From Wikipedia: Multiocular O (ꙮ) is the most rare and exotic glyph variant of Cyrillic letter O. This glyph variant can be found in certain manuscripts in the phrase «серафими многоꙮчитїи» ("many-eyed seraphim").
"In celestial mechanics, the mean anomaly is a parameter relating position and time for a body moving in a Kepler orbit. It is based on the fact that equal areas are swept at the focus in equal intervals of time."
"The mean anomaly is one of three angular parameters ('anomalies') that define a position along an orbit; the other two being the eccentric anomaly and the true anomaly."
"Porkchop plot (also pork-chop plot) is a chart that shows contours of equal characteristic energy (C3) against combinations of launch date and arrival date for a particular interplanetary flight." (Wikipedia)
Accidentally read about sweetbread on Wikipedia. Read that it should not be confused with sweetmeat. Both these words confuse/disgust me now. In a good way.
"Knobs into holes packing is a protein packing motif that occurs mainly in alpha helix or coiled coil domains. One such example is fibrinogen fibril formation." (Wikipedia)
"In molecular biology, a RING (Really Interesting New Gene) finger domain is a protein structural domain of zinc finger type which contains a Cys3HisCys4 amino acid motif which binds two zinc cations." (Wikipedia)
"Kleptothermy is any form of thermoregulation by which an animal shares in the metabolic thermogenesis of another animal. It may or may not be reciprocal, and occurs in both endotherms and ectotherms. Its most common form is huddling." (Wikipedia)
"In mathematics, an abstract simplicial complex is a purely combinatorial description of the geometric notion of a simplicial complex, consisting of a family of finite sets closed under the operation of taking subsets. In the context of matroids and greedoids, abstract simplicial complexes are also called independence systems." (Wikipedia)
Are you suggesting crazy cat people or cat? I would say that the crazy cat people aren't really overrated, but I would like to see them in a zoo... (I imagine that every day, to entertain the audience, a zookeeper will throw in a bunch of cats.)
Anyway, cats ands dogs are definately overrated animals, and everyone is welcome to lock up their favorite ones here.
"This theory gets the name 'banana' because the tube of influence along the entire ray path from source to receiver is an arc resembling the fruit. The 'doughnut' part of the name comes from the ring shape of the cross-section. The ray path is a hollow banana, or a banana-shaped doughnut."
"Tip of the red giant branch (TRGB) is a primary distance indicator used in astronomy. It uses the luminosity of the brightest red giant branch stars in a galaxy to gauge the distance to that galaxy. It has been used in conjunction with observations from the Hubble Space Telescope to determine the relative motions of the Local Cluster of galaxies within the Local Supercluster." (Wikipedia)
"The red clump is a feature in the Hertzsprung-Russell diagram of stars. The red clump is considered the metal-rich counterpart to the horizontal branch. Stars in this part of the Hertzsprung-Russell diagram are sometimes called clump giants." (Wikipedia)
"Bones are not all that is left of dinosaurs. Occasionally the fossilized feces of dinosaurs and other vertebrates are found. Called coprolites, these sometimes impressive relics can give an intestine’s-eye view of dinosaurian diets." From Dinosaurs: A Concise Natural History by David E. Fastovsky.
A vacuous truth is a truth that is devoid of content because it asserts something about all members of a class that is empty or because it says "If A then B" when in fact A is inherently false. (Wikipedia)
In particle physics, a B-factory, or sometimes a beauty factory, is a collider-basedscientific machine designed to produce a large number (of the order of 109) of B mesons and analyze their properties. The tauons and D mesons are also copiously produced at B-factories, which allows precise studies of their properties. (Wikipedia)
Autothysis is the process where an animal destroys itself via an internal rupturing or explosion of an organ which ruptures the skin. The term was proposed by Maschwitz and Maschwitz in 1974 to describe the defensive mechanism of the carpenter ant (Camponotus saundersi). It is caused by a contraction of muscles around a large gland that leads to the gland wall breaking. Some termites (such as the soldiers of Globitermes sulphureus) release a sticky secretion by rupturing a gland near the skin of their neck, producing a tar baby effect in defense against ants. It is a form of suicidal altruism. (Wikipedia)
"The ultraviolet catastrophe, also called the Rayleigh–Jeans catastrophe, was a prediction of late 19th century/early 20th century classical physics that an ideal black body at thermal equilibrium will emit radiation with infinite power." (Wikipedia)
"Clever Hans (in German, der Kluge Hans) was an Orlov Trotter horse that was claimed to have been able to perform arithmetic and other intellectual tasks.
After a formal investigation in 1907, psychologist Oskar Pfungst demonstrated that the horse was not actually performing these mental tasks, but was watching the reaction of his human observers. Pfungst discovered this artifact in the research methodology, wherein the horse was responding directly to involuntary cues in the body language of the human trainer, who had the faculties to solve each problem. The trainer was entirely unaware that he was providing such cues. In honour of Pfungst's study, the anomalous artifact has since been referred to as the Clever Hans effect and has continued to be important knowledge in the observer-expectancy effect and later studies in animal cognition."
"Sarcococca, Sweet box, or Christmas box is a genus of 16-20 species of flowering plants in the family Buxaceae, native to eastern and southeastern Asia and the Himalaya. They are slow-growingevergreen shrubs 1-2 m tall. The leaves are borne alternately, 3-12 cm long and 1-4 cm broad. They bear fragrant flowers, often in winter. The fruit is a red or black drupe containing 1-3 seeds. Some species are cultivated for ground cover in shady areas." (Wikipedia)
My (limited) knowledge of greek tells me it should mean something like meatballs. But that doesn't really seem right...
I find a funny molecule. I list it. I notice that it's been listed before. I find an entire list of funny molecules, and a link to even more of them! Perfect...
Because it always halts, the machine is able to decide whether a given string is a member of a formal language. The class of languages which can be decided by such machines is exactly the set of recursive languages. However, due to the Halting Problem, determining whether an arbitrary Turing machine halts on an arbitrary input is itself an undecidable decision problem.
A Rapidly-exploring random tree (RRT) is a data structure and algorithm designed for efficiently searching nonconvex, high-dimensional search spaces. The tree is constructed in such a way that any sample in the space is added by connecting it to the closest sample already in the tree. (Wikipedia)
An eccentric flint is a chipped artefact produced by the Maya civilization of ancient Mesoamerica. Although generally referred to as "flints", they were typically fashioned from chert, chalcedony and obsidian. Eccentric flints were manufactured by specialist artisans in lithic workshops for non-utilitarian purposes. They were sacred high-status objects associated with Maya elite power. (Wikipedia)
Thanks actung! (I don't know that much about american politics, and hadn't seen those words before, but that can be a good thing in a list like this, since understanding sometimes take away the magic...)
edit: just an hour after saying that I didn't recognize the words, my usual (swedish) newspaper wrote about super PACs...
Moist desquamation is a description of the clinical pattern seen as a consequence of radiation exposure where the skin thins and then begins to weep because of loss of integrity of the epithelial barrier and decreased oncotic pressure. Typically this occurs at doses of 15 - 20 gray, far higher than any diagnostic scan and more typical of levels seen in radiotherapy or deployment of nuclear armament. (Wikipedia)
The sexy son hypothesis of evolutionary biology was first proposed by Fisher in 1930. 'The sexy son hypothesis' proposes that a female animal's optimal choice among potential mates is a male whose genes will produce male offspring with the best chance of reproductive success. In particular, the sexy son hypothesis implies that a potential mate's capacity as a caregiver or any other direct benefits the male can offer the female (e.g., nuptial gifts, good territory) are irrelevant to his value as the potential father of the female's offspring. What matters are her sexy sons' future breeding successes (like that of their promiscuous father) in creating large numbers of offspring carrying copies of the female's genes.
In nuclear physics, secular equilibrium is a situation in which the quantity of a radioactive isotope remains constant because its production rate (due, e.g., to decay of a parent isotope) is equal to its decay rate. (Wikipedia)
The gastric-brooding frogs or Platypus frogs (Rheobatrachus) were a genus of ground-dwelling frogs native to Queensland in eastern Australia. The genus consisted of only two species, both of which became extinct in the mid-1980s. The genus was unique because it contained the only two known frog species that incubated the prejuvenile stages of their offspring in the stomach of the mother. (Wikipedia)
Mouthbrooding, also known as oral incubation and buccal incubation, is the care given by some groups of animals to their offspring by holding them in the mouth of the parent for extended periods of time. Although mouthbrooding is performed by a variety of different animals, most notably Darwin's frog, fishes are by far the most diverse mouthbrooders. (Wikipedia)
The simplest example is a moving-knife equivalent of the I cut, you choose scheme, sometimes known as Austin's moving-knife procedure. One player moves the knife across the cake, conventionally from left to right. The cake is cut when either player calls "stop". If each player calls stop when he or she perceives the knife to be at the 50-50 point, then the first player to call stop will produce an envy-free division if the caller gets the left piece and the other player gets the right piece. Note that this procedure is not necessarily efficient.
Wikipedia describes it as "the triangular area on the anterior view of the elbow of a human or other hominid animal." (But I fail to find anything triangular on my own arm.)
The hand of benediction results from a severed median nerve at the level of the elbow or upper arm. The ability to flex the digits 2–3 at the metacarpophalangeal joints, proximal interphalangeal joints and distal interphalangeal joints is lost. This is due to the loss of innervation of the lateral 2 lumbricals of the hand which are supplied by the median nerve. Flexion at the proximal interphalangeal joints of digits 4–5 is weakened, but flexion at the metocarpophalangeal joints and distal interphalangeal joints remains intact. The extensors are left unopposed and digits 2–3 remain extended while attempting to make a fist.
Hmm... I'll see what I can do... Here's a list of too-many-organs.
Unfortunatly, it seems that medical counting is limited to missing, one, two, many, too many). But I'm sure you are capable of constructing some made up greek-sounding terms?
Flap surgery is a technique in plastic and reconstructive surgery where any type of tissue is lifted from a donor site and moved to a recipient site with an intact blood supply. This is similar to but different from a graft, which does not have an intact blood supply and therefore relies on growth of new blood vessels. (Wikipedia)
An abstract machine, also called an abstract computer, is a theoretical model of a computer hardware or software system used in automata theory. Abstraction of computing processes is used in both the computer science and computer engineering disciplines and usually assumes discrete time paradigm. (Wikipedia)
In mathematics, monstrous moonshine, or moonshine theory, is a term devised by John Horton Conway and Simon P. Norton in 1979, used to describe the (then totally unexpected) connection between the monster group M and modular functions (particularly, the j function). (Wikipedia)
The term scotobiology describes the study of biology as directly and specifically affected by darkness, as opposed to photobiology, which describes the biological effects of light. (Wikipedia)
Sisyphus cooling is a mechanism through which atoms can be cooled using laser beams below the temperatures expected to be achieved by Doppler cooling. It comes about as a result of a polarization gradient created by two counter-propagating laser beams with orthogonal polarization. Atoms moving through the potential landscape created by the standing wave (created by the interference of the two counter-propagating beams) lose kinetic energy as they move to a potential maximum, at which point optical pumping moves them to a lower-energy state, thus losing the potential energy they had. (Wikipedia)
Self-incompatibility (SI) is a general name for several genetic mechanisms in angiosperms, which prevent self-fertilization and thus encourage outcrossing. (Wikipedia)
Thecomas or theca cell tumors are benign ovarian neoplasms composed only of theca cells. Histogenetically they are classified as sex cord-stromal tumours. (Wikipedia)
A hydrostatic skeleton or hydroskeleton is a structure found in many cold-blooded organisms and soft-bodied animals consisting of a fluid-filled cavity, the coelom, surrounded by muscles. The pressure of the fluid and action of the surrounding circular and longitudinal muscles are used to change an organism's shape and produce movement, such as burrowing or swimming. (Wikipedia)
The End of Greatness is an observational scale discovered at roughly 100 Mpc (roughly 300 million lightyears) where the lumpiness seen in the large-scale structure of the universe is homogenized and isotropized as per the Cosmological Principle. The superclusters and filaments seen in smaller surveys are randomized to the extent that the smooth distribution of the universe is visually apparent. It was not until the redshift surveys of the 1990s were completed that this scale could accurately be observed. (Wikipedia)
The Local Void is a vast, empty region of space, devoid of matter, located within the Virgo Supercluster and lying adjacent to our own Milky Way galaxy. (Wikipedia)
Funny to stumble upon this word two times in one day... (I think I prefer it capitalized.)
"In computation theory, the Blum–Shub–Smale machine, or BSS machine, is a model of computation introduced by Lenore Blum, Michael Shub and Stephen Smale, intended to describe computations over the real numbers." (Wikipedia)
Crystal habit is an overall description of the visible external shape of a mineral. This description can apply to an individual crystal or an assembly of crystals or aggregates. (Wikipedia)
A chilled margin is a shallow intrusive or volcanic rock texture characterised by a glassy or fine grained zone along the margin where the magma or lava has contacted air, water, or particularly much cooler rock. This is caused by rapid crystallization of the melt near the contact with the surrounding low temperature environment. In an intrusive case, the crystallized chilled margin may decrease in size or disappear by later remelting during magma flow, depending on magma heat flux. (Wikipedia)
The Vegetable Lamb of Tartary (Latin: Agnus scythicus or Planta Tartarica Barometz) is a legendary zoophyte of central Asia, believed to grow sheep as its fruit. The sheep were connected to the plant by an umbilical cord and grazed the land around the plant. When all the plants were gone, both the plant and sheep died. (Wikipedia)
A supernormal stimulus or superstimulus is an exaggerated version of a stimulus to which there is an existing response tendency, or any stimulus that elicits a response more strongly than the stimulus for which it evolved.
For example, a moth will spiral into a flame because it is adapted to navigate by the sun (a much more distant lightsource).
The unmoved mover (οὐ κινούμενον κινεῖ) is a philosophical concept described by Aristotle as a primary cause or "mover" of all the motion in the universe. As is implicit in the name, the "unmoved mover" is not moved by any prior action. In Book 12 (Greek "Λ") of his Metaphysics, Aristotle describes the unmoved mover as being perfectly beautiful, indivisible, and contemplating only the perfect contemplation: itself contemplating. He equates this concept also with the active intellect. (Wikipedia)
In particle physics, a superpartner (also sparticle) is hypothetical elementary particle. Supersymmetry is one of the synergistic theories in current high-energy physics which predicts the existence of these "shadow" particles.
The word superpartner is a portmanteau of the words supersymmetry and partner (sparticle is a portmanteau of supersymmetry and particle).
The Wikipedia article about it starts with "In mathematics, a loop group is a group of loops in a topological group..." and it sounds like it could be a nursery rhyme...
