1. The branch of technology concerned with the development and exploitation of machines in relation to the various needs of human beings.
2. The branch of technology concerned with modern forms of industrial production utilizing living organisms, especially micro-organisms, and their biological processes.
3. The field devoted to applying the techniques of biochemistry, cellular biology, biophysics, and molecular biology to addressing issues related to human beings and the environment.
4. The use of living things or parts of living things to create or modify drugs and other substances; to modify food crops and other macroscopic organisms; or to adapt microorganisms to agricultural, medical, or other purposes.

1. Study of the behavior and activity of organisms using remote detection and transmission equipment; radio tracking.
2. The technique of monitoring vital processes and transmitting data without wires to a point remote from the subject.

Bioterror is the use of biological agents for terrorism. The term bioterror is often used loosely to describe nuclear, biological, and/or chemical (NBC) terrorism. The U.S. government is especially worried about the Big Six bioterrorism threats: anthrax, smallpox, plague, tularemia, botulism toxin and viral hemorrhagic fevers (like the Ebola virus). While less well-known than the other diseases, tularemia and botulism toxins could conceivably be aerosolized, causing severe respiratory illness and paralysis, respectively.

A terrorist who uses biological weapons. Not only water supplies are susceptible to deliberate contamination; so too is much of the air we breathe. Skyscrapers, tunnels, subways, and their requisite heating and air-conditioning systems provide targets and also avenues of attack for would-be bioterrorists.

An obsolete term for suicide.

Pertaining to the inter-relationship of temperature and living organisms.

1. Treatment using biological agents, almost always those made by genetic engineering. Genetic engineering is central to modern biotherapy’s backbone: pharmaceutical biotechnology. Pharmaceutical biotechnology involves using microorganisms, macroscopic organisms, or hybrids of tumor cells and leukocytes.
2. Virtually all biotherapeutic agents in clinical use are biotech pharmaceuticals. A biotech pharmaceutical is simply any medically useful drug whose manufacture involves microorganisms or substances that living organisms produce (e.g., enzymes). Most biotech pharmaceuticals are recombinantÑthat is, produced by genetic engineering. Insulin was among the earliest recombinant drugs.
3. In psychology, any form of treatment for abnormal behavior that alters the individual’s physiological processes; such as, electric shock treatment or surgery.
4. The treatment of disease with biologicals, that is, materials produced by living organisms.

An instrument for measuring the vibratory-perception threshold.

1. A reference to common life; secular.
2. Pertaining to life or living organisms; caused by, produced by, or comprising living organisms.

The science concerned with the functions of life, or vital activity and force.

1. The study of animal and plant structure by dissection; vivisection.
2. A biopsy instrument passed through a catheter into the heart to obtain pieces of tissue for diagnosis.

1. The smallest geographical area providing uniform conditions for life; the physical part of an ecosystem.
2. The smallest geographical unit of the biosphere or of a habitat that can be delimited by convenient boundaries and is characterized by its biota.
3. The location of a parasite within the host’s body.
4. An ecological niche, or restricted area, the environmental conditions of which are suitable for certain fauna and flora. A tree with its associated organisms is a biotope; a forest is a biochore.

An intoxication resulting from a plant or animal poison (biotoxin).

The study of poisons produced by living organisms, their cause, detection, and their effects, and of the treatment of those conditions produced by them.

Any toxic substance formed in an animal body, and demonstrable in its tissues or body fluids, or both.

1. The conversion of molecules from one form to another within an organism, often associated with change in pharmacologic activity; refers especially to drugs and other xenobiotics. Also, biodegradation..
2. The change of one chemical into another while within a living organism.

The study of the body by means of its reactions to chemical substances.

1. A chamber with controlled climate; used in experiments to determine the effects of environment on organisms.
2. A place in a laboratory in which temperature and other environmental conditions can be controlled.

1. A reference to a parasite deriving nutrients from the tissues of a living host.
2. An organism that can live and multiply only on another living organism; such as, parasitic or symbiotic bacteria and fungi, carnivores, herbivores, etc.

An obsolete term for a theory that a drug eruption may be due to activation of a latent allergy by the drug.

The mixing of a sediment by the burrowing, feeding, or other activity of living organisms.

In biology, a group with the same genetic constitution that is characteristic in a species.

The study of anthropological types with their constitutional variations, inadequacies, etc.

1. The use of ultrasonics for biological applications; such as, ultrasonic medical tomography, ultrasonic microscopy, and physical therapy.3
2. The study of the interaction of sound at frequencies above about 20 000 hertz with living systems.

A group (infrasubspecific) of bacterial strains distinguishable from other strains of the same species on the basis of physiological characters. Formerly called biotype.

1. In terms of time, the period of existence of a species.
2. In lithic terms, an abstract zone that includes all strata deposited during the period of time that a given taxon lived.
3. The range of a single taxonomic entity in geologic time as reflected by its occurrence in fossiliferous rocks.