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Introduction To Health Sciences Vocab

Subject : health-sciences
Instructions:
  • Answer 50 questions in 15 minutes.
  • If you are not ready to take this test, you can study here.
  • Match each statement with the correct term.
  • Don't refresh. All questions and answers are randomly picked and ordered every time you load a test.

This is a study tool. The 3 wrong answers for each question are randomly chosen from answers to other questions. So, you might find at times the answers obvious, but you will see it re-enforces your understanding as you take the test each time.
1. The part of the nervous system consisting of the brain and spinal cord.






2. A value which can be used to calculate the degree to which X-rays (or other radiation) are reduced in intensity when passing through a material (e.g. human tissue).






3. Blood that contains very little oxygen.






4. A muscular structure at the junction of the stomach and small intestine that constricts and closes when food is present in the stomach - preventing it from passing into the small intestine.






5. A fracture where the bone bends and only breaks on one side; commonest in children - whose bones tend to bend rather than break completely.






6. The type of muscle tissue that is responsible for moving parts of the musculoskeletal system.






7. Any physical injury or severe psychological shock.






8. The amount of air that can be forcefully expired from fully inflated lungs in the first second of expiration - abbreviated to FEV1.






9. A form of conditioning in which a stimulus with no intrinsic capacity to trigger a particular response acquires such a capacity by being paired with a stimulus that does trigger the response; e.g. a bell can come to trigger salivation in a dog if it






10. A screening programme (sometimes called 'mass screening') that aims to screen everyone in a particular population group (rarely every citizen) - e.g. everyone over the age of 50 years - or all newborn babies. Attempts are made to screen everyone in t






11. Condition in which no colour at all can be seen.






12. A volume in which there are no atoms or molecules.






13. A graft where the donor tissue comes from the same person (as opposed to an allograft where it comes from another person).






14. The dimension of positive and negative feelings - exemplified by - respectively - happiness and pain.






15. A method of purifying water - e.g. filtering - that involves individual people treating water as they use it - rather than having purified water delivered to them from a remote water-treatment plant in pipes.


16. A property of the body in which a number of its important parameters are held near to constant and any deviation from their normal value triggers action that tends to restore normality. It is exemplified by the maintenance of body temperature - or of






17. The type of bone that is less dense (compared with compact bone) and contains struts (trabeculae) to provide strength. It is found within the widened areas inside the ends of the bones.






18. The process of detecting stimuli that cause actual or potential damage to the tissues of the body.






19. The study of toxins and their effects on living organisms.






20. The need to drink much more than in the past to achieve the same effect.






21. A substance (usually liquid) in which other substances dissolve.






22. A break in the continuity of a bone. Classified according to the extent of damage and the subsequent position of the broken pieces.






23. A lens shape with a greater thickness at each end than through the centre.






24. Condition in which the full range of colours cannot be clearly distinguished.






25. The pressure exerted by the Earth's atmosphere at a particular location as a result of the mass of the column of air above it. At sea level - it is 760 mmHg or 101.325 kPa.






26. A non-invasive method of measuring the level of oxygenation of the blood by using light absorption to calculate the relative levels of haemoglobin and oxyhaemoglobin.






27. A class of animals characterised by having the body covered in hair - by having a four-chambered heart - and by feeding their young on milk produced by the female.






28. An atom that is better than other atoms at attracting electrons to itself; e.g. oxygen






29. A thick ring of muscle that controls pupil size - thereby regulating the amount of light that enters the eye. It forms the coloured portion of the eye.






30. A shell - typically made from plaster or fibreglass - which can be put around a limb in order to encase and support a broken bone until it has healed.






31. An internationally recognised health indicator - defined as the number of babies in every 1000 live births who die in their first year of life.






32. A process causing evolutionary change over time (from one generation to the next). Individuals that hold an advantage in terms of survival and reproduction - in competition with other individuals - will pass on characteristics that contribute to that






33. The skin layer that lies beneath the epidermis and provides the strength and elasticity of the skin.






34. The process by which collagen is produced by fibroblasts following tissue damage - often resulting in scar formation.






35. The distance between atoms in a molecule.






36. A stimulus that has no intrinsic power to trigger a particular response but which acquires this power after being associated with another stimulus. For example - a bell does not normally trigger salivation but - after pairing with food - it acquires






37. A synapse at which the release of neurotransmitter from a presynaptic neuron has an inhibitory effect on a postsynaptic cell - i.e. it inhibits the appearance of action potentials in the second cell.






38. An electrically charged atom or molecule. May be positively or negatively charged; e.g. Na+ (the positively charged sodium ion) and Cl- (the negatively charged chloride ion).






39. Any one of numerous proteins in a mammalian cell that are part of the machinery that detects and repairs mistakes in DNA caused by errors during DNA copying - or by the effects of mutagens. They help to minimise the number of mutations - and when the






40. A condition that may develop following exposure to an extremely stressful situation - typically where a person witnesses the violent death of someone else - or believes their own life is in danger. Symptoms include disordered sleeping - a dread of si






41. The outer waterproof protective layer of the skin.






42. A complex molecule composed of smaller molecules (globin and haem) and iron atoms. It is a component of erythrocytes and its function is to bind reversibly to oxygen.






43. The share of the total morbidity in a population Which is due to a particular cause; it is usually expressed as a percentage.






44. A proteinase (protein-degrading) enzyme that catalyses (facilitates) the breakdown of elastin and other related proteins.






45. A graphical method of showing whether two numerical variables are related to one another. They are called 'variables' because they can each have a range of possible values. Each data point represents a particular entity - such as a country - for whic






46. Matter formed from saliva mixed with mucus and any foreign material such as dust - Which is coughed up (expectorated) from the lower respiratory tract and usually ejected from the mouth.






47. A segment of this contains the coded information required for a cell to make a particular protein. Humans probably have about 25 000. Different forms or variants of these - called alleles - determine how these characteristics are expressed in a given






48. In screening - a person whose screening test result is positive (indicating disease) - but who actually does not have the disease.






49. A protein produced by a living organism that functions as a catalyst. It facilitates other molecules entering into chemical reactions with one another - but is itself unaffected by these reactions.






50. Industrial chemicals - commonly found as environmental pollutants - that disrupt the hormonal systems of animals - including humans.