Bio 1210 vocab test 1

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Bio 1210 vocab test 1
2014-09-22 04:40:15
Bio 1210

Bio 1210 Vocab test 1
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  1. Fact
    a measured property of the surrounding world (e.g. the wight of an object). Or put in the perspective of te observer, a measured observation.
  2. Law
    a regular pattern of occurrence in Nature (e.g., the universal law of gravitation)
  3. Theory
    a general idea that aids in conceptually unifying, hence explaining, many and diverse phenomena of nature.
  4. inertia
    the tendency for the velocity of any object to stay the same (i.e., if an object is at rest--- velocity equals zero--- it tends to stay at rest, and if an object is moving at a certain velocity its tendency is to continue to move at that velocity.)
  5. Field Force
    the push or pull that an object experiences as the result of an interaction with another object at a distance.
  6. potential energy (PE)
    the energy associated with the potential---due to te presence of one or more forces---of an object to increase its velocity, or accelerate, in the future.
  7. 1st law of thermodynamics
    energy can neither be created nor destroyed, only transformed from one type of energy to another. (PE to KE or KE to PE)
  8. Heat
    random molecular motion
  9. self-assembly
    the tendency of certain objects, due to field force interactions, to take on and/or stay in a nonrandom arrangement.
  10. emergent property
    any property of a system that results from the arrangement of the system's parts.
  11. ordered arrangement
    when the parts of system are arranged in a patter---that is, they have a nonrandom arrangement.
  12. self-organization
    a system's parts interact in a way that results in these parts taking on a nonrandom arrangement.
  13. process
    That which occurs wen something (a processor) alters inputs, such that outputs are different than inputs.
  14. performance
    that which results from two or more processes being linked together by regulatory connections
  15. sensor
    any device that adjusts a processor's rate as a response to detecting some change in conditions.
  16. input-based regulation
    whenever one processor is input limited, ad the actions of another processor influences the supply of the limiting input.
  17. counter-acting response
    when a sensor that detects some trend of change initiates rate adjustments that act to reverse the trend.
  18. co-acting response
    when a sensor that detects some trend of change initiates rate adjustments that act to maintain or even accelerate the trend.
  19. homeostasis
    the act of maintaining similar conditions despite constant disruptive fluctuations
  20. information
    what any arrangement that can code for some activity has. (something that has information can be interpreted. where the interpretation is the conversion of the coded activity into the activity.)
  21. genome
    a set of information that, in total, has sufficient information to guide the development of a reproductively competent organism.
  22. gene
    a single instruction within a genome.
  23. genotype
    an organism's specific constitution of genetic information
  24. phenotype
    the performing (active) part of an individual organism, which is generally tough of as the organism's body. (Geneticists commonly use the term phenotype to refer to specific features of an individual's body)
  25. shape-performance tradeoff
    the notion that because an organism has a particular shape (at any point during its life) it cannot be great at doing everything. any shape makes certain activities possible, but at the cost of not being the best shape to perform well in other ways.
  26. asexual reproduction
    the production of offspring by a single parent, where, in the absence of errors, the parent's genotype is passed intact to each offspring.
  27. sex
    when genetic information from more than one individual is combined into a single individual
  28. gamete
    a haploid cell capable of fusing with another gamete---typically of the opposite sex---to form a diploid cell.
  29. anisogamy
    when an sexual population produces two distinct types of gametes---generally a small mobile gamete (male) and a larger nutrient laden gamete (female)
  30. ploidy level
    the number of genomes contained within a cell
  31. biological species concept
    two individual organism of the opposite sex are members of the same species, if and only if, they recognize each other as potential mates (hence may attempt to mate), and if they do mate they can produce viable offspring; the largest unit of populations within which the mixing genetic information through sexual reproduction occurs or could occur.
  32. trophic level
    a species' position in an energy food chain. first tropic level, for example, are species able to use the sun as an energy source, second trophic level species acquire their needed supply of usable energy by feeding on first trophic level species, and so on.
  33. gross production efficiency
    the efficiency with which biomass consumed from one trophic level is converted into biomass at the next trophic leve.
  34. niche
    the set of conditions (based on each species' set of requirements) under which a species can maintain a viable population.
  35. carrying capacity
    the maximum sustainable population size for each species within a community.
  36. gene pool
    the entire genetic constitution of a sexual population. (in other words, it is all the genetic information contained all the genotypes of the individuals that make up the population.)
  37. mutation
    a modification of the genotype within an individual cell. (in multicellular organisms such modification could occur in either a somatic cell---somatic mutation---or in its germ cells--germ-line mutation)
  38. biological evolution
    the two-step process of descent wit modification followed by persistence across generations.
  39. natural selection
    whenever a modified type is caught in a reproductive race with an ancestral type, and the outcome of the race is affected by differences in performance ability.
  40. genetic drift
    whenever a modified type is caught in a reproductive race with an ancestral type, and the outcome of the race is affected by chance occurrences.
  41. phylogeny
    the pattern of relatedness among different species, where any two species relatedness depends on how recently they branched from a common ancestor. (for example, if among three species---A, B, and C---A and B share a more recent common ancestor than A and C or B and C, then A and B are the most closely related species among the three.)

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