What is "blast"

Blast \Blast\ (bl[.a]st), n. [AS. bl[=ae]st a puff of wind, a blowing; akin to Icel. bl[=a]str, OHG. bl[=a]st, and fr. a verb akin to Icel. bl[=a]sa to blow, OHG. bl[^a]san, Goth. bl[=e]san (in comp.); all prob. from the same root as E. blow. See Blow to eject air.]

1. A violent gust of wind.

   And see where surly Winter passes off, Far to the north, and calls his ruffian blasts; His blasts obey, and quit the howling hill.
   --Thomson.

2. A forcible stream of air from an orifice, as from a bellows, the mouth, etc. Hence: The continuous blowing to which one charge of ore or metal is subjected in a furnace; as, to melt so many tons of iron at a blast.

   Note: The terms hot blast and cold blast are employed to designate whether the current is heated or not heated before entering the furnace. A blast furnace is said to be in blast while it is in operation, and out of blast when not in use.

3. The exhaust steam from and engine, driving a column of air out of a boiler chimney, and thus creating an intense draught through the fire; also, any draught produced by the blast.

4. The sound made by blowing a wind instrument; strictly, the sound produces at one breath.

   One blast upon his bugle horn Were worth a thousand men.
   --Sir W. Scott.

   The blast of triumph o'er thy grave.
   --Bryant.

5. A sudden, pernicious effect, as if by a noxious wind, especially on animals and plants; a blight.

   By the blast of God they perish.
   --Job iv. 9.

   Virtue preserved from fell destruction's blast.
   --Shak.

6. The act of rending, or attempting to rend, heavy masses of rock, earth, etc., by the explosion of gunpowder, dynamite, etc.; also, the charge used for this purpose. ``Large blasts are often used.''
   --Tomlinson.

7. A flatulent disease of sheep.

   Blast furnace, a furnace, usually a shaft furnace for smelting ores, into which air is forced by pressure.

   Blast hole, a hole in the bottom of a pump stock through which water enters.

   Blast nozzle, a fixed or variable orifice in the delivery end of a blast pipe; -- called also blast orifice.

   In full blast, in complete operation; in a state of great activity. See Blast, n., 2. [Colloq.]

Blast \Blast\, v. i.

1. To be blighted or withered; as, the bud blasted in the blossom.

2. To blow; to blow on a trumpet. [Obs.]

   Toke his blake trumpe faste And gan to puffen and to blaste.
   --Chaucer.

Blast \Blast\, v. t. [imp. & p. p. Blasted; p. pr. & vb. n. Blasting.]

1. To injure, as by a noxious wind; to cause to wither; to stop or check the growth of, and prevent from fruit-bearing, by some pernicious influence; to blight; to shrivel.

   Seven thin ears, and blasted with the east wind.
   --Gen. xii. 6.

2. Hence, to affect with some sudden violence, plague, calamity, or blighting influence, which destroys or causes to fail; to visit with a curse; to curse; to ruin; as, to blast pride, hopes, or character.

   I'll cross it, though it blast me.
   --Shak.

   Blasted with excess of light.
   --T. Gray.

3. To confound by a loud blast or din.

   Trumpeters, With brazen din blast you the city's ear.
   --Shak.

4. To rend open by any explosive agent, as gunpowder, dynamite, etc.; to shatter; as, to blast rocks.

Old English blæst "blowing, breeze, puff of wind," from Proto-Germanic *bles- (cognates: Old Norse blastr, Old High German blast "a blowing, blast," German blasen, Gothic blesan "to blow"), from PIE *bhle- "to blow," probably a variant of root *bhel- (2) "to blow, inflate, swell" (see bole).\n

\nMeaning "explosion" is from 1630s; that of "noisy party, good time" is from 1953, American English slang. Sense of "strong current of air for iron-smelting" (1690s) led to blast furnace and transferred sense in full blast "the extreme" (1839). Blast was the usual word for "a smoke of tobacco" c.1600.

Old English blæstan "to blow, belch forth," from the root of blast (n.). Since 16c., often "to breathe on balefully." Meaning "to blow up by explosion" is from 1758. Related: Blasted; blasting. Blast off (n.) is attested from 1950.

