Blind Shear Ram: Underwater oil wells house enormous structures called blowout preventers. Located within the blowout preventer is the blind shear ram, which cuts the drill pipe and seals the well during emergencies— the last line of defense against a spill. In the Gulf of Mexico disaster, the blind shear ram failed to close properly.

Cloud Vendors: These business reps aren’t peddling thunderclouds. They’re renting and selling services over computer “clouds,” which supply shared resources, software, and information over the Internet to desktops. Execs from major cloud vendors Microsoft, Google, and Amazon.com made headlines this fall when they urged Congress to support giving legal protection to information stored on clouds (similar to the protection now afforded to info on PCs).

Rouge Protein: Not a trendy vegetarian dish, instead it’s an errant protein produced by a genetic DNA mutation that can disrupt normal growth and result in conditions such as achondroplasia, a common form of dwarfism.