Entries - B

B (byte)

Doesn't need spelling out for the CERN Courier

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Courier

B decay, B factory, B hadron, B physics

Use in the CERN Courier 

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Courier

back up (verb), back-up (adj. and noun)

style, translation

bail-out (noun), bail out (verb)

style, translation

balance of payments (noun), balance-of-payments (adj.)

style, translation

balance sheet (noun), balance-sheet (adj.)

style, translation

bandwidth

style, translation

barn

Symbol b.

A unit of area. A barn is 10−28 m2 (100 fm2), about the cross-sectional area of a uranium nucleus.

A barn expresses the cross-section of any scattering process, which relates to the probability of interaction between small particles.

Sample size at CERN is often expressed in femtobarns and luminosity is expressed in inverse femtobarns.

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physics, style

bars

mbar = millibar, BaBar = keep as it is!, Kbar = a bar above the ‘K’, bbbar = a bar above the 2nd ‘b’

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Courier

baryon

Adjective: baryonic

A subatomic particle, such as a nucleon or hyperon, that has a mass equal to or greater than that of a proton.

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physics

BASE

Baryon Antibaryon Symmetry Experiment

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abbreviations, acronyms, translation

baseline

translation

beam line

Two words, except in the title of CERN's competition for high-school students, Beamline for Schools (BL4S) – capital "B" and capital "S".

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grammar, spelling

beam pipe

Two words. See beam line

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style

beam-spin asymmetry

use hyphen

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Courier

behaviour

translation

Belle

An experiment conducted at the High Energy Accelerator Research Organization (KEK) in Japan from 1999 to 2010.

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Courier

benchmark

translation

biannual

twice a year

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translation

biennial

every second year

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translation

Big Bang

initial capital letters

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physics, style

bilateral

translation

billion

Means a thousand million, 109

See trillion

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physics, style

bimonthly

translation

bio

The prefix bio takes no hyphen. So,

bioethics

biomedicine

biomedical

 

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style

bits per second

bit/s, kbit/s, Mbit/s, Gbit/s

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Courier, translation

black hole

translation

BNL

Brookhaven National Laboratory

Spell out in first use then use acronym for the CERN Courier

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abbreviations, acronyms, Courier

boilerplate text

See footnotes

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style

bona fide

no italics

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translation

book-keeping (adj. and noun)

use hyphen

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translation

boson

A subatomic particle, such as a photon, which has zero or integral spin and follows a statistical description given by SN Bose and Einstein.

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physics

bottleneck

translation

brackets ( ) [ ]

Follow OD's advice on brackets, copied here below:

There are two main types of brackets.

Round brackets

Round brackets (also called parentheses) are mainly used to separate off information that isn’t essential to the meaning of the rest of the sentence. If you removed the bracketed material the sentence would still make perfectly good sense. For example: 

Mount Everest (8848 metres) is the highest mountain in the world.

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grammar, punctuation

brand new

not "brand-new"

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translation

break-up (noun), break up (verb)

translation

breakdown (noun), break down (verb)

translation

breakthrough (noun), break through (verb)

translation

broadband

translation

Brout-Englert-Higgs (BEH) mechanism

Not "Higgs mechanism" or "Higgs-Brout-Englert" mechanism. 

See Higgs boson

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abbreviations, acronyms, style

budget, budgeted

but capitalise CERN Budget

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translation

build-up (noun), build up (verb)

translation

bureau, bureaux (pl.)

translation

busbar

Courier

by-product

use hyphen

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translation

bypass (noun and verb)

translation

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