electrical engineers are also striving to give this world more advanced tools to make the life easier than ever before.

The basic job of an electrical engineer is to design systems that provide electrical power, such as the power distribution scheme in any infrastructure

All the major engineering universities of Pakistan namely, NED University of engineering and Technology, National University of Science and Technology (NUST), University of Engineering Science and Technology, Sialkot, offer degree program in electrical engineering. Since today's world would be impossible to run without electricity, career and Job prospect for electrical engineers is very bright in Pakistan and abroad.

Electrical engineering is the knowledge of generation, transmission, distribution, utilization and control of electricity. Electric power is normally changed into mechanical power, heat, sound, light or chemical power by some motor, electric magnet, Furness, loudspeaker, lamp or electrolytic. Electrical engineering has performed an important rule in the advancement of science and technology today due to the characteristic of being changing of electric power into mechanical power.

Electrical engineering begins with the activity of generating electric power through generators. Electricity is generated by the generators which work through oil, gas or atomic energy, or construct dam on rivers. Then this electricity is supplied to cities, towns and villages for domestic and industrial consumption. Different equipments and instruments are fixed for such purpose of distribution and transmission. Generation of electric power in the electric station, transmission to cities, distribution of electricity among domestic and industrial consumers, fitting of electrical equipment, are all such activities which are performed under the supervision of engineers.

The youths having practical approach and creative abilities can be more successful in the field of engineering. They are necessary to be logical minded and have the ability to pre plain their task. An engineer also has to work as an administrator therefore he should have the ability to make use of others. Doing a work in a disciplined manner and arrange the record carefully are some additional persona of an engineer.