Sb

Stibium. Latin name of the chemical element antimony. Sb is the official systematic chemical symbol for antimony, and in fact the only common one.

The Roberts & Etherington Dictionary of Descriptive Terminology for Bookbinding and the Conservation of Books claims that antimony is black in its amorphous form, and has been used in this form since the late seventeenth century to blacken the edges of book pages. Trust me, no elemental metal is widely available in amorphous form. It's finely divided (powder in suspension), and most metals look black if divided finely enough.

The atomic number of antimony is 51. Learn more at its entry in WebElements and its entry at Chemicool.

SB

Sammelbuch. Full title Sammelbuch griechischer Urkunden aus Ägypten. `Collection of Greek documents from Egypt.' Has appeared at regular intervals since 1913.

SB

Santa Barbara. One of the spiritual microclimates in the California state of mind.

SB

Schottky Barrier. A junction between metal and lightly doped semiconductor, exhibits diode behavior. (Heavy doping doesn't change the barrier height, but can make barrier sufficiently thin to allow tunneling conduction around the Fermi energy. This tunneling situation is called an Ohmic contact.)

SB, S.B.

Scientiae Baccalaureus. Science Baccalaureate. An engineering degree in the US.

.sb

(Domain code for) Solomon Islands. I don't see a b there either.

SB

South Bend. A small city in Indiana.

The local UHF television stations are WNIT, WSBT, and a couple of others that I'll fill in as I remember them.

SB

SouthBound.

SB

Stony Brook [University]. For historical or sentimental reasons -- okay, really because I'm lazy -- our SB info is at the SUNY-SB entry.

SB

Stop Band. Band gap in a photonic crystal; region where wavevector is imaginary, so signal attenuates.

Maybe it's used more generally for filters?

sb.

SuBstantive. Another, older, word for noun, q.v.

SB

Super Bowl. The ones from 1996 to 2005 have been designated triple-X. This won't happen again for another fifty years.

Like most people, I watch the SB for the ads and the frantic half-time show. In 2004, I noticed that one of the most irritating sponsors was hawking a drug that is pushed by some of the most irritating spammers. During half-time, the crotch-grabbing was generally tame by current rap-video standards. More than a couple of the performances featured partial disrobing. It didn't get a rise out of me. I watched that half-time show on a wide-screen TV in a room with a dozen or so Catholic-university students. On a scale of 1 to 10, where 7 was the reaction to the end-zone interception of a Tom Brady pass, Janet Jackson's Justin-Timberlake-assisted tit-flash rated a 0. (But it did merit recognition in the degradation entry.) And the people who get a kick out of mock violence against women probably weren't rolling on the floor after the horse-fart commercial either.

In 1972, I missed getting extra credit on Mr. Coulter's Electronics exam because I didn't know that S.B. stood for Super Bowl. Don't let this happen to you if you can possibly avoid it.

SBA

(US) Small Business Administration.

Also of interest: the (nongovernment) Small Business Advisory, CENA and NASE.

SBA

Sociedade Brasileira de Agrometeorogia.

SBA

Status of Black Atlanta. An annual report published since 1993 by the Southern Center for Studies in Public Policy (SCSPP) at Clark Atlanta University (CAU).

SBA

Student Bar Association. Put your beer mug down, it's not like that. It's the student government at the law school, not necessarily in any formal way associated with the ABA. The link above is to the UB SBA. The SBA exists to give ambitious law school students something to put on their résumé, even if they can't get a spot on the Law Review, and incidentally serves to demonstrate that engineers aren't the only professional illiterates.

SBA

Susan B. Anthony (dollar coin). The abbreviation appeared briefly on pin-ball machines and some other coin-operated equipment, before it became obvious that the coin was a blunder.

SBA

Standard Beam Approach.

SBA

Strong-Base Anion-exchange (resin). The SBA resins common in water treatment have quaternary amine functionality. Cf. SAC.

S band

The designation for a range of microwave frequencies. Actually many frequencies. The traditional S band is 1550 to 5200 MHz. These are the frequencies supported in single-mode propagation by a particular diameter of circular-cross section waveguide. The diameter is determined by a plumbing gauge associated with a someone named S_____.

