All articles starting with S
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Spud (film)
Spud is a 2010 South African coming-of-age comedy directed by Donovan Marsh, adapted from John van de Ruit's novel, starring Troye Sivan and John Cleese, set in 1990 at a KwaZulu-Natal boarding school.
Spud Webb
Spud Webb (Anthony Webb), 5'7" NBA point guard (1985-1998) with Atlanta, Sacramento, Minnesota, and Orlando; won the 1986 Slam Dunk Contest in Dallas with a 42-inch vertical, beating Dominique Wilkins.
SpudCell
SpudCell is a synthetic cell built in 2026 at the University of Minnesota from nonliving chemicals, described as the first to complete a full cellular life cycle.
Spuds MacKenzie
Spuds MacKenzie, the "Original Party Animal," was a fictional bull terrier mascot for Bud Light, created by DDB Needham around 1982, debuted on TV in Super Bowl XXI 1987, played by female dog Honey Tree Evil Eye, retired 1989.
SPUM-ACS study
SPUM-ACS (Special Program University Medicine – Acute Coronary Syndromes, NCT01000701) is a Swiss prospective multicentre cohort of over 7,000 ACS patients at university hospitals, studying inflammation, biomarkers, treatment safety, and mortality prediction.
Spun
Spun (2002) is Jonas Åkerlund's feature directorial debut, an independent dark comedy written by Will De Los Santos and Creighton Vero, starring Jason Schwartzman, Mickey Rourke, Brittany Murphy, John Leguizamo, and Mena Suvari in a three-day crystal-meth odyssey; Metascore 41, US gross $410.2K.
Spur
Spur (equestrian): metal heel fitting on a rider's boot, prick or rowel type, used to signal the horse. Known since Celtic Iron Age; rowel spurs from 9th-century Spain; FEI and national rules cap length and ban serrated rowels.
Spur gear
A spur gear is a cylindrical gear with straight teeth parallel to the axis of rotation, transmitting power between parallel shafts. It is the most widely used gear type.
Spur Posse
Spur Posse: a Lakewood, California high school clique (about 20-30 members, founded 1990 by Dana Belman) whose members scored 'points' for sexual encounters, arrested in 1993 on rape charges that prosecutors mostly dropped.
Spur Ventures
Spur Ventures is the series name of venture-capital fund-of-funds vehicles managed by Spur Capital Partners, an Oklahoma firm founded in 2001 that managed about $1.0 billion at end-2023.
Spurious relationship
A spurious relationship, or spurious correlation, is a statistical association between two variables without a direct causal link, produced by chance, a third factor, or data selection.
Spurlock power station
Spurlock power station, formally the Hugh L. Spurlock Generating Station, is East Kentucky Power Cooperative's largest facility, a four-unit coal-fired plant on the Ohio River in Mason County, Kentucky.
Spurr
Mount Spurr is a 3,374 m glaciated stratovolcano 126 km northwest of Anchorage, Alaska, whose Crater Peak vent erupted explosively in 1953 and three times in 1992; unrest in 2024-2025 ended without eruption.
Spurting
Spurting: present participle of the English verb spurt, to flow out suddenly and forcefully in a stream; verb attested 1560s, of obscure origin; also a medical term for arterial bleeding and a GEMET agricultural term for spray application.
Sputnik (film)
Sputnik (Спутник) is a 2020 Russian sci-fi horror film, Egor Abramenko's feature debut, about a 1983 Soviet cosmonaut hosting an alien parasite, examined by Oksana Akinshina's neuropsychologist at a secret base; it premiered online-only in April 2020.
Sputnik (Спутник) (news agency)
Sputnik (Спутник) is a Russian state-owned international news agency created by Rossiya Segodnya on 10 November 2014 from RIA Novosti and Voice of Russia; state-funded, multilingual, EU-banned since March 2022, widely documented as a Kremlin disinformation channel.
Sputnik 1 (Спутник-1)
Sputnik 1 (Спутник-1) was the world's first artificial Earth satellite, a 58 cm aluminum sphere the Soviet Union launched on 4 October 1957, opening the Space Age.
Sputnik 2 (Спутник-2)
Sputnik 2, also known as Sputnik II, was the second Soviet artificial satellite, launched on November 3, 1957, carrying the dog Laika, the first animal to orbit Earth.
Sputnik crisis
The Sputnik crisis, also known as the Sputnik shock or Sputnik moment, was American public alarm after the Soviet Union launched Sputnik 1, the first artificial satellite, in 1957.
Sputnik Planitia
Sputnik Planitia, formerly Sputnik Planum, is a vast basin on Pluto filled with convecting nitrogen ice, forming the western lobe of the heart-shaped Tombaugh Regio.
Sputnik V COVID-19 vaccine
Sputnik V (Gam-COVID-Vac) is Russia's two-dose adenoviral vector COVID-19 vaccine by the Gamaleya Centre, using rAd26 then rAd5; registered August 2020, 91.6% trial efficacy, used in about 70 countries, never WHO EUL-listed.
Sputnik virophage
Sputnik virophage (Mimivirus-dependent virus Sputnik), discovered 2008 in a water-cooling tower, is the first virophage: an 18,343 bp dsDNA virus that parasitizes Mamavirus and mimivirus replication factories in Acanthamoeba, impairing giant virus infectivity.
Sputter deposition
Sputter deposition, also called vacuum sputtering, is a physical vapor deposition technique that ejects atoms from a target to form thin films on a substrate.
Sputter yield
Sputter yield, also called sputtering yield, is the mean number of target atoms removed from a solid surface per incident ion during sputtering; it peaks near 10 keV ion energy.
Sputtering
Sputtering is the removal of atoms from a solid target by energetic ion bombardment; in vacuum the ejected atoms condense on a substrate as thin films, a method foundational to semiconductor manufacturing since the 1850s.
Sputum
Sputum (phlegm) is saliva and mucus coughed up from the respiratory tract, used to diagnose TB (smear, culture, Xpert MTB/RIF), pneumonia, and COPD exacerbations; color alone is a weak bacterial marker.
Sputum culture
A sputum culture is a laboratory test that grows mucus coughed up from the lungs to identify bacteria or fungi causing pneumonia, tuberculosis, or bronchiectasis infections.
Sputum cytology
Sputum cytology is a noninvasive, inexpensive diagnostic test that examines cells from coughed-up sputum under the microscope to detect lung cancer, though it is no longer recommended for screening.
Spuyten Duyvil Creek
Spuyten Duyvil Creek was a tidal waterway in New York City connecting the Hudson and Harlem rivers around northern Manhattan, replaced by the Harlem River Ship Canal.
Spuzzle
Spuzzle is a 2011 solitaire ball-placement puzzle by Néstor Romeral Andrés for the Shibumi set: fill a 4×4 board with white, black, and red balls without forming a same-color group of three. Distinct from a 2012 Amigo children's jigsaw game of the same name.