| unified medical language system | A research and development program initiated by the national library of medicine to build an intelligent automated system that can understand biomedical concepts, words, and expressions and their interrelationships, and use this understanding to help users retrieve and organise information from a variety of machine-readable sources. The goal of the umls is to compensate for differences in the terminology of the disparate systems and for variations in user modes of expression. The umls project has produced four knowledge sources meant to be used by user interface programs. These are the metathesaurus, the semantic network, the information sources map, and the specialist lexicon. (12 Dec 1998) |
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| alternative | Available in place of something else. (18 Nov 1997) |
| alternative hypothesis | In Neyman-Pearson testing of a hypothesis, the hypothesis or family of hypotheses about the numerical value of a parameter if and only if the null hypothesis is rejected as untenable. (05 Mar 2000) |
| alternative inheritance | Galton's term for an assumed form in which all the characters are derived from one parent. (05 Mar 2000) |
| alternative medicine | A catch-all phrase for a long list of treatments or medicinal systems including traditional systems such as Chinese or Ayurvedic medicine, homeopathy, various herbals and other miscellaneous treatments that have not been accepted by the mainstream, or Western, medical establishment. Alternative medicine is also referred to as complementary medicine (see). The designation alternative medicine is not equivalent to holistic medicine, which is a more narrow term. See: Holistic Medicine. (09 Oct 1997) |
| alternative mRNA splicing | Splicing different exons in or out of messenger RNA to form different mRNA transcripts. (09 Oct 1997) |
| alternative oxidase | <enzyme> The terminal oxidase in alternative pathway respiration, as seen in plants like sauromatum guttatum (voodoo lily); amino acid sequence for tobacco alternative oxidase (aox1) in first source Registry number: EC 1.- Synonym: aox1 gene product, aox2 gene product, aox3 gene product (26 Jun 1999) |
| alternative oxidase pathway | Pathway of mitochondrial electron transport in higher plants, particularly in fruits and seeds, that does not involve cytochrome oxidase and thus is resistant to cyanide. (18 Nov 1997) |
| alternative pathway | See: complement activation. (18 Nov 1997) |
| alternative splicing | A process whereby multiple protein isoforms are generated from a single gene. Alternative splicing involves the splicing together of nonconsecutive exons during the processing of some, but not all, transcripts of the gene. Thus a particular exon may be connected to any one of several alternative exons to form messenger RNA. The alternative forms produce proteins in which one part is common while the other part is different. (12 Dec 1998) |
| alternative therapy | A term given to nonconventional therapy usually given by persons who do not have a medical qualification. (16 Dec 1997) |
| alternative tremor | A coarse, low frequency (3-8 Hz) pathologic tremor produced by alternating contraction of muscles and their antagonists; seen with Parkinson disease and kinetic predominant action tremor. (05 Mar 2000) |
| complement pathway, alternative | The complement activation sequence initiated by the activation of complement factor c3, which is triggered by the interaction of microbial polysaccharides and properdin without participation of an antigen-antibody reaction. (12 Dec 1998) |
| academic medical centres | Medical complexes consisting of medical school, hospitals, clinics, libraries, administrative facilities, etc. (12 Dec 1998) |
| advance medical directives | Advance directives preserve the person's right to accept or reject a course of medical treatment even after that person becomes mentally or physically incapacitated to the point of being unable to communicate those wishes. There ared two basic types of advance directives: (1) a living will, in which the person outlines specific treatment guidelines that are to be followed by health care providers; (2) a health care proxy (also called a power of attorney for healthcare decision making) in which the person designates a trusted individual to make medical decisions in the event that he or she becomes too incapacitated to make such decisions. Advance directive requirements vary greatly from one jurisdiction to another and should therefore be drawn up in consultation with an attorney who is familiar with the laws of the particular jurisdiction. (This entry is based upon material from the National MS Society). (12 Mar 2000) |