In a quantum field theory, charge screening can restrict the value of the observable "renormalized" charge of a classical theory. If the only allowed value of the renormalized charge is zero, the theory is said to be "trivial" or noninteracting. Thus, surprisingly, a classical theory that appears to describe interacting particles can, when realized as a quantum field theory, become a "trivial" theory of noninteracting free particles. This phenomenon is referred to as quantum triviality. (Wikipedia)
In physics, mirror matter, also called shadow matter or Alice matter, is a hypothetical counterpart to ordinary matter. Modern physics deals with three basic types of spatial symmetry: reflection, rotation and translation. The known elementary particles respect rotation and translation symmetry but do not respect mirror reflection symmetry (also called P-symmetry or parity). Of the four fundamental interactions—electromagnetism, the strong interaction, the weak interaction, and gravity—only the weak interaction breaks parity. (Wikipedia)
It is possible that such quantum primordial black holes were created in the high-density environment of the early Universe (or big bang), or possibly through subsequent phase transitions. They might be observed by astrophysicists in the near future, through the particles they are expected to emit by Hawking radiation.
In ecology, a supertramp species is any type of animal which follows the "supertramp" strategy of high dispersion among many different habitats, towards none of which it is particularly specialized. Supertramp species are typically the first to arrive in newly available habitats, such as volcanic islands and freshly deforested land; they can have profoundly negative effects on more highly specialized flora and fauna, both directly through predation and indirectly through competition for resources.
The name was coined by Jared Diamond in 1974, as an allusion to both the itinerant lifestyle of the tramp, and the then-popular band Supertramp.
In condensed matter physics, the term geometrical frustration (or in short: frustration) means a phenomenon in which the geometrical properties of the crystal lattice or the presence of conflicting atomic forces forbid simultaneous minimization of the interaction energies acting at a given site. This may lead to highly degenerate ground states with a nonzero entropy at zero temperature. Or in simple terms, the substance can never be completely frozen, because the structure it forms does not have a single minimal-energy state, so motion on a molecular scale continues even at absolute zero and even without input of energy. (Wikipedia)
Soft matter is a subfield of condensed matter comprising a variety of physical states that are easily deformed by thermal stresses or thermal fluctuations. They include liquids, colloids, polymers, foams, gels, granular materials, and a number of biological materials. (Wikipedia)
The black swallower, Chiasmodon niger, is a species of deep sea fish in the family Chiasmodontidae, notable for its ability to swallow fish larger than itself (for which it is sometimes named the "great swallower"). (Wikipedia)
Fail-deadly is a concept in nuclear military strategy which encourages deterrence by guaranteeing an immediate, automatic and overwhelming response to an attack. The term fail-deadly was coined as a contrast to fail-safe. (Wikipedia)
"Nuclear semiotics was created in 1981 when a team of engineers, anthropologists, nuclear physicists, behavior scientists and others was convened on behalf of the U.S. Department of Energy and Bechtel Corp. The goal of this workgroup (the "Human Interference Task Force") was to find the means to reduce the likelihood of future humans unintentionally intruding on radioactive waste isolation systems."
The firing squad synchronization problem is a problem in computer science and cellular automata in which the goal is to design a cellular automaton that, starting with a single active cell, eventually reaches a state in which all cells are simultaneously active. (Wikipedia)
Nuclei which have neutron number and proton (atomic) numbers each equal to one of the magic numbers are called "double magic", and are especially stable against decay. (Wikipedia)
The term fish kill, known also as fish die-off and (in Britain) as fish mortality, is a localized die-off of fish populations which may also be associated with more generalised mortality of aquatic life. (Wikipedia)
A sacrificial part is a part of a machine or product that is intentionally engineered to fail under excess mechanical stress, electrical stress, or other unexpected and dangerous situations. The sacrificial part is engineered to fail first, and thus protect other parts of the system. (Wikipedia)
(Sometimes I worry about clogging the entire "latest comments" stream. But then I try to think that random bits of Wikipedia must be better than spam. Or silence.)
Common described forms of nonclassical light are the following:
Squeezed light exhibits reduced noise in one quadrature component. The most familiar kinds of squeezed light have either reduced amplitude noise or reduced phase noise, with increased noise of the other kind.
Fock states (also called photon number states) have a well defined number of photons (stored e.g. in a cavity), while the phase is totally undefined.
Radio Relics are diffuse synchrotron radio emission found in the peripheral regions of galaxy clusters. Similar to the case of radio halos, they do not have any obvious galaxy counterpart, but their shapes are much more elongated and irregular compared to those of radio halos. (Wikipedia)
A sonic black hole (sometimes called a dumb hole) is a phenomenon in which phonons (sound perturbations) are unable to escape from a fluid that is flowing more quickly than the local speed of sound. They are called sonic, or acoustic, black holes because these trapped phonons are analogous to light in astrophysical (gravitational) black holes. (Wikipedia)
Relativistic jets are extremely powerful jets of plasma which emerge from presumed massive objects at the centers of some active galaxies, notably radio galaxies and quasars. (Wikipedia)
Yes, I saw your quintaphone, and thought that I'd let you decide if my quintephone was of interest. (I must confess that I didn't understand the definition of quintaphone at all.)
No, I'm not really worrying... It's just that I feel that I must be missing lots of good stuff just because I don't know where to look. But, it's probably just a matter of time!
Affective science is the scientific study of emotion or affect. This includes the study of emotion elicitation, emotional experience and the recognition of emotions in others. In particular the nature of feeling, mood, emotionally driven behaviour, decision making, attention and self-regulation, as well as the underlying physiology and neuroscience of the emotions. (Wikipedia)
Another type of anomia is color anomia, where the patient can distinguish between colors but cannot identify them by name or name the color of an object. They can separate colors into categories, but they cannot name them. (Wikipedia)
In a fission-fusion society, the main parent group can fracture (fission) into smaller stable subgroups or individuals to adapt to environmental or social circumstances. For example, a number of males may break off from the main group in order to hunt or forage for food during the day, but at night they may return to join (fusion) the primary group to share food and partake in other activities. (Wikipedia)
Synnecrosis is a particular case in which the interaction is so mutually detrimental that it results in death, as in the case of some parasitic relationships. It is a rare and necessarily short-lived condition as evolution selects against it. The term is seldom used. (Wikipedia)
Lapsarianism is the set of Calvinist doctrines describing the theoretical order of God's decree (in his mind, before Creation), in particular concerning the order of his decree for the fall of man and reprobation. The name of the doctrine comes from the Latin lapsus meaning fall.
Supralapsarianism (also antelapsarianism) is the view that God's decrees of election and reprobation logically preceded the decree of the fall while infralapsarianism (also called postlapsarianism and sublapsarianism) asserts that God's decrees of election and reprobation logically succeeded the decree of the fall. The words can also be used in connection with other topics, e.g. supra- and infralapsarian christology.
A repugnant market is a term used to describe an area of commerce that is considered by society to be outside of the range of market transactions and that bringing this area into the realm of a market would be inherently immoral or uncaring. (Wikipedia)
Quasi-empirical methods are applied in science and in mathematics. The term "empirical methods" refers to experiment, disclosure of apparatus for reproduction of experiments, and other ways in which science is validated by scientists. Empirical methods are studied extensively in the philosophy of science but cannot be used directly in fields whose hypotheses are not invalidated by real experiment (mathematics, theology, ideology). In these fields, the prefix 'quasi' came to denote methods that are "almost" or "socially approximate" an ideal of truly empirical methods. (Wikipedia)
"An ousiograph or oustograph is a fictitious device purported to detect messages that are sent directly to one's brain. Arising from the State v. Green case in the Court of Criminal Appeals of Tennessee, the messages are sent to a person's brain to 'direct them' and possibly control their behavior for an undetermined purpose."
(From Wikipedia, where it is also questioned if it is right to have an article about "a 'device' mentioned once in FBI notes in an investigation of a paranoid schizophrenic who killed a police officer.")
A perverse incentive is an incentive that has an unintended and undesirable result which is contrary to the interests of the incentive makers. Perverse incentives are a type of unintended consequences. (Wikipedia)
Compassion fatigue (also known as a secondary traumatic stress disorder) is a condition characterised by a gradual lessening of compassion over time. It is common among trauma victims and individuals that work directly with trauma victims. (Wikipedia)
I have a feeling that if you go to the trouble to make rock into tunnels that conform with the shape of your body, you make them to stay there... (but it's hard to know whats in the mind of an endolith)
The links look interesting, in a way that might keep me busy all night. Which, at least at the moment, seems like a good thing.
And about what interests me... Hard to say. I love getting lost on Wikipedia (and here too, but it's not as easy), jumping from word to word just because they look interesting, ending up somewhere unexpected.
Cracks can be formed in many different elastomers by ozone attack, and the characteristic form of attack of vulnerable rubbers is known as ozone cracking. (Wikipedia)
Cracks can be formed in many different elastomers by ozone attack, and the characteristic form of attack of vulnerable rubbers is known as ozone cracking. (Wikipedia)
A perceptual trap is an ecological scenario in which environmental change, typically anthropogenic, leads an organism to avoid an otherwise high-quality habitat. The concept is related to that of an ecological trap, in which environmental change causes preference towards a low-quality habitat. (Wikipedia)
Ecological traps are scenarios in which rapid environmental change leads organisms to prefer to settle in poor-quality habitats. The concept stems from the idea that organisms that are actively selecting habitat must rely on environmental cues to help them identify high quality habitat. If either the habitat quality or the cue changes so that one does not reliably indicate the other, organisms may be lured into poor quality habitat. (Wikipedia)
In mathematical logic, an atomic formula (also known simply as an atom) is a formula with no deeper propositional structure, that is, a formula that contains no logical connectives or equivalently a formula that has no strict subformulas. Atoms are thus the simplest well-formed formulas of the logic. Compound formulas are formed by combining the atomic formulas using the logical connectives. (Wikipedia)
Looks interesting, thanks! (Is there some reasonable way to search for lists? I stumble upon great lists all the time, but I imagine there are so many more that I miss...)
The umbilic torus is a single-edged 3-dimensional figure created by Helaman Ferguson as a mathematical artwork. Ferguson created a 27-inch (69 centimeters) bronze sculpture, Umbilic Torus, and it is his most widely known piece of art. The lone edge goes three times around the ring before returning to the starting point. (from Wikipedia, where you can also see the equations that define the shape)
A strange loop arises when, by moving up or down through a hierarchical system, one finds oneself back where one started.
Strange loops may involve self-reference and paradox. The concept of a strange loop was proposed and extensively discussed by Douglas Hofstadter in "Gödel, Escher, Bach", and is further elaborated in Hofstadter's book "I Am a Strange Loop", published in 2007.
A tangled hierarchy is a hierarchical system in which a strange loop appears.
An opportunistic infection is an infection caused by pathogens, particularly opportunistic pathogens—those that take advantage of certain situations—such as bacterial, viral, fungal or protozoan infections that usually do not cause disease in a healthy host, one with a healthy immune system. A compromised immune system, however, presents an "opportunity" for the pathogen to infect. (Wikipedia)
Determinate is the form of cleavage in most protostomes. It results in the developmental fate of the cells being set early in the embryo development. Each cell produced by early embryonic cleavage does not have the capacity to develop into a complete embryo. (Wikipedia)
Original antigenic sin, also known as the Hoskins effect, refers to the propensity of the body's immune system to preferentially utilize immunological memory based on a previous infection when a second slightly different version, of that foreign entity (e.g. a virus or bacterium) is encountered. This leaves the immune system "trapped" by the first response it has made to each antigen, and unable to mount potentially more effective responses during subsequent infections. The phenomenon of original antigenic sin has been described in relation to influenza virus, dengue fever, human immunodeficiency virus (HIV), and to several other viruses. (Wikipedia)
The third category, in general, referred to as crying or weeping, is increased lacrimation due to strong emotional stress, anger, suffering, mourning, or physical pain. It does not occur during the brain's Fight-or-flight response because the sympathetic nervous system inhibits lacrimation. This practice is not restricted to negative emotions; many people cry when extremely happy. In humans, emotional tears can be accompanied by reddening of the face and sobbing — cough-like, convulsive breathing, sometimes involving spasms of the whole upper body. Tears brought about by emotions have a different chemical make-up than those for lubrication. (Wikipedia)
The second type of tears results from irritation of the eye by foreign particles, or from the presence of irritant substances such as onion vapors, tear gas, or pepper spray in the eye's environment, including the cornea, conjunctiva, or nasal mucosa. It can also occur with bright light and hot or peppery stimuli to the tongue and mouth. It is also linked with vomiting, coughing, and yawning. These reflex tears attempt to wash out irritants that may have come into contact with the eye. (Wikipedia)
A spermatophylax is a gelatinousbolus which some male insects eject during copulation with females through their aedeagi together with spermatophores, and which functions as a nutritive addition for the female. (Wikipedia)
An ovipore is a pore-like sexual organ of a female insect that gets inseminated by the spermatophores ejected by the aedeagus of a male insect during copulation. The spermatophores that pass through the ovipore are stored in most insect species in another organ called spermatheca. (Wikipedia)
Wikipedia tells me that this is also known as "big bang reproduction", since the single reproductive event of semelparous organisms is usually large, as well as fatal...
The torquetum or turquet is a medieval astronomical instrument designed to take and convert measurements made in three sets of coordinates: Horizon, equatorial, and ecliptic. In a sense, the Torquetum is an analog computer. (Wikipedia)
The last living individual of a species, such as Martha the passenger pigeon and possibly Lonesome George, the last known individual of the Pinta Island tortoise.
Ubiquitous gaze, also referred to as pursuing eyes, is an art term for the effect created by certain portraits, such as the Mona Lisa, which give the impression that the subject's eyes are following the viewer. When such a painting is viewed from any angle, the subject's eyes still appear to be looking straight into the viewer's. This is an effect of perspective and may be deliberate or not.
Ubiquitous gaze is a common technique of the trompe-l'œil school of painting, and can be seen in numerous works.
Snaggletooths or stareaters are any of a number of small, deep-sea stomiid fish in the genus Astronesthes. They possess a bioluminescent red chin barbel that the fish use to lure prey into striking distance. (Wikipedia)
An n-parasitic number (in base 10) is a positive natural number which can be multiplied by n by moving the rightmost digit of its decimal representation to the front. Here n is itself a single-digit positive natural number. In other words, the decimal representation undergoes a right circular shift by one place. For example, 4•128205=512820, so 128205 is 4-parasitic. (Wikipedia)
The acardiac twin is a parasitic twin that fails to develop a head, arms and a heart. The parasitic twin, little more than a torso with or without legs, receives its blood supply from the host twin by means of an umbilical cord-like structure, much like a fetus in fetu, except the acardiac twin is outside the host twin's body. Although the reason is not fully understood, it is apparent that deoxygenated blood from the pump twin is perfused to the acardiac twin. The acardiac twin grows along with the pump twin, but due to inadequate perfusion it is unable to develop the structures necessary for life, and presents with dramatic deformities. (Wikipedia)
A vanishing twin, also known as fetal resorption, is a fetus in a multi-gestation pregnancy which dies in utero and is then partially or completely reabsorbed by the mother or twin.
The occurrence of this phenomenon is sometimes referred to as twin embolisation syndrome or vanishing twin syndrome (VTS), since the 1980s when twin pregnancies were made visible early on by means of ultrasound.
Occasionally, rather than being completely reabsorbed, the dead fetus will be compressed by its growing twin to a flattened, parchment-like state known as fetus papyraceus.
