Glossary of the key notions in Bionics and beyond

Rheobase → The minimal current amplitude of infinite duration that results in an action potential.

RiboNucleic Acid (RNA) → A nucleic acid molecule similar to DNA but containing ribose rather than deoxyribose. RNA is formed upon a DNA template

Ribosome → A molecular machine which is a complex of several protein and RNA molecules. The function of ribosomes is the protein synthesis.

Ribozymes → RNAs with catalytic activity. They are involved mainly in conversion of RNAs.

Richardson → Sir Owen Willans Richardson, (1879–1959), English physicist (1928 Nobel Prize). His work on electron emission by hot metals is the basic principle used in vacuum tubes.

Richardson-Dushman’s electron emission formula → The Richardson-Dushman formula (roughly valid for all metals) relates the current density of a thermionic emission to the work function and temperature of the emitting material.

Right Atrial Electrogram (RAE) → Electrical activity of the right atrium.

Right Ventricular Electrogram (RVE) → Electrical activity of the right ventricle.

RMS (root mean square) → The RMS (Root Mean Square) is equal to the value of the direct current which does the same amount of work (produce heat) per unit time as the measured alternating current.

RNA (Ribonucleic acid) editing → Post-transcriptional modification of the RNA molecule which may result in the change of the amino acid sequence of the encoded protein.

ROC annulus → ~ is in general an annulus

ROC curve → Receiver-operator characteristic curve is a graphical plot of the sensitivity, or true positive rate, vs. false positive rate (1 − specificity or 1 - true negative rate), for a binary classifier system as its discrimination threshold is varied.

Rods → Photoreceptor cells in the retina that can function in less intense light than cones. Named for their cylindrical shape, ~ are concentrated at the outer edges of the retina and are used in peripheral vision. They are almost entirely responsible for night vision.

Rosenblatt learning algorithm → The basic recursion for perceptron, which adapts the weights by using training sequence

Rotating wave approximation → The ~ is an approximation used in atom optics and magnetic resonance. In this approximation, terms in a Hamiltonian which oscillate rapidly are neglected. This is a valid approximation when the applied electromagnetic radiation is near resonance with an atomic resonance, and the intensity is low.

Rotation → A ~ is a circular movement of an object around a center of ~. A three-dimensional object rotates always around an imaginary line called a rotation axis. If the axis is within the body, and passes through its center of mass the body is said to rotate upon itself, or spin.

Round window → The ~ is a circle-shaped membrance-covered opening located on the cochlea. It connects the fluid channels in the cochlea with the oval window.

Röntgen → Wilhelm Conrad Röntgen (1845–1923) German physicist who produced and detected electromagnetic radiation in a wavelength range today known as X-rays (Nobel Prize, 1901) or ~ rays.

Rutherford → Ernest Rutherford, 1st Baron Rutherford of Nelson (1871–1937) was a New Zealand-born British chemist and physicist who became known as the father of nuclear physics (Nobel Prize, 1908).

22. S

Saddlenode bifurcation → A local bifurcation in which two fixed points (or equilibria) of a dynamical system collide and annihilate each other.

Salvage pathways of purine nucleotide synthesis → Purine nucleotides can be reused, adenine, quanine and hypoxanthine react with phosphoricosyl-pyrophosphate catalized by transferases forming AMP, GMP and IMP. The defect of transferases results in seriousdisease states.

Sampling → In signal processing, ~ is the reduction of a continuous signal to a discrete signal.

Sampling frequency → The rate of the sampling.

Sarcolemma → Membrane of the muscle fiber.

Sarcomer → Morhological and functional unit of the muscle fibril delimited by Z disks.

Saturated hydrocarbons → ~ are organic compounds containing only carbon and hydrogen in which each carbon is bounded to the maximum number of hydrogen atoms.

Saturation mode → A range characterized by the output chracteristic curve of the amplifiers, in which the electric state of the output is not (or barely) changes when the input control is modified. In the case of transistors, both the emitter and the collector base diodes are in an open state in the saturation range.

Saw tooth wave → The ~ is a kind of non-sinusoidal waveform. It is named a sawtooth based on its resemblance to the teeth on the blade of a saw. The convention is that a ~ ramps upward and then sharply drops.

Scalar potential → A ~ is a scalar field whose negative gradient is a given vector field.

Scaling down → Geometrical (constant field) Scaling—refers to the continued shrinking of horizontal and vertical physical feature sizes

Scalp electrodes → ~ are usually silver/silvercloride electrodes in a plactic cap, nowadays electrode cap is used to position the electrodes according to the international standard

Scanning electromyography → A method for studying the electrophysiological cross-section of the motor unit.