S-Bahn

German: Schnellbahn or Stadtbahn. Literally `quick railway' or `city railway.' A rail line that's occasionally called a suburban railway or city railroad in English. In Berlin (BE) there's another line that's called the Stadtbahn, so S-Bahn there ought to stand for Schnellbahn if it stands for anything.

SBAW

Sitzungsberichte der Bayerischen Akademie der Wissenschaften. German, `Proceedings of the Bavarian Academy of Sciences.' The philological study of classical antiquity is within the bailiwick of this Bavarian academy, so this is one of those instances in which the term sciences, the conventional translation of Wissenschaften, is misleading. (More at the Geisteswissenschaften entry.) When classicists cite SBAW, they generally mean more precisely Sitzungsberichte der Bayerischen Akademie der Wissenschaften, Philosophisch-Historische Klasse (SBAW, `section for philosophy and history'). There is also a journal ABAW.

SBB

Schweizerische Bundesbahn. German name of Swiss (.ch) national railway. The acronyms in all the other languages also consist of one double letter and one single:

• CFF (French)
• FFS (Italian)
• VFF (Romansch)

SBBF

Singapore BodyBuilding Federation.

SBC

S-Bus Circuit. This was introduced by Siemens, and no further expansion of S Bus was supplied, so I suppose that S Bus might be expanded Siemens Bus. This is what lexicographers call an ulterior expansion.

SBC

Single-Board Computer.

SBC

Soleil-Babinet Compensator. A compensator is a device in the beam path which can insert an adjustable phase shift (a delay, in effect). Also BSC.

SBC

Southern Baptist Convention. As of 2007, it's the second-largest church body in the U.S. However, demographically it has been stagnant or in decline since around 1998. For detailed demographic information, see this page from <adherents.com>.

SBC

State Board for Charter Schools.

SBC

Student Basketball Congress. A kind of union of US college basketball players. First formal intercollegiate meeting held in September 2000. They don't represent players in negotiations, but the NCAA listens to them. Amateur athletics -- what a business!

You know, the more colleges have a kind of farm system too: they'll recruit players who may not be academically eligible or athletically quite so desirable, and get them into a cooperative junior college. For example, Indiana University (in Bloomington, Indiana) and University of Nebraska (in Lincoln) and other schools have sent players to Iowa Western. Iowa Western Community College is in Council Bluffs, IA. Their teams are known as the Reivers, which apparently are some sort of river pirate.

Another popular school of this sort is MCI, Maine C--- Institute (forgot the name, can't find a listing, this is bad). Oh well, then, let's have a link to NJCAA (National Junior College Athletic Association).

SBC

Sun Belt Conference.

SBCCOM

US Army Soldier and Biological Chemical Command. Interesting way to deploy that grammatical nonchemical conjunction.

SBC Communications

SBC stands for the former name Southwestern Bell Corporation, one of the baby Bells. At some point it was absorbed by ``the New AT&T.''

SBCT

South Bend Civic Theatre.

SBCX

S-Bus Circuit eXtended.

SBD

Smart Battery Data.

SBDE

State Board of Dental Examiners.

SbE, SbW

South by East, South by West. Vide compass directions.

SBE

Society of Broadcast Engineers, Inc.

SBE

State Board of Education.

SBE

SuperTwisted Birefringence Effect. Mechanism in certain STN LC displays. [See T. J. Scheffer, and J. Nehring, J. Appl. Phys. 58, 3022 (1985).

SBF

Sabbatarian Bible Fellowship.

SBF

Salomon Brothers Fund.

SBF

Savings Bank of Finland, Ltd. A wholly-owned subsidiary of the aggressively named Arsenal, in a business report of which it is mentioned.

SBF

SbF₃ is antimony fluoride.

SBF

Schiffbauforschung. (German, `Shipbuilding Research.') ( subscribe).

SBF

School Book Fairs. As in ``SBF Services Inc.''

SBF

School Bus Fleet.

Here's an image of a small school bus.

SBF

Science Books & Films.

SBF

Scientific Balloon Flight. Conducted by the NSBF.

SBF

Sea Breeze Front.

