Technology Glossary

Term	Definition	Link
Application Programming Interface (API)	specification intended to be used as an interface by software components to communicate with each other	http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Application_programming_interface
Bioinformatics	branch of biological science which deals with the study of methods for storing, retrieving and analyzing biological data, such as nucleic acid (DNA/RNA) and protein sequence, structure, function, pathways and genetic interactions	http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bioinformatics
Cyberinfrastructure	research environments that support advanced data acquisition, data storage, data management, data integration, data mining, data visualization and other computing and information processing services distributed over the Internet beyond the scope of a single institution	http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cyberinfrastructure
Data Migration	process of transferring data between storage types, formats, or computer systems	http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Data_migration
Dataset	collection of data, usually presented in tabular form	http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Data_set
Descriptive Metadata	individual instances of application data, the data content	http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metadata
Electron Micrograph	micrograph prepared using an electron microscope
Georeference	to define something's existence in physical space	http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Georeference
Geovisualization	a set of tools and techniques supporting geospatial data analysis through the use of interactive visualization	http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geovisualization
Hack-a-thon	event in which computer programmers and others in the field of software development, like graphic designers, interface designers and project managers, collaborate intensively on software projects	http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hackathon
Key-stroking	the action of tracking (or logging) the keys struck on a keyboard	http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Keystroke_logging
Metadata		http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metadata
Micrograph	a photograph or digital image taken through a microscope or similar device to show a magnified image of an item	http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Micrograph#Electron_micrograph
Natural Language Processing (NLP)	a field of computer science, artificial intelligence, and linguistics concerned with the interactions between computers and human (natural) languages	http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Natural_language_processing
Optical Character Rrecognition (OCR)	the mechanical or electronic conversion of scanned images of handwritten, typewritten or printed text into machine-encoded text	http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Optical_character_recognition
Ontology	formally represents knowledge as a set of concepts within a domain, and the relationships among those concepts	http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ontology_(information_science)
Portal	A Web portal or public portal refers to a Web site or service that offers a broad array of resources and services, such as e-mail, forums, search engines, and online shopping malls.
Remote Annotations
Structural Metadata	design and specification of data structures	http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metadata
Virtualization	the creation of a virtual (rather than actual) version of something	http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Virtualization