A parasitic twin (also known as an asymmetrical or unequal conjoined twin) is the result of the processes that produce vanishing twins and conjoined twins, and may represent a continuum between the two. (Wikipedia)
Parasitic drag (also called skin friction drag) is drag caused by moving a solid object through a fluid medium (in the case of aerodynamics, more specifically, a gaseous medium). Parasitic drag is made up of many components, the most prominent being form drag. Skin friction and interference drag are also major components of parasitic drag. (Wikipedia)
A facultative parasite is an organism that may resort to parasitic activity, but does not absolutely rely on any host for completion of its life cycle. (Wikipedia)
Idiobiont parasitoids are those that prevent further development of the host after initial parasitization; typically they attack a host life stage that is immobile (e.g., an egg or pupa), and almost without exception idiobiont parasitoids live outside the host. (Wikipedia)
Koinobiont parasitoids allow the host to continue its development and often do not kill or consume the host until the host either is about to pupate or become an adult; this therefore typically involves living within an active, mobile host. In turn, koinobionts can be subdivided further into endoparasitoids, which develop inside body of the host, and ectoparasitoids, which develop outside the host body, though the parasitoids frequently are attached or embedded in the host's tissues. (Wikipedia)
Parasitic castration is the strategy, by a parasite, of blocking reproduction by its host, completely or in part. For example, Hemioniscus balani, a parasitic castrator of hermaphroditic barnacles, feeds on ovarian fluid, so that its host loses female reproductive ability but still can function as a male. This would be a case of direct parasitic castration (feeding on host gonads). Indirect strategies are also seen such as diverting host energy from gonad development or secreting castrating hormones.
Ambush predators or sit-and-wait predators are carnivorous animals that capture prey by stealth or cunning, not by speed or necessarily by strength. These organisms usually hide motionless and wait for prey to come within striking distance. They are often camouflaged, and may be solitary. This mode of predation may be most efficient when a predator cannot move faster than its preferred prey; otherwise, active hunting is more efficient. (Wikipedia)
Macroparasites are parasites that are large enough to be seen with the naked eye, in contrast to microparasites. They grow in one host but reproduce by infective stages outside of this host. These generally include ticks, mites, nematodes, flatworms, etc., and can be either external parasites (ectoparasitic) or internal parasites (endoparasitic).
Kettle Logic (la logique du chaudron in the original French) is a type of informal fallacy wherein one uses multiple arguments to defend a point, but the arguments themselves are inconsistent.
The name derives from an example used by Sigmund Freud in The Interpretation of Dreams and in his Jokes and Their Relation to the Unconscious. Freud relates the story that a man who was accused by his neighbour of having returned a kettle in a damaged condition offered three arguments.
A philosophical zombie or p-zombie in the philosophy of mind and perception is a hypothetical being that is indistinguishable from a normal human being except in that it lacks conscious experience, qualia, or sentience.
...
The unifying idea of the zombie is of a human that has no conscious experience, but one might distinguish various types of zombie used in different thought experiments as follows:
A behavioral zombie that is behaviorally indistinguishable from a human.
A neurological zombie that has a human brain and is generally physiologically indistinguishable from a human.
The reminiscence bump is the tendency for older adults to have increased recollection for events that occurred during their adolescence and early adulthood. (Wikipedia)
Gaslighting is a form of psychological abuse in which false information is presented with the intent of making a victim doubt his or her own memory and perception. It may simply be the denial by an abuser that previous abusive incidents ever occurred, or it could be the staging of bizarre events by the abuser with the intention of disorienting the victim.
The term "gaslighting" comes from the play Gas Light and its film adaptations. In those works a character uses a variety of tricks, including turning the gas lamps lower than normal, to convince his spouse that she is crazy. Since then it became a colloquial expression which has now also been used in clinical and research literature
"A hot-cold empathy gap is a cognitive bias in which a person underestimates the influences of visceral drives, and instead attributes behavior primarily to other, nonvisceral factors." (Wikipedia)
In paleontology, an Elvis taxon (plural Elvis taxa) is a taxon which has been misidentified as having re-emerged in the fossil record after a period of presumed extinction, but is not actually a descendant of the original taxon, instead having developed a similar morphology through convergent evolution. This implies the extinction of the original taxon is real, and the two taxa are polyphyletic.
By contrast, a Lazarus taxon is one which actually is a descendant of the original taxon, and highlights missing fossil records, which may be found later. A zombie taxon is a type of Lazarus taxon sample that was mobile in the time between its original death and its subsequent discovery in a site of younger classification, like, for example, a trilobite that gets eroded out of its Cambrian-aged limestone matrix, and reworked into Miocene-aged siltstone.
"One of the two types of sensory nerve ending associated with the neuromuscular spindle (the other being the annulospiral ending); in this type, the fibre branches spread out upon the surface of the intrafusal fibres like a spray of flowers. Synonym: flower-spray organ of Ruffini"
The Hebrew word for "truth" or "real", written in the forehead of a golem (making it animated). Removing the letter aleph changes the mening to "dead" (and deactivates it). See מת
"The muscular coat (muscular layer, muscular fibers, muscularis propria, muscularis externa) is a region of muscle in many organs in the vertebrate body, adjacent to the submucosa membrane. It is responsible for gut movement such as peristalsis." (Wikipedia)
"The zonule of Zinn (Zinn's membrane, ciliary zonule) (after Johann Gottfried Zinn) is a ring of fibrous strands connecting the ciliary body with the crystalline lens of the eye.
The zonule of Zinn is split into two layers: a thin layer, which lines the hyaloid fossa, and a thicker layer, which is a collection of zonular fibers. Together, the fibers are known as the suspensory ligament of the lens." (Wikipedia)
"an epidermal pustule formed by infiltration of neutrophils into necrotic epidermis in which the cell walls persist as a spongelike network; seen in pustular psoriasis."
(now I have to learn some more new words to understand this definition)
"In the Münchausen by Proxy syndrome, an adult care-giver makes a child sick by either fabricating symptoms or actually causing harm to the child, whereby convincing not only the child but others, including medical providers, that their child is sick." (Wikipedia)
"The lower circumference of the lesser pelvis is very irregular; the space enclosed by it is named the inferior aperture or pelvic outlet." (Wikipedia)
"The lower circumference of the lesser pelvis is very irregular; the space enclosed by it is named the inferior aperture or pelvic outlet." (Wikipedia)
"Orientia tsutsugamushi is the causative organism of scrub typhus, and the natural vector and reservoir is probably trombiculid mites (genus Leptotrombidium). The organism is an obligate intracellular pathogen, which needs to infect eukaryotic cells in order to multiply." (Wikipedia)
Found it here: www.english-medical-dictionary.com (where I keep finding random treasures) with this lovely definition:
the red margin of the upper and lower lip that commences at the exterior edge of the intraoral labial mucosa (“moist line”) and extends outward, terminating at the extraoral labial cutaneous junction; a thinly keratinized type of stratified squamous epithelium deeply penetrated by well-vascularized dermal papillae which show through the translucent epidermis to impart the typical red appearance of the lips.
"A venous lake (which are also known as 'Phlebectases') is an asymptomatic, generally solitary, soft, compressible, dark blue to violaceous, 0.2- to 1-cm papule commonly found on sun-exposed surfaces of the vermilion border of the lip, face and ears. Lesions generally occur among the elderly." (Wikipedia)
"movement produced by the inherent power of contraction and relaxation of protoplasm; such movements are of three kinds: muscular, streaming, and ciliary"
I imagine Toxic Megacolon as some sort of superhero (or villain? probably better that way), so then I guess that Toxic Supercolon would fit very well in the same universe...
"A cricothyrotomy (also called thyrocricotomy, cricothyroidotomy, inferior laryngotomy, intercricothyrotomy, coniotomy or emergency airway puncture) is an incision made through the skin and cricothyroid membrane to establish a patent airway during certain life-threatening situations, such as airway obstruction by a foreign body, angioedema, or massive facial trauma." (Wikipedia)
Wikipedia says: "Narcissistic supply is a concept in some psychoanalytic theories which describes a type of admiration, interpersonal support or sustenance drawn by an individual from his or her environment (especially from carers, codependents and others)."
But I like to think of it as some sort of dietary supplement or drug.
"Toxic megacolon (megacolon toxicum) is an acute form of colonic distension. It is characterized by a very dilated colon (megacolon), accompanied by abdominal distension (bloating), and sometimes fever, abdominal pain, or shock." (Wikipedia)
"Megarectum is a large rectum as a result of underlying nerve supply abnormalities or muscle dysfunction, which remains after disimpaction of the rectum. The Principles of Surgery textbook describes any rectum that can hold more than 1500cc of fluid as a megarectum." (Wikipedia)
Wikipedia teaches me some new terms (that I probably never will use (but like anyway)):
A gravida is a pregnant woman.
A nulligravida or gravida 0 is a woman who has never been pregnant.
A primigravida or gravida 1 is a woman who is pregnant for the first time or has been pregnant one time.
A multigravida or more specifically a gravida 2 (also secundigravida), gravida 3, and so on, is a woman who has been pregnant more than one time.
An elderly primigravida is a woman in her first pregnancy, who is at least 35 years old. This term is becoming less common as it may be considered offensive.
"Souffle, in medical terminology, can refer to a sound heard on auscultation of the gravid female. A souffle is a vascular or cardiac murmur with a blowing quality.
Funic souffle (also known as funicular or fetal souffle), is a blowing sound heard in synch with fetal heart sounds, and may originate from the umbilical cord." (Wikipedia)
"A hair whorl is a patch of hair growing in the opposite direction of the rest of the hair. Hair whorls occur in most hairy animals, on the body as well as on the head. Hair whorls, also known as crowns, swirls, trichoglyphs, or cowlicks, can be either clockwise or counterclockwise in direction of growth." (Wikipedia)
"Colloidal gold is a suspension (or colloid) of sub-micrometre-sized particles of gold in a fluid — usually water. The liquid is usually either an intense red colour (for particles less than 100 nm), or a dirty yellowish colour (for larger particles). Due to the unique optical, electronic, and molecular-recognition properties of gold nanoparticles, they are the subject of substantial research, with applications in a wide variety of areas, including electron microscopy, electronics, nanotechnology, and materials science." (Wikipedia)
"Undark was a trade name for luminous paint made with a mixture of radioactive radium and zinc sulfide, as produced by the U.S. Radium Corporation between 1917 and 1938. It was used primarily in watch dials." (Wikipedia)
"Tuberculosis verrucosa cutis (also known as Lupus verrucosus, Prosector's wart, and Warty tuberculosis) is a rash of small, red papular nodules in the skin that may appear 2-4 weeks after inoculation by Mycobacterium tuberculosis in a previously infected and immunocompetent individual.
It is so called because it was a common occupational disease of prosectors, the preparers of dissections and autopsies." (Wikipedia)
"The Radium Girls were female factory workers who contracted radiation poisoning from painting watch dials with glow-in-the-dark paint at the United States Radium factory in Orange, New Jersey around 1917. The women, who had been told the paint was harmless, ingested deadly amounts of radium by licking their paintbrushes to sharpen them; some also painted their fingernails and teeth with the glowing substance." (Wikipedia)
"Exotic pollution is a general definition that includes attacks involving nuclear, chemical, or biological agents intended to cause harm or contaminate and make unfit for use." (Wikipedia)
It really bothers me that so many nice swedish words are used as names for bread. Maybe I'll have to stop using them? Or just make a list of them on Wordie?
Comments by deinonychus
Show previous 200 comments...
deinonychus commented on the word Ped-O-Jet
Had to list this after seeing this:
The following pages on the English Wikipedia link to this file (pages on other projects are not listed):
Jet injector
Medicine in Star Trek
(I'm really in a spamming mode at the moment, hope you don't mind that I'm clogging the stream om "latest comments" completely...)
May 14, 2012
deinonychus commented on the word mean anomaly
I know! I really prefer the eccentric anomaly.
May 14, 2012
deinonychus commented on the word escort service in delhi,call girls in delhi,nightcallgirls in delhi,independent escorts in delhi,five star hotel escorts in delhi,delhi escorts,delhi call girls
Love the tags! (The non-spam ones, that is.) A very subtle way of fighting back.
May 14, 2012
deinonychus commented on the list bubbles--1
Added some more bubbles... (Wikipedia's prefix search is addictive!)
May 14, 2012
deinonychus commented on the word multiocular O
From Wikipedia: Multiocular O (ꙮ) is the most rare and exotic glyph variant of Cyrillic letter O. This glyph variant can be found in certain manuscripts in the phrase «серафими многоꙮчитїи» ("many-eyed seraphim").
May 14, 2012
deinonychus commented on the list remarkable-wikipedia-categories
And now i find a list of long proofs and the list of extremely hazardous substances...
May 14, 2012
deinonychus commented on the list remarkable-wikipedia-categories
List of unexplained sounds (or the more specific List of unexplained booms).
May 14, 2012
deinonychus commented on the list math-eponyms
Nice list! Mr Reo Fortune will now be introduced to my friends in my list of eponymous persons I find funny.
May 14, 2012
deinonychus commented on the word cat’s whisker detector
Same as a crystal detector.
May 13, 2012
deinonychus commented on the user SAMRAT9990477102
"414. That’s an error.
The requested URL /mail/... is too large to process. That’s all we know."
A way to get away with spam?
May 13, 2012
deinonychus commented on the list the-porn-birds
Great list! I keep finding porn birds everywhere, most recently the rough-faced shag...
May 13, 2012
deinonychus commented on the word mean anomaly
"In celestial mechanics, the mean anomaly is a parameter relating position and time for a body moving in a Kepler orbit. It is based on the fact that equal areas are swept at the focus in equal intervals of time."
"The mean anomaly is one of three angular parameters ('anomalies') that define a position along an orbit; the other two being the eccentric anomaly and the true anomaly."
(Wikipedia)
May 12, 2012
deinonychus commented on the word porkchop plot
"Porkchop plot (also pork-chop plot) is a chart that shows contours of equal characteristic energy (C3) against combinations of launch date and arrival date for a particular interplanetary flight." (Wikipedia)
May 12, 2012
deinonychus commented on the word sweetmeat
Accidentally read about sweetbread on Wikipedia. Read that it should not be confused with sweetmeat. Both these words confuse/disgust me now. In a good way.
May 12, 2012
deinonychus commented on the word knobs into holes packing
"Knobs into holes packing is a protein packing motif that occurs mainly in alpha helix or coiled coil domains. One such example is fibrinogen fibril formation." (Wikipedia)
May 12, 2012
deinonychus commented on the word coiled coil
"A coiled coil is a structural motif in proteins, in which 2-7 alpha-helices are coiled together like the strands of a rope (dimers and trimers are the most common types)." (Wikipedia)
May 12, 2012
deinonychus commented on the word RING finger
"In molecular biology, a RING (Really Interesting New Gene) finger domain is a protein structural domain of zinc finger type which contains a Cys3HisCys4 amino acid motif which binds two zinc cations." (Wikipedia)
May 12, 2012
deinonychus commented on the word kleptothermy
"Kleptothermy is any form of thermoregulation by which an animal shares in the metabolic thermogenesis of another animal. It may or may not be reciprocal, and occurs in both endotherms and ectotherms. Its most common form is huddling." (Wikipedia)
May 11, 2012
deinonychus commented on the word greedoid
This really sounds like an ugly kind of comic book monster...
