Environment
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.
This is a disambiguation page; that is, one that points to other pages that might otherwise have the same name. If you followed a link here, you might want to go back and fix that link to point to the appropriate specific page. In general, the environment or milieu of some object or action consists of the substances, circumstances, objects, or conditions by which it is surrounded or in which it occurs. (Although the two terms are usually synonyms, some sciences prefer the less common milieu to avoid confusion with the more well-known meanings of environment in ecology, politics, and sociology.) Either word may be used with specialized meaning in various contexts:
- In biology, chiefly ecology, it means everything that may directly affect the metabolism or behavior of a living organism or species, including light, air, water, soil, and other living beings. See environment (biology).
- In non-technical contexts, such as politics, it often refers to the natural environment, that part of the natural world that is deemed valuable or important by human beings, for any reason.
- In literature, history, and sociology, it is the culture that an individual lives or was educated in, and the people and institutions with whom he interacts; see social environment.
- In any kind of organization or enterprise, it may also refer to the social and psychological conditions that are felt by its members; see work environment.
- In any kind of meeting or congress, it may signify the prevailing mood or preferences of the participants.
- In architecture, ergonomy, and work safety, it is the ensemble of elements of a room or building that affect the well-being and efficiency of its occupants—including dimensions and arranement of living spaces and furniture, light, ventilation, temperature, noise, etc..; see living environment.
- In thermodynamics, it refers to any objects that are not part of the system under study, and may receive or provide heat to it; see surroundings (thermodynamics).
- In chemistry and biochemistry, it is the chemical nature of a solution in which a reaction takes place, chiefly its PH (i.e. whether it is acid or alkaline).
- In metallurgy and ceramics, it often refers to the oxidizing or reductive character of the gases or flames prevailing during some high-temperature process.
- In computer science, it generally means data, processes or devices which, although not explicitly named as parameters of a computation, may nevertheless affect its outcome.
- In functional programming, lambda calculus, and programming languages, it usually means identifiers that are defined outside a given function but can be used in it.
- In certain operating systems like Unix and MS-DOS, it also means a set of predefined variables that are provided by the system to any newly started process; see environment variable.
- More generally, it may also mean the hardware and operating system on which a program is executed; see System platform.
See also