SBF

Search By Form.

SBF

Secretariat des Bailleurs de Fonds.

SBF

Sequential Block File.

SBF

Sigma Beta Digamma. Pretty respectable membership for a nonexistent organization.

SBF

Simulated Body Fluid.

SBF

Single Barrier Failure. NASAnese.

SBF

Single Black Female. Personals abbreviation. Special case this site.

SBF

Siyasal Bilgiler Fakultesi. Of Ankara Universitesi.

SBF

Siyasal Bilimler Fakultesi. Of Istanbul Universitesi.

SBF

Small Business Finance.

SBF

Small Business Friendly -- the Homepage.

SBF

Small But Fast (radio-controlled airships).

SBF

Sociedade Brasileira de Fisica (Brazilian Physical Society).

SBF

Sociedade Brasileira de Fruticultura.

SBF

Société Batrachologique de France. They publish a quarterly journal Alytes.

SBF

Société Belge de Filtration. The name always seems to appear in French, but this search (with a bit of luck) is a conference jointly sponsored with the Royal Flemish Engineering Union (I guess: Koninklijke Vlaamse Ingenieursvereniging).

SBF

Société des Bourses Françaises (``Society of French Stock Exchanges'' -- Paris Stock Exchange). (Old gopher site here.)

SBF

Sola Brettseilerforening. Imagine that: sailing at Greenland lattitudes. Shows what the Gulf Stream can do.

SBF

South Bay Folks. An ``informal organization of music lovers and musicians dedicated to promoting folk music in the greater San Jose, California area.''

SBF

Spark, Burn Firefighter (project). Has to do with programming.

SBF

Spherical Bessel Function. Name of NAG numerical subroutine.

SBF

SpiroBiFluorene.

SBF

SportBootFührerschein. German: `Sport Boat Driver's License.'

SBF

Stammtisch Beau Fleuve. Sponsor of this glossary. Have you visited the acclaimed homepage?

Some curiosity has been expressed regarding the significance of our name, but not really that much. The etymology of Tisch is given at the fisk entry.

SBF

Standard Broadband Format.

SBF

State Board of Forestry. In California, the SBF is ``a nine-member board appointed by the Govern[at]or, which is responsible for developing the general forest policy of the State, for determining the guidance policies of the [California] Department of Forestry and Fire Protection, and for representing the State's interest in federal land in California.''

SBF

Steel Bridge Forum. We have a bridge entry, but it probably doesn't have any useful information on steel bridges yet.

SBF

Stiftelsen Bioteknisk Forskning (Biotechnology Research in Sweden). Try also this site.

SBF

Stockholm Boule Festival.

SBF

Stony Brook Foundation.

SBF

Strange BedFellows. ``The Strange Bedfellows [is] an eight[-]member band with guitars, keyboards, drums, assorted sound effects and seven vocalists.... Dubbed "The silliest band in Vancouver," the Strange Bedfellows appear clad in old-fashioned nightshirts and bedcaps'' as at right.

SBF

Structure Behavior Function (model). Something to do with AI.

SBF

Students' Broadcasting Federation.

SBF

Studium Biblicum Franciscanum. Here's a Jerusalem site.

SBF

Subic Bay Freeport. Or maybe try this.

SBF

Surface Brightness Fluctuation. One way to estimate the distances of galaxies. Here's an example.

SBF

Svenska BadmintonForbundet (Swedish Badminton Association).

SBF

Svenska BetongForeningen [Swedish Concrete Association (SCA)].

SBF

Svenska Bilsportförbundets. [Motor-sport.]

SBF

Svenska Botaniska Förening.

SBF

Svenska Brädseglarförbundet. `Swedish Association of Windsurfers.'

SBF

Svenska BrandForsvarsforeningen. (Swedish Fire Protection Association.)

SBF

Svenska BudoFoerbundet (Swedish Martial Arts Federation). Sounds pretty funny, but don't laugh -- they'll take you out.

SBF

Sveriges Begravningsbyraers Forbund. (Sweden Burial Association.)

SBF

Sveriges BlabandsForbunds Forbund. (Sweden Temperance Society). Cf. WCTU.

