KNOW WHY CAPSULES HAVE TWO COLOURS !!

Whenever we do not feel good or get sick, we generally take medicines. We go for tablets, capsules or syrups. But when we look at capsules, they have two colours. Have you ever thought of this? Let’s discuss the reason for the two colours in the capsule in this article.

1. Operational Efficiency: 

If you see a capsule closely, it has two separate parts joined and one of them is actually a little wider. You can see in the below picture the difference in the diameter of both parts. The white part is called the body and the red part is called the cap.

When the contents are being filled in capsules, both parts are open. While the filling operation is being carried out with a capsule filling machine, the body part is placed at the bottom to fill content and the cap part is placed on the body after filling the content. The two colours help to make it easy to distinguish both parts and use them appropriately.

2. Easy Identification:

The colour of capsules or any medicine plays a very important role from the identification point of view. Specifically for patients with multiple diseases and taking lot many medicines. This colour coding helps patients to remember the specific medicine easily. Also, having two different colours in one capsule gives patients and medical practitioners more colour combinations to differentiate their medicine and product.

Another reason is to cover up its less aesthetically pleasing appearance and make people more acceptable from the senses. Especially for children, coloured capsules make them less afraid.

So, these are the two major reasons for having two colours in capsules. If you have anything to add, feel free to use the comment box. Thank you for reading the article!

KNOW WHAT IS THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN EFFICIENCY & EFFICACY !!

These days we repetitively hear one word that is efficacy. This term is being used most commonly with vaccines. You might wonder what does this mean and how is this different from efficiency. Let us discuss the difference between them in this article.

Efficiency:

Efficiency is doing things in the most economical way whether in terms of time, energy, or money. It is the ratio of the output to the inputs of any system (good input to output ratio). Once you have found a solution, you can then try to improve it by making it more efficient. In clinical trials, two drugs could be equally effective: they both manage to improve patients’ symptoms in the real world. However, if one of them is much more costly than the other one, that drug won’t be considered as efficient.

Efficacy:

Efficacy is getting things done. It is the ability to produce a desired amount of the desired effect, or success in achieving a given goal. The word efficacy is used in pharmacology and medicine to refer to the maximum response achievable from a pharmaceutical drug in research settings. It simply focuses on the output without considering the input.

To summarize: efficacy means getting things done (is it working?), effectiveness means doing the right things (is it actually working well?), and efficiency means doing things right (is it working in the most economical way?)

KNOW WHY EVERY QR CODE HAS 3 BIG SQUARES !

Nowadays, we see QR codes almost everywhere. While doing UPI payments, using WhatsApp web, going to a website, or seeking additional information, QR codes come in handy. Every QR code has one thing in common, they have 3 squares on the corner. This may seem to be quite normal but they have a specific purpose to serve. In this article, we will explore the reason behind those three squares on the QR code.

A QR code or Quick Response code is a type of two-dimensional barcode invented in 1994 by the Japanese automotive company with the purpose to track vehicles during manufacturing. The Quick Response system became popular due to its fast readability and greater storage capacity compared to standard barcodes. A QR code consists of black squares arranged in a square grid on a white background, which can be read by an imaging device such as a camera. The point of the QR code is to allow you to easily access their website without typing any web addresses into your phone — just by scanning a picture.

When your Smartphone scans the QR code, it translates that information into something that can be easily understood by humans. QR codes can be divided into various parts as shown below.

1. Quiet zone: An empty white border that makes it possible to isolate the code from among other printed information (for example, on a dirty envelope, among the black and white print of a newspaper).

2. Finder patterns: One unique feature of QR code is that it can be read at any orientation be it at angle or upside down. These 3 squares allow the reader (an app on your smartphone or a dedicated one) to determine the code’s orientation, size and viewing angle. If all 4 corners were the same, the scanner would not know if the code was the right way up, upside down, or rotated 90 degrees clockwise or anticlockwise.

3. Alignment pattern: This ensures the code can be read even if it's distorted (viewed at an angle, printed on a curved surface, and so on).

4. Timing pattern: This runs horizontally and vertically between the three finder patterns and consists of alternate black and white squares. The timing pattern makes it easy to identify the individual data cells within a QR code and is especially useful when the code is damaged or distorted.

5. Version information: There are various different versions of the QR code standard; the version information (positioned near two of the finder patterns) simply identifies which one is being used in a particular code.

6. Data cells: Each individual black or white square that's not part of one of the standard features (the timing, alignment, and other patterns) contains some of the actual data in the code.

So, QR codes contain a lot of data that we see in form of boxes. Every pattern of QR code has a different set of data inside. So from the next time you see a QR code, you know the purpose of those 3 squares.

Thank you for reading the article.