Thursday, September 30, 2010

Mindstream


Mindstream, mind stream, or mental stream is the English translation of a Buddhist philosophical term (Sanskrit citta-saṃtāna) for the moment-to-moment continuity of consciousness.

The mindstream doctrine, like most Buddhist doctrines, is not homogeneous and shows historical development (as is evident through the exploration of this article), different applications according to context and varied definitions employed by different Buddhist traditions and yana.

Monday, September 27, 2010

Sunday, September 26, 2010

sessility

In zoology, sessility is a characteristic of animals which are not able to move about. They are usually permanently attached to a solid substrate of some kind, such as a rock, or the hull of a ship in the case of barnacles. Corals lay down their own substrate.

Saturday, September 25, 2010

ptyalism


Drooling (also known as driveling, ptyalism, flobidising, sialorrhea) is when saliva flows outside the mouth. Drooling is generally caused by excess production of saliva, inability to retain saliva within the mouth, or problems with swallowing.

Some people with drooling problems are at increased risk of inhaling saliva, food, or fluids into the lungs. However, this is unlikely to cause harm, unless the body's normal reflex mechanisms (such as gagging and coughing) are also impaired.

Thursday, September 23, 2010

Myrmecology


Myrmecology (Greek: myrmex, "ant"; and λόγος, logos, "knowledge") is the scientific study of ants, a branch of entomology. Some early myrmecologists considered ant society as the ideal form of society and sought to find solutions to human problems by studying them. Ants continue to be a model of choice for the study of questions on the evolution of social systems because of their complex and varied forms of eusociality. Their diversity and prominence in ecosystems has also made them important components in the study of biodiversity and conservation.

Wednesday, September 22, 2010

sorptivity

John Philip (1957) described sorptivity as a measure of the capacity of the medium to absorb or desorb liquid by capillarity. Calculation of the true sorptivity required numerical iterative procedures dependent on soil water content and diffusivity. John Philip (1969) showed that sorptivity can be determined from horizontal infiltration where water flow is mostly controlled by capillary absorption.

Tuesday, September 21, 2010

Loess


Loess is a homogeneous, typically nonstratified, porous, friable, slightly coherent, often calcareous, fine-grained, silty, pale yellow or buff, windblown (aeolian) sediment.[1] It generally occurs as a widespread blanket deposit that covers areas of hundreds of square kilometers and tens of meters thick. Loess often stands in either steep or vertical faces.[2] The term sometimes also refers to soils derived from such deposits. The word comes from the German Löss or Löß, and ultimately from Swiss German lösch (loose) as named by peasants and brickworkers along the Rhine Valley where this type of sediment was first recognized.

Loess is an aeolian sediment which forms by the accumulation of wind-blown silt and lesser and variable amounts of either sand or clay. Glacial loess is derived from either glacial or glacial outwash deposits, where glacial activity has ground rocks very fine (rock flour).

Monday, September 20, 2010

Gymnosophists

Gymnosophists is the name (meaning "naked philosophers") given by the Greeks to certain ancient Indian philosophers who pursued asceticism to the point of regarding food and clothing as detrimental to purity of thought (sadhus or yogis).

The Digambar Jain monks in India even now remain unclothed; they have been identified as the gymnosophists by several researchers.

Sunday, September 19, 2010

Schloss


Schloss (pl. Schlösser) is a German word for a building similar to a Château, castle or palace. Most Schlösser were built after the Middle Ages for representative purposes and not for defense.

Friday, September 17, 2010

craton

A craton (Greek kratos / κρἀτος (neut.) "strength") is an old and stable part of the continental lithosphere. Cratons have often survived cycles of merging and rifting of continents are generally found in the interiors of tectonic plates. They are characteristically composed of ancient crystalline basement rock, which may be covered by younger sedimentary rock. They have a thick crust and deep lithospheric roots that extend up to a few hundred kilometers into the Earth's mantle.

Thursday, September 16, 2010

Cedilla

A cedilla is a hook (¸) added under certain consonant letters as a diacritical mark to modify their pronunciation.

Tuesday, September 14, 2010

leachate

Leachate is the liquid that drains or 'leaches' from a landfill; it varies widely in composition regarding the age of the landfill and the type of waste that it contains.[1] It can usually contain both dissolved and suspended material.

Friday, September 10, 2010

Mung



Mung is computer jargon for "to make repeated changes which individually may be reversible, yet which ultimately result in an unintentional, irreversible destruction of large portions of the original item." It was coined in 1958 in the Tech Model Railroad Club at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. In 1960 the backronym "Mash Until No Good" was created to describe Mung, and a while after it was revised to "Mung Until No Good", making it one of the first recursive acronyms. It lived on as a recursive command in the editing language TECO.

Munging implies destruction—to make large-scale and irrevocable changes to a file and to destroy it. Hence in the early text-adventure game Zork, also known as Dungeon, the user could mung an object and thereby destroy it (making it impossible to finish the game if the object was an important item).

Thursday, September 9, 2010

Monday, September 6, 2010

Titration

Titration is a common laboratory method of quantitative chemical analysis that is used to determine the unknown concentration of a known reactant. Because volume measurements play a key role in titration, it is also known as volumetric analysis. A reagent, called the titrant or titrator, of a known concentration (a standard solution) and volume is used to react with a solution of the analyte or titrand, whose concentration is not known.

Sunday, September 5, 2010

simplex


In geometry, a simplex (plural simplexes or simplices) or n-simplex is an n-dimensional analogue of a triangle. Specifically, a simplex is the convex hull of a set of (n + 1) affinely independent points in some Euclidean space of dimension n or higher (i.e., a set of points such that no m-plane contains more than (m + 1) of them; such points are said to be in general position).

Saturday, September 4, 2010

Ramps


Allium tricoccum, commonly known as ramps, spring onion, ramson, wild leek, or ail des bois (French), is a member of the onion family (Alliaceae). Found in groups with broad, smooth, light green leaves, often with deep purple or burgundy tints on the lower stems and a scallion-like bulb strongly rooted just beneath the surface of the soil. Both the white lower leaf stalks and the broad green leaves are edible. They are found from the U.S. state of South Carolina to Canada and are especially popular in the cuisine of the US state of West Virginia and the Canadian province of Quebec when they emerge in the springtime. A common description of the flavor is like a combination of onions and strong garlic.

Friday, September 3, 2010

Thursday, September 2, 2010

Fact


A fact is a pragmatic truth, a statement that can, at least in theory, be checked and either confirmed or denied. Facts are often contrasted with opinions and beliefs, statements which are held to be true, but are not amenable to pragmatic confirmation or denial.

Wednesday, September 1, 2010

spectrophotometry


In physics, spectrophotometry is the quantifiable study of electromagnetic spectra. It is more specific than the general term electromagnetic spectroscopy in that spectrophotometry deals with visible light, near-ultraviolet, and near-infrared. Also, the term does not cover time-resolved spectroscopic techniques.

lordosis

  Lordosis is historically defined as an abnormal inward curvature of the lumbar spine.