Optimism Report

Glossary

Plain-language definitions of the technical terms in our reporting. Every entry is checked against a source, the same as every story.

Climate & Energy

  • Legal Amazon An administrative region of Brazil covering nine states and about 59 percent of the country, which is not the same thing as the Amazon rainforest.
  • PRODES Brazil's official satellite programme for measuring annual deforestation, whose reporting year runs from August to July rather than matching the calendar.
  • capacity factor The share of its maximum possible output a power plant actually delivers over a period, comparing electricity produced with what running at full power throughout would have produced.
  • installed capacity The maximum power a generator or a whole fleet could deliver at once if everything ran flat out, set by the equipment rather than by how much it actually runs.
  • ozone hole Not a gap with no ozone in it, but a region over Antarctica where ozone thins below a defined threshold each southern spring.
  • ozone-depleting substance The family of nearly 100 manufactured chemicals controlled by the Montreal Protocol because they destroy ozone in the stratosphere.
  • perovskite-on-silicon tandem cell A solar cell that stacks a perovskite layer on a silicon one so each captures a different part of the spectrum, beating the ceiling for any single layer.
  • solar cell efficiency The share of the sunlight falling on a solar cell that it converts into electricity, a figure with a hard theoretical ceiling for any single-layer cell.
  • terawatt hour A unit of energy equal to a trillion watt hours, used for the electricity a country or a continent generates over a period.

Health & Medicine

  • HPV Human papillomavirus, a very common sexually transmitted infection that usually clears by itself, but whose high-risk types cause almost all cervical cancer.
  • LDL cholesterol Low-density lipoprotein cholesterol, often called the harmful cholesterol, is the form that collects in artery walls; high levels raise the risk of heart attacks and strokes.
  • PCSK9 inhibitor A PCSK9 inhibitor is a medicine that blocks the PCSK9 protein so the liver can clear more LDL cholesterol from the blood, producing large drops in cholesterol levels.
  • accelerated approval A US licence granted on a measurement thought to predict a real benefit, rather than on the benefit itself, on condition that a later trial confirms it.
  • antimicrobial resistance When bacteria, viruses, fungi or parasites stop responding to the medicines meant to kill them, so infections that were once routine to treat become hard or impossible to cure.
  • boxed warning The warning the US Food and Drug Administration requires to be printed inside a box at the top of a drug label, reserved for risks that may lead to death or serious injury.
  • cataplexy A sudden episode of muscle weakness, usually triggered by strong emotion such as laughter, during which the person stays fully conscious throughout.
  • cohort A group who share a defining trait, often the year they were born or treated, and who are then followed together over time.
  • controlled substance schedule One of five US categories, set by the Drug Enforcement Administration, ranking a drug by its accepted medical use and its potential for abuse and dependence.
  • double reading The European standard for checking screening mammograms: two readers examine the same images independently, with a consensus discussion or a third opinion settling any disagreement.
  • elimination as a public health problem A formal WHO status meaning a disease has been pushed below an agreed threshold in a country, which is not the same as wiping it out.
  • evaluable In a clinical trial, a participant whose data could actually be assessed for the result being measured, often fewer than the number enrolled.
  • event-free survival The time after treatment ends that a patient stays free of the setbacks it was meant to prevent, such as the cancer returning or growing.
  • gene therapy A technique that treats or cures disease by modifying a person's genes, rather than by giving a drug that acts on the body's chemistry.
  • immunotherapy Treatment that uses substances to stimulate or suppress the immune system so that the body can fight cancer, infection and other diseases.
  • interval cancer A cancer diagnosed in the gap between one screening round and the next, after a screening test that did not detect it. Programmes count them to measure what the screen missed.
  • messenger RNA A single-stranded molecule that carries the instructions for building one protein from a cell's DNA to the machinery that assembles the protein.
  • neglected tropical disease A WHO category for a diverse group of diseases, caused by many different pathogens, that mainly affect the poorest communities.
  • non-inferiority A trial result showing that a new treatment is not materially worse than an existing one, measured against a margin fixed before the trial begins, rather than that it works better.
  • open-label trial A study in which both the patients and the people treating them know which drug or treatment is being given.
  • orexin A brain chemical, also called hypocretin, made by a small group of cells in the hypothalamus, that holds the body in a waking state and controls the timing of REM sleep.
  • pathological complete response No sign of cancer left in the tissue removed at surgery or biopsy after treatment, as judged by a pathologist under a microscope.
  • retina The light-sensitive layer of tissue at the back of the eye, which turns light into the electrical signals the brain reads as an image.
  • sensitivity For a medical test, the share of the people who genuinely have the disease that the test correctly identifies. No test reaches 100 percent, because some cases are always missed.
  • single-arm trial A trial in which everyone receives the treatment and there is no comparison group enrolled alongside them, so results are judged against outside data.
  • specificity For a medical test, the share of the people without the disease that the test correctly clears. No test reaches 100 percent, because some healthy people always test positive.
  • statin Statins are a widely used class of medicines that lower LDL cholesterol by slowing the liver's own production of it, cutting the risk of heart attacks and strokes.
  • vaccine efficacy The percentage by which a vaccine lowered the risk of disease in a clinical trial, measured against whatever the comparison group received.

