Hysteresis

 Hysteresis is the dependence of the state of a system on its history. For example, a magnet may have more than one possible magnetic moment in a given magnetic field, depending on how the field changed in the past.

 

ace

 In baseball, an ace is the best starting pitcher on a team and nearly always the first pitcher in the team's starting rotation. Barring injury or exceptional circumstances, an ace typically starts on Opening Day. In addition, aces are usually preferred to start crucial playoff games, sometimes on three days' rest.

 

A baseball ace "Ian Kennedy"

chronozone

 A chronozone or chron is a unit in chronostratigraphy, defined by events such as geomagnetic reversals (magnetozones), or based on the presence of specific fossils (biozone or biochronozone). According to the International Commission on Stratigraphy, the term "chronozone" refers to the rocks formed during a particular time period, while "chron" refers to that time period.

 

Biostratigraphy

 Biostratigraphy is the branch of stratigraphy which focuses on correlating and assigning relative ages of rock strata by using the fossil assemblages contained within them.

 

Chronostratigraphy

 

Chronostratigraphy is the branch of stratigraphy that studies the ages of rock strata in relation to time. 

 

diopter

 diopter, in optics, unit of magnifying power of a lens or lens system.

 

nyctophilia

 

nyctophilia

n. a strong preference for darkness or night. Also called noctiphilia; noctophilia; scotophilia.

Smishing

 Smishing is a type of phishing scam where cyber criminals try to trick you by sending fraudulent SMS or text messages.

wight

 

A wight (Old English: wiht) is a mythical sentient being, often undead.

In its original usage, the word wight described a living human being, but has come to be used within fantasy to describe certain immortal beings. The earliest example of this usage in English is in William Morris's translation of the Grettis Saga, where haugbui is translated as "barrow-wight". Wights also feature in J. R. R. Tolkien's world of Middle-earth, especially in The Lord of the Rings, and in George R. R. Martin's HBO television series Game of Thrones and novel series A Song of Ice and Fire. Since its 1974 inclusion in the RPG Dungeons & Dragons (D&D), it has become a recurring form of undead in other fantasy games and mods, such as Vampire: The Masquerade.

 

Aeroelasticity

 Aeroelasticity is the branch of physics and engineering studying the interactions between the inertial, elastic, and aerodynamic forces occurring while an elastic body is exposed to a fluid flow. 

 

feverently

 A misspelling of fervently.

Porpoising

 Porpoising

How porpoises leap out of the water, coined by Tadashi Tokieda, from a numberphile video.

 

foxglove

 Digitalis (/ˌdɪdʒɪˈteɪlɪs/ or /ˌdɪdʒɪˈtælɪs/) is a genus of about 20 species of herbaceous perennial plants, shrubs, and biennials, commonly called foxgloves.

 

Meltwater

 Meltwater is water released by the melting of snow or ice, including glacial ice, tabular icebergs and ice shelves over oceans. Meltwater is often found in the ablation zone of glaciers, where the rate of snow cover is reducing. Meltwater can be produced during volcanic eruptions, in a similar way in which the more dangerous lahars form. 

 

 

waterfall

 The waterfall model is a breakdown of project activities into linear sequential phases, where each phase depends on the deliverables of the previous one and corresponds to a specialization of tasks. The approach is typical for certain areas of engineering design.

A phase-gate process (also referred to as a stage-gate process or waterfall process) is a project management technique in which an initiative or project (e.g., new product development, software development, process improvement, business change) is divided into distinct stages or phases, separated by decision points (known as gates).

 

chelicerae

 The chelicerae (/kəˈlɪsəriː/) are the mouthparts of the Chelicerata, an arthropod group that includes arachnids, horseshoe crabs, and sea spiders. Commonly referred to as "jaws", chelicerae may be shaped as either articulated fangs, or similarly to pincers. 

 

Wienerbrød

 A Danish pastry (Wienerbrød in Danish and Norwegian, literally Vienna Bread, sometimes shortened to just Danish (especially in American English), is a multilayered, laminated sweet pastry.

 

Fenian

 Fenian (/ˈfiːniən/) served as an umbrella term for the Irish Republican Brotherhood (IRB) and their affiliate in the United States, the Fenian Brotherhood, secret political organisations in the late 19th and early 20th century dedicated to the establishment of an independent Irish Republic. In 1867 they sought to coordinate raids into Canada from the United States with a rising in Ireland. In the 1916 Easter Rising and the 1919–1921 Irish War of Independence, the IRB led the republican struggle.

The term Fenian today occurs as a derogatory sectarian term in Ireland, referring to Irish nationalists or Catholics, particularly in Northern Ireland. The term has been used similarly in Scotland by Protestants as an attempt at a derogatory religious slur when referring to Scottish Catholics or to Scots with Irish ancestry. 

 

In vitro

 In vitro (meaning in glass, or in the glass) studies are performed with microorganisms, cells, or biological molecules outside their normal biological context. Colloquially called "test-tube experiments", these studies in biology and its subdisciplines are traditionally done in labware such as test tubes, flasks, Petri dishes, and microtiter plates. Studies conducted using components of an organism that have been isolated from their usual biological surroundings permit a more detailed or more convenient analysis than can be done with whole organisms; however, results obtained from in vitro experiments may not fully or accurately predict the effects on a whole organism. In contrast to in vitro experiments, in vivo studies are those conducted in living organisms, including humans, and whole plants. 

 

Downland

 Downland, chalkland, chalk downs or just downs are areas of open chalk hills, such as the North Downs. This term is used to describe the characteristic landscape in southern England where chalk is exposed at the surface. The name "downs" is derived from the Old English word dun, meaning "hill".

