| life change events | Those occurrences, including social, psychological, and environmental, which require an adjustment or effect a change in an individual's pattern of living. (12 Dec 1998) |
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| life cycle | The entire life history of a living organism. (05 Mar 2000) |
| life-cycle costing | A method of comparing costs of equipment or buildings based on original costs plus all operating and maintenance costs over the useful life of the equipment. Future costs are discounted. (05 Dec 1998) |
| life cycle stages | The continuous sequence of changes undergone by metamorphosing insects and other animals during the developmental process. (12 Dec 1998) |
| life events | Occurrences in one's daily life, some of which act as stressors. (05 Mar 2000) |
| life expectancy | <epidemiology> Longevity, the average length of life of individuals in a population. (05 Dec 1998) |
| life instinct | The instinct of self-preservation and sexual procreation; the basic urge toward preservation of the species. Synonym: sexual instinct. (05 Mar 2000) |
| life stress | Events or experiences that produce severe strain, e.g., failure on the job, marital separation, loss of a love object. (05 Mar 2000) |
| life support care | Care provided patients requiring extraordinary therapeutic measures in order to sustain and prolong life. (12 Dec 1998) |
| life support systems | Systems that provide all or most of the items necessary for maintaining life and health. Provisions are made for the supplying of oxygen, food, water, temperature and pressure control, disposition of carbon dioxide and body waste. The milieu may be a spacecraft, a submarine, or the surface of the moon. In medical care, usually under hospital conditions, life support care is available. (12 Dec 1998) |
| life table | A representation of the probable years of survivorship of a defined population of subjects; since survivorship is changed by new methods of prevention or treatment, a diachronic study is commonly used because the main interest lies in the composite structure of the current population. (In the summarizing technique used to describe the pattern of mortality and survival in a population, survivors to age x are denoted by the symbol lx and the expectation of life at age x is denoted by the symbol x. (05 Mar 2000) |
| life tables | Summarizing techniques used to describe the pattern of mortality and survival in populations. These methods can be applied to the study not only of death, but also of any defined endpoint such as the onset of disease or the occurrence of disease complications. (12 Dec 1998) |
| adducted thumbs with mental reatardation | A syndrome with the following characteristic features: (1) neurologically:mental retardation and aphasia (lack of speech); (2) limbs: adducted (clasped) thumbs, absent extensor pollicis longus and/or brevis muscles to the thumb, shuffling gait, and leg spasticity; (3) growth: small body size; (4) skeleton: lumbar lordosis (sway back). The syndrome is inherited as an X-linked trait and so affects mainly boys. Alternative names include MASA syndrome ( MASA stands for mental retardation, aphasia, shuffling gait, and adducted thumbs), clasped thumb and mental retardation, congenital clasped thumb with mental retardation, and the Gareis-Mason syndrome. (12 Dec 1998) |
| mental | 1. <psychiatry> Pertaining to the mind, psychic. 2. <anatomy> Pertaining to the chin. Origin: L. Mens = mind, L. Mentum = chin (18 Nov 1997) |
| mental aberration | Disturbed thought or behaviour that connotes a psychological or psychiatric impairment. See: delusion. (05 Mar 2000) |