Etymology 1 interj. Blast it; damn it. n. 1 (senseid en violent gust of wind)A violent gust of wind. 2 A forcible stream of air from an orifice, as from a bellows, the mouth, etc. Hence: The continuous blowing to which one charge of ore or metal is subjected in a furnace; as, to melt so many tons of iron at a blast. 3 The exhaust steam from an engine, driving a column of air out of a boiler chimney, and thus creating an intense draught through the fire; also, any draught produced by the blast. 4 An explosion, especially for the purpose of destroying a mass of rock, etc. vb. 1 (context transitive English) To confound by a loud blast or din. 2 (context intransitive English) To make a loud noise. 3 (context transitive English) To shatter, as if by an explosion. 4 (context transitive English) To open up a hole in, usually by means of a sudden and imprecise method (such as an explosion). 5 (context transitive English) To curse; to damn. 6 (context transitive English) (context sci-fi English) To shoot, especially with an energy weapon (as opposed to one which fires projectiles). 7 (context soccer English) To shoot; kick the ball in hope of scoring a goal. Etymology 2

n. (context cytology English) An immature or undifferentiated cell (e.g., lymphoblast, myeloblast).

1. n. a long and hard-hit fly ball

2. a sudden very loud noise [syn: bang, clap, eruption, loud noise]

3. a strong current of air; "the tree was bent almost double by the gust" [syn: gust, blow]

4. an explosion (as of dynamite)

5. a highly pleasurable or exciting experience; "we had a good time at the party"; "celebrating after the game was a blast" [syn: good time]

6. intense adverse criticism; "Clinton directed his fire at the Republican Party"; "the government has come under attack"; "don't give me any flak" [syn: fire, attack, flak, flack]

1. v. make a strident sound; "She tended to blast when speaking into a microphone" [syn: blare]

2. hit hard; "He smashed a 3-run homer" [syn: smash, nail, boom]

3. use explosives on; "The enemy has been shelling us all day" [syn: shell]

In bioinformatics, BLAST for Basic Local Alignment Search Tool is an algorithm for comparing primary biological sequence information, such as the amino-acid sequences of different proteins or the nucleotides of DNA sequences. A BLAST search enables a researcher to compare a query sequence with a library or database of sequences, and identify library sequences that resemble the query sequence above a certain threshold.

Different types of BLASTs are available according to the query sequences. For example, following the discovery of a previously unknown gene in the mouse, a scientist will typically perform a BLAST search of the human genome to see if humans carry a similar gene; BLAST will identify sequences in the human genome that resemble the mouse gene based on similarity of sequence. The BLAST algorithm and program were designed by Stephen Altschul, Warren Gish, Webb Miller, Eugene Myers, and David J. Lipman at the National Institutes of Health and was published in the Journal of Molecular Biology in 1990 and cited over 50,000 times.

Blast was the short-lived literary magazine of the Vorticist movement in Britain. Two editions were published: the first on 2 July 1914 (dated 20 June 1914, but publication was delayed) and published with a bright pink cover, referred to by Ezra Pound as the "great MAGENTA cover'd opusculus"; and the second a year later on 15 July 1915. Both editions were written primarily by Wyndham Lewis. The magazine is emblematic of the modern art movement in England, and recognised as a seminal text of pre-war 20th-century modernism. The magazine originally cost 2/6.

Blast (stylized as BL'AST!) is a band formed in 1983 in Santa Cruz, California. After breaking up in 1991, they reunited in 2001 and again in 2013. To date, Blast has released three original studio albums (the latest being 1989's Take the Manic Ride), and they have gone through several line-up changes, leaving vocalist Clifford Dinsmore and guitarist Mike Neider as the only constant members.

