Glossary
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| Term | Definition |
|---|---|
| Pandemic | A pandemic cuts across international boundaries, as opposed to regional epidemics. This wide geographical reach is what makes pandemics lead to large-scale social disruption, economic loss, and general hardship. Vaccines |
| Paper Mills | Paper mills are organized commercial enterprises that mass-produce fake academic manuscripts and sell authorship slots, driving industrial-scale scientific fraud. Public Trust |
| Paradigm | A paradigm is a standard framework, set of beliefs, or overarching model that guides how we understand, interpret, or approach the world. It establishes the fundamental assumptions and boundaries of how we think about a specific discipline or situation. Science General |
| Paradigm shift | A fundamental change in the basic concepts and practices of a scientific field, such as the move from an Earth-centered to a Sun-centered model of the solar system. Science General |
| Parameter | A factor we measure. A climate parameter can be the amount of rainfall, maximum or average temperature, length of drought periods, and so on. Science General |
| Parameters | The internal values, mainly weights, that a model learns during training. Large language models can have billions or trillions of parameters. Artificial Intelligence |
| Paris Agreement | The 2015 international treaty aiming to limit global warming to well below 2 degrees C above pre-industrial levels, and to pursue efforts to limit it to 1.5 degrees C. Climate Change |
| Participatory research | A collaborative approach that equitably involves community members, stakeholders, or end-users in the entire research process - from design to action. Ethical Concerns |
| Parts per million (ppm) | A unit used to measure the concentration of gases in the atmosphere. Atmospheric carbon dioxide has risen from about 280 ppm before the Industrial Revolution to more than 420 ppm today. Climate Change |
| Passive Immunity | Protection against disease through antibodies produced by another human being or animal. Passive immunity is effective, but protection is generally limited and diminishes over time (usually a few weeks or months). For example, maternal antibodies are passed to the infant prior to birth and protect the baby for the first 4-6 months of life. Vaccines |