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In a recent article in the ARCHIVES about language and logic, Melski1 cites the following lines by Lewis Carroll as an introduction: "When I use a word . . . it means just what I choose it to mean—neither more nor less." Though this should not be the case in scientific language, it seems to happen even to Melski, who certainly means "tick sting" when he writes "tick bite." Ticks have no jaws or pincers with which to bite; rather, they have highly specialized tools to sting and suck blood. Medicine (dermatology in particular) abounds with evidently wrong or even nonsense terms that have evolved throughout the history of science. However, when a new method is developed in our century of science, it should be termed correctly.
Luminescence is a physical phenomenon defined by emission of light when a substance or compound takes up any kind of energy. When a chemical reaction leads to emission of light it is called chemiluminescence; this is responsible for the light emitted by glowworms. This type of reaction is also used for highly sensitive biochemical tests. When a substance takes up energy and emits light for a longer time than the time it took to absorb the light, it exhibits phosphorescence. When a substance emits light immediately upon uptake of energy (in most cases by irradiation with a shorter-wavelength light) it exhibits fluorescence. However, when incident light is used for visualization of a surface or of subsurface structures, this is neither luminescence nor epiluminescence2 but epi-illumination. Incident UV light is used for high-quality fluorescence microscopy, but the type of visible light used for dermoscopy does not elicit any visible luminescence (a collective term for fluorescence and phosphorescence). Even though some dermatologists may think it makes no difference,3 I strongly believe in the advantage of using a correct term if it is available. This dermatologic procedure should therefore be called what it is: surface microscopy,4 incident light microscopy,5 epi-illumination microscopy, or derm(at)oscopy.6
Country-Specific Mortality and Growth Failure in Infancy and Yound Children and Association With Material Stature
Use interactive graphics and maps to view and sort country-specific infant and early dhildhood mortality and growth failure data and their association with maternal
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