Scanning Tunneling Microscope (STM) → ~ is an instrument for imaging surfaces at the atomic level. With its good resolution (0.1 nm lateral and 0.01 nm depth resolution) individual atoms within materials are routinely imaged and manipulated. The ~ can be used not only in ultra high vacuum but also in air, water, and various other liquid or gas ambients, and at temperatures ranging from near zero kelvin to a few hundred degrees Celsius. The ~ is based on the concept of quantum tunneling.

SCAP (SREBP cleavage-activating protein) → ~ is a protein in the endoplasmic reticulum which binds SREBP and facilitates its transfer to the site of proteolysis in cholesterol-depleted state of the cell

Scatchard plot → A linear plot helping us to obtain the number of binding sites and the association constant in a binding equilibrium.

Scavenger receptor → A plasma membrane protein that binds a variety of waste proteins (e.g. bacterial proteins, aged and oxidized endogenous proteins) and mediates their endocytosis and intracellular degradation

Schaffer collaterals → Axon-collaterals of CA3 pyramidal cells, which innervate the proximal part of the apical dendrites of CA1 pyramidal cells.

Schematic → Graphical view of interconnected devices.

Schematic driven layout → Layout design tool that is interconnected with schematic to help device selection, connectivity checks.

Schiff’s bases → ~ are imines bearing a hydrocarbyl group on the nitrogen atom R2C=NR’.

Schottky → Walter Hermann Schottky (1886–1976) was a German physicist who played a major early role in developing the theory of electron and ion emission phenomena

Schottky effect → In electron emission devices (electron guns) the thermionic electron emitter will be biased negative relative to its surroundings. This creates an electric field at the emitter surface, which lowers the surface barrier, and increases the emission current. This is known as the “Schottky effect” or field enhanced thermionic emission.

Schrödinger → Erwin Rudolf Josef Alexander Schrödinger (1887–1961) was a physicist and theoretical biologist who was one of the fathers of quantum mechanics, and is famed for a number of important contributions to physics (Nobel Prize, 1933).

Schrödinger equation → ~ is an equation that describes how the quantum state of a physical system changes in time. It was formulated by Austrian physicist Erwin Schrödinger (1887–1961)

Scientific world wiew → The term refers to a wide world perception. People have developed many interconnected and validated ideas about the physical universe. Those ideas have enabled successive generations to achieve an increasingly comprehensive and reliable understanding of the physical environment. The means used to develop these ideas are particular ways of observing, thinking, experimenting, and validating. These ways represent a fundamental aspect of the nature of science and reflect how science tends to differ from other modes of knowing. When someone comes up with a new or improved version that explains more phenomena or answers more important questions than the previous version, the new one eventually takes its place.

Scintillator → A ~ is material which exhibits scintillation – the property of luminescence when excited by ionizing radiation.

Scoring matrix → Based on substitution probabilities and its values are used when concidering mismatches during calculation of similarities

SCP (slow cortical potential) → Based on changes in slow cortical potentials, which depend activation or on motor or emotional imagery.

Scribe line → The line where the wafer is cut into dies

SDS-PAGE → Sodium dodecylsulfate polyacrylamide gel electrophoresis: A laboratory method that separates proteins according to their mass.

Second law of thermodynamics → In the simplest definition, it claims that the heat can flow only from a wormer place to a cooler one. In an other view, in an isolated system, dS≥0, i.e. the entropy cannot drop in a spontaneous process.

Second order reaction → A reaction where the order with respect to the overall reaction is two. A reaction where the order is two for a reactant is a ~ with respect to that reactant.

Secondary active transport → A transport process against the electrochemical gradient of a substance (“uphill transport”) which is coupled to “downhill” transport of another substance

Secondary alcohol → ~ is an alcohol that has two alkyl group bounded to the carbon atom with the hydroxyl group.

Secondary structure → Pattern of regular local folding of a polypeptide

Secondary transport → Active transport where the energy is ensured by the passive cotransport of an other species of substance.

Secundary emission → ~ is a phenomenon where primary incident particles of sufficient energy, when hitting a surface or passing through some material, induce the emission of secondary particles. The primary particles are often charged particles like electrons or ions.

Segmentation → A process of selecting a part of the image by using specific algorhythms, through which analysis can be restricted to the area of interest.

Self configuration → ~ in wireless sensor networks can be apprehended from several viewpoints:i) node organization (deployment, data gathering protocols, routing protocols); ii) node participation; iii) node localization; iv) network recovery.

Self orginizing network → A network, which is able to learn without apriori information

Selforganization → ~ is the spontaneous, often seemingly purposeful formation of spatial, temporal, or spatio-temporal structures or functions in systems composed of several (often many) interacting components.

