Science Tony

By   McDonald, T.    | Date 29th of November 2020 The future as we know it is uncertain. As we become more and more dependent on computers and machine do we put our very existence at risk? Even in entertainment, sci-fi is constantly airing our subconsciousness concerns about our own demise. Now we have the problem of algorithms determining what type of propaganda gets the best results from us. As we move into an uncertain future due to the high levels of propaganda from politics and religion on the net not to mention the violence, the tension on the street and in everyday life grows. What are the problems that we face?   Influence from outside our nations: bots on the net.   By this i mean foreign countries with malicious intent.  You know how businesses collect information for advertising purposes so they can make adverts that are more appealing to someone?  Well, political parties can do the same.  Algorithms collect information on you and then determine what type of person

Giving up smoking is a top priority for many people and will make it to many a new year’s resolution list, but how many are really serious? It is true that a person will not give up smoking until they are ready; someone must really want it to happen. For myself, I gave up smoking because of a growing list of logical reasons and it took a lot of effort, but in the end I did it. Why I gave up smoking and how I did it.  By McDonald, T . | Updated 10th of January 2022 Why I decided to give up smoking. Everyone must agree that smoking is an expensive habit. When I gave up, cigarettes were around £4 for a packet of twenty and about the same for 50g of tobacco. My habit was costing me around £30 to £40 a week, so I moved to rolling tobacco. At the time, I also thought that moving to rolling tobacco would help reduce my intake as well as the cost. Furthermore, I knew that smoking was killing me and making it difficult to achieve real success in health goals like running, so

By McDonald, T . | Date 3rd of October 2018 Mental health is a phrase banded about by more and more people.  Mental health encompasses a wide range of disorders listed in the international classification of disorders (ICD 10) and in the diagnostic and statistical manual of mental disorders (DSM 5) Recently I was asked on social media by Wendy Dignan , ‘How do I maintain a balanced mental health ?’  This is a perplexing question since it is firstly difficult to explain what mental health is and secondly why should we assume that mental health is something that has a balance and is solely in our control ?   What is Mental Health? Firstly, how can mental health be described ; what is mental health?  Is it something to do with the way a person feels or is it more to do with how a person copes under stress?  If it is to do with how a person feels, surely it is easy to heal people and if it is to do with stress then why do some of the most successful people with no stress su

By McDonald. T |  September 24th 2018 We spend about a third of our life asleep.  For anyone working with computers, sleeping can become a problem due to the light from the screen and from the stimulation of cracking technical problems.  If we have a bad night sleep, it can ruin our day and make us feel unhappy.  Sleep is a place of rejuvenation and for dreaming: it is a time to relax and regenerate.  We place a lot of importance on sleeping and rightly so since if it is interrupted night after night it will turn our life upside down.  If you have trouble sleeping at night consider these factors: temperature of the room, activity in the room and breathing. Temperature of the room If you have trouble sleeping at night, consider the temperature of the room as a factor.  Our core body temperature needs to drop a couple of degrees before we can nod off into the land of blissful sleep. So open a window in the bedroom a few hours before you go to bed to cool the temperature i

By McDonald. T |  July 23th 2018   A.I. is not a discipline in its own right; however, it does fall under a subset of psychology called cognitive sciences and computer science.  Although cognitive science does not include therapy, it is still a good idea to have some understanding of mental health and if any parts of the mental health system can be automated.  For your interest, cognitive science includes anthropology, neuroscience, philosophy and linguistics.  Ultimately, computer science can provide advanced technology to improve mental health services: automating tests; supporting people in the home and understanding the way a person solves a problem. Advanced technology provided by computer science can improve automated testing of mental health. Surveys are a good way of extracting information from people and computers do surveys really well. Furthermore, in computer science there is a subset called data science, which uses scientific methods to extract knowledge from data