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night blindness

(Encyclopedia)night blindness, inability to see normally in subdued light. It is usually a result of vitamin A deficiency. The rod cells, one of two light-sensitive areas of the retina of the eye, are impaired in t...

Schekman, Randy Wayne

(Encyclopedia)Schekman, Randy Wayne, 1948–, American cell biologist, b. St. Paul, Minn. Ph.D. Stanford, 1974. He is a professor (since 1976) at the Univ. of California, Berkeley, and an investigator of the Howard...

Purkinje, Johannes Evangelista

(Encyclopedia)Purkinje, Johannes Evangelista yōhänˈəs āˌväng-gālĭsˈtä po͝orˈkĭnyā [key], 1787–1869, Czech physiologist. While professor (1823–50) at the Univ. of Breslau he pioneered in establish...

Stein, William Howard

(Encyclopedia)Stein, William Howard, 1911–80, American biochemist, b. New York City, Ph.D. Columbia, 1937. Stein was a professor at the Rockefeller Institute for Medical Research (now Rockefeller Univ.) from 1937...

Agre, Peter Courtland

(Encyclopedia)Agre, Peter Courtland, 1949–, American molecular biologist, b. Northfield, Minn., M.D. Johns Hopkins, 1974. From 1981 to 2005, Agre taught at Johns Hopkins in the departments of medicine and cell bi...

Wald, George

(Encyclopedia)Wald, George, 1906–97, American biochemist, b. New York City, Ph.D. Columbia, 1932. He spent most of his career on the faculty at Harvard. In 1967 Wald, Haldan K. Hartline, and Ragnar Granit receive...

liposome

(Encyclopedia)liposome līˈpəsōmˌ, lĭpˈə– [key], microscopic, fluid-filled pouch whose walls are made of layers of phospholipids identical to the phospholipids that make up cell membranes. Liposomes are us...

coelom

(Encyclopedia)coelom sēˈləm [key], fluid-filled body cavity, found in animals, which is lined by cells derived from mesoderm tissue in the embryo, and which provides for free, lubricated motion of the viscera. I...

geriatrics

(Encyclopedia)geriatrics jĕrēăˈtrĭks [key], the branch of medicine concerned with conditions and diseases of the aged. Many disabilities in old age are caused by or related to the deterioration of the circulat...

staphylococcus

(Encyclopedia)staphylococcus stăfˌələkŏkˈəs [key], any of the pathogenic bacteria, parasitic to humans, that belong to the genus Staphylococcus. The spherical bacterial cells (cocci) typically occur in irreg...