The Balloon-borne Large Aperture Submillimeter Telescope (BLAST) is a submillimeter telescope that hangs from a high altitude balloon. It has a 2-meter primary mirror that directs light into bolometer arrays operating at 250, 350, and 500 µm. These arrays were developed for the SPIRE instrument on the Herschel Space Observatory. The project is carried out by a multi-university consortium headed by the University of Pennsylvania and which also includes University of Toronto, Brown University, the University of Miami, the University of British Columbia, JPL, INAOE, and Cardiff University. The third flight of BLAST in Antarctica was a scientific success, but much of telescope was destroyed after landing. It has been rebuilt for a flight from Antarctica in the 2010-11 austral summer. This most recent flight of BLAST (aka BLAST-Pol) has a polarimeter to observe the polarized light from star forming cores. The light is polarized due to magnetic fields. It is thought that the magnetic fields inhibit the collapse of the cores. The Herschel Space Observatory does not have a polarimeter.

BLAST's primary science goals are:

• Measure photometric redshifts, rest-frame FIR luminosities and star formation rates of high-redshift starburst galaxies, thereby constraining the evolutionary history of those galaxies that produce the FIR/submillimeter background.
• Measure cold pre-stellar sources associated with the earliest stages of star and planet formation.
• Make high-resolution maps of diffuse galactic emission over a wide range of galactic latitudes.

Filmmaker Paul Devlin made a documentary film titled BLAST! about the project. Paul is the brother of cosmologist Mark Devlin, Principal Investigator of the BLAST project.

Blast was a 2004 action comedy film directed by Anthony Hickox. It was written by Steven E. de Souza and starring Eddie Griffin, Vinnie Jones, Breckin Meyer, and Vivica A. Fox.

Blast: Proletarian Short Stories was a short-lived literary magazine, published in the Bronx from 1933 to 1934. The magazine was edited by Fred Miller, described by his friend William Carlos Williams as then being "out of employment: a tool designer living precariously over a garage in Brooklyn.

William Carlos Williams contributed five stories to Blast. Other contributors included Benjamin Appel, Ilya Ehrenburg and Len Zinberg.

BLAST (BLocked ASynchronous Transmission), like XMODEM, is a communications protocol designed for file transfer over asynchronous communication ports and dial-up modems that achieved some popularity during the 1980s. Reflecting its status as a de facto standard for such transfers, BLAST, along with XMODEM, was briefly under official consideration by ANSI in the mid-80s as part of that organization's ultimately futile attempt to establish a single de jure standard.

Blast is an album by the British musician Holly Johnson of Frankie Goes to Hollywood. It was released in 1989 and reached number 1 in the UK charts and sold over 300,000 copies making it platinum. The album stayed on the charts for 17 weeks. The album featured hits "Love Train", "Americanos", "Atomic City" and "Heavens Here". The album was re-released in November 2009 and again in November 2010.

As part of the early 2011 fan questions, Johnson marked "Love Will Come" and "Heaven's Here" as his favourite tracks from the album. The album's title Blast came from The Vorticists.

In a 2014 interview with The Arts Desk, Johnson spoke of his reaction to the success of Blast following the stressful nature of his court case with ZTT: "The week it got to No.1 I was very... vindicated. That was a transient moment of victory in retrospect. I'd been on the promotional trail, touring and on the endless European television shows that existed in those days, for years and years, since the beginning of '84. Towards the end of '89, with a couple of hit singles and a platinum-selling album. I started to get health worries that ultimately came to consume my life for quite a number of years."

Blast is a Moscow-based band formed in the late 1990s by Georgian singer/songwriter Nash Tavkhelidze.

He had previously spent a number of years in the US playing in different bands. The band was composed of Nash, Russian Alexandre "Khlap" Artchevski and Bulgarians Vlado Kostov and Valio Blagoev. At that time the Moscow club scene was booming and BLAST very quickly became the most popular indie band in the city. In 1998 band was picked up by the indie label " Apollo G Records" ( Manchester, UK). They released their first album "Pigs Can Fly" and followed this with a UK club tour in 2000. A few years later the band signed to Ghost Records UK and hit the studio recording the album F**K the industry with producer Graham Pilgrim. Ghost Records Musical Director Frank Perri and A&R manager Phillipe Palmer drew much attention to the Russian Rock Rebels and a place within the British music scene was forged. Regular tours of the UK and Europe have continued since that time.