Mining Engineering is a field that involves many of the other engineering disciplines as applied to extracting and processing minerals from a naturally occurring environment.

The need for mineral extraction and production is an essential activity of any technically proficient society. As minerals are produced from within a naturally occurring environment, disturbance of the environment as a result of mineral production is a given. Modern mining engineers must therefore be concerned not only with the production and processing of mineral commodities, but also with the mitigation of damage or changes to an environment as a result of that production and processing.

The two primary types of mine are underground mines and open-pit mines. Minerals that exist mostly underground (eg. coal, gold etc.) are generally recovered using the underground mining process. Minerals like iron ore, limestone, manganese ore, etc. are mostly recovered from the surface downwards in opencast mining.

Engineering disciplines that are closely related to mining engineering are:

• Civil engineering
• Environmental engineering
• Geotechnical engineering
• Hydraulic engineering
• Electrical engineering
• Structural Engineering

Specialized areas of mining engineering involve extraction of minerals from underwater mines, seawater, in-situ retorting of rock, and underground gasification.

Information Technology (IT), as defined by the Information Technology Association of America (ITAA) is: "the study, design, development, implementation, support or management of computer-based information systems, particularly software applications and computer hardware." In short, IT deals with the use of electronic computers and computer software to convert, store, protect, process, transmit and retrieve information, securely.

In this definition, the term "information" can usually be replaced by "data" without loss of meaning. Recently it has become popular to broaden the term to explicitly include the field of electronic communication so that people tend to use the abbreviation ICT (Information and Communication Technology).

The history of information technology predates the invention of the modern digital computer by many centuries. Machines for calculating fixed numerical tasks, such as the abacus, have existed since antiquity. Wilhelm Schickard built the first mechanical calculator in 1623.^[1] Charles Babbage designed a difference engine in Victorian times^[2], and around 1900 the IBM corporation sold punch-card machines^[3]. However all of these machines were constrained to perform a single task, or at best, some subset of all possible tasks.

During the 1940s, as newer and more powerful computing machines were developed, the term computer came to refer to the machines rather than their human predecessors. As it became clear that computers could be used for more than just mathematical calculations, the field of computer science broadened to study computation in general. Computer science began to be established as a distinct academic discipline in the 1960s, with the creation of the first computer science departments and degree programs.^[4] Since practical computers became available, many applications of computing have become distinct areas of study in their own right.

Information Technology Today

Today, the term Information Technology has ballooned to encompass many aspects of computing and technology, and the term is more recognizable than ever before. The Information Technology umbrella can be quite large, covering many fields. IT professionals perform a variety of duties that range from installing applications to designing complex computer networks and information databases. A few of the duties that IT professionals perform may include:

• Data Management
• Computer Networking
• Database Systems Design
• Software design
• Management Information Systems
• Systems management