Technology glossary

Gut Microbiome

The community of microorganisms and their genes living in the digestive tract.

Habitable Zone

The range around a star where temperatures may allow liquid water on a planet's surface under suitable atmospheric conditions.

Haptic Feedback

Hardware Abstraction Layer

A software layer that provides a common interface while hiding differences between underlying hardware systems.

Heat Load

The amount of heat introduced into a cooled system that the refrigeration stage must remove.

Host Factor

A molecule produced by a host cell that a pathogen uses to enter, replicate, or spread.

Human-AI Co-Design

Human-in-the-Loop AI

Hydrogel

A water-rich polymer network used in biomedical materials, sensors and tissue models.

Hyperscale Data Center

Immune Checkpoint Inhibitor

A cancer therapy that blocks inhibitory signals used by tumors to suppress immune attack.

Immune Checkpoint Therapy

Immunosenescence

Age-related changes that reduce some immune functions while increasing chronic inflammation.

Impact Winter

In Silico Screening

The use of computational models to prioritize or reject candidate molecules before laboratory testing.

In-Memory Computing

A computing approach that performs operations where data is stored, reducing movement between processors and memory.

Induced Pluripotent Stem Cell(iPSC)

A mature cell reprogrammed into a stem-cell-like state that can develop into many different cell types.

Inertial Measurement Unit

Information Asymmetry

A situation in which one party has faster, better, or more complete information than another.

Integrative Taxonomy

An approach to identifying and classifying species by combining multiple forms of evidence, such as anatomy, genetics, behavior, ecology, and sound recordings.

Interfacial Adhesion

Intermediate-Mass Black Hole

A black hole with a mass between stellar-mass and supermassive black holes.

Interoperability Obligation

Interstitial Fluid

Intracortical Implant

Inverse Design

A design approach that starts with the desired performance or behavior and uses computation to search for a structure or set of parameters capable of producing it.

Invisible Labor

Isotope Separation

A process that separates atoms of the same element according to differences in nuclear mass or radioactive properties.

Laser Power Beaming

A wireless power-transfer method that converts electricity into a directed laser beam, sends it across a line of sight, and converts the received light back into electricity. Practical systems must manage conversion losses, beam tracking, atmospheric interference and laser safety.

Late-Stage Functionalization

Adding or changing a functional group near the end of a molecule's synthesis to rapidly create related variants.