Tuesday, May 29, 2007

Mental health

Mental health is a idea that refers to a human individual's emotional and psychological well-being. Merriam-Webster defines mental health as "A state of emotional and psychological well-being in which an individual is able to use his or her cognitive and emotional capabilities, function in society, and meet the ordinary demands of everyday life."
According to the World Health Organization (WHO), there is no one "official" definition of mental health. Cultural differences, subjective assessments, and competing professional theories all affect how "mental health" is defined. In general, most experts agree that "mental health" and "mental illness" are not opposites. In other words, the absence of a recognized mental disorder is not of necessity an indicator of mental health.One way to think about mental health is by looking at how efficiently and successfully a person functions. Feeling capable and competent; being able to handle normal levels of stress, preserve satisfying relationships, and lead an independent life; and being able to "bounce back," or recover from difficult situations, are all signs of mental health.Encompassing your emotional, social, and—most importantly—your mental well-being; All these aspects—emotional, physical, and social—must function jointly to achieve overall health.

Monday, May 21, 2007

Game controller

A game controller is an input device used to manage a video game. A controller is usually connected to a video game console or a personal computer. A game controller can be a keyboard, mouse, game pad, joystick, paddle, or any other device designed for gaming that can receive input.
Special purpose devices, such as steering wheels for driving games and light guns for shooting games, may also exist for a platform. Some devices, such as keyboards and mice, are actually common input devices and their use is not strictly limited to that of a game controller.

Monday, May 14, 2007

ALU

The arithmetic logic unit (ALU) is a digital circuit that calculates an arithmetic operation (addition, subtraction, etc.) and logic operations (Exclusive or, AND, etc.) between two numbers. The ALU is a basic building block of the central processing unit of a computer. Many types of electronic circuits require performing some type of arithmetic operation, so even the circuit within a digital watch will have a tiny ALU that keeps adding 1 to the current time, and keeps checking if it should beep the timer, etc...

By far, the most complex electronic circuits are those that are built within the chip of modern microprocessors like the Pentium. Therefore, these processors have inside them a powerful and very complex ALU. In fact, recent microprocessor (or mainframe) may have multiple cores, each core with multiple execution units, each with multiple ALUs.

Wednesday, May 09, 2007

Water pollution

Water pollution is a large set of unfavorable belongings upon water bodies such as lakes, rivers, oceans, and groundwater caused by human activities. Although natural phenomena such as volcanoes, algae blooms, storms, and earthquakes also cause main changes in water quality and the environmental status of water, these are not deemed to be pollution. Water pollution has many causes and characteristics. Increases in nutrient loading may lead to eutrophication. Organic wastes such as sewage inflict high oxygen demands on the getting water leading to oxygen depletion with potentially severe impacts on the whole eco-system. Industries discharge a variety of pollutants in their wastewater including grave metals, organic toxins, oils, nutrients, and solids. Discharges can also have thermal effects, especially those from power stations, and these too reduce the available oxygen. Silt-bearing runoff from many activities together with construction sites, deforestation and agriculture can reduce the penetration of sunlight through the water column, restricting photosynthesis and causing blanketing of the lake or river bed, in turn damaging ecological systems.

Pollutants in water consist of a wide spectrum of chemicals, pathogens, and physical chemistry or sensory changes. A lot of the chemical substances are toxic. Pathogens can apparently produce waterborne diseases in either human or animal hosts. Alteration of water’s physical chemistry includes acidity, conductivity, temperature, and eutrophication. Eutrophication is the fertilization of surface water by nutrients that were previously scarce. Even many of the municipal water supplies in developed countries can present health risks.

Thursday, May 03, 2007

Refrigerator

A typical refrigerator with its door open refrigerator is a cooling machine comprising a thermally insulated compartment and a mechanism to transfer heat from it to the outside environment, cooling the contents to a temperature below ambient. Refrigerators are widely used to store foods which deteriorate at ambient temperatures; spoilage due to bacterial growth and other processes is much slower at low temperatures. Devices described as "refrigerators" maintain a temperature a few degrees above the freezing point of water; similar devices which maintain temperatures below the freezing point of water are called "freezers". The refrigerator is a relatively modern creation amongst kitchen appliances. It replaced the common icebox which had been a household item for almost a century and a half prior, and is sometimes still called by the original name "icebox".