short for Terabyte (2^40 bytes). as in, "my 50GB hard disk isn't big enough for all my mp3s; I need at least 2TB!"

Incidentally, not that anyone cares, but my family used to have a cute little black cocker spaniel, who we got from a dog breeder when he was retired. His first owners had named him "Tar Baby", and who were we to change it? (It certainly did fit him, in both appearance and personality.) Well, my mom, for some unknown reason, likes to call people by initials that aren't necessarily actually their initials; I am "BB", my sister is "EE", my dad is "IR", and Tar Baby became "TB". Interestingly, our cat, Fox (named after The X-Files character of the same name, after "Cerulean" was nixed) never did acquire initials... had my sister and I succeeded in getting him named "Cerulean Blue", he would have been "CB", I guess. Oh well...

TB is an abbreviation for tuberculosis, a highly infectious, potentially fatal disease of humans and animals caused by the Gram-positive bacteria Mycobacterium tuberculosis. TB causes the formation of hard nodules (tubercules) and crusty dead spots in lung and bone tissue. People suffering from tuberculosis exhibit symptoms such as a bad cough and wasting debility.

Prior to the development of antibiotics such as penicillin, TB was known as "consumption" and was widely feared. Now, because TB infection is on the rise again as a common secondary infection accompanying AIDS, antibiotic-resistant strains have developed which could potentially cause major epidemics in the near future if alternate treatments aren't found.


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