Maryland

Maryland Forklift Parts - The US state of Maryland is located within the Mid Atlantic region of the nation. The state is bordered by the states of Virginia, West Virginia, and the District of Columbia to its west and south, the state of Pennsylvania towards its north, and the state of Delaware to its east. The state of Maryland was the seventh state to ratify the United States Constitution, and three nicknames for it: the Old Line State, the Free State, and the Chesapeake Bay State are sometimes used. Baltimore is the most inhabited city in Maryland. Its capital is Annapolis.

The economic activity of the state of Maryland is mainly dependent in the sector of tertiary service, and in turn, the sector is mostly influenced by location. Transportation is another major service sector, relying on the Port of Baltimore and its subsequent trucking and railway access. The port ranked 17th in the nation by tonnage in the year 2008. Even though the port handles a huge array of products, the most usual imports are raw materials and bulk commodities, like for instance petroleum, iron ore, sugar, and fertilizers, normally distributed to the relatively close manufacturing centers of the inland Midwest via good overland transportation. The port also receives some different brands of imported motor vehicles and is the number two auto port in the nation

Because of its nearness to the government in Washington, D.C., a second service activity takes advantage of its location emphasizing administrative and technical tasks for the defense/aerospace business as well as the numerous bio-research laboratories. Additionally, many medical and educational research institutions are situated within Maryland. As a matter of fact, the different components of The Johns Hopkins University and its medical research facilities are currently the biggest single employer in the Baltimore area. Altogether, white collar administrative and technical workers consist of 25% of Maryland's work force, attributable in part to neighboring state of Maryland being a part of the Washington Metro Area where the federal government office employment is relatively high.

Maryland has a large food-production sector. A huge component of this is commercial fishing, centered in Chesapeake Bay, but likewise comprising activity off the short Atlantic seacoast. The largest catches by species are the oysters blue crab, menhaden and striped bass. The Bay also has uncounted millions of overwintering waterfowl in its many wildlife refuges. While not, strictly speaking, a commercial food resource, the waterfowl support a tourism sector of sportsmen.

The state is a key center for research in life sciences and development. There are approximately 400 biotechnology companies within the state, making the state of Maryland the fourth-biggest biotech economy within the nation.

Government agencies and institutions with an interest in research and development located in Maryland comprise the Johns Hopkins University, the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory, more than one campus of the University System of Maryland, Goddard Space Flight Center, the United States Census Bureau, the National Institutes of Health (NIH), the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH), the federal Food and Drug Administration (FDA), the Howard Hughes Medical Institute, the Celera Genomics company, the J. Craig Venter Institute (JCVI), the Human Genome Sciences (HGS), and MedImmune, that just obtained by AstraZeneca.