May 11, 2012
deinonychus commented on the word abstract simplicial complex
"In mathematics, an abstract simplicial complex is a purely combinatorial description of the geometric notion of a simplicial complex, consisting of a family of finite sets closed under the operation of taking subsets. In the context of matroids and greedoids, abstract simplicial complexes are also called independence systems." (Wikipedia)
May 11, 2012
deinonychus commented on the list zoo-of-overrated-animals
Are you suggesting crazy cat people or cat? I would say that the crazy cat people aren't really overrated, but I would like to see them in a zoo... (I imagine that every day, to entertain the audience, a zookeeper will throw in a bunch of cats.)
Anyway, cats ands dogs are definately overrated animals, and everyone is welcome to lock up their favorite ones here.
May 11, 2012
deinonychus commented on the word banana doughnut theory
"This theory gets the name 'banana' because the tube of influence along the entire ray path from source to receiver is an arc resembling the fruit. The 'doughnut' part of the name comes from the ring shape of the cross-section. The ray path is a hollow banana, or a banana-shaped doughnut."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Banana_Doughnut_theory
May 10, 2012
deinonychus commented on the word meddle
yay! dictionary haiku!
May 10, 2012
deinonychus commented on the word tip of the red giant branch
"Tip of the red giant branch (TRGB) is a primary distance indicator used in astronomy. It uses the luminosity of the brightest red giant branch stars in a galaxy to gauge the distance to that galaxy. It has been used in conjunction with observations from the Hubble Space Telescope to determine the relative motions of the Local Cluster of galaxies within the Local Supercluster." (Wikipedia)
May 10, 2012
deinonychus commented on the word red clump
"The red clump is a feature in the Hertzsprung-Russell diagram of stars. The red clump is considered the metal-rich counterpart to the horizontal branch. Stars in this part of the Hertzsprung-Russell diagram are sometimes called clump giants." (Wikipedia)
May 10, 2012
deinonychus commented on the list found-poetry
I like this! It should be possible to find a poem that is not in free verse... An accidental sonnet perhaps? Or haiku?
May 10, 2012
deinonychus commented on the list sick
I'm sure my lists like you too, ruzuzu!
May 10, 2012
deinonychus commented on the word intestine’s-eye view
"Bones are not all that is left of dinosaurs. Occasionally the fossilized feces of dinosaurs and other vertebrates are found. Called coprolites, these sometimes impressive relics can give an intestine’s-eye view of dinosaurian diets." From Dinosaurs: A Concise Natural History by David E. Fastovsky.
May 10, 2012
deinonychus commented on the list remarkable-wikipedia-categories
Prolagus, that makes me so happy to hear! (and you were really fast, too)
May 6, 2012
deinonychus commented on the list remarkable-wikipedia-categories
List of alternative names for the human species
May 6, 2012
deinonychus commented on the word vacuous truth
A vacuous truth is a truth that is devoid of content because it asserts something about all members of a class that is empty or because it says "If A then B" when in fact A is inherently false. (Wikipedia)
May 3, 2012
deinonychus commented on the word beauty factory
In particle physics, a B-factory, or sometimes a beauty factory, is a collider-based scientific machine designed to produce a large number (of the order of 109) of B mesons and analyze their properties. The tauons and D mesons are also copiously produced at B-factories, which allows precise studies of their properties. (Wikipedia)
May 2, 2012
deinonychus commented on the word autothysis
Autothysis is the process where an animal destroys itself via an internal rupturing or explosion of an organ which ruptures the skin. The term was proposed by Maschwitz and Maschwitz in 1974 to describe the defensive mechanism of the carpenter ant (Camponotus saundersi). It is caused by a contraction of muscles around a large gland that leads to the gland wall breaking. Some termites (such as the soldiers of Globitermes sulphureus) release a sticky secretion by rupturing a gland near the skin of their neck, producing a tar baby effect in defense against ants. It is a form of suicidal altruism. (Wikipedia)
April 27, 2012
deinonychus commented on the word trivaginate
http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/notrocketscience/2012/04/17/kangaroos-have-three-vaginas/
April 20, 2012
deinonychus commented on the word ultraviolet catastrophe
"The ultraviolet catastrophe, also called the Rayleigh–Jeans catastrophe, was a prediction of late 19th century/early 20th century classical physics that an ideal black body at thermal equilibrium will emit radiation with infinite power." (Wikipedia)
April 19, 2012
deinonychus commented on the word Clever Hans effect
"Clever Hans (in German, der Kluge Hans) was an Orlov Trotter horse that was claimed to have been able to perform arithmetic and other intellectual tasks.
After a formal investigation in 1907, psychologist Oskar Pfungst demonstrated that the horse was not actually performing these mental tasks, but was watching the reaction of his human observers. Pfungst discovered this artifact in the research methodology, wherein the horse was responding directly to involuntary cues in the body language of the human trainer, who had the faculties to solve each problem. The trainer was entirely unaware that he was providing such cues. In honour of Pfungst's study, the anomalous artifact has since been referred to as the Clever Hans effect and has continued to be important knowledge in the observer-expectancy effect and later studies in animal cognition."
(Wikipedia)
February 23, 2012
deinonychus commented on the word auroral chorus
"An auroral chorus is a series of chirps, whistles, and quasi-musical sounds in predominantly rising tones created by geomagnetic storms also responsible for the auroras. The sounds last approximately 0.1-1.0 seconds. Other auroral sounds includes hissing, swishing, rustling and cracking." (Wikipedia)
February 19, 2012
deinonychus commented on the list putting-my-two-cents-in--coined-words
I've read them all now. Can I have some more, please?
February 18, 2012
deinonychus commented on the word detoastification
I had always thought of toasting as an irreversible process...
February 18, 2012
deinonychus commented on the word colorless shiner
A fish, Notropis perpallidus.
February 17, 2012
deinonychus commented on the list remarkable-wikipedia-categories
The list of Enochian angels contains many names that seem to be just random letters...
February 17, 2012
deinonychus commented on the word Oonopidae
A spider family (goblin spiders). Including genera with names such as Unicorn, Megabulbus, Calculus, Hypnoonops, Oonops, Oonopoides, Oonopinus...
February 16, 2012
deinonychus commented on the word Sarcococca
Thanks ruzuzu! It fits right in...
February 16, 2012
deinonychus commented on the word Sarcococca
"Sarcococca, Sweet box, or Christmas box is a genus of 16-20 species of flowering plants in the family Buxaceae, native to eastern and southeastern Asia and the Himalaya. They are slow-growing evergreen shrubs 1-2 m tall. The leaves are borne alternately, 3-12 cm long and 1-4 cm broad. They bear fragrant flowers, often in winter. The fruit is a red or black drupe containing 1-3 seeds. Some species are cultivated for ground cover in shady areas." (Wikipedia)
My (limited) knowledge of greek tells me it should mean something like meatballs. But that doesn't really seem right...
http://www.myetymology.com says "kokkos, κόκκος (a kernel of seed)". Well, almost...
February 16, 2012
deinonychus commented on the word Kentucky meat shower
I especially appreciated the "cosmic meat" theory!
February 15, 2012
deinonychus commented on the list fun-with-chemistry
I find a funny molecule. I list it. I notice that it's been listed before. I find an entire list of funny molecules, and a link to even more of them! Perfect...
February 15, 2012
deinonychus commented on the word widemouth blindcat
A fish (Satan eurystomus). It is the only representative of the genus Satan.
February 15, 2012
deinonychus commented on the list bubbles--1
Well, I do like things in great quantity... But it feels a bit like cheating to add both! (So I chose the one I think look best.)
February 13, 2012
deinonychus commented on the word lumpsucker
There are several species, and many of them sound like excellent insults: pimpled lumpsucker, toad lumpsucker, bumpy lumpsucker, smooth lumpsucker...
February 13, 2012
deinonychus commented on the word Jack Dempsey
"Jack Dempseys lay their eggs on the substrate (the bottom of the aquarium or pool)."
Wikipedia about Jack Dempsey (fish)
February 13, 2012
deinonychus commented on the list bubbles--1
There's a bubble eye goldfish. (Or maybe it's Bubble Eye, names of species in English are driving me crazy with their arbitrary capitalization.)
February 13, 2012
deinonychus commented on the word Vinciguerria poweriae
Also known as Power's deep-water bristle-mouth fish.
February 13, 2012
deinonychus commented on the word machine that always halts
In computability theory, a machine that always halts—also called a decider (Sipser, 1996) or a total Turing machine (Kozen, 1997)—is a Turing machine that halts for every input.
Because it always halts, the machine is able to decide whether a given string is a member of a formal language. The class of languages which can be decided by such machines is exactly the set of recursive languages. However, due to the Halting Problem, determining whether an arbitrary Turing machine halts on an arbitrary input is itself an undecidable decision problem.
(Wikipedia)
February 12, 2012
deinonychus commented on the word rapidly-exploring random tree
A Rapidly-exploring random tree (RRT) is a data structure and algorithm designed for efficiently searching nonconvex, high-dimensional search spaces. The tree is constructed in such a way that any sample in the space is added by connecting it to the closest sample already in the tree. (Wikipedia)
Here's an animated example.
February 12, 2012
deinonychus commented on the word bumpy
Also a species of jellyfish, Stellamedusa ventana.
February 12, 2012
deinonychus commented on the word mellified man
Mellified man, or human mummy confection, was a legendary medicinal substance created by steeping a human cadaver in honey. (Wikipedia)
February 11, 2012
deinonychus commented on the word trimethylaminuria
Also called fish odor syndrome.
February 11, 2012
deinonychus commented on the word eccentric flint
An eccentric flint is a chipped artefact produced by the Maya civilization of ancient Mesoamerica. Although generally referred to as "flints", they were typically fashioned from chert, chalcedony and obsidian. Eccentric flints were manufactured by specialist artisans in lithic workshops for non-utilitarian purposes. They were sacred high-status objects associated with Maya elite power. (Wikipedia)
February 11, 2012
deinonychus commented on the list sounding-like-a-superhero
Thanks actung! (I don't know that much about american politics, and hadn't seen those words before, but that can be a good thing in a list like this, since understanding sometimes take away the magic...)
edit: just an hour after saying that I didn't recognize the words, my usual (swedish) newspaper wrote about super PACs...
February 11, 2012
deinonychus commented on the word Auto-icon
What was made of Jeremy Bentham's remains.
http://www.ucl.ac.uk/Bentham-Project/who/autoicon
February 10, 2012
deinonychus commented on the word moist desquamation
Moist desquamation is a description of the clinical pattern seen as a consequence of radiation exposure where the skin thins and then begins to weep because of loss of integrity of the epithelial barrier and decreased oncotic pressure. Typically this occurs at doses of 15 - 20 gray, far higher than any diagnostic scan and more typical of levels seen in radiotherapy or deployment of nuclear armament. (Wikipedia)
February 10, 2012
deinonychus commented on the word existential graph
An existential graph is a type of diagrammatic or visual notation for logical expressions, proposed by Charles Sanders Peirce, who wrote on graphical logic as early as 1882,1 and continued to develop the method until his death in 1914. (Wikipedia)
February 10, 2012
deinonychus commented on the word ootype
Yay, another word starting with oo! (The search function here is not really functional, but that way it becomes more of a treasure hunt...)
February 10, 2012
deinonychus commented on the word Giffen good
In economics and consumer theory, a Giffen good is one which people paradoxically consume more of as the price rises, violating the law of demand. (Wikipedia)
February 10, 2012
deinonychus commented on the word heart urchin
To make it even worse, one of the families of heart urchins are called Loveniidae.
February 10, 2012
deinonychus commented on the word traumatic insemination
Sometimes I feel weird for being the only one listing (or even looking up!) some things.
February 9, 2012
deinonychus commented on the word sexy son hypothesis
The sexy son hypothesis of evolutionary biology was first proposed by Fisher in 1930. 'The sexy son hypothesis' proposes that a female animal's optimal choice among potential mates is a male whose genes will produce male offspring with the best chance of reproductive success. In particular, the sexy son hypothesis implies that a potential mate's capacity as a caregiver or any other direct benefits the male can offer the female (e.g., nuptial gifts, good territory) are irrelevant to his value as the potential father of the female's offspring. What matters are her sexy sons' future breeding successes (like that of their promiscuous father) in creating large numbers of offspring carrying copies of the female's genes.
(Wikipedia)
February 9, 2012
deinonychus commented on the list remarkable-wikipedia-categories
Notable people who have discussed chicken hypnotism
February 9, 2012
deinonychus commented on the word secular equilibrium
In nuclear physics, secular equilibrium is a situation in which the quantity of a radioactive isotope remains constant because its production rate (due, e.g., to decay of a parent isotope) is equal to its decay rate. (Wikipedia)
February 8, 2012
deinonychus commented on the word eternal light mushroom
Mycena luxaeterna, a bioluminescent fungus.
February 8, 2012
deinonychus commented on the word Tyrannobdella rex
A scary looking leech with unusually large teeth...
February 8, 2012
deinonychus commented on the word figure of eighty
Tethea ocularis, a moth of the family Drepanidae.
February 8, 2012
deinonychus commented on the word poplar kitten
Furcula bifida, a moth of the family Notodontidae.
February 8, 2012
deinonychus commented on the word cream wave
Scopula floslactata, a moth.
February 8, 2012
deinonychus commented on the word gastric-brooding frog
The gastric-brooding frogs or Platypus frogs (Rheobatrachus) were a genus of ground-dwelling frogs native to Queensland in eastern Australia. The genus consisted of only two species, both of which became extinct in the mid-1980s. The genus was unique because it contained the only two known frog species that incubated the prejuvenile stages of their offspring in the stomach of the mother. (Wikipedia)
February 7, 2012
deinonychus commented on the word mouthbrooding
Mouthbrooding, also known as oral incubation and buccal incubation, is the care given by some groups of animals to their offspring by holding them in the mouth of the parent for extended periods of time. Although mouthbrooding is performed by a variety of different animals, most notably Darwin's frog, fishes are by far the most diverse mouthbrooders. (Wikipedia)
February 7, 2012
deinonychus commented on the word cuckoo catfish
Synodontis multipunctata, also known as the cuckoo catfish, cuckoo squeaker, or multipunk, is a small catfish from Lake Tanganyika, one of the lakes in the Great Rift Valley system in Africa. It is a brood parasite upon mouthbrooding cichlids. (Wikipedia)
February 7, 2012
deinonychus commented on the word diamond planet
See carbon planet.
February 6, 2012
deinonychus commented on the word moving-knife procedure
From Wikipedia:
In the mathematics of social science, and especially game theory, a moving-knife procedure is a type of solution to the fair division problem. The canonical example is the division of a cake using a knife.
The simplest example is a moving-knife equivalent of the I cut, you choose scheme, sometimes known as Austin's moving-knife procedure. One player moves the knife across the cake, conventionally from left to right. The cake is cut when either player calls "stop". If each player calls stop when he or she perceives the knife to be at the 50-50 point, then the first player to call stop will produce an envy-free division if the caller gets the left piece and the other player gets the right piece. Note that this procedure is not necessarily efficient.