Self-organizing map (SOM) → A multivariate data mining tool, a type of artificial neural network using a low-dimensional grid of the nodes, called a map

Semicircular canals → The ~ are the sensory organ for balance and consist of three fluid-containing (endolymph) small circular tubes. Motion sensors in the tubes detect the movement of the head through the movement of the endolymph.

Semiconductive device → Devices made of semiconductor materials performing electronic tasks.

Semiconductor → A ~ is a material with electrical conductivity due to electron flow intermediate in magnitude between that of a conductor and an insulator.

Semi-empirical QM methods → ~ are using parameters derived from experimental data to simplify computations. The simplification may occur at various levels: simplification of the Hamiltonian (e.g., as in the Extended Huckel method), approximate evaluation of certain molecular integrals (see, for example, Zero differential overlap approximation), simplification of the wavefunction (for example, use of a Pi (π) electron approximation as in Pariser–Parr–Pople method), etc.

Sensing capacity → The minimum number of sensors necessary to monitor a given region to a desired degree of fidelity based on noisy sensor measurements.

Sensitivity (electronics) → The ~ of an electronic device is the minimum magnitude of input signal required to produce a specified output signal having a specified signal-to-noise ratio.

Sensitivity (medical) → Measures the proportion of actual positives which are correctly identified as such (e.g. the percentage of sick people who are correctly identified as having the condition). The formula for ~ is Sn = TruePositives / (TruePositives + FalseNegatives).

Sensor → A ~ is a device that measures a physical quantity and converts it into a signal which can be read by an observer or by an instrument.

Sensorineural hearing loss → ~ is a hearing disorder which results from missing or damaged sensory cells (hair cells) in the cochlea.

Sensory nerve action potential (SNAP) → The response of a sensory nerve after electrical stimulation.

Sensory system → A system composed of specific receptors to sense different modality of stimuli, pathways to transmit the information and cerebral cortical areas to provide final processing of it.

Sequence → A specific representation of biological macromolecules that represents them as a linear series of their building blocks, such as amino acids (for proteins), nucleotides (for DNA and RNA)

Sequence aligment → A process of comparing two or more DNA or protein sequences

Sequencing by hybridization → A non-enzymatic method that uses a DNA microarray to determine a DNA sequence

Sequencing by synthesis → Sequencing of a single strand of DNA by synthesizing the complementary strand along it, one base pair at a time, and detecting the base added at each step

Sequential backpropagation → The backprogragation is made in a sequential form.

Sequential reaction → Reaction in which all substrates must be bound to the enzyme in random or a specific order before the reaction can proceed

Sequential stimulation → Using ~, one electrode is stimulated at one time, adjacent electrodes are stimulated with a delay.

Serial Analysis of Gene Expression (SAGE) → A method for gene expression analysis in which long concatenated cDNA sequences are determined.

Serpin → A class of proteins that acts as inhibitors of serine proteases

Set separation problem → A problem, where sets of inputs have to be separated

Setup time → ~, that needed to be prepared for storage

Shadowing fading → ~ is a phenomenon that occurs when a mobile moves behind an obstruction and experiences a significant reduction in signal power.

Shared memory → ~ is (part of) memory which is uses by multiple processing units.

Sharp-waves → Fast, irregular EEG in conscious, resting state, during feeding and slow-wave sleep

Shielding → ~ is typically applied (1) to enclosures to isolate electrical devices from the ‘outside world’ and (2) to cables to isolate wires from the environment through which the cable runs.

Shielding (NMR) → ~ is an effect can be observed in NMR that causes a nucleus to absorb toward the right (upfield) side of the chart. It is caused by the donation of electron density toward the nucleus.

Short circuit → A electrical phenomenon between two or more conductors different voltages, when they get into a conducting connection through a very small resistance (impedance).

Shortest superstring problem → Looking for the shortest string which contains each member of a given set of strings

Shot noise → It is a type of electronic noise.

Shotgun sequencing → A method for DNA sequencing in which the original DNA molecule is broken to small pieces and the sequence of the short fragments are assembled computationally.

Shunt → A device allowing electrical current to pass around a point in a circuit.

Shunting inhibition → Inhibition mediated by an ionic current whose reversal potential is near the resting membrane potential. If a shunting inhibitory synapse is activated, the membrane potential changes little, but the input resistance is reduced locally and, following Ohm’s law, the amplitude of subsequent excitatory postsynaptic potentials (EPSPs) is reduced.

SI system → It is the most widely used unit system (m, s, kg) in science and engineering.

Side effect/adverse effect → An adverse effect is a harmful and undesired effect resulting from a medication or other intervention such as surgery. An adverse effect may be termed a “side effect”, when judged to be secondary to a main or therapeutic effect, and may result from an unsuitable or incorrect dosage or procedure, which could be due to medical error.

