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

Science, research, scientific disciplines. You can also see entries assigned to this category.

(4/23 pages) « First < 2 3 4 5 6 > Last »

biogenetic child adj. With egg donation, science has succeeded in, if not extending women’s fertility, at least making an end run around it, allowing older women who, for a variety of reasons (lack of money, lack of partner, lack of interest, lack of partner’s interest) didn’t have children in their biological prime—as well as younger women with dysfunctional ovaries—to carry and bear babies themselves. It has given rise to the mind-bending phrase “biogenetic child,” meaning a child who is both biologically and genetically related to each of its parents, by, for the first time in history, separating those components. [English Relationships Science] [full cite] (Jul. 15, 2007)

biophony n. Krause coined the term, “biophony,” referring to the biotic (group of animals living together) symphony in an ecosystem. [English Biology Environment Science] [full cite] (Jul. 9, 2004)

blackbody radiation n. The millimeter wave signature is also known as blackbody radiation and is made up of two properties: emissivity and reflectivity. [English Science Technology] [full cite] (Mar. 15, 2005)

blebbing n. Here, we show that Dictyostelium cells moving in a physiological milieu continuously produce “blebs” at their leading edges, and demonstrate that focal blebbing contributes greatly to their locomotion. Blebs are well-characterized spherical hyaline protrusions that occur when a patch of cell membrane detaches from its supporting cortex. Their formation requires the activity of myosin II, and their physiological contribution to cell motility has not been fully appreciated. We find that pseudopodia extension, cell body retraction and overall cell displacement are reduced under conditions that prevent blebbing, including high osmolarity and blebbistatin, and in myosin-II-null cells. [English Biology Science] [full cite] (Nov. 19, 2006)

bomb peak n. The chemical record in stalagmites is so sensitive the scientists are even able to plot the presence of what is called the bomb peak—the presence of excess carbon 14 created by the global atmospheric nuclear tests of the 1950s and ’60s. [English Science] [full cite] (Apr. 19, 2006)

bomb pulse n. Because of atmospheric testing of nuclear bombs between 1945 and 1960, the atmosphere received a sharp spike of carbon-14, commonly called the “bomb pulse,” that has been declining to normal levels as excess carbon-14 has been absorbed into the ocean. The yearly amount of carbon-14 has been carefully monitored and is well known. [English Science Jargon] [full cite] (Feb. 26, 2008)

bouma shape n. Nor have the palaeographers and codicologists ever noted one of the most important lexical consequences of the adoption of minuscule, as opposed to majuscule, as a book script is that it contributed, in conjunction with word separation, to giving each word a distinct image, which modern psychologists call the “Bouma shape,” peculiar to Western writing and a significant aid to silent visual processing. [English Science Jargon] [full cite] (Sep. 3, 2004)

bouma shape n. Taylor & Taylor used these Bouma shapes for a study on the text of their own book, and found that the Bouma shape uniquely specified 6953 out of 7848 words in the sample. [English Science Technology Jargon] [full cite] (Sep. 3, 2004)

bouma shape n. In visual terms, a word is distinguished by its characters’ relation to the white space surrounding it and the nature of its letter face (for instance, small thin strokes are common to handwriting, and thick short strokes are common to non-serifed print fonts). Psychologists describe this as its “Bouma-shape” (after Dutch psychologist Herman Bouma) in cognition studies. [English Science Technology Jargon] [full cite] (Sep. 3, 2004)

bouma shape n. I didn’t really invent the term “bouma”: it’s adapted from the term “Bouma-shape” used by Saenger in his “Space between words”; he in turn claims to have taken it from the work of Taylor & Taylor (although I myself have yet to find any such term used by them), and is based on the Dutch psychologist Herman Bouma who formalized empirical research into word-shape-based reading. Professor Bouma himself had never heard of the term (a friend of mine asked him). The only things I can take credit for is making it convenient (a single lc word), and spreading it. [English Science Technology Jargon] [full cite] (Sep. 3, 2004)

(4/23 pages) « First < 2 3 4 5 6 > Last »