Generalizing this scheme to more than two players cannot be done by a discrete procedure without sacrificing envy-freeness.
February 6, 2012
deinonychus commented on the list t-shirt-animals
Nice list! I found it searching for animals to my Zoo of overrated animals, and there's quite an overlap...
February 6, 2012
deinonychus commented on the word mentalis
"The pouting muscle", the internet tells me...
February 6, 2012
deinonychus commented on the list flanges-c
I just stumbled upon grease nipple... Lovely to find an entire list with more of that sort.
February 5, 2012
deinonychus commented on the word perfect flower
Same as bisexual flower.
February 4, 2012
deinonychus commented on the word cubital fossa
Wikipedia describes it as "the triangular area on the anterior view of the elbow of a human or other hominid animal." (But I fail to find anything triangular on my own arm.)
February 4, 2012
deinonychus commented on the word hand of benediction
From Wikipedia:
The hand of benediction results from a severed median nerve at the level of the elbow or upper arm. The ability to flex the digits 2–3 at the metacarpophalangeal joints, proximal interphalangeal joints and distal interphalangeal joints is lost. This is due to the loss of innervation of the lateral 2 lumbricals of the hand which are supplied by the median nerve. Flexion at the proximal interphalangeal joints of digits 4–5 is weakened, but flexion at the metocarpophalangeal joints and distal interphalangeal joints remains intact. The extensors are left unopposed and digits 2–3 remain extended while attempting to make a fist.
The name arises from the invocation of a blessing used in Christian circles (see benediction).
February 4, 2012
deinonychus commented on the word wet-folding
An origami technique, using water.
February 3, 2012
deinonychus commented on the word Etymology-Man
http://www.xkcd.com/1010/
(Not to be confused with Entomology-Man.)
February 3, 2012
deinonychus commented on the word polysplenia
Hmm... I'll see what I can do... Here's a list of too-many-organs.
Unfortunatly, it seems that medical counting is limited to missing, one, two, many, too many). But I'm sure you are capable of constructing some made up greek-sounding terms?
February 3, 2012
deinonychus commented on the word koinophilia
Attraction to averageness.
February 3, 2012
deinonychus commented on the word Vulcanism
Also called Plutonism (or plutonism?).
February 3, 2012
deinonychus commented on the word polysplenia
Having multiple spleens.
February 3, 2012
deinonychus commented on the word flap surgery
Flap surgery is a technique in plastic and reconstructive surgery where any type of tissue is lifted from a donor site and moved to a recipient site with an intact blood supply. This is similar to but different from a graft, which does not have an intact blood supply and therefore relies on growth of new blood vessels. (Wikipedia)
February 3, 2012
deinonychus commented on the word situs solitus
The normal position of thoracic and abdominal organs. As opposed to situs inversus and situs ambiguus.
February 2, 2012
deinonychus commented on the word catastrophe theory
You mean there isn't one already? Well, then I see no other option than to create the list of catastrophes!
February 2, 2012
deinonychus commented on the word catastrophe theory
There are several catastrophes with pretty names:
fold catastrophe
cusp catastrophe
swallowtail catastrophe
butterfly catastrophe
hyperbolic umbilic catastrophe
elliptic umbilic catastrophe
parabolic umbilic catastrophe
January 31, 2012
deinonychus commented on the word probability flux
See probability current.
January 31, 2012
deinonychus commented on the word probability current
In quantum mechanics, the probability current (sometimes called probability flux) is a mathematical quantity describing the flow of probability density. Intuitively; if one pictures the probability density as an inhomogeneous fluid, then the probability current is the rate of flow of this fluid (change in probability per unit time). This is analogous to hydrodynamic mass currents and electromagnetic charge currents. (Wikipedia)
January 31, 2012
deinonychus commented on the word abstract machine
An abstract machine, also called an abstract computer, is a theoretical model of a computer hardware or software system used in automata theory. Abstraction of computing processes is used in both the computer science and computer engineering disciplines and usually assumes discrete time paradigm. (Wikipedia)
January 31, 2012
deinonychus commented on the word monstrous moonshine
In mathematics, monstrous moonshine, or moonshine theory, is a term devised by John Horton Conway and Simon P. Norton in 1979, used to describe the (then totally unexpected) connection between the monster group M and modular functions (particularly, the j function). (Wikipedia)
January 31, 2012
deinonychus commented on the word scotobiology
The term scotobiology describes the study of biology as directly and specifically affected by darkness, as opposed to photobiology, which describes the biological effects of light. (Wikipedia)
January 31, 2012
deinonychus commented on the word Sisyphus cooling
Sisyphus cooling is a mechanism through which atoms can be cooled using laser beams below the temperatures expected to be achieved by Doppler cooling. It comes about as a result of a polarization gradient created by two counter-propagating laser beams with orthogonal polarization. Atoms moving through the potential landscape created by the standing wave (created by the interference of the two counter-propagating beams) lose kinetic energy as they move to a potential maximum, at which point optical pumping moves them to a lower-energy state, thus losing the potential energy they had. (Wikipedia)
January 31, 2012
deinonychus commented on the word horse-latitudes
This is the first time I found a word here that has etymologies, but no definition. (See horse latitudes.)
January 30, 2012
deinonychus commented on the list favourite-phrases
I like this list. And I like that I found it while reading about benign summer light eruption.
January 30, 2012
deinonychus commented on the word self-incompatibility
Self-incompatibility (SI) is a general name for several genetic mechanisms in angiosperms, which prevent self-fertilization and thus encourage outcrossing. (Wikipedia)
January 30, 2012
deinonychus commented on the word thecoma
Thecomas or theca cell tumors are benign ovarian neoplasms composed only of theca cells. Histogenetically they are classified as sex cord-stromal tumours. (Wikipedia)
January 30, 2012
deinonychus commented on the word Roboastra
A genus of nudibranchs.
January 29, 2012
deinonychus commented on the word hydrostatic skeleton
Also called hydroskeleton.
January 24, 2012
deinonychus commented on the word hydroskeleton
A hydrostatic skeleton or hydroskeleton is a structure found in many cold-blooded organisms and soft-bodied animals consisting of a fluid-filled cavity, the coelom, surrounded by muscles. The pressure of the fluid and action of the surrounding circular and longitudinal muscles are used to change an organism's shape and produce movement, such as burrowing or swimming. (Wikipedia)
January 24, 2012
deinonychus commented on the word End of Greatness
The End of Greatness is an observational scale discovered at roughly 100 Mpc (roughly 300 million lightyears) where the lumpiness seen in the large-scale structure of the universe is homogenized and isotropized as per the Cosmological Principle. The superclusters and filaments seen in smaller surveys are randomized to the extent that the smooth distribution of the universe is visually apparent. It was not until the redshift surveys of the 1990s were completed that this scale could accurately be observed. (Wikipedia)
January 22, 2012
deinonychus commented on the word Local Void
The Local Void is a vast, empty region of space, devoid of matter, located within the Virgo Supercluster and lying adjacent to our own Milky Way galaxy. (Wikipedia)
January 22, 2012
deinonychus commented on the list remarkable-wikipedia-categories
I just found a list of voids!
January 22, 2012
deinonychus commented on the word blum–shub–smale machine
I was not aware. Now I am!
January 22, 2012
deinonychus commented on the word blum–shub–smale machine
Funny to stumble upon this word two times in one day... (I think I prefer it capitalized.)
"In computation theory, the Blum–Shub–Smale machine, or BSS machine, is a model of computation introduced by Lenore Blum, Michael Shub and Stephen Smale, intended to describe computations over the real numbers." (Wikipedia)
January 22, 2012
deinonychus commented on the word oracle machine
In complexity theory and computability theory, an oracle machine is an abstract machine used to study decision problems. It can be visualized as a Turing machine with a black box, called an oracle, which is able to decide certain decision problems in a single operation. The problem can be of any complexity class. Even undecidable problems, like the halting problem, can be used. (Wikipedia)
January 22, 2012
deinonychus commented on the word lyman-alpha blob
There's also a Lyman-alpha forest. (Listed once as lyman-alpha forest... I'm still not comfortable with this case sensitivity thing...)
January 22, 2012
deinonychus commented on the word simian foamy virus
There's also a human foamy virus. The spumavirus or foamyvirus is a genus of the retroviridae family.
January 22, 2012
deinonychus commented on the list gas-music-from-jupiter
So many good words...
January 22, 2012
deinonychus commented on the word blue rubber bleb syndrome
Blue rubber bleb nevus syndrome (or "BRBNS", or "blue rubber bleb syndrome, or "blue rubber-bleb nevus", or "Bean syndrome") is a rare disorder that consists mainly of abnormal blood vessels affecting the gastrointestinal tract.
(From Wikipedia, where i keep finding things that sounds like I just made them up)
January 22, 2012
deinonychus commented on the word crystal habit
Crystal habit is an overall description of the visible external shape of a mineral. This description can apply to an individual crystal or an assembly of crystals or aggregates. (Wikipedia)
January 22, 2012
deinonychus commented on the word orange roughy
"The orange roughy, red roughy, or deep sea perch, Hoplostethus atlanticus, is a relatively large deep-sea fish belonging to the slimehead family (Trachichthyidae)."
"The orange roughy is not a vertically slender fish. They turn orange after death, but are red while living."
(Wikipedia)
January 22, 2012
deinonychus commented on the word Zagros fold and thrust belt
The Zagros fold and thrust belt (Zagros FTB) is a ~1800 km long zone of deformed crustal rocks, formed in the foreland of the collision between the Arabian Plate and the Eurasian Plate. (Wikipedia)
January 22, 2012
deinonychus commented on the word chilled margin
A chilled margin is a shallow intrusive or volcanic rock texture characterised by a glassy or fine grained zone along the margin where the magma or lava has contacted air, water, or particularly much cooler rock. This is caused by rapid crystallization of the melt near the contact with the surrounding low temperature environment. In an intrusive case, the crystallized chilled margin may decrease in size or disappear by later remelting during magma flow, depending on magma heat flux. (Wikipedia)
January 21, 2012
deinonychus commented on the list remarkable-wikipedia-categories
List of animals by number of neurons. "This list is incomplete; you can help by expanding it." (Reminded me of this comic by SMBC.)
January 21, 2012
deinonychus commented on the word Vegetable Lamb of Tartary
Ah, these misleading capital letters. I did find it strange that Barometz didn't have all the comments it deserved, but there they are at barometz.
January 21, 2012
deinonychus commented on the word Odradek
A creature appearing in the short story "The Cares of a Family Man" ("Die Sorge des Hausvaters") by Franz Kafka.
January 21, 2012
deinonychus commented on the word Vegetable Lamb of Tartary
The Vegetable Lamb of Tartary (Latin: Agnus scythicus or Planta Tartarica Barometz) is a legendary zoophyte of central Asia, believed to grow sheep as its fruit. The sheep were connected to the plant by an umbilical cord and grazed the land around the plant. When all the plants were gone, both the plant and sheep died. (Wikipedia)
January 21, 2012
deinonychus commented on the word supernormal stimulus
A supernormal stimulus or superstimulus is an exaggerated version of a stimulus to which there is an existing response tendency, or any stimulus that elicits a response more strongly than the stimulus for which it evolved.
For example, a moth will spiral into a flame because it is adapted to navigate by the sun (a much more distant lightsource).
(WIkipedia)
January 21, 2012
deinonychus commented on the word vegetable sheep
Not to be confused with the Vegetable Lamb of Tartary.
January 21, 2012
deinonychus commented on the word ooblast
"a primordial cell from which the ovum is developed."
January 21, 2012
deinonychus commented on the word unmoved mover
The unmoved mover (οὐ κινούμενον κινεῖ) is a philosophical concept described by Aristotle as a primary cause or "mover" of all the motion in the universe. As is implicit in the name, the "unmoved mover" is not moved by any prior action. In Book 12 (Greek "Λ") of his Metaphysics, Aristotle describes the unmoved mover as being perfectly beautiful, indivisible, and contemplating only the perfect contemplation: itself contemplating. He equates this concept also with the active intellect. (Wikipedia)
January 20, 2012
deinonychus commented on the list monsters
Wow... pope lick monster... The name gives me so many disturbing images... I love it!
January 20, 2012
deinonychus commented on the list pernicious-parasites
I'll take some of these to my parasitic list (that isn't really parasitic since I'm not hurting this one...)
January 18, 2012
deinonychus commented on the word Aichelburg–Sexl ultraboost
Ooh, animated gifs! Hypnotizing...
January 18, 2012
deinonychus commented on the word superpartner
In particle physics, a superpartner (also sparticle) is hypothetical elementary particle. Supersymmetry is one of the synergistic theories in current high-energy physics which predicts the existence of these "shadow" particles.
The word superpartner is a portmanteau of the words supersymmetry and partner (sparticle is a portmanteau of supersymmetry and particle).
(Wikipedia)
January 18, 2012
deinonychus commented on the word loop group
The Wikipedia article about it starts with "In mathematics, a loop group is a group of loops in a topological group..." and it sounds like it could be a nursery rhyme...
January 18, 2012
deinonychus commented on the word quantum triviality
In a quantum field theory, charge screening can restrict the value of the observable "renormalized" charge of a classical theory. If the only allowed value of the renormalized charge is zero, the theory is said to be "trivial" or noninteracting. Thus, surprisingly, a classical theory that appears to describe interacting particles can, when realized as a quantum field theory, become a "trivial" theory of noninteracting free particles. This phenomenon is referred to as quantum triviality. (Wikipedia)
January 18, 2012
deinonychus commented on the word mirror matter
In physics, mirror matter, also called shadow matter or Alice matter, is a hypothetical counterpart to ordinary matter. Modern physics deals with three basic types of spatial symmetry: reflection, rotation and translation. The known elementary particles respect rotation and translation symmetry but do not respect mirror reflection symmetry (also called P-symmetry or parity). Of the four fundamental interactions—electromagnetism, the strong interaction, the weak interaction, and gravity—only the weak interaction breaks parity. (Wikipedia)
January 18, 2012
deinonychus commented on the word micro black hole
Micro black holes are tiny black holes, also called quantum mechanical black holes or mini black holes, for which quantum mechanical effects play an important role.
It is possible that such quantum primordial black holes were created in the high-density environment of the early Universe (or big bang), or possibly through subsequent phase transitions. They might be observed by astrophysicists in the near future, through the particles they are expected to emit by Hawking radiation.
(Wikipedia)
January 18, 2012
deinonychus commented on the word Aichelburg–Sexl ultraboost
It makes me very happy to see that the Poor-man's Gaussian pulses have found a loving home.
(Do you know what it means?)
January 18, 2012
deinonychus commented on the word supertramp
In ecology, a supertramp species is any type of animal which follows the "supertramp" strategy of high dispersion among many different habitats, towards none of which it is particularly specialized. Supertramp species are typically the first to arrive in newly available habitats, such as volcanic islands and freshly deforested land; they can have profoundly negative effects on more highly specialized flora and fauna, both directly through predation and indirectly through competition for resources.
