The English term “earworm”: a literal translation of the composed German noun “Ohrwurm”

The compositum earworm is a literal translation of the German word Ohrwurm, referring to a musical form or phrase that hooks the mind and keeps playing over and over again. Oliver Sacks in his book “Musicophilia” makes the comparison with earwig insects that bore their way into the ear or mind of the listener. Though, he argues, one might be inclined to call them “brainworms,” since the brain is the organ where those catchy tunes finally stick.

My German-French dictionary tells me that the French term for naming the insect is perce-oreille. And by browsing apt French-language web pages, I am going to conclude that the word perce-oreille also has the alternate meaning of possession-taking jingle. How do earworms do in your mother tongue?

Reference
Oliver Sacks: Brainworms, Sticky Music, and Catchy Tunes. Chapter 5 in Musicophilia • Tales of Music and the Brain. First Vintage Books Edition, Random House, Inc., New York, September 2008.

D. L. Bliss State Park at Lake Tahoe in California named after Duane L. Bliss

Duane L. Bliss was a pioneering lumberman, railroad owner, and banker of the Lake Tahoe area. Born in 1833 in Massachusetts, he came to California during the gold rush and ended up in Gold Hill south of Virginia City, Nevada, in 1860 to mine for silver. Then, investing in timber land at Lake Tahoe, he became a successful businessmen in Nevada. He invested in the construction of the Lake Tahoe Railroad, which carried lumber from Glenbrook to a flume station at Spooner Summit. He invested in another rail line to take tourists from Truckee, California, to Lake Tahoe. Further, he commissioned the construction of a steamboat to carry tourists across the lake. He died in 1907, but his family lived on and donated 744 acres of precious land at the lake to the State Park system in 1929, which travelers now can enjoy as D. L. Bliss State Park, where hiking, biking, swimming, and camping belong the most favorite summer activities. Rubicon's Point's Lighthouse and the Balancing Rock Nature Trail are easily accessible from various locations inside the park.

Antinomy versus antimony

Antinomy and antimony are two words that very much look the same in print and also sound very similar, but their meanings differ widely. The abstract noun antinomy derives from the Latin prefix anti, meaning against or contra, and the Greek noun nomos, meaning law. The term antinomy is typically used to express the contradiction between two statements that nevertheless both appear reasonable or true. Philosophers like Plato, Aristotle, Zeno and Kant included antinomy-based arguments in their thinking and metaphysical explanation of the world [1].

Less abstract, antimony is the name of the chemical element with atomic number 51 and symbol Sb. This name derives from Greek anti - monos, meaning not - alone: a metal not found alone [2,3]. Alchemists used the term antimonium [4]. The Latin name is stibium, from which the atomic symbol has been derived.

References
[1] N. I. Kondakow, E. Albrecht and G. Asser: Wörterbuch der Logik. 2. neubearbeitete Auflage, VEB Bibliographisches Institut Leipzig, German Democratic Republic, 1983; pp. 33-34.
[2] D. R. Lide (Editor-in-Chief): CRC Handbook of Chemistry and Physics. 88th Edition, CRC Press, Boca Raton, Florida, 2007-2008; page 4-4.
[3] Etymology of the Elements at www.innvista.com/science/chemistry/elements/etymolo.htm.
[4] Antimony at www.etymonline.com/index.php?term=antimony.

Acronym in pharmaceutical chemistry: LTG for lamotrigine

The acronym LTG denotes the anticonvulsant drug lamotrigine, a chemical compound with the IUPAC name 6-(2,3-dichlorophenyl)-1,2,4-triazine-3,5-diamine. It is marketed by GlaxoSmithKline under the brand name Lamictal. The molecular formula is C₉H₇Cl₂N₅ [1]. The CAS registry number is 84057-84-1.

LTG was approved for marketing in the USA in 1994. Typically classified as an antiepileptic drug, it was in 2003 also approved by the FDA for treatment of patients with bipolar disorder. A very interesting case history is that of a woman with intractable temporal lobe seizures with a right temporal lobe focus. Her seizures were eventually brought under control by treatment with LTG and—surprisingly—her former indifference to music changed abruptly: listening to classical music became a pleasant and emotion-charged experience for her [2].

