Today’s word of the week is transcription, in the biological sense. Not the process of converting speech into a written document (though I know a lot of science writers who spend a lot of time doing that, so I suppose it could count as part of the biological definition), but the part of the central […]
This word of the week has meanings both in science and in normal, every day language. Bromide: An anion of the element bromine, element 35. Bromide: A word used to indicate a platitude, especially one used WAY too often, and which has no real use or meaning, except that meant to make you feel better, […]
Today’s word of the week is actually an acronym: CREB, the c-AMP response element binding protein. CREB is a very popular protein in studies of things like addiction and mood disorders, and particularly interesting to people to study memory. It binds to specific bits of DNA (called, easily enough c-AMP response elements), and by binding […]
The word of the week this week is one that many scientists often assume that you already know: presynaptic. But do you? Pre- means before, and it’s before the synapse, but what does that mean? Presynaptic: This is an adjective really, but when I use it, I use it to talk about the neuron that […]
Last week’s word of the week was not a sciencey word, but a fun word, because why not? But this word of the week is one I use ALL the time, and one that I always worry people don’t know about. And your brain is full of them, so it seems relatively important to know […]
I would like to start something new on the blog, the Word of the Week! Even though I try very hard to keep my blog posts readable for people without much science background, it’s really hard to not use big words. Or acronyms. Or a bunch of other things. Usually I explain them or link […]