The name was coined by Jared Diamond in 1974, as an allusion to both the itinerant lifestyle of the tramp, and the then-popular band Supertramp.
(Wikipedia)
January 17, 2012
deinonychus commented on the word bioprecipitation
Rain-making bacteria.
January 17, 2012
deinonychus commented on the word serous membrane
I cannot stop reading this as serious membrane.
January 17, 2012
deinonychus commented on the word accessory breast
Accessory breasts, also known as polymastia, supernumerary breasts, or mammae erraticae, is the condition of having an additional breast. (Wikipedia)
January 16, 2012
deinonychus commented on the word posthumous execution
Posthumous execution is the ritual or ceremonial mutilation of an already dead body as a punishment.
See also: Cadaver Synod, in 897, when Pope Stephen VI had the corpse of Pope Formosus disinterred and put on trial.
(Wikipedia)
January 16, 2012
deinonychus commented on the word geometrical frustration
In condensed matter physics, the term geometrical frustration (or in short: frustration) means a phenomenon in which the geometrical properties of the crystal lattice or the presence of conflicting atomic forces forbid simultaneous minimization of the interaction energies acting at a given site. This may lead to highly degenerate ground states with a nonzero entropy at zero temperature. Or in simple terms, the substance can never be completely frozen, because the structure it forms does not have a single minimal-energy state, so motion on a molecular scale continues even at absolute zero and even without input of energy. (Wikipedia)
January 16, 2012
deinonychus commented on the word antisense therapy
Not as strange as it may look. See antisense.
January 16, 2012
deinonychus commented on the word soft matter
Soft matter is a subfield of condensed matter comprising a variety of physical states that are easily deformed by thermal stresses or thermal fluctuations. They include liquids, colloids, polymers, foams, gels, granular materials, and a number of biological materials. (Wikipedia)
January 16, 2012
deinonychus commented on the word aurophilicity
In chemistry, aurophilicity refers to the tendency of gold complexes to aggregate via formation of weak gold-gold bonds. (Wikipedia)
January 16, 2012
deinonychus commented on the word black swallower
The black swallower, Chiasmodon niger, is a species of deep sea fish in the family Chiasmodontidae, notable for its ability to swallow fish larger than itself (for which it is sometimes named the "great swallower"). (Wikipedia)
January 16, 2012
deinonychus commented on the list remarkable-wikipedia-categories
Unfortunately, the list Famous webbed feet is not as long as one could have hoped...
January 16, 2012
deinonychus commented on the word island of inversion
"An island of inversion is a region of the chart of nuclides that contains isotopes with a non-standard ordering of single particle levels in the nuclear shell model."
"Because there are 5 known islands of inversion, physicists have suggested renaming the phenomenon as an 'archipelago of islands of shell breaking'."
(Wikipedia)
January 16, 2012
deinonychus commented on the word fail-deadly
Fail-deadly is a concept in nuclear military strategy which encourages deterrence by guaranteeing an immediate, automatic and overwhelming response to an attack. The term fail-deadly was coined as a contrast to fail-safe. (Wikipedia)
January 16, 2012
deinonychus commented on the word Human Interference Task Force
See nuclear semiotics.
January 16, 2012
deinonychus commented on the word nuclear semiotics
"Nuclear semiotics was created in 1981 when a team of engineers, anthropologists, nuclear physicists, behavior scientists and others was convened on behalf of the U.S. Department of Energy and Bechtel Corp. The goal of this workgroup (the "Human Interference Task Force") was to find the means to reduce the likelihood of future humans unintentionally intruding on radioactive waste isolation systems."
The suggestions include radiation cats, atomic priesthood, and atomic flowers!
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_semiotics
January 16, 2012
deinonychus commented on the word firing squad synchronization problem
The firing squad synchronization problem is a problem in computer science and cellular automata in which the goal is to design a cellular automaton that, starting with a single active cell, eventually reaches a state in which all cells are simultaneously active. (Wikipedia)
January 15, 2012
deinonychus commented on the word double magic
Nuclei which have neutron number and proton (atomic) numbers each equal to one of the magic numbers are called "double magic", and are especially stable against decay. (Wikipedia)
January 15, 2012
deinonychus commented on the word fish kill
The term fish kill, known also as fish die-off and (in Britain) as fish mortality, is a localized die-off of fish populations which may also be associated with more generalised mortality of aquatic life. (Wikipedia)
January 15, 2012
deinonychus commented on the word bird kill
Bird kill is a localized event resulting in the death of large numbers of birds at the same time. (Wikipedia)
January 15, 2012
deinonychus commented on the word sacrificial part
A sacrificial part is a part of a machine or product that is intentionally engineered to fail under excess mechanical stress, electrical stress, or other unexpected and dangerous situations. The sacrificial part is engineered to fail first, and thus protect other parts of the system. (Wikipedia)
January 15, 2012
deinonychus commented on the user deinonychus
(Sometimes I worry about clogging the entire "latest comments" stream. But then I try to think that random bits of Wikipedia must be better than spam. Or silence.)
January 15, 2012
deinonychus commented on the word nonclassical light
Nonclassical light is light that cannot be described using classical electromagnetism; its characteristics are described by the quantised electromagnetic field and quantum mechanics. Nonclassical light has nonclassical noise properties called quantum noise, which can be understood on the basis of quantum optics.
Common described forms of nonclassical light are the following:
Squeezed light exhibits reduced noise in one quadrature component. The most familiar kinds of squeezed light have either reduced amplitude noise or reduced phase noise, with increased noise of the other kind.
Fock states (also called photon number states) have a well defined number of photons (stored e.g. in a cavity), while the phase is totally undefined.
(Wikipedia)
January 15, 2012
deinonychus commented on the word squeezed light
http://www.squeezed-light.de/
January 15, 2012
deinonychus commented on the word radio relic
Radio Relics are diffuse synchrotron radio emission found in the peripheral regions of galaxy clusters. Similar to the case of radio halos, they do not have any obvious galaxy counterpart, but their shapes are much more elongated and irregular compared to those of radio halos. (Wikipedia)
January 15, 2012
deinonychus commented on the word sonic black hole
A sonic black hole (sometimes called a dumb hole) is a phenomenon in which phonons (sound perturbations) are unable to escape from a fluid that is flowing more quickly than the local speed of sound. They are called sonic, or acoustic, black holes because these trapped phonons are analogous to light in astrophysical (gravitational) black holes. (Wikipedia)
January 15, 2012
deinonychus commented on the word dumb hole
A sonic black hole.
January 15, 2012
deinonychus commented on the word relativistic jet
Relativistic jets are extremely powerful jets of plasma which emerge from presumed massive objects at the centers of some active galaxies, notably radio galaxies and quasars. (Wikipedia)
January 15, 2012
deinonychus commented on the word Aichelburg–Sexl ultraboost
This Wikipedia article is pure poetry!
"...smooth Lorentzian manifold..."
"...Poor-man's Gaussian pulses..."
"...impulsive curvatures..."
"...The moving particle will 'think'..."
January 15, 2012
deinonychus commented on the word zeusaphone
I didn't know that this existed, but now I want a singing Tesla coil.
January 15, 2012
deinonychus commented on the list nineteen-random-words
Yes, I saw your quintaphone, and thought that I'd let you decide if my quintephone was of interest. (I must confess that I didn't understand the definition of quintaphone at all.)
January 15, 2012
deinonychus commented on the list sounding-like-a-superhero
No, I'm not really worrying... It's just that I feel that I must be missing lots of good stuff just because I don't know where to look. But, it's probably just a matter of time!
January 15, 2012
deinonychus commented on the word affective science
Affective science is the scientific study of emotion or affect. This includes the study of emotion elicitation, emotional experience and the recognition of emotions in others. In particular the nature of feeling, mood, emotionally driven behaviour, decision making, attention and self-regulation, as well as the underlying physiology and neuroscience of the emotions. (Wikipedia)
January 14, 2012
deinonychus commented on the word color anomia
Another type of anomia is color anomia, where the patient can distinguish between colors but cannot identify them by name or name the color of an object. They can separate colors into categories, but they cannot name them. (Wikipedia)
January 14, 2012
deinonychus commented on the word fission-fusion society
In a fission-fusion society, the main parent group can fracture (fission) into smaller stable subgroups or individuals to adapt to environmental or social circumstances. For example, a number of males may break off from the main group in order to hunt or forage for food during the day, but at night they may return to join (fusion) the primary group to share food and partake in other activities. (Wikipedia)
January 14, 2012
deinonychus commented on the word synnecrosis
Synnecrosis is a particular case in which the interaction is so mutually detrimental that it results in death, as in the case of some parasitic relationships. It is a rare and necessarily short-lived condition as evolution selects against it. The term is seldom used. (Wikipedia)
January 14, 2012
deinonychus commented on the word lapsarianism
Lapsarianism is the set of Calvinist doctrines describing the theoretical order of God's decree (in his mind, before Creation), in particular concerning the order of his decree for the fall of man and reprobation. The name of the doctrine comes from the Latin lapsus meaning fall.
Supralapsarianism (also antelapsarianism) is the view that God's decrees of election and reprobation logically preceded the decree of the fall while infralapsarianism (also called postlapsarianism and sublapsarianism) asserts that God's decrees of election and reprobation logically succeeded the decree of the fall. The words can also be used in connection with other topics, e.g. supra- and infralapsarian christology.
(Wikipedia)
January 14, 2012
deinonychus commented on the word daxophone
I can really recommend a visit here: http://daxo.de (if you're in the mood for some chaos)
January 14, 2012
deinonychus commented on the list nineteen-random-words
Here's some more phones: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quintephone
January 14, 2012
deinonychus commented on the word repugnant market
A repugnant market is a term used to describe an area of commerce that is considered by society to be outside of the range of market transactions and that bringing this area into the realm of a market would be inherently immoral or uncaring. (Wikipedia)
January 14, 2012
deinonychus commented on the word quasi-empiricism
Quasi-empirical methods are applied in science and in mathematics. The term "empirical methods" refers to experiment, disclosure of apparatus for reproduction of experiments, and other ways in which science is validated by scientists. Empirical methods are studied extensively in the philosophy of science but cannot be used directly in fields whose hypotheses are not invalidated by real experiment (mathematics, theology, ideology). In these fields, the prefix 'quasi' came to denote methods that are "almost" or "socially approximate" an ideal of truly empirical methods. (Wikipedia)
January 14, 2012
deinonychus commented on the word ousiograph
"An ousiograph or oustograph is a fictitious device purported to detect messages that are sent directly to one's brain. Arising from the State v. Green case in the Court of Criminal Appeals of Tennessee, the messages are sent to a person's brain to 'direct them' and possibly control their behavior for an undetermined purpose."
(From Wikipedia, where it is also questioned if it is right to have an article about "a 'device' mentioned once in FBI notes in an investigation of a paranoid schizophrenic who killed a police officer.")
January 14, 2012
deinonychus commented on the word analysis paralysis
"...often phrased as paralysis by analysis, in contrast to extinct by instinct (making a fatal decision based on hasty judgment or a gut-reaction)." (Wikipedia)
January 14, 2012
deinonychus commented on the word perverse incentive
A perverse incentive is an incentive that has an unintended and undesirable result which is contrary to the interests of the incentive makers. Perverse incentives are a type of unintended consequences. (Wikipedia)
January 14, 2012
deinonychus commented on the word compassion fatigue
Compassion fatigue (also known as a secondary traumatic stress disorder) is a condition characterised by a gradual lessening of compassion over time. It is common among trauma victims and individuals that work directly with trauma victims. (Wikipedia)
January 14, 2012
deinonychus commented on the word euendolith
I have a feeling that if you go to the trouble to make rock into tunnels that conform with the shape of your body, you make them to stay there... (but it's hard to know whats in the mind of an endolith)
January 14, 2012
deinonychus commented on the word Shepard tone
Wikipedia (that also has an example to listen to) tells me that It has been described as a "sonic barber's pole".
January 14, 2012
deinonychus commented on the word euendolith
An endolith that penetrates actively into the interior of rocks forming tunnels that conform with the shape of its body.
January 14, 2012
deinonychus commented on the word cryptoendolith
An endolith that colonizes structural cavities within porous rocks, including spaces produced and vacated by euendoliths.
January 14, 2012
deinonychus commented on the word chasmoendolith
An endolith that colonizes fissures and cracks in the rock.
January 14, 2012
deinonychus commented on the word endolith
An endolith is an organism (archaeum, bacterium, fungus, lichen, alga or amoeba) that lives inside rock, coral, animal shells, or in the pores between mineral grains of a rock. Many are extremophiles, living in places previously thought inhospitable to life. (Wikipedia)
January 14, 2012
deinonychus commented on the word fatigue life
"the number of stress cycles of a specified character that a specimen sustains before failure of a specified nature occurs." (Wikipedia)
January 13, 2012
deinonychus commented on the list sounding-like-a-superhero
Of course every potential list is an existing list... But I try not to let that get to me, somehow I must be doing something original (sometimes).
The links look interesting, in a way that might keep me busy all night. Which, at least at the moment, seems like a good thing.
And about what interests me... Hard to say. I love getting lost on Wikipedia (and here too, but it's not as easy), jumping from word to word just because they look interesting, ending up somewhere unexpected.
January 13, 2012
deinonychus commented on the word ozone cracking
Cracks can be formed in many different elastomers by ozone attack, and the characteristic form of attack of vulnerable rubbers is known as ozone cracking. (Wikipedia)
January 13, 2012
deinonychus commented on the word ozone attack
Cracks can be formed in many different elastomers by ozone attack, and the characteristic form of attack of vulnerable rubbers is known as ozone cracking. (Wikipedia)
January 13, 2012
deinonychus commented on the word perceptual trap
A perceptual trap is an ecological scenario in which environmental change, typically anthropogenic, leads an organism to avoid an otherwise high-quality habitat. The concept is related to that of an ecological trap, in which environmental change causes preference towards a low-quality habitat. (Wikipedia)
January 13, 2012
deinonychus commented on the word ecological trap
Ecological traps are scenarios in which rapid environmental change leads organisms to prefer to settle in poor-quality habitats. The concept stems from the idea that organisms that are actively selecting habitat must rely on environmental cues to help them identify high quality habitat. If either the habitat quality or the cue changes so that one does not reliably indicate the other, organisms may be lured into poor quality habitat. (Wikipedia)
January 13, 2012
deinonychus commented on the word atomic formula
In mathematical logic, an atomic formula (also known simply as an atom) is a formula with no deeper propositional structure, that is, a formula that contains no logical connectives or equivalently a formula that has no strict subformulas. Atoms are thus the simplest well-formed formulas of the logic. Compound formulas are formed by combining the atomic formulas using the logical connectives. (Wikipedia)
January 13, 2012
deinonychus commented on the word supervaluationism
In logic, supervaluationism is a semantics for dealing with irreferential singular terms and vagueness. (Wikipedia)
January 13, 2012
deinonychus commented on the list sounding-like-a-superhero
Looks interesting, thanks! (Is there some reasonable way to search for lists? I stumble upon great lists all the time, but I imagine there are so many more that I miss...)
