Technology Glossary

Circumgalactic Medium

Diffuse gas extending around a galaxy beyond its visible stellar disk.

The region of space between Earth and the Moon, including the many orbital paths shaped by the gravity of both bodies. Tracking spacecraft there is harder than in low Earth orbit because objects are distant and their trajectories can change through several gravitational influences.

Civil Penalty Proceedings

A court process in which a regulator or other authorized party asks a court to impose a financial or other civil sanction for an alleged breach of law. It is not a criminal prosecution, and filing the case does not prove the allegation.

Classified Benchmark

A test set or evaluation procedure whose contents are restricted for national-security reasons. Keeping it confidential can protect sensitive attack knowledge, but also limits independent inspection of the benchmark.

Climate Adaptation

Adjustments that reduce harm or use opportunities arising from actual or expected climate effects.

Climate Feedback

A process triggered by climate change that alters the original change. A positive feedback amplifies warming, while a negative feedback reduces it. The term does not by itself mean that the process is irreversible.

Climate Overshoot

A period when global warming rises above a stated temperature limit, such as 1.5°C, before potentially declining below it later. The size and duration of the overshoot influence the severity and reversibility of climate impacts.

Climate Tipping Point

A threshold in the climate system beyond which a small additional change triggers a large, often self-reinforcing and hard-to-reverse shift to a new state.

Clinical Complete Response(cCR)

The absence of detectable disease using the clinical examinations, imaging, endoscopy, laboratory tests, or other assessments specified for a condition after treatment. It does not necessarily prove that every cancer cell is gone and is distinct from pathological complete response.

Clipjacking

An attack that monitors or alters copied clipboard content, commonly replacing cryptocurrency wallet addresses or payment details before the user pastes them.

Clonal Evolution

The process by which groups of cells with different mutations compete and change over time.

Closed-Loop Stimulation

A system that measures a biological signal and automatically adjusts stimulation in response.

Cloud Condensation Nuclei

A tiny airborne particle around which water vapor condenses to form a cloud droplet, a key factor in how many clouds form and how reflective they become.

Coastal Exposure Mapping

Mapping places and assets that may be exposed to flooding, erosion or sea-level rise.

Coding Agent

An AI system that can inspect code, make changes, run tools, and complete software-development tasks with limited human direction.

Coercivity

The strength of the reverse magnetic field needed to reduce a magnetized material's magnetization to zero. Low coercivity is desirable in motor cores and transformers that repeatedly reverse their magnetic state.

Cold Start

A GNSS cold start occurs when a receiver begins without current satellite orbit, time or approximate-position information and must acquire what it needs from satellite broadcasts. This usually makes the first position fix slower than a warm or assisted start.

Collaborative Combat Aircraft

A planned class of uncrewed US Air Force aircraft designed to fly alongside crewed fighter jets and support them in combat missions.

Collagen

A structural protein that provides strength and organization to skin, bone, tendons, and many other tissues.

Collecting Society

An organization that manages copyrights or related rights on behalf of many creators and publishers. It can license uses, collect royalties, distribute payments and enforce represented rights, reducing the need for each user to negotiate separately with every rights holder.

Command-and-Control Server(C2)

Infrastructure used by an attacker to send instructions to compromised devices, receive stolen information, update malicious software or coordinate an intrusion.

Commissioning Phase

The period after launch when engineers deploy, cool, calibrate and test a spacecraft and its instruments before routine science operations. Successful launch does not guarantee successful commissioning because many systems must work together in their operating environment.

Competitive Integrity

The condition in which a competition is conducted under fair, consistently enforced rules and its outcome is not distorted by cheating, manipulation, undisclosed assistance, or unequal access to prohibited advantages.

Complete Switching

Replacing combustible cigarettes entirely with another nicotine product during a defined study period, rather than using both products together.

Computable General Equilibrium Model(CGE)

An economy-wide mathematical model that represents interactions among industries, consumers, governments, trade, prices and resource constraints. Analysts use it to estimate how a policy or productivity change in one sector propagates through markets and affects production, demand and emissions.

Computer Security Incident Response Team(CSIRT)

A specialist organization that coordinates the handling of cybersecurity incidents, including analysis, information sharing and support for mitigation. Under the EU reporting process, a designated national CSIRT receives and distributes relevant product-security notifications.

Technology glossary