| 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) |
| abstracting and indexing | Shortening or summarizing of documents; assigning of descriptors for referencing documents. (12 Dec 1998) |
| academies and institutes | Organizations representing specialised fields which are accepted as authoritative; may be non-governmental, university or an independent research organization, e.g., national academy of sciences, brookings institution, etc. (12 Dec 1998) |
| accounts payable and receivable | Short-term debt obligations and assets occurring in the regular course of operational transactions. (12 Dec 1998) |
| aged, 80 and over | A person 80 years of age and older. (12 Dec 1998) |
| algae and fungi | Algae represent a group of spore-propagating plants, unicellular or undifferentiated into root, stem, and leaf. They include seaweed and many unicellular fresh water plants, most of which contain chlorophyll. They account for about 90% of the earth's photosynthetic activity. Fungi are eukaryotic, heterotrophic organisms that live as saprobes or parasites and include mushrooms, yeasts, smuts, molds, etc. They lack chlorophyll. (12 Dec 1998) |
| alkyl and aryl transferases | <enzyme> A somewhat heterogeneous class of enzymes that catalyze the transfer of alkyl or related groups (excluding methyl groups). Registry number: EC 2.5 (12 Dec 1998) |
| allergy and immunology | A medical specialty concerned with the hypersensitivity of the individual to foreign substances and protection from the resultant infection or disorder. (12 Dec 1998) |
| alligators and crocodiles | Large, long-tailed reptiles, including caimans, of the order loricata. (12 Dec 1998) |
| Amine Precursor Uptake and Decarboxylation | <pharmacology, physiology> Paracrine cells of which argentaffin cells are an example. Usage of the term APUD is neither helpful nor memorable. Acronym: APUD (11 Nov 1997) |
| amino acids, peptides, and proteins | Amino acids and chains of amino acids connected by peptide linkages. (12 Dec 1998) |
| Anderson and Goldberger test | A test for typhus in which the patient's blood is injected into a guinea pig's peritoneal cavity. In typhus a typical temperature curve will be observed. (05 Mar 2000) |