January 13, 2012
deinonychus commented on the word umbilic torus
The umbilic torus is a single-edged 3-dimensional figure created by Helaman Ferguson as a mathematical artwork. Ferguson created a 27-inch (69 centimeters) bronze sculpture, Umbilic Torus, and it is his most widely known piece of art. The lone edge goes three times around the ring before returning to the starting point. (from Wikipedia, where you can also see the equations that define the shape)
January 13, 2012
deinonychus commented on the word strange loop
A strange loop arises when, by moving up or down through a hierarchical system, one finds oneself back where one started.
Strange loops may involve self-reference and paradox. The concept of a strange loop was proposed and extensively discussed by Douglas Hofstadter in "Gödel, Escher, Bach", and is further elaborated in Hofstadter's book "I Am a Strange Loop", published in 2007.
A tangled hierarchy is a hierarchical system in which a strange loop appears.
(Wikipedia)
January 13, 2012
deinonychus commented on the word tangled hierarchy
A tangled hierarchy is a hierarchical system in which a strange loop appears. (Wikipedia)
January 13, 2012
deinonychus commented on the word borderline carnivore
See protocarnivorous.
January 13, 2012
deinonychus commented on the word subcarnivorous
See protocarnivorous.
January 13, 2012
deinonychus commented on the word paracarnivorous
See protocarnivorous.
January 13, 2012
deinonychus commented on the word inavelns navel
Literally "the navel of inbreeding", said about a place. Coined by a dutch friend of mine, who was sad that it didn't work in dutch...
January 13, 2012
deinonychus commented on the list sounding-like-a-superhero
That was the intention...
...and I would be happy if people would give me more suggestions. (Actual words or made-up ones, as long as they aren't "real" superheroes)
January 13, 2012
deinonychus commented on the word Disproportionate Response Man
As seen on SMBC.
January 13, 2012
deinonychus commented on the word opportunistic pathogen
An opportunistic infection is an infection caused by pathogens, particularly opportunistic pathogens—those that take advantage of certain situations—such as bacterial, viral, fungal or protozoan infections that usually do not cause disease in a healthy host, one with a healthy immune system. A compromised immune system, however, presents an "opportunity" for the pathogen to infect. (Wikipedia)
January 13, 2012
deinonychus commented on the list welcome-to-the-oddery
This was indeed a rainy day, but this list made it better.
January 12, 2012
deinonychus commented on the list words-not-suitable-in-academic-publications-that-i-nontheless-use
Only four? You can do better!
January 12, 2012
deinonychus commented on the word wet shock
Same as insulin shock.
January 11, 2012
deinonychus commented on the word determinate cleavage
Determinate is the form of cleavage in most protostomes. It results in the developmental fate of the cells being set early in the embryo development. Each cell produced by early embryonic cleavage does not have the capacity to develop into a complete embryo. (Wikipedia)
January 11, 2012
deinonychus commented on the word original antigenic sin
Original antigenic sin, also known as the Hoskins effect, refers to the propensity of the body's immune system to preferentially utilize immunological memory based on a previous infection when a second slightly different version, of that foreign entity (e.g. a virus or bacterium) is encountered. This leaves the immune system "trapped" by the first response it has made to each antigen, and unable to mount potentially more effective responses during subsequent infections. The phenomenon of original antigenic sin has been described in relation to influenza virus, dengue fever, human immunodeficiency virus (HIV), and to several other viruses. (Wikipedia)
January 11, 2012
deinonychus commented on the word psychic tears
There are three very basic types of tears: basal tears, reflex tears and crying or weeping (psychic tears).
The third category, in general, referred to as crying or weeping, is increased lacrimation due to strong emotional stress, anger, suffering, mourning, or physical pain. It does not occur during the brain's Fight-or-flight response because the sympathetic nervous system inhibits lacrimation. This practice is not restricted to negative emotions; many people cry when extremely happy. In humans, emotional tears can be accompanied by reddening of the face and sobbing — cough-like, convulsive breathing, sometimes involving spasms of the whole upper body. Tears brought about by emotions have a different chemical make-up than those for lubrication. (Wikipedia)
January 11, 2012
deinonychus commented on the word reflex tears
There are three very basic types of tears: basal tears, reflex tears and crying or weeping (psychic tears).
The second type of tears results from irritation of the eye by foreign particles, or from the presence of irritant substances such as onion vapors, tear gas, or pepper spray in the eye's environment, including the cornea, conjunctiva, or nasal mucosa. It can also occur with bright light and hot or peppery stimuli to the tongue and mouth. It is also linked with vomiting, coughing, and yawning. These reflex tears attempt to wash out irritants that may have come into contact with the eye. (Wikipedia)
January 11, 2012
deinonychus commented on the word basal tears
There are three very basic types of tears: basal tears, reflex tears and crying or weeping (psychic tears).
In healthy mammalian eyes, the cornea is continually kept wet and nourished by basal tears. They lubricate the eye, and help to keep it clear of dust. Tear fluid contains water, mucin, lipids, lysozyme, lactoferrin, lipocalin, lacritin, immunoglobulins, glucose, urea, sodium, and potassium. (Wikipedia)
January 11, 2012
deinonychus commented on the word sleep inertia
Sleep inertia is a physiological state characterised by a decline in motor dexterity and a subjective feeling of grogginess immediately following an abrupt awakening. The impaired alertness may interfere with the ability to perform mental or physical tasks. Sleep inertia can also refer to the tendency of a person wanting to return to sleep. (Wikipedia)
January 11, 2012
deinonychus commented on the user hernesheir
Nice to hear... (I find myself in your lists every now and then)
January 10, 2012
deinonychus commented on the word spermatophylax
A spermatophylax is a gelatinous bolus which some male insects eject during copulation with females through their aedeagi together with spermatophores, and which functions as a nutritive addition for the female. (Wikipedia)
January 10, 2012
deinonychus commented on the word hidden angel shark
(Squatina occulta)
January 10, 2012
deinonychus commented on the word ovipore
An ovipore is a pore-like sexual organ of a female insect that gets inseminated by the spermatophores ejected by the aedeagus of a male insect during copulation. The spermatophores that pass through the ovipore are stored in most insect species in another organ called spermatheca. (Wikipedia)
January 10, 2012
deinonychus commented on the word iteroparity
An iteroparous organism is one that can undergo many reproductive events throughout its lifetime. (Wikipedia)
January 10, 2012
deinonychus commented on the word big bang spawner
See semelparity.
January 10, 2012
deinonychus commented on the word big bang reproduction
See semelparity.
January 10, 2012
deinonychus commented on the word semelparity
Wikipedia tells me that this is also known as "big bang reproduction", since the single reproductive event of semelparous organisms is usually large, as well as fatal...
January 10, 2012
deinonychus commented on the word torquetum
The torquetum or turquet is a medieval astronomical instrument designed to take and convert measurements made in three sets of coordinates: Horizon, equatorial, and ecliptic. In a sense, the Torquetum is an analog computer. (Wikipedia)
January 10, 2012
deinonychus commented on the word endling
The last living individual of a species, such as Martha the passenger pigeon and possibly Lonesome George, the last known individual of the Pinta Island tortoise.
January 9, 2012
deinonychus commented on the user apocalipstick
against-nature - a list for you?
January 9, 2012
deinonychus commented on the user ruzuzu
I'm happy to hear that! Nobody had said "welcome to Wordnik" before you did, but I've been feeling more and more at home here, lately.
January 9, 2012
deinonychus commented on the word ubiquitous gaze
Ubiquitous gaze, also referred to as pursuing eyes, is an art term for the effect created by certain portraits, such as the Mona Lisa, which give the impression that the subject's eyes are following the viewer. When such a painting is viewed from any angle, the subject's eyes still appear to be looking straight into the viewer's. This is an effect of perspective and may be deliberate or not.
Ubiquitous gaze is a common technique of the trompe-l'œil school of painting, and can be seen in numerous works.
(Wikipedia)
January 9, 2012
deinonychus commented on the word nightmare dreamer
A fish (Oneirodes epithales).
January 9, 2012
deinonychus commented on the list remarkable-wikipedia-categories
List of animals with fraudulent diplomas, List of (historical) pigs and List of fictional pigs.
January 9, 2012
deinonychus commented on the word stareater
Snaggletooths or stareaters are any of a number of small, deep-sea stomiid fish in the genus Astronesthes. They possess a bioluminescent red chin barbel that the fish use to lure prey into striking distance. (Wikipedia)
January 9, 2012
deinonychus commented on the word smooth dreamer
A fish, (Chaenophryne draco).
January 9, 2012
deinonychus commented on the word bulbous dreamer
A fish (Oneirodes eschrichtii).
January 9, 2012
deinonychus commented on the word spiny dreamer
A fish (Oneirodes acanthias).
January 9, 2012
deinonychus commented on the list words-for-deinonychus
Yay! Parasites!
January 9, 2012
deinonychus commented on the word parasitic number
An n-parasitic number (in base 10) is a positive natural number which can be multiplied by n by moving the rightmost digit of its decimal representation to the front. Here n is itself a single-digit positive natural number. In other words, the decimal representation undergoes a right circular shift by one place. For example, 4•128205=512820, so 128205 is 4-parasitic. (Wikipedia)
January 8, 2012
deinonychus commented on the word parasitic eel
"The snubnosed eel, Simenchelys parasitica, also known as the pug-nosed eel, slime eel, or snub-nose parasitic eel, is a species of deep-sea eel and the only member of its genus."
"Although typically a scavenger, it is better known for using its powerful jaws and teeth to burrow into larger fishes as a parasite."
(Wikipedia)
January 8, 2012
deinonychus commented on the word devil facial tumour disease
A transmissible parasitic cancer that affects Tasmanian devils.
January 8, 2012
deinonychus commented on the word parasitic cancer
A parasitic cancer or transmissible cancer is a cancer cell or cluster of cancer cells that can be transmitted from animal to animal. (Wikipedia)
January 8, 2012
deinonychus commented on the word parasitic cone
A parasitic cone (or satellite cone) is the cone-shaped accumulation of volcanic material not part of the central vent of a volcano. (Wikipedia)
January 8, 2012
deinonychus commented on the list parasitic
Thanks! I'm hoping this is a way to make my Wikipedia mania result in something... a little less ephemeral.
January 8, 2012
deinonychus commented on the word pump twin
See acardiac twin.
January 8, 2012
deinonychus commented on the word acardiac twin
The acardiac twin is a parasitic twin that fails to develop a head, arms and a heart. The parasitic twin, little more than a torso with or without legs, receives its blood supply from the host twin by means of an umbilical cord-like structure, much like a fetus in fetu, except the acardiac twin is outside the host twin's body. Although the reason is not fully understood, it is apparent that deoxygenated blood from the pump twin is perfused to the acardiac twin. The acardiac twin grows along with the pump twin, but due to inadequate perfusion it is unable to develop the structures necessary for life, and presents with dramatic deformities. (Wikipedia)
January 8, 2012
deinonychus commented on the word fetus papyraceus
See vanishing twin.
January 8, 2012
deinonychus commented on the word fetal resorption
See vanishing twin.
January 8, 2012
deinonychus commented on the word vanishing twin
A vanishing twin, also known as fetal resorption, is a fetus in a multi-gestation pregnancy which dies in utero and is then partially or completely reabsorbed by the mother or twin.
The occurrence of this phenomenon is sometimes referred to as twin embolisation syndrome or vanishing twin syndrome (VTS), since the 1980s when twin pregnancies were made visible early on by means of ultrasound.
Occasionally, rather than being completely reabsorbed, the dead fetus will be compressed by its growing twin to a flattened, parchment-like state known as fetus papyraceus.
(Wikipedia)
January 8, 2012
deinonychus commented on the word parasitic twin
A parasitic twin (also known as an asymmetrical or unequal conjoined twin) is the result of the processes that produce vanishing twins and conjoined twins, and may represent a continuum between the two. (Wikipedia)
January 8, 2012
deinonychus commented on the word parasitic drag
Parasitic drag (also called skin friction drag) is drag caused by moving a solid object through a fluid medium (in the case of aerodynamics, more specifically, a gaseous medium). Parasitic drag is made up of many components, the most prominent being form drag. Skin friction and interference drag are also major components of parasitic drag. (Wikipedia)
January 8, 2012
deinonychus commented on the word sclerenchymatic guillotine
I found this reading about parasitic plants. It is what the Nuytsia floribunda uses to cut off the host root.
And this is what it looks like.
January 8, 2012
deinonychus commented on the word Varroa destructor
A parasitic mite that attacks honey bees, causing varroatosis.
January 8, 2012
deinonychus commented on the word facultative parasite
A facultative parasite is an organism that may resort to parasitic activity, but does not absolutely rely on any host for completion of its life cycle. (Wikipedia)
January 8, 2012
deinonychus commented on the word obligate parasite
An obligate parasite is a parasitic organism that cannot complete its life cycle without exploiting a suitable host. (Wikipedia)
January 8, 2012
deinonychus commented on the word multiparasitism
When a host is parasitized by more than one species.
January 8, 2012
deinonychus commented on the word idiobiont parasitoid
Idiobiont parasitoids are those that prevent further development of the host after initial parasitization; typically they attack a host life stage that is immobile (e.g., an egg or pupa), and almost without exception idiobiont parasitoids live outside the host. (Wikipedia)
See koinobiont parasitoid.
January 8, 2012
deinonychus commented on the word koinobiont parasitoid
Koinobiont parasitoids allow the host to continue its development and often do not kill or consume the host until the host either is about to pupate or become an adult; this therefore typically involves living within an active, mobile host. In turn, koinobionts can be subdivided further into endoparasitoids, which develop inside body of the host, and ectoparasitoids, which develop outside the host body, though the parasitoids frequently are attached or embedded in the host's tissues. (Wikipedia)
See idiobiont parasitoid.
January 8, 2012
deinonychus commented on the word parasitic castration
Parasitic castration is the strategy, by a parasite, of blocking reproduction by its host, completely or in part. For example, Hemioniscus balani, a parasitic castrator of hermaphroditic barnacles, feeds on ovarian fluid, so that its host loses female reproductive ability but still can function as a male. This would be a case of direct parasitic castration (feeding on host gonads). Indirect strategies are also seen such as diverting host energy from gonad development or secreting castrating hormones.
(Wikipedia)
January 7, 2012
deinonychus commented on the word vampire finch
Geospiza difficilis septentrionalis, a bloodsucking bird native to the Galápagos Islands.
January 7, 2012
deinonychus commented on the word sit-and-wait predator
Same as ambush predator.
January 7, 2012
deinonychus commented on the word ambush predator
Ambush predators or sit-and-wait predators are carnivorous animals that capture prey by stealth or cunning, not by speed or necessarily by strength. These organisms usually hide motionless and wait for prey to come within striking distance. They are often camouflaged, and may be solitary. This mode of predation may be most efficient when a predator cannot move faster than its preferred prey; otherwise, active hunting is more efficient. (Wikipedia)
January 7, 2012
deinonychus commented on the word macroparasite
Macroparasites are parasites that are large enough to be seen with the naked eye, in contrast to microparasites. They grow in one host but reproduce by infective stages outside of this host. These generally include ticks, mites, nematodes, flatworms, etc., and can be either external parasites (ectoparasitic) or internal parasites (endoparasitic).