 

Sweat box

 "Sweat box" is the animation industry's equivalent to rushes, or dailies. Nowadays, when an animated scene has been approved by the animation lead, it is sent to the edit suite. The editor inserts the scene into the relevant animatic or Leica reel for viewing in context with other scenes. The director views the reel and calls for changes or approves the scenes.

thunk

 In computer programming, a thunk is a subroutine used to inject a calculation into another subroutine. Thunks are primarily used to delay a calculation until its result is needed, or to insert operations at the beginning or end of the other subroutine. They have many other applications in compiler code generation and modular programming

 

// 'hypot' is a binary function
const hypot = (x, y) => Math.sqrt(x * x + y * y);

// 'thunk' is a function that takes no arguments and, when invoked, performs a potentially expensive
// operation (computing a square root, in this example) and/or causes some side-effect to occur
const thunk = () => hypot(3, 4);

// the thunk can then be passed around without being evaluated...
doSomethingWithThunk(thunk);

// ...or evaluated
thunk(); // === 5

chine

 

A chine ( /ˈtʃaɪn/) is a steep-sided coastal gorge where a river flows to the sea through, typically, soft eroding cliffs of sandstone or clays. The word is still in use in central Southern England—notably in East Devon, Dorset, Hampshire and the Isle of Wight—to describe such topographical features. The term 'bunny' is sometimes used to describe a chine in Hampshire. The term chine is also used in some Vancouver suburbs in Canada to describe similar features.

Comus

In Greek mythology, Comus (Ancient Greek: Κῶμος) is the god of festivity, revels and nocturnal dalliances. He is a son and a cup-bearer of the god Dionysus. He was represented as a winged youth or a child-like satyr and represents anarchy and chaos. His mythology occurs in the later times of antiquity. During his festivals in Ancient Greece, men and women exchanged clothes. He was depicted as a young man on the point of unconsciousness from drink. He had a wreath of flowers on his head and carried a torch that was in the process of being dropped. Unlike the purely carnal Pan or purely intoxicated Dionysos, Comus was a god of excess.

 

retrofocus

 The Angénieux retrofocus photographic lens is a wide-angle lens design that uses an inverted telephoto configuration. The popularity of this lens design made the name retrofocus synonymous with this type of lens. The Angénieux retrofocus for still cameras was introduced in France in 1950 by Pierre Angénieux. 

 

Nucleotides

 Nucleotides are organic molecules consisting of a nucleoside and a phosphate. They serve as monomeric units of the nucleic acid polymers – deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA) and ribonucleic acid (RNA), both of which are essential biomolecules within all life-forms on Earth. Nucleotides are obtained in the diet and are also synthesized from common nutrients by the liver.

Nucleotides are composed of three subunit molecules: a nucleobase, a five-carbon sugar (ribose or deoxyribose), and a phosphate group consisting of one to three phosphates. The four nucleobases in DNA are guanine, adenine, cytosine and thymine; in RNA, uracil is used in place of thymine. 

Homochirality

 

Homochirality is a uniformity of chirality, or handedness. Objects are chiral when they cannot be superposed on their mirror images. For example, the left and right hands of a human are approximately mirror images of each other but are not their own mirror images, so they are chiral. In biology, 19 of the 20 natural amino acids are homochiral, being L-chiral (left-handed), while sugars are D-chiral (right-handed). Homochirality can also refer to enantiopure substances in which all the constituents are the same enantiomer (a right-handed or left-handed version of an atom or molecule), but some sources discourage this use of the term.

It is unclear whether homochirality has a purpose; however, it appears to be a form of information storage. One suggestion is that it reduces entropy barriers in the formation of large organized molecules. It has been experimentally verified that amino acids form large aggregates in larger abundance from an enantiopure samples of the amino acid than from racemic (enantiomerically mixed) ones.

It is not clear whether homochirality emerged before or after life, and many mechanisms for its origin have been proposed. Some of these models propose three distinct steps: mirror-symmetry breaking creates a minute enantiomeric imbalance, chiral amplification builds on this imbalance, and chiral transmission is the transfer of chirality from one set of molecules to another.

 

wet lab

 

A wet lab, or experimental lab, is a type of laboratory where it is necessary to handle various types of chemicals and potential "wet" hazards, so the room has to be carefully designed, constructed, and controlled to avoid spillage and contamination.

A dry lab might have large experimental equipment but minimal chemicals, or instruments for analyzing data produced elsewhere.

 

Arschgeweih

 

Arschgeweih (German) n (strong, genitive Arschgeweihes or Arschgeweihs, plural Arschgeweihe)

1. tramp stamp; arse antlers (lower-back tattoo popular among women) [from 2000s]
   
   
   
   
   
   
   

knickpoint

 In geomorphology, a knickpoint or nickpoint is part of a river or channel where there is a sharp change in channel slope, such as a waterfall or lake. Knickpoints reflect different conditions and processes on the river, often caused by previous erosion due to glaciation or variance in lithology. In the cycle of erosion model, knickpoints advance one cycle upstream, or inland, replacing an older cycle.

A knickpoint that occurs at the head (furthest upstream extent) of a channel is called a headcut. Headcuts resulting in headward erosion are hallmarks of unstable expanding drainage features such as actively eroding gullies.

skerry

 

A skerry is a small rocky island, or islet, usually too small for human habitation. It may simply be a rocky reef. A skerry can also be called a low sea stack.

A skerry may have vegetative life such as moss and small, hardy grasses. They are often used as resting places by animals such as seals and birds.