Computing Concepts for Biomedicine and Health Chapter 3

Vocabulary flashcards covering core terms and definitions from the lecture notes on computing concepts for biomedicine and health.

Computer

An electronic device that processes data according to instructions; includes mainframes, servers, PCs, tablets, smartphones, and wearables.

Mainframe

Largest, most powerful computers used for mission-critical needs with many users.

Supercomputer

Extremely powerful computer designed for massive processing and computation.

Server

Computer that serves resources or services to other computers/users; can be any device from a PC to a mainframe.

Server farm

A large collection of servers used to provide scalable computing resources, common in cloud computing.

Desktop PC

Desktop personal computer; typically Windows/Intel (Wintel) or Apple Macintosh; commoditized in power.

Tablet computer

Portable computer with a touchscreen; examples include iPad, Android tablets, Microsoft Surface.

Smartphone

Hand-held computer with high portability, connected to cell networks or Wi‑Fi; main platforms are iOS and Android.

Wearable computer

Wearable devices such as fitness trackers and smartwatches with sensors for monitoring.

mHealth

Use of mobile devices and apps for health interventions and healthcare delivery.

BYOD

Bring Your Own Device; policy allowing personal devices for work or health use, with security considerations.

Moore’s Law

Observation that computing power, speed, size, and cost per unit of power tend to double roughly every ~18 months.

FLOPS

Floating point operations per second; standard measure of computer speed.

Unicode

Universal character encoding capable of representing most of the world’s writing systems; includes encodings like UTF‑8/16/32.

UTF-8

Unicode encoding using 8‑bit units; variable length, ASCII-compatible.

UTF-16

Unicode encoding using 16‑bit units; used in some systems for efficient storage.

UTF-32

Unicode encoding using 32‑bit units; fixed length per character.

ASCII

7‑bit character encoding for alphanumeric characters; 128 characters; extended to 8 bits in many systems.

Bit

The most basic unit of digital data, having a value of 0 or 1.

Byte

A group of 8 bits; a basic unit that can represent 256 values.

Kilobyte (KB)

10^3 bytes (1000 bytes) as a decimal unit (historically sometimes 1024 bytes in binary).

Kibibyte (KiB)

1024 bytes; binary prefix for computer memory.

Megabyte (MB)

10^6 bytes (1,000,000 bytes) in decimal; used for larger data sizes.

Mebibyte (MiB)

1,048,576 bytes (1024 KiB) in binary terms.

Gigabyte (GB)

10^9 bytes (1,000,000,000 bytes) in decimal.

Gibibyte (GiB)

1,073,741,824 bytes (1024 MiB) in binary terms.

Terabyte (TB)

10^12 bytes (1,000,000,000,000 bytes) in decimal.

Petabyte (PB)

10^15 bytes (1,000,000,000,000,000 bytes).

DIKW

Data → Information → Knowledge → Wisdom; data are raw facts, information is organized data, knowledge is learned insights, wisdom is applying knowledge.

Digital

Relating to discrete values (0/1) rather than continuous analog signals; all modern computers are digital.

Analog

Continuously variable signals as opposed to discrete digital values.

Pixel

A picture element; the smallest addressable unit in a digital image; color depth affects how many bits per pixel.

Megapixel

One million pixels in an image.

RAM

Random Access Memory; volatile, fast memory used for active data and programs; loses state when power is off.

Flash memory

Non-volatile memory that retains data without power; used in SSDs and USB drives.

Auxiliary storage

Secondary storage used for data not in active use; includes magnetic disks, tapes, optical media, etc.

Keyboard

Primary input device for typing characters and commands.

Mouse

Input device for pointing and interacting with the graphical user interface; trackpad as laptop alternative.

Monitor

Output display device; resolution and color depth affect readability and detail.

DPI

Dots per inch; a measure of display or print resolution.

Printer

Output device that produces hard copies of digital content.

OS (Operating System)

Software that manages hardware resources and provides services to applications (e.g., Windows, macOS, Linux).

API

Application Programming Interface; set of rules for software components to communicate; enables interaction between programs.

REST

Representational State Transfer; architectural style for stateless web services and APIs.

XML

eXtensible Markup Language; data representation format that is platform-neutral and human-readable.

JSON

JavaScript Object Notation; lightweight data-interchange format used widely in web services and APIs.

HTML

HyperText Markup Language; standard markup language for describing web page structure and content.

HTTP

HyperText Transfer Protocol; protocol used for communication between web clients and servers.

URL

Uniform Resource Locator; address of a resource on the Web, e.g., scheme://host/[path].

DNS

Domain Name System; translates domain names to IP addresses and maps names to locations on the Internet.