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 Forklift Masts Maryland - The US state of Maryland is located in the Mid Atlantic region of the country. Maryland is surrounded by the states of Virginia, West Virginia, and the District of Columbia to its south and west, the state of Pennsylvania towards its north, and Delaware towards its east. The state of Maryland was the seventh state to ratify the United States Constitution, and three nicknames for it: the Chesapeake Bay State, the Old Line State and the Free State are sometimes utilized. Maryland's most populated city is Baltimore. 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 largely influenced by location. Transportation is another major service sector, depending on the Port of Baltimore and its subsequent railway and trucking access. The port ranked 17th within the U.S. by tonnage in 2008. Although the port handles a huge variety of products, the most usual imports are bulk commodities and raw materials, like for instance iron ore, petroleum, fertilizers and sugar, often distributed to the relatively close manufacturing centers of the inland Midwest via good overland transportation. The port also receives some various brands of imported motor vehicles and is the number two auto port within the U.S.
A second service activity takes advantage of the close location of the center of government within Washington, D.C. and emphasizes administrative and technical tasks for the defense/aerospace industry and bio-research laboratories, along with staffing of satellite government headquarters in the exurban or suburban Baltimore/Washington area. Additionally, many medical and educational research institutions are situated within the state. 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. In total, white collar administrative and technical workers comprise 25 percent of Maryland's labor force, attributable partly to neighboring Maryland being a part of the Washington Metro Area where the federal government office employment is relatively high.
There is a huge food-production sector within the state of Maryland. Commercial fishing is a large component of this, with the areas of Chesapeake Bay and the shores of the Atlantic seacoast providing access to the waters of the Atlantic Ocean. The biggest catches by species are the oysters blue crab, striped bass, and menhaden. The Bay likewise has uncounted millions of overwintering waterfowl in its many wildlife refuges. Though not, strictly speaking, a commercial food resource, the waterfowl support a tourism sector of sportsmen.
The state of Maryland is a major center for life sciences research and development. With over 400 biotechnology businesses situated there, Maryland is the fourth-biggest nexus in this field in the US.
Government agencies and institutions with an interest in research and development located within Maryland comprise the John Hopkins Applied Physics laboratory, the John Hopkins University, more than one campus of the University System of Maryland, the United States Census Bureau, Goodard Space Flight Center, the National Institutes of Health (NIH), the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), the federal Food and Drug Administration (FDA), the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH), the Celera Genomics company, the Howard Hughes Medical Institute, the J. Craig Venter Institute (JCVI), the Human Genome Sciences (HGS), and MedImmune, that recently purchased by AstraZeneca.
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