What is "docking"

docking \docking\ n.

1. (Naut.) a act of securing an arriving vessel with ropes or anchors.

   Syn: mooring, tying up, dropping anchor.

2. (Astronautics) the coming together and joining of two space vehicles. The joining usually is accomplished by bringing special connecting devices, the docking ports, into contact, and fastening the ships together by clamping devices. The docking ports are often fitted so as to allow a passage to be opened between the two space vehciles, and thus to permit transfer of materials or personnel between them.

n. 1 The process of cut off or trimming the tail or ears of an animal. 2 The securing of a vessel to the quayside with cables 3 (spacecraft) The process of connecting one spacecraft to another. 4 (context colloquial LGBT English) The sex act involving two men co-joined by their penises, with overlapping foreskins, coupling them together by their penises. vb. (present participle of dock English)

n. the act of securing an arriving vessel with ropes [syn: moorage, tying up]

Docking is the removal of portions of an animal's tail. While docking and bobbing are more commonly used to refer to removal of the tail, the term cropping is used in reference to the ears. Tail docking occurs in one of two ways. The first involves constricting the blood supply to the tail with a rubber ligature for a few days until the tail falls off. The second involves the severance of the tail with surgical scissors or a scalpel. The length to which tails are docked varies by breed, and is often specified in the breed standard.

At least 170 dog breeds have naturally occurring bob tail lines. These appear similar to docked dogs but are a distinct naturally occurring phenotype.

In the field of molecular modeling, docking is a method which predicts the preferred orientation of one molecule to a second when bound to each other to form a stable complex. Knowledge of the preferred orientation in turn may be used to predict the strength of association or binding affinity between two molecules using, for example, scoring functions.

The associations between biologically relevant molecules such as proteins, nucleic acids, carbohydrates, and lipids play a central role in signal transduction. Furthermore, the relative orientation of the two interacting partners may affect the type of signal produced (e.g., agonism vs antagonism). Therefore, docking is useful for predicting both the strength and type of signal produced.

Molecular docking is one of the most frequently used methods in structure-based drug design, due to its ability to predict the binding-conformation of small molecule ligands to the appropriate target binding site. Characterisation of the binding behaviour plays an important role in rational design of drugs as well as to elucidate fundamental biochemical processes.

Docking may refer to:

Docking is the intentional removal of part of an animal's tail or, sometimes, ears. The term cropping is more commonly used in reference to the cropping of ears, while docking more commonly—but not exclusively—refers to the tail. The term tailing is also commonly used. The term arises because the living flesh of the tail, from which the animal's tail hairs grow, commonly is known as the dock.

Docking is a surname. Notable people with the surname include:

• Alan Docking, founder of Alan Docking Racing
• Alfred Docking (1860–1938), missionary in the United States
• George Docking (1904–1964), politician in the U.S. state of Kansas
• Jeffrey Docking (born 1961), president of Adrian College in Michigan
• Jonathan Docking (born 1964), Australian rugby league footballer
• Robert Docking (1925–1983), politician in the U.S. state of Kansas
• Trevor Docking (born 1952), Australian cricketer