| relative value scales | Coded listings of physician or other professional services using units that indicate the relative value of the various services they perform. They take into account time, skill, and overhead cost required for each service, but generally do not consider the relative cost-effectiveness. Appropriate conversion factors can be used to translate the abstract units of the relative value scales into dollar fees for each service based on work expended, practice costs, and training costs. (12 Dec 1998) |
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| relative viscosity | The ratio of the viscosity of a solution or dispersion to the viscosity of the solvent or continuous phase. (05 Mar 2000) |
| relatrix | A female relator. Origin: L. Source: Websters Dictionary (01 Mar 1998) |
| relax | 1. To make lax or loose; to make less close, firm, rigid, tense, or the like; to slacken; to loosen; to open; as, to relax a rope or cord; to relax the muscles or sinews. "Horror . . . All his joints relaxed." (Milton) "Nor served it to relax their serried files." (Milton) 2. To make less severe or rogorous; to abate the stringency of; to remit in respect to strenuousness, esrnestness, or effort; as, to relax discipline; to relax one's attention or endeavors. "The stature of mortmain was at several times relaxed by the legilature." (Swift) 3. Hence, to relieve from attention or effort; to ease; to recreate; to divert; as, amusement relaxes the mind. 4. To relieve from constipation; to loosen; to open; as, an aperient relaxes the bowels. Synonym: To slacken, loosen, loose, remit, abate, mitigate, ease, unbend, divert. Origin: L. Relaxare; pref. Re- re- + laxare to loose, to slacken, from laxus loose. See Lax, and cf. Relay, Release. Source: Websters Dictionary (01 Mar 1998) |
| relaxant | 1. Lessening or reducing tension. 2. <pharmacology> An agent that lessens tension. Origin: L. Relaxare = to loosen (18 Nov 1997) |
| relaxant reversal | Use of acetylcholinesterase inhibitors to terminate the action of nondepolarising neuromuscular relaxants. (05 Mar 2000) |
| relaxation | A state of relative freedom from both anxiety and skeletal muscle tension. (16 Dec 1997) |
| relaxation factor | Substance presumably involved in the return of muscle fibrils to the resting state after nervous stimulation ceases, postulated to act by withdrawing Calcium from myosin-ATPase sites. (05 Mar 2000) |
| relaxation response | An integrated hypothalamic reaction resulting in decreased sympathetic nervous system activity which, physiologically and psychologically, is almost a mirror image of the body's response's to Cannon's emergency theory (flight or fight response); can be self-induced through the use of techniques associated with transcendental meditation, yoga, and biofeedback. See: emergency theory. (05 Mar 2000) |
| relaxation suture | A suture so arranged that it may be loosened if the tension of the wound becomes excessive. (05 Mar 2000) |
| relaxation techniques | The use of muscular relaxation techniques in treatment. (12 Dec 1998) |
| relaxation time | Time taken for a system to return to the resting or ground state or a new equilibrium state following perturbation. Often used in context of receptor systems that have a refractory period after responding and then relax to a competent state. Can be used more precisely to mean the time for a system to change from its original equilibrium value to 1/e of this original value. (18 Nov 1997) |
| relaxed control | The ability of certain plasmids to continue to replicate after their bacteria stop dividing, theresult is a single bacteria that containshundreds of plasmids. (09 Oct 1997) |
| relaxed DNA | <molecular biology> DNA that isn't supercoiled. (09 Oct 1997) |
| relaxed mutant | A mutant bacterium that continues to synthesise RNA in a medium that lackscertain nutrients or amino acids which that sort of bacterium normallyneeds present before it can make RNA. (09 Oct 1997) |