Nature & Conservation

  • IUCN Red List The IUCN's ranked system for classifying how close a species is to global extinction, from Least Concern up to Extinct.
  • capture-recapture A method of estimating how many animals live in an area by identifying individuals, then seeing how often the same ones turn up again.
  • downlisting Moving a species to a lower-risk category on the IUCN Red List after a reassessment finds its extinction risk has genuinely fallen.
  • escapement The number of adult salmon that survive the fisheries and reach a river or hatchery to spawn, counted each year as the measure of a run's health.
  • overfished A formal status meaning a fish stock has fallen below a set population threshold. It does not mean too much fishing is happening now, which is called overfishing.
  • umbrella species A species whose protection shelters many others, because saving it means protecting the large habitat that all of them share.

Science & Discovery

  • CRISPR A technology that lets researchers change the DNA of a living organism at a chosen spot, adapted from a defence system found in bacteria.
  • fault-tolerant Describes a quantum computer that keeps computing correctly even though its parts keep making errors, because it detects and corrects them as it goes.
  • logical qubit A single unit of quantum information spread across many physical qubits, so that errors in any one of them can be spotted and fixed without losing the information.
  • megajoule A million joules, the joule being the standard unit of energy, used for the energy in a single burst such as a fusion shot.
  • neurotransmitter A chemical messenger that one nerve cell releases to carry a signal across the gap to the next cell, where it attaches to a receptor and changes what that cell does.
  • peer review The process of asking independent experts in the same field to assess a scientific manuscript before a journal publishes it.
  • physical qubit One real piece of quantum hardware, such as a single trapped ion or a superconducting circuit, holding one qubit of information and carrying its own error rate.
  • quantum error correction The method of spreading one unit of quantum information across many physical qubits and checking them repeatedly, so errors can be found and fixed while a computation runs.
  • qubit The basic unit of information in a quantum computer, able to hold a coherent blend of 0 and 1 at the same time rather than only one or the other.
  • reuptake The step in which a nerve cell pulls a chemical messenger it has just released back inside itself, ending the signal. Drugs that block it leave more of the messenger available.
  • target gain In fusion, the energy a reaction releases divided by the laser energy delivered to the fuel, which is a much narrower comparison than energy in versus energy out.

Society & Justice

  • Mine Ban Treaty The 1997 convention banning anti-personnel mines, which obliges countries to destroy stockpiles, clear mined areas to a deadline and report on progress.
  • anti-personnel mine A mine designed to go off when a person is near it or touches it, which is the specific weapon the Mine Ban Treaty prohibits.
  • child labour Work that is too young, too long or too dangerous for a child's age, as defined by international labour standards. Light chores and family help that harm neither health nor schooling fall outside it.
  • conditional cash transfer A payment made to poor households on condition that they take specified actions, usually keeping children in school and using basic health care.
  • cost of a healthy diet A United Nations measure of what it costs one person a day to buy the cheapest local foods that together meet dietary guidelines, rather than the price of a typical shop.
  • food insecurity Lacking regular access to enough safe and nutritious food for normal growth and development and an active, healthy life. It is measured by asking people about going without.
  • hazardous work Work likely to harm a child's health, safety or morals, by its nature or by the conditions it is done in. International standards prohibit it for everyone under 18.
  • purchasing power parity A currency conversion rate that equalises what money buys in different countries by stripping out differences in price levels, so costs and incomes can be compared fairly.
  • safe system approach A way of designing roads, vehicles and speed limits on the assumption that people will make mistakes, so that the forces in a crash stay within what a human body can survive.
  • undernourishment Consuming too little dietary energy to maintain a normal, active, healthy life. It is how the United Nations defines hunger when it counts how many people are hungry.
  • unexploded ordnance Ammunition that was fired, dropped or launched but failed to go off, which makes it a different hazard from a landmine that was deliberately laid.

Technology & Solutions

  • photovoltaic Turning light directly into electricity in a material, with no moving parts and no heat engine in between.
  • trapped-ion A way of building a quantum computer in which single electrically charged atoms are held in place by electromagnetic fields and used as qubits.