References
[1] Lamotrigine: The Merck Index, Eleventh Edition, Merck & Co., Inc., Rahway, N. J., USA, 1989; entry 5228 on page 844 with further references.
[2] Oliver Sacks: Musicophilia • Tales of Music and the Brain. First Vintage Books Edition, Random House, Inc., New York, September 2008; pp. 10-11.

Acronym in open source technology and publishing: OCW for OpenCourseWare

OCW is short for OpenCourseWare, a term expressing academic content that has been used in teaching and made available by open access via the World Wide Web. Such freely available course materials support virtual learning—educating anyone with Internet access anywhere in the world depending on his or her interest and current level of knowledge. The Massachusetts Institue of Technology (MIT) provides a large collection of OCW, available at http://ocw.mit.edu. Partner organizations have translated many courses in five other languages [1]. The MIT OCW also includes audio/video courses.

MIT was instrumental in establishing the OCW Consortium and guiding early collaboration efforts as an informal alliance. The Consortium (http://ocwconsortium.org) became independent in 2009 . OCW content is published under a Creative Commons V3.0 license (www.creativecommons.org). Creative Commons launched the Science Commons in 2005 to achieve for science what already had bee achieved for culture, art, and educational material: “to ease unnecessary legal and technical barriers to sharing, to promote innovation, to provide easy, high quality tools that let individuals and organizations specify the terms under which they wished to share their material.” [2]

Keywords: virtual education, public lectures, teaching globally, open source, licensing

References
[1] C. d'Oliveira, S. Carson, K. James, L. Lazarus: MIT OpenCourseWare: Unlocking Knowledge, Empowering Minds. Science 30. July 2010, 329 (5991), pp. 525-526.
DOI: 10.1126/science.11826962.
[2] J. Wilbanks and J. Boyle: Introduction to Science Commons. August 3, 2006. Available as PDF file at http://sciencecommons.org/about/.

Acronym in chemistry: DMSP for dimethylsulfoniopropionate

Dimethylsulfoniopropionate is a zwitterionic compound. Its IUPAC name is (dimethylsulfaniumyl)propanoate. For either name, the abbreviation DMSP works. DMSP has the molecular formula C₅H₁₀O₂S. Its CAS registry number is 7314-30-9.

DMSP is a naturally produced chemical compound, occurring as a metabolite in both terrestrial and aquatic species. It has been detected, for example, in seaweed and phytoplankton. The role of DMSP in the chemical ecology of marine planktonic microbes is largely unknown, but a recent study found chemoattraction toward experimental microscale pulses of DMSP among several motile strains of phytoplankton, heterotrophic bacteria, and bacterivore and herbivore microzooplankton [1].

Keywords: organic chemistry, biochemistry, marine ecology, chemoattraction, zwitterionic molecule

Selected literature
[1] J. R. Seymour, R. Simó, T. Ahmed and R. Stocker: Chemoattraction to Dimethylsulfoniopropionate Throughout the Marine Microbial Food Web. Science 16. July 2010, 329 (5989), pp. 342-345. DOI: 10.1126/science.1188418.
[2] J. L. DeBose, S. C. Lema and G. A. Nevitt: Dimethylsulfoniopropionate as a Foraging Cue for Reef Fishes. Science 7. March 2008, 319 (5868), p. 1356.
DOI: 10.1126/science.1151109.
[3] M. Vila-Costa, R. Simó, H. Harada, J. M. Gasol, D. Slezak and R. P. Kiene: Dimethylsulfoniopropionate Uptake by Marine Phytoplankton. Science 27. October 2006, 314 (5799), pp. 652-654. DOI: 10.1126/science.1131043.

Acronym in imaging technology: UEM for ultrafast electron microscopy

In nanoscience, UEM stands for ultrafast electron microscopy. This technology is applicable to studies in materials science, mineralogy, nanotechnology and biology by providing real-space images, diffraction patterns and energy spectra at the nanoscale. Short nanomovies, demonstrating the nanoscopic imaging capability of UEM, can be viewed online at ScientificAmerican.com/aug2010/nanomovies.

