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Life and health

72,234 articles

Passive transport

Passive transport: movement of substances across cell membranes down concentration gradients without cell energy, including simple diffusion, facilitated diffusion via channels and carriers, osmosis, and filtration.

Pasta

Pasta, shaped dough of durum wheat semolina and water (fresh or dried, optionally with eggs), made by mixing, extrusion, and drying; over 300 shapes, medieval Sicilian dried-pasta origins, €14.6bn dry market.

Pasteur effect

Pasteur effect: oxygen inhibits fermentation and lowers glycolytic rate, first observed by Louis Pasteur in yeast (1861). Reversed by the Crabtree effect in yeast and the Warburg effect in cancer cells.

Pasteurella

Pasteurella, genus of Gram-negative, nonmotile, facultatively anaerobic coccobacilli in the family Pasteurellaceae, named for Louis Pasteur (Trevisan 1887). Type species Pasteurella multocida; animal commensal and pathogen, common cause of human bite-wound infections.

Pasteurella multocida

Pasteurella multocida, a Gram-negative coccobacillus of Pasteurellaceae, commensal of dogs, cats, and livestock; causes fowl cholera, hemorrhagic septicemia, atrophic rhinitis, and human bite-wound and invasive infections.

Pasteurellaceae

Pasteurellaceae (Pohl 1981), type genus Pasteurella, a family of gram-negative, nonmotile, facultatively anaerobic Gammaproteobacteria in the order Pasteurellales; mucosal commensals of vertebrates including the pathogens Haemophilus influenzae, Pasteurella multocida, and Mannheimia haemolytica, with polyphyletic classical genera under taxonomic revision.

Pasteurellosis

Pasteurellosis: infection with Pasteurella bacteria, chiefly Pasteurella multocida, a Gram-negative coccobacillus. Causes fowl cholera, haemorrhagic septicaemia (serotypes B:2/E:2), atrophic rhinitis, and human bite-wound infections.

Pastinaca

Pastinaca is a genus of 8-16 Apiaceae herbs native from Europe to Mongolia and Lebanon, containing the cultivated parsnip Pastinaca sativa, whose edible taproot and furanocoumarin sap toxicity distinguish it.

PaSTo trial

PaSTo (NCT03167268), Panitumumab Skin Toxicity Prevention Trial: Italian phase 2 double-blind trial of oral lycopene 20 mg versus placebo to reduce panitumumab-induced skin toxicity in metastatic colorectal cancer; 28 enrolled, reported 41% absolute reduction of grade 2-3 toxicity.

Pastoral ideal in veterinary culture

The pastoral ideal in veterinary culture is the romanticized image of the country vet popularized by James Herriot's books, which still shapes who applies to veterinary school.

Pastoralism

Pastoralism, also called mobile herding or nomadic/transhumant livestock keeping, is an extensive livelihood system in which 200 million pastoralists move cattle, sheep, goats, and camels across rangelands, using mobility and common land to manage dryland variability.

Pat R. Levitt

Pat R. Levitt is an American neuroscientist at the University of Southern California known for the neurodevelopmental model of schizophrenia and a developmental disconnection model of autism.

Patagioenas

Patagioenas is a genus of about 17 New World pigeon species (Columbidae), split from Columba on DNA evidence; includes the band-tailed pigeon, largest North American pigeon and closest living relative of the extinct passenger pigeon.

Patagona

Patagona is a genus of hummingbirds containing the two largest living hummingbird species, the Northern and Southern Giant Hummingbirds, restricted to the Andes of South America and split into two species in 2024.

Patagonian mara

Patagonian mara (Dolichotis patagonum), also called Patagonian cavy or hare: a large long-legged monogamous rodent of arid Argentina, 8-16 kg, near threatened, with communal-den pup rearing and a feral population in Dubai.

Patagonian toothfish

Patagonian toothfish (Dissostichus eleginoides), sold as Chilean sea bass or mero, a deep-water southern-ocean fish up to 2 m long, fished by bottom longline and managed by CCAMLR amid past IUU fishing.

Patagonian wool boom

The Patagonian wool boom was the expansion of sheep ranching across Patagonia and Tierra del Fuego from 1877, turning the frontier into a wool-export economy of giant estancias.

Patagotitan

Patagotitan mayorum, the titanosaur from La Flecha ranch, Chubut, Patagonia, Argentina; gigantic Early Cretaceous sauropod (~101 Ma) known from six individuals, ~37 m long, mass estimates 42.5–71.4 tonnes.

Patara Elephant Farm

Patara Elephant Farm is a privately owned elephant facility in Hang Dong, south-west of Chiang Mai, Thailand, offering hands-on tourist programs in which visitors feed, bathe, and ride elephants.

Patatin-like phospholipase domain

Patatin-like phospholipase domain (PNPLA domain, Pfam PF01734): a Ser-Asp dyad lipid-hydrolysis domain named after potato patatin, defining nine human PNPLA enzymes acting on triacylglycerols or phospholipids.

Patatin-like phospholipase domain-containing protein

Patatin-like phospholipase domain-containing proteins (PNPLAs, pPLAs) are lipid hydrolases defined by a patatin domain from potato tuber, with a Ser-Asp dyad and GXSXG motif; nine human members (PNPLA1–9) act in lipid metabolism and disease, and plant, bacterial, and parasite homologs exist.

Patau syndrome

Patau syndrome, also called trisomy 13 or Bartholin-Patau syndrome, is a chromosomal disorder with an extra chromosome 13, causing heart defects, cleft lip, microphthalmia, and polydactyly; only 5-10% survive the first year.

Patch Adams

Patch Adams, born Hunter Doherty Adams, is an American physician and social activist who founded the Gesundheit! Institute, campaigning since the 1970s for free healthcare with humor.

Patch angioplasty

Patch angioplasty is a vascular surgery technique that widens a narrowed artery by sewing in a patch of vein, bovine pericardium, or synthetic material, chiefly after carotid endarterectomy.

Patch clamp

Patch clamp: electrophysiology technique by Erwin Neher and Bert Sakmann (1976) using a gigaohm-sealed glass pipette to record single ion channel currents; configurations include cell-attached, whole-cell, inside-out, outside-out; 1991 Nobel Prize; now automated in 384-well high-throughput platforms.

Patch dynamics

Patch dynamics is an ecological framework describing how a regional population persists through local extinction and recolonization across habitat patches, centered on the Levins metapopulation model.

Patch test

Patch test: epicutaneous diagnostic procedure for allergic contact dermatitis, devised by Josef Jadassohn in 1895; allergens applied under patches for 48 hours with delayed readings to detect T-cell mediated skin allergy.

Patch-sequencing

Patch-seq (Patch-sequencing) is a multimodal neuroscience technique combining patch-clamp electrophysiology, single-cell RNA sequencing, and morphology in the same neuron, first implemented reliably in 2016 and central to brain cell type atlases.

Patches (character)

Patches is FromSoftware's recurring trickster NPC, debuting as Patch the Good Luck in Armored Core: For Answer (2008) and appearing as Patches the Hyena, Trusty Patches, Patches the Spider, Unbreakable Patches, Lapp, and Patches the Untethered, luring players into traps across the Soulsborne games.

Patchouli

Patchouli (Pogostemon cablin, 广藿香), Lamiaceae herb of Sri Lanka and Malesia; leaves steam-distilled into earthy patchouli oil rich in patchoulol, dominated by Indonesian production and used as a perfumery fixative.