Sigmatropic rearrangement → ~ is a molecular rearrangement that involves both the formation of a new σ-bond and the breaking of an existing σ-bond between atoms previously were not directly linked. There is usually a concurrent relocation of π-bonds in the molecule concerned, but the total number of π- and σ- bonds does not change.

Sigmoid function → Mathematical function defined by (the shifted and scaled versions of) the formula f(x)=1/(1+exp(-x)), or another similar-looking function

Signal (bionics) → DNA or RNA sequence pattern that are “recognized” proteins or other molecules

Signal decomposition → It is to decompose an original signal into its primitive or fundamental constituents.

Signal integrity → Signal quality measure that ensures that the cross talk between signals does not affect operation.

Signal level → The values of power or voltage are often correlated to pre-set values. These are the signal levels.

Signal propagation → Compute the outputs for all neurons in the network

Signal to Quantization Noise Ratio (SQNR) → It compares the power level of the sampled signal to the power level of quantization noise which is the result of ADC.

Signal transduction → The conversion of an extracellular signal to a cellular response.

Signalform → Representation of a general signal.

Signal-to-Interference Ratio (SIR) → It is studied in interference limited systems where the interference dominates over the nosie. It is a measure used for quantify how much a signal has been interfered by an other coommunication source.

Signal-to-Noise Ratio (SNR) → A signal quality measure which shows how much a signal has been corrupted by noise. It is defined as the ratio of signal power (meaningful information) to the noise power (unwanted signal) corrupting the signal.

Signal-to-Noise-Interference Ratio (SNIR) → Both noise and intreference limited situation can occur, the SNIR may be studied.

Signoff analysis → Final verification of timing, signal integrity, power consumption, statistical static timing, electro-migration, and thermal characteristics

Silicon → ~ is the eighth most common element in the universe, but very rarely occurs as the pure free element in nature. It has the symbol Si and atomic number 14.

Similarity measures → Numerical measures defined to describe the similarity between objects. A similarity measure between identical objects is maximal but it is close to zero between dissimilar objects.

Similarity searching → A process by which we rank the entries of a database according to their similarity to a chosen object, the query. It requires a numerical index of similarity, such as a distance or a similarity measure.

Simiusculus → Proportional depiction of the body parts in a “little monkey” according to their representation in certain parts of the brain.

Simulation → ~ is the imitation of some real thing, state of affairs, or process by a simulator e.g. computer. The act of simulating something generally entails representing certain key characteristics or behaviours of a selected physical or abstract system. Key issues in ~ include acquisition of valid source information about the relevant selection of key characteristics and behaviours, the use of simplifying approximations and assumptions within the ~, and fidelity and validity of the ~ outcomes.

Simultaneous stimulation → Using ~ all electrodes are stimulated at one time.

Single bond → ~ is a covalent bond formed when two atoms share one pair of electrons.

Single fiber electromyography (SFEMG) → The ~ is a selective electrophysiological method for recording the action potentials of single muscle fibers.

Single Instruction Multiple Data → ~ or SIMD describes computers with multiple processing elements that perform the same operation on multiple data simultaneously

Single neuron activity (SUA) → Action potentials of a given cell.

Single photon emission computed tomography (SPECT) → Imaging technologies using gamma rays to detect radioactive materials taken up by cells from the bloodstream.

Single unit activity (SUA) → Action potentials of a single neuron recorded with an extracellular electrode.

Single-Nucleotide Polymorphism (SNP) (“snip”) → A SNP represents a small (one nucleotide) diffrence between two related genoms (e.g. that of two individuals of the same species).

Single-pulse TMS → ~non-repetitive transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS).

Sinus node → ~ is the regulatory centre controlling the contractions of the muscles of the heart in the wall of the right atrium.

Skeletal isomers → ~ constitutional isomers that differ with respect to branching of the carbon skeleton.

Skeletal structure (chemistry) → A representation of organic compounds that shows only the bounding of the carbon framework.

Slater → John Clarke Slater (1900–1976) was a noted American physicist who made major contributions to the theory of the electronic structure of atoms, molecules and solids.

Slater determinant → A ~ is an expression which describes the wavefunction of a multi-fermionic system that satisfies anti-symmetry requirements and subsequently the Pauli exclusion principle by changing sign upon exchange of fermions.

Slew rate → The time needed for a signal to reach safe high (low) signal level from the opposite value.

Slice selection → The excitation of spins in a limited planar section of tissue by applying a gradient (the slice-selective gradient) while sending a narrow-band radiofrequency pulse of appropriate frequencies into the subject.