(Wikipedia)
January 7, 2012
deinonychus commented on the word delusory cleptoparasitosis
A form of delusional parasitosis where "the sufferer believes the infestation is in their dwelling, rather than on or in their body." (Wikipedia)
January 6, 2012
deinonychus commented on the word kettle logic
Kettle Logic (la logique du chaudron in the original French) is a type of informal fallacy wherein one uses multiple arguments to defend a point, but the arguments themselves are inconsistent.
The name derives from an example used by Sigmund Freud in The Interpretation of Dreams and in his Jokes and Their Relation to the Unconscious. Freud relates the story that a man who was accused by his neighbour of having returned a kettle in a damaged condition offered three arguments.
That he had returned the kettle undamaged;
That it was already damaged when he borrowed it;
That he had never borrowed it in the first place.
(Wikipedia)
January 3, 2012
deinonychus commented on the word philosophical zombie
From Wikipedia:
A philosophical zombie or p-zombie in the philosophy of mind and perception is a hypothetical being that is indistinguishable from a normal human being except in that it lacks conscious experience, qualia, or sentience.
...
The unifying idea of the zombie is of a human that has no conscious experience, but one might distinguish various types of zombie used in different thought experiments as follows:
A behavioral zombie that is behaviorally indistinguishable from a human.
A neurological zombie that has a human brain and is generally physiologically indistinguishable from a human.
A soulless zombie that lacks a "soul."
December 31, 2011
deinonychus commented on the word dysrationalia
Dysrationalia is defined as the inability to think and behave rationally despite adequate intelligence. (Wikipedia)
December 31, 2011
deinonychus commented on the word reminiscence bump
The reminiscence bump is the tendency for older adults to have increased recollection for events that occurred during their adolescence and early adulthood. (Wikipedia)
December 31, 2011
deinonychus commented on the word gaslighting
Gaslighting is a form of psychological abuse in which false information is presented with the intent of making a victim doubt his or her own memory and perception. It may simply be the denial by an abuser that previous abusive incidents ever occurred, or it could be the staging of bizarre events by the abuser with the intention of disorienting the victim.
The term "gaslighting" comes from the play Gas Light and its film adaptations. In those works a character uses a variety of tricks, including turning the gas lamps lower than normal, to convince his spouse that she is crazy. Since then it became a colloquial expression which has now also been used in clinical and research literature
(Wikipedia)
December 31, 2011
deinonychus commented on the word empathy gap
"A hot-cold empathy gap is a cognitive bias in which a person underestimates the influences of visceral drives, and instead attributes behavior primarily to other, nonvisceral factors." (Wikipedia)
December 31, 2011
deinonychus commented on the word lesser extinction
A sort of mass extinction.
December 20, 2011
deinonychus commented on the word mass extinction
The same as extinction event, extinction-level event and biotic crisis.
December 20, 2011
deinonychus commented on the word Great Dying
The Permian–Triassic extinction event.
December 20, 2011
deinonychus commented on the word Lazarus taxon
A taxon that disappears from one or more periods of the fossil record, only to appear again later.
December 20, 2011
deinonychus commented on the word Elvis taxon
In paleontology, an Elvis taxon (plural Elvis taxa) is a taxon which has been misidentified as having re-emerged in the fossil record after a period of presumed extinction, but is not actually a descendant of the original taxon, instead having developed a similar morphology through convergent evolution. This implies the extinction of the original taxon is real, and the two taxa are polyphyletic.
By contrast, a Lazarus taxon is one which actually is a descendant of the original taxon, and highlights missing fossil records, which may be found later. A zombie taxon is a type of Lazarus taxon sample that was mobile in the time between its original death and its subsequent discovery in a site of younger classification, like, for example, a trilobite that gets eroded out of its Cambrian-aged limestone matrix, and reworked into Miocene-aged siltstone.
(From Wikipedia)
December 20, 2011
deinonychus commented on the word context
Also the same as trama: the mass of non-hymenial tissues that composes the mass of a fungal fruiting body.
December 19, 2011
deinonychus commented on the word cocoanut
I read "coconaut"... Sounded like a dream job...
December 18, 2011
deinonychus commented on the word flower-spray organ of Ruffini
Synonym: flower-spray ending.
December 3, 2011
deinonychus commented on the word flower-spray ending
"One of the two types of sensory nerve ending associated with the neuromuscular spindle (the other being the annulospiral ending); in this type, the fibre branches spread out upon the surface of the intrafusal fibres like a spray of flowers. Synonym: flower-spray organ of Ruffini"
December 3, 2011
deinonychus commented on the word מת
See אמת
December 2, 2011
deinonychus commented on the word אמת
The Hebrew word for "truth" or "real", written in the forehead of a golem (making it animated). Removing the letter aleph changes the mening to "dead" (and deactivates it). See מת
December 2, 2011
deinonychus commented on the word fugitive swelling
Loa loa filariasis, a skin and eye disease caused by the nematode worm, loa loa.
December 2, 2011
deinonychus commented on the word muscular coat
"The muscular coat (muscular layer, muscular fibers, muscularis propria, muscularis externa) is a region of muscle in many organs in the vertebrate body, adjacent to the submucosa membrane. It is responsible for gut movement such as peristalsis." (Wikipedia)
December 2, 2011
deinonychus commented on the word zonule of Zinn
"The zonule of Zinn (Zinn's membrane, ciliary zonule) (after Johann Gottfried Zinn) is a ring of fibrous strands connecting the ciliary body with the crystalline lens of the eye.
The zonule of Zinn is split into two layers: a thin layer, which lines the hyaloid fossa, and a thicker layer, which is a collection of zonular fibers. Together, the fibers are known as the suspensory ligament of the lens." (Wikipedia)
December 2, 2011
deinonychus commented on the word Valentine position
"A supine position on a table with double inclined plane so as to cause flexion at the hips, used to facilitate urethral irrigation."
December 2, 2011
deinonychus commented on the word null cell
"A null cell is a large granular lymphocyte without surface markers or membrane-associated proteins from B lymphocytes or T lymphocytes." (Wikipedia)
December 2, 2011
deinonychus commented on the word active mutant
A mutant with overt phenotypic expression.
December 2, 2011
deinonychus commented on the word dottersvulst
Metastasis. Literally "daughter tumour".
December 1, 2011
deinonychus commented on the word spongiform pustule of Kogoj
"an epidermal pustule formed by infiltration of neutrophils into necrotic epidermis in which the cell walls persist as a spongelike network; seen in pustular psoriasis."
(now I have to learn some more new words to understand this definition)
December 1, 2011
deinonychus commented on the word harmonic mean
This could be an alignment in a role-playing game of some sort...
December 1, 2011
deinonychus commented on the word butterfly eruption
A symptom of systemic lupus erythematosus.
December 1, 2011
deinonychus commented on the word Münchhausen by proxy
"In the Münchausen by Proxy syndrome, an adult care-giver makes a child sick by either fabricating symptoms or actually causing harm to the child, whereby convincing not only the child but others, including medical providers, that their child is sick." (Wikipedia)
November 30, 2011
deinonychus commented on the word inferior aperture
"The lower circumference of the lesser pelvis is very irregular; the space enclosed by it is named the inferior aperture or pelvic outlet." (Wikipedia)
November 29, 2011
deinonychus commented on the word pelvic outlet
"The lower circumference of the lesser pelvis is very irregular; the space enclosed by it is named the inferior aperture or pelvic outlet." (Wikipedia)
November 29, 2011
deinonychus commented on the word Orientia tsutsugamushi
"Orientia tsutsugamushi is the causative organism of scrub typhus, and the natural vector and reservoir is probably trombiculid mites (genus Leptotrombidium). The organism is an obligate intracellular pathogen, which needs to infect eukaryotic cells in order to multiply." (Wikipedia)
November 29, 2011
deinonychus commented on the word vermilion zone
Found it here: www.english-medical-dictionary.com (where I keep finding random treasures) with this lovely definition:
the red margin of the upper and lower lip that commences at the exterior edge of the intraoral labial mucosa (“moist line”) and extends outward, terminating at the extraoral labial cutaneous junction; a thinly keratinized type of stratified squamous epithelium deeply penetrated by well-vascularized dermal papillae which show through the translucent epidermis to impart the typical red appearance of the lips.
November 29, 2011
deinonychus commented on the word venous lake
"A venous lake (which are also known as 'Phlebectases') is an asymptomatic, generally solitary, soft, compressible, dark blue to violaceous, 0.2- to 1-cm papule commonly found on sun-exposed surfaces of the vermilion border of the lip, face and ears. Lesions generally occur among the elderly." (Wikipedia)
November 29, 2011
deinonychus commented on the word retromammary space
"Retromammary space is a loose areolar tissue that separates the breast from the pectoralis major muscle." (Wikipedia)
November 29, 2011
deinonychus commented on the word dysversion
"A turning in any direction, but not a complete turning over."
November 29, 2011
deinonychus commented on the word mixed tumor
"A mixed tumor is a tumor that derives from multiple tissue types" (Wikipedia)
November 29, 2011
deinonychus commented on the word paralyssa
"A paralytic form of rabies caused by the bite of the vampire bat (Desmodus)."
November 29, 2011
deinonychus commented on the word protoplasmic movement
"movement produced by the inherent power of contraction and relaxation of protoplasm; such movements are of three kinds: muscular, streaming, and ciliary"
November 29, 2011
deinonychus commented on the word toxic megacolon
I imagine Toxic Megacolon as some sort of superhero (or villain? probably better that way), so then I guess that Toxic Supercolon would fit very well in the same universe...
November 28, 2011
deinonychus commented on the word coniotomy
"A cricothyrotomy (also called thyrocricotomy, cricothyroidotomy, inferior laryngotomy, intercricothyrotomy, coniotomy or emergency airway puncture) is an incision made through the skin and cricothyroid membrane to establish a patent airway during certain life-threatening situations, such as airway obstruction by a foreign body, angioedema, or massive facial trauma." (Wikipedia)
November 28, 2011
deinonychus commented on the word narcissistic supply
Wikipedia says: "Narcissistic supply is a concept in some psychoanalytic theories which describes a type of admiration, interpersonal support or sustenance drawn by an individual from his or her environment (especially from carers, codependents and others)."
But I like to think of it as some sort of dietary supplement or drug.
November 28, 2011
deinonychus commented on the word toxic megacolon
"Toxic megacolon (megacolon toxicum) is an acute form of colonic distension. It is characterized by a very dilated colon (megacolon), accompanied by abdominal distension (bloating), and sometimes fever, abdominal pain, or shock." (Wikipedia)
November 28, 2011
deinonychus commented on the word megarectum
"Megarectum is a large rectum as a result of underlying nerve supply abnormalities or muscle dysfunction, which remains after disimpaction of the rectum. The Principles of Surgery textbook describes any rectum that can hold more than 1500cc of fluid as a megarectum." (Wikipedia)
November 28, 2011
deinonychus commented on the word mammary souffle
"Mammary souffle is a maternal cardiac murmur heard over the gravid breasts." (Wikipedia)
November 28, 2011
deinonychus commented on the word gravid
Wikipedia teaches me some new terms (that I probably never will use (but like anyway)):
A gravida is a pregnant woman.
A nulligravida or gravida 0 is a woman who has never been pregnant.
A primigravida or gravida 1 is a woman who is pregnant for the first time or has been pregnant one time.
A multigravida or more specifically a gravida 2 (also secundigravida), gravida 3, and so on, is a woman who has been pregnant more than one time.
An elderly primigravida is a woman in her first pregnancy, who is at least 35 years old. This term is becoming less common as it may be considered offensive.
November 28, 2011
deinonychus commented on the word fetal souffle
"Souffle, in medical terminology, can refer to a sound heard on auscultation of the gravid female. A souffle is a vascular or cardiac murmur with a blowing quality.
Funic souffle (also known as funicular or fetal souffle), is a blowing sound heard in synch with fetal heart sounds, and may originate from the umbilical cord." (Wikipedia)
November 28, 2011
deinonychus commented on the word hair whorl
"A hair whorl is a patch of hair growing in the opposite direction of the rest of the hair. Hair whorls occur in most hairy animals, on the body as well as on the head. Hair whorls, also known as crowns, swirls, trichoglyphs, or cowlicks, can be either clockwise or counterclockwise in direction of growth." (Wikipedia)
November 28, 2011
deinonychus commented on the word superior meatus
"The superior meatus, the smallest of the three meatuses of the nose, occupies the middle third of the lateral wall of the nasal cavity." (Wikipedia)
November 28, 2011
deinonychus commented on the word nocturnal vertigo
"a feeling of falling when dropping off to sleep."
November 28, 2011
deinonychus commented on the word cicatricotomy
"Cutting a scar. (Rarely used.)" (www.english-medical-dictionary.com)
November 28, 2011
deinonychus commented on the word aurum potabile
"Colloidal gold is a suspension (or colloid) of sub-micrometre-sized particles of gold in a fluid — usually water. The liquid is usually either an intense red colour (for particles less than 100 nm), or a dirty yellowish colour (for larger particles). Due to the unique optical, electronic, and molecular-recognition properties of gold nanoparticles, they are the subject of substantial research, with applications in a wide variety of areas, including electron microscopy, electronics, nanotechnology, and materials science." (Wikipedia)
November 28, 2011
deinonychus commented on the word Undark
"Undark was a trade name for luminous paint made with a mixture of radioactive radium and zinc sulfide, as produced by the U.S. Radium Corporation between 1917 and 1938. It was used primarily in watch dials." (Wikipedia)
November 27, 2011
deinonychus commented on the word prosector's wart
"Tuberculosis verrucosa cutis (also known as Lupus verrucosus, Prosector's wart, and Warty tuberculosis) is a rash of small, red papular nodules in the skin that may appear 2-4 weeks after inoculation by Mycobacterium tuberculosis in a previously infected and immunocompetent individual.
It is so called because it was a common occupational disease of prosectors, the preparers of dissections and autopsies." (Wikipedia)
November 27, 2011
deinonychus commented on the word Radium Girls
"The Radium Girls were female factory workers who contracted radiation poisoning from painting watch dials with glow-in-the-dark paint at the United States Radium factory in Orange, New Jersey around 1917. The women, who had been told the paint was harmless, ingested deadly amounts of radium by licking their paintbrushes to sharpen them; some also painted their fingernails and teeth with the glowing substance." (Wikipedia)
November 27, 2011
deinonychus commented on the word exotic pollution
"Exotic pollution is a general definition that includes attacks involving nuclear, chemical, or biological agents intended to cause harm or contaminate and make unfit for use." (Wikipedia)
November 27, 2011
deinonychus commented on the word livspusslet
I love that it is added to the list of foreign sounding insults! It's the only way I know to handle the newspeak I'm surrounded by...
October 18, 2011
deinonychus commented on the word Äntligen
It really bothers me that so many nice swedish words are used as names for bread. Maybe I'll have to stop using them? Or just make a list of them on Wordie?
June 4, 2009
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