Selected References
[1] Ultrafast Science & Technology: Ultrafast Electron Microscopy.
[2] Casey Johnston: Taking videos with ultrafast electron microscopy.
[3] Ahmed H. Zewail: Filming the invisible in 4-D. Sci. Am. August 2010, 303 (2), pp. 74-81.
[4] V. A. Lobastov, J. Weissenrieder, J. Tang and A. H. Zewail: Ultrafast Electron Microscopy (UEM): Four-Dimensional Imaging and Diffraction of Nanostructures during Phase Transition. Nano Lett. 2007, 7 (9), pp. 2552-2558.
DOI: 10.1021/nl071341e.
[5] V. A. Lobastov, R. Srinivasa and A. H. Zewail: Four-dimensional ultrafast electron microscopy. PNAS May 2005, 102 (20), pp. 7069-7073. DOI: 10.1073/pnas.0502607102.

English-German dictionary of ebb-and-flow terms

The following dictionary lexicographically lists English terms related to the moving tides and provides the corresponding terms typically used in the German literature:

amphidromy: Amphidromie, f.; also: Drehtidenerscheinung, f.
ebb and flow: Ebbe und Flut or Gezeiten
ebb-tide: Ebbe, f.; also: Niedrigwasser, n.
flood-tide: Flut, f.; also: Hochwasser, n.
high tide: Flut, f.; also: Hochwasser, n.
low tide: Ebbe, f.; also: Niedrigwasser, n.
neap-tide: Nippflut, f.
spring-tide: Springflut, f.
tidal current: Gezeitenstrom, m.
tidal height: Tidenhub, m.
tides: Gezeiten, f. pl.; also: Ebbe und Flut
tide table: Gezeitentafel, f.
(Used abbreviations: m. = masculine, f. = feminine, n. = neutral, pl. = plural)

To learn the German ebb and flow terms in scientific context, the book by Wolfgang Glebe with the title Ebbe und Flut [1] provides a nicely illustrated lecture, which also explains the phenomena of the tides based on physical and geographical facts and observations. In English, I like the chapter entitled The Moving Tides by Rachel Carson in her book The Sea Around Us [2]. This chapter is an excellent narrative of tidal phenomena that certainly will move your mind.

Keywords: oceanography, coastal geography, linguistics, terminolgy, translation

Note: A German-English dictionary is also available.

References
[1] Wolfgang Glebe: Ebbe und Flut. Das Naturphänomen der Gezeiten einfach erklärt. Delius Klasing Verlag, Bielefeld, 1. Auflage 2010.
[2] Rachel L. Carson: The Sea Around Us. Oxford University Press, New York, 1991 (first issued as paperback; originally published in 1950).

German-English dictionary of ebb-and-flow terms

The following dictionary lexicographically lists German terms related to the moving tides and provides the corresponding terms typically used in the English literature:

Amphidromie, f.: amphidromy
Ebbe, f.: ebb-tide or low tide
Flut, f.: flood-tide or high tide
Gezeiten, f. pl.: tide(s)
Gezeitenstrom, m.: tidal current
Gezeitentafel, f.: tide table
Nippflut, f.: neap-tide
Springflut, f.: spring-tide
Tide, f.: tide
Tiden, f. pl.: tides or ebb and flow
Tidenhub, m.: tidal height
(Used abbreviations: m. = masculine, f. = feminine, pl. = plural)

The composed nouns Niedrigwasser (“low water”) and Hochwasser (“high water”) are synonyms for the German words Ebbe and Flut. The German phrases ablaufendes Wasser and auflaufendes Wasser refer to the outgoing and incoming tide, respectively.

To learn the German ebb and flow terms in scientific context, the book by Wolfgang Glebe with the title Ebbe und Flut [1] provides a nicely illustrated lecture, which also explains the phenomena of the tides based on physical and geographical facts and observations. In English, I like the chapter entitled The Moving Tides by Rachel Carson in her book The Sea Around Us [2]. This chapter is an excellent narrative of tidal phenomena that certainly will move your mind.

Keywords: oceanography, coastal geography, linguistics, terminolgy, translation

References
[1] Wolfgang Glebe: Ebbe und Flut. Das Naturphänomen der Gezeiten einfach erklärt. Delius Klasing Verlag, Bielefeld, 1. Auflage 2010.
[2] Rachel L. Carson: The Sea Around Us. Oxford University Press, New York, 1991 (first issued as paperback; originally published in 1950).