Biology Slang, Jargon, and New Words from Double-Tongued Dictionary

Biology, including plants, animals, and the study of them. You can also see entries assigned to this category.

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ant colony optimization n. Ant colony optimisation, as the technique is called, turns on the fact that such insects exploit food in what appears to be an intelligent, but is in fact an entirely mindless, way.…he computer scientists fill their machines with virtual ants and give them the task of finding their way through a maze or graph, leaving a coded signal as they pass until, just like the ants, the fastest route emerges. The technique is used in planning the most efficient design of a phone network, the best use of the gates at Heathrow and the management of wireless messages through a grid of receivers. In the phone system, for example, each message leaves a digital scent-mark as it passes through a node and, as it builds up, the fastest track soon attracts the most traffic. [English Biology Science Technology] [full cite] (Jul. 18, 2007)

anthropodenial n. The ancients apparently never gave much thought to this practice, the opposite of anthropomorphism, and so we lack a word for it. I will call it anthropodenial: a blindness to the humanlike characteristics of other animals, or the animal-like characteristics of ourselves. [English Biology Science] [full cite] (Jul. 8, 2005)

astrobioethics n. Say hello to astrobioethics, a branch of ethics involving the implications of life science in space. [English Biology Science Factitious New or Nonce] [full cite] (Aug. 5, 2008)

bac n. Now, all the inspectors were really doing was assessing health risk, watching your bacteria (or “bac” as they call it), identifying environs in which it peaked and coaxing those food retailers to improve their outlets. [English Biology Health Science] [full cite] (Nov. 5, 2004)

bait bucket biologist n. While pike have not been stocked extensively in Colorado waters since the early 1980s, some fish have escaped, or been “planted” illegally by “bait bucket biologists” in other Colorado waters where they were not intended to be, sometimes repeatedly. [English Animals, Insects, & Birds Biology Environment] [full cite] (Sep. 1, 2006)

bamboo kun n. When the bamboo is pulped and treated, it produces strands that are nearly as strong as steel. A natural agent called “bamboo kun” prevents the growth of bacteria on the fiber, eliminating the need for anti-microbial chemical treatment. [English Biology] [full cite] (Sep. 14, 2006)

bean-bag genetics n. As Robert Brandon famously stated, genes are invisible to selection. Yet, population genetics assumes that the genes are visible to selection. How? Via phenotypes. But that is an oversimplified notion that a mutation in one gene predictably leads always to the same change in the phenotype. This one-gene one-trait view is sometimes called “bean-bag genetics.” [English Biology Science Slang] [full cite] (Jul. 10, 2007)

bio-box n. He helped haul out bio-boxes in the wake of suicides and murders. [English Biology Jargon Abbreviation] [full cite] (Jun. 11, 2007)

bio-ink n. For years, tissue engineers have used souped-up printers, and in some cases off-the-shelf models, to print “bio-inks.” These inks consist of anything from proteins to individual cells printed in microscopic patterns. By printing layer upon layer of cell patterns, scientists may one day be able to “print” whole tissues or organs for replacement therapies. [English Biology Technology] [full cite] (Dec. 20, 2006)

bio-ink n. A printer that generates a scaffold onto which new bone can grow has been developed by researchers at Carnegie Mellon University’s Bone Tissue Engineering Center (BTEC) in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.…Alongside fibrin, the group is planning to use growth factors such as insulin-type growth factor (IGF) as a bio-ink. [English Biology Technology] [full cite] (Mar. 9, 2007)

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