Glossary

CLAUDIA

GLOSSARY OF TERMS - MEDICINE

• Illness. A disease of the body or mind. The state of being ill.

• Aside. On or to one side. If you put/set aside money, you save it for a particular purpose. (Romans for the care of his body)

• Sewage. Waste matter such as water or human urine or solid waste.

• Swamps. (An area of) very wet, soft land

• Creatures. Any large or small living thing that can move independently

• Malaria. A disease that you can get from the bite of a particular type of mosquito. It causes periods of fever and makes you shiver and feel very cold. It is common in very hotter parts of the world.

• Aqueducts. A structure for carrying water across land, especially one like a high bridge with many arches that carries pipes or a canal across a valley

• Caliphs. Rule of the Islamic

• Zakat tax. Charitable donations

• Infirm. Ill or needing care, especially for long periods and often because of old age

• Peer review. The process of someone reading, checking, and giving his or her opinion about something that has been written by another scientist or expert working in the same subject area, or a piece of work in which this is done

• Symptom. Any feeling of illness or physical or mental change that is caused by a particular disease

• Pledge. A serious or formal, especially one to give money or to be a friend, or something that you give a sign that you will keep a promise

• Hippocratic oath. A promise made by people when they become doctors to do everything possible to help their patients and to have high moral standarts in their world

EVA

• Ebers Papyrus:the first known medical book,written by the Egyptians. (1500 BC)

• Hippocrates: famous and well known old Greek doctor, who revolutionized the medicine of his time.

• 4 Humours: Phlegm, Blood, Yellow Bite and Black Bile

• Barber-surgeon: during the Medieval Age, they were the only ones allowed or prepared to work as doctors.

• Capillaries: very small and thin veins who circulate in places where the principal veins can't reach.

• Chloroform: first anesthetic substance used for sleeping the patients during a painful surgery, used by James Simpson (1847)

• Vaccination: process of introducing an almost dead or very weak bacteria into the body, inducing the body to be sick, but ensuring that the immunological system will create defenses that will destroy the illness and make the body immune to it.

• Stethoscope: The stethoscope is an acoustic medical device for auscultation, or listening to the internal sounds of an animal or human body.

• Smallpox: illness that, for many centuries, devastated mankind, until its vaccine was created in 1796 by Edward Jenner.

• Cholera: Cholera is an infection of the small intestine by some strains of the bacterium Vibrio cholerae.

• Ophthalmoscope: instrument used to see the “inside” of the eye.

• Chicken Cholera: highly contagious and lethal disease that occurred in epidemics in poultry yards.

• Salvarsan: drug used to cure syphilis.

• Penicillin: substance used to treat infections caused by bacteria, such as ear infections.

• Antiseptic surgery: invented by Joseph Lister, it's a way of developing surgery avoiding illnesses spreading through the instruments used.

• Iron Lung: A now-obsolete mechanical respirator which enabled a person for whom breathing on their own, in a normal manner, when muscle control had been lost.

• X-rays: a form of electromagnetic radiation, similar to light but of shorter wavelength and capable of penetrating solids and of ionizing gases.

• Typhoid: bacterial infection due to Salmonella.

• Polio: also called poliomyelitis or infantile paralysis, is an infectious disease caused by the poliovirus.

• Diphtheria: serious bacterial infection that affects the mucous membranes of the throat and nose.

JAIME

HEREDITY - the passing on of qualities, characteristics, or traits from parents to their young through the genes.

PEA - the round, edible seed of a widely grown plant of the legume family

INHERITANCE - the receiving of a genetic characteristic or trait

TRAIT - an inherited feature or characteristic

GENOTYPE - the genetic makeup of an organism or group of organisms with reference to a single trait, set of traits, or an entire complex of traits.

PHENOTYPE - the appearance of an organism resulting from the interaction of the genotype and the environment.

ALLELES - any of several forms of a gene, usually arising through mutation, that are responsible for hereditary variation.

DOMINANT - of or relating to one of a pair of hereditary traits that masks the other when both are present in an organism.

RECESSIVE - of or relating to one of a pair of hereditary traits that is masked by the other when both are present in an organism.

HOMOZYGOUS - an organism with identical pairs of genes with respect to any given pair of hereditary characters, and therefore breeding true for that character.

HETEROZYGOTE - a hybrid containing genes for two unlike forms of a characteristic, and therefore not breeding true to type.

PROTEIN - a molecule that is a large portion of the mass of every life form, composed of amino acids linked in long chains.

ENZYME - a protein substance from living cells that is capable of producing certain chemical changes in plants and animals, as in digestion.

AMINOACIDS - a compound that is one of the building blocks from which proteins are constructed.

PNEUMONIA - infection of the lungs caused by bacteria.

POLYSACCHARIDE - a carbohydrate, as starch, inulin, or cellulose, containing more than three monosaccharide units per molecule, the units being attached to each other in the manner of acetals, and therefore capable of hydrolysis by acids or enzymes to monosaccharides.

MITOCHONDRIA - an organelle in the cytoplasm of cells that functions in energy production. See diag. under  cell.

CHROMOSOME - one of a set of threadlike structures in a cell that carry the genes determining an individual's inherited traits

DNA -  deoxyribonucleic acid: an extremely long macromolecule that is the main component of chromosomes and is the material that transfers genetic characteristics in all life forms, constructed of two nucleotide strands coiled around each other in a ladderlike arrangement with the sidepieces composed of alternating phosphate and deoxyribose units and the rungs composed of the purine and pyrimidine bases adenine, guanine, cytosine, and thymine: the genetic information of DNA is encoded in the sequence of the bases and is transcribed as the strands unwind and replicate. Cf. base pair, gene, genetic code, RNA.

RNA - ribonucleic acid, any of a class of single-stranded nucleic molecules found chiefly in body cells and in certain viruses, important in making protein and in sending genetic material to new cells.

PEDRO

GLOSSARY OF TERMS - EVOLUTION THEORIES

VARIATION AND CLASSIFICATION.

• Continuous variation: A characteristic of a species that changes over a range of values (height, weight, foot length).
• Darwinism: Theory of evolution explained by Charles Darwin, English naturalist of the 19th century. It sustains that all species on Earth have evolved from simple life forms, which developed 3 billion years ago. The way of evolution this theory defends is evolution by natural selection.    
• Discontinuous variation: A characteristic of any species with only a limited number of possible values (gender, blood group,eye color…).
• Environmental variation: Genetic variation produced by factors such as climate, diet, culture and lifestyle.
• Genetic information: The genetic potential of an organism carried in the base sequence of it´s DNA.
• Genetic variation: Genetic variation is a term used to describe the variation in the DNA sequence in each of our genomes. We are all unique because of genetic variation, whether in terms of hair color, skin color, eye color… Some of the variations are inherited and other ones are caused by environmental factors.
• Inherited variation: Variation in a characteristic that is a result of genetic inheritance from both parents (eye/skin/hair color, height…).
• Lamarckism: Theory of evolution developed by Lamarck (France,19th century). According to Lamarck, evolution depends on the law of  use and disuse and on the law of inheritance of acquired characteristics. This theory states that a characteristic which is used more and more by an organism strengthens, and one that is not used disappears.
• Mutations: Random changes that can occur in genes, usually caused by environmental factors. During mutation, affected cells can either die, survive or divide uncontrollably and become cancerous. Mutations are rarely beneficial. If mutations affect  sex cells, changes in the gene can pass onto the next generation.    
• Natural selection: The process through which those organisms better adapted to their environment survive and pass their genes to their offspring,among these genes their beneficial characteristics.
• Selective breeding: The process of breeding animals or plants to bring out specific desirable characteristics in future generations.
• Sex cells: A sex cell or gamete is a cell that fuses with another cell during fertilization in organisms that sexually reproduce.Two types: sperm (in man) and ova (in women).

GLOSSARY OF TERMS - ARE WE HUMAN?

• Bipedalism. A form of locomotion with which an organism moves standing on his two legs.
• Control of fire.  The happening that led to the use of fire for cooking food, lightening the caves…(1.5 Ma ago).
• FOXP2 gene. The gene linked to the control of speech, transmuted from generation to generation.
• Fossil. A preserved remain or trace of animals, plants and other organisms of the past.
• Gorilla. A greater ape inhabitant of the forests of central Africa. He shares from 95% to %99 of the DNA with humans. Two species: Eastern gorilla and Western gorilla.
• Homo. The genus that comprises homo sapiens + his extinct ancestors.
• Hominids. Members of a taxonomic family family which includes species of four genera. Pongo, Gorilla, Pan and Homo.
• Lineage. Direct descent from a particular ancestor.
• Mitochondrial haplogroup. It´s a group of genes inherited from a single parent that represent the major branch pout on the mitochondrial phylogenetic tree, with it´s origin in Africa.
• Mortuary rituals. They characterize humans. The farewell to a death person after he/she dies.
• Pongo. The genus that comprises the two existent species of orangutan: Sumatran and Bornean orangutan.
• Pan. One of the genus that belong to the Hominidae family. It comprises the species of chimpanzee and bonobo.   

SANDRA

CHROMOSOMES: they are X-shaped objects found in the nucleus of most cells. They consists in long strands of a substance called deoxyribonucleic acid , or DNA for short.

BASES: they are located in the DNA and they carry the different codes needed for different amino acids.

NUCLEOTIDES: they consist of a deoxyribose sugar, phosphate and base.

GENOTYPE: the genetic constitution of an individual organism.

CYTOPLASM: the material or protoplasm within a living cell, excluding the nucleus.

EUKARYOTES: an organism consisting of a cell or cells in which the genetic material is DNA in the form of chromosomes contained within a distinct nucleus. Eukaryotes include all living organisms other than the eubacteria and archaea.

MITOCHONDRIA: an organelle found in large numbers in most cells, in which the biochemical processes of respiration and energy production occur. It has a double membrane, the inner part being folded inwards to form layers.

LIGASE: an enzyme which brings about ligation of DNA or another substance.

ENZYMES: a substance produced by a living organism which acts as a catalyst to bring about a specific biochemical reaction.

GENE THERAPY: the introduction of normal genes into cells in place of missing or defective ones in order to correct genetic disorders.