Crossword clues for granule
Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English
The Collaborative International Dictionary
Granule \Gran"ule\ (gr[a^]n"[-u]l), n. [L. granulum, dim. of granum grain: cf. F. granule. See Grain a kernel.] A little grain; a small particle; a pellet.
Douglas Harper's Etymology Dictionary
1650s, from French granule or directly from Late Latin granulum "small grain," diminutive of Latin granum "grain" (see corn (n.1)).
Wiktionary
n. 1 A tiny grain, a small particle. 2 (context biology English) A small structure in a cell. 3 (context geology English) A particle from 2 to 4 mm in diameter, following the Wentworth scale 4 (context astronomy English) a small mark in the photosphere of the sun caused by convection currents. See also Wikipedia:Granule (solar physics).
WordNet
n. a tiny grain
Wikipedia
In cell biology, a granule is a small particle. It can be any structure barely visible by light microscopy. The term is most often used to describe a secretory vesicle.
Granules on the photosphere of the Sun are caused by convection currents ( thermal columns, Bénard cells) of plasma within the Sun's convective zone. The grainy appearance of the solar photosphere is produced by the tops of these convective cells and is called granulation.
The rising part of the granules is located in the center where the plasma is hotter. The outer edge of the granules is darker due to the cooler descending plasma. (The terms darker and cooler are strictly by comparison to the brighter, hotter plasma.) In addition to the visible appearance, which would be explained by convective motion, Doppler shift measurements of the light from individual granules provides evidence for the convective nature of the granules.
A typical granule has a diameter on the order of 1,500 kilometers and lasts 8 to 20 minutes before dissipating. At any one time, the Sun's surface is covered by about 4 million granules. Below the photosphere is a layer of " supergranules" up to 30,000 kilometers in diameter with lifespans of up to 24 hours.
[[ poster.svg|thumb|left|320px|Granules in the context of the Sun's structure
valign=top | Granules
Sunspot
Photosphere
Chromosphere
valign=top | Convection zone
Radiation zone
Tachocline
Solar core
valign=top | Corona
Flare
Prominence
Solar wind
]]
A granule is a clast of rock with a particle size of 2 to 4 millimetres based on the Krumbein phi scale of sedimentology. Granules are generally considered to be larger than sand (0.0625 to 2 millimetres diameter) and smaller than pebbles (4 to 64 millimetres diameter). A rock made predominantly of granules is termed a conglomerate.
A granule is a large particle or grain. It can also be
- Granule (solar physics), visible structures in the photosphere of the Sun arising from activity in the Sun's convective zone
- Granule (cell biology), any of several submicroscopic structures, some with explicable origins, others noted only as cell type-specific features of unknown function
- Azurophil granule, a structure characteristic of the azurophil eukarytotic cell type
- Chromaffin granule, a structure characteristic of the chromophil eukaryotic cell type
- Martian spherules, spherical granules of material found on the surface of the planet Mars
- Granule (geology), a specified particle size of 2–4 millimetres (-1–-2 on the φ scale)
- Granule, in pharmaceutical terms, small particles gathered into a larger, permanent aggregate in which the original particles can still be identified
- Granule (Oracle DBMS), a unit of contiguously allocated virtual memory
In computing, a granule is a unit of contiguous (adjacent/bordering) virtual memory allocated to a process.
In the Oracle DBMS, the Oracle server allocates the system global area (SGA) in granule units at the time of instance startup. During the startup, each component acquires as many granules as it requires. The SGA can be said to consist of linked granules.
The granule size depends on the database version and sometimes on the operating system. In Oracle 9i and earlier, it is 4 MB if the SGA size is less than 128 MB, and 16 MB otherwise. For later releases, it is typically 4 MB if the SGA size is less than 1 GB, and 16 MB otherwise. There must be at least 3 granules in the SGA: one for the Database Buffer Cache, one for the Shared Pool Area and one for the Redo Log Buffer.
It is possible to retrieve information about the current granule size at any time by querying the dynamic view V$SGAINFO.
Usage examples of "granule".
She dipped into the little bag of dustlike granules she had found in his laboratory, and softly blew on her fingertips, sending the dust to settle over him in a powdery cloud.
I took my digging knife and chipped a piece from the block with reckless haste, dropped it into my mortar, and smashed it into granules with a few quick jabs of the pestle.
The change in character of the lochial discharge is due to the quantity of blood decreasing and its place being taken by fatty granules and leucocytes.
It was over a hundred times more likely that the equally charged diplodeviant sperm would lash its frenetic way through the zona pellucida and neutralize the inhibiting effect of the cortical granules.
Remo got behind the wheel, everything was fine except for the fact that the steering wheel was on the wrong side, and the wind blew back saltlike granules of shatterproof glass off the hood and into his face as he drove.
It seems at present necessary to abandon the original idea of Schwann, that we can observe the building up of a cell from the simple granules of a blastema, or formative fluid.
These terminal cells or glands contain granules and often globules of granular matter.
After the granules of protoplasm have been thus attracted, the layer of flowing protoplasm can no longer be distinguished, though a current of limpid fluid still flows round the walls.
And this change in the glands, whether excited directly, or indirectly by a stimulus received from other glands, is transmitted from cell to cell, causing granules of protoplasm either to be actually generated in the previously limpid fluid or to coalesce and thus to become visible.
I may here add that thin slices of the stem of the Euphorbia were placed in the same solution, and the cells which were green instantly became cloudy, whilst others which were before colourless were clouded with brown, owing to the formation of numerous granules of this tint.
Many of the points on the infolded rims also had their lining of protoplasm similarly shrunk, and contained spherical granules of hyaline matter.
Some of the quadrifids included a few spherical granules, but several were transparent and empty, and their positions were marked.
The cells of the glands contain bright pink fluid, charged with granules or with globular masses of pinkish pulpy matter.
The first change which could be observed is a cloudy appearance in the fluid, due to the formation of very fine granules, which afterwards aggregate into larger masses.
In the third bladder, the quadrifids included distinctly visible granules, and the primordial utricle was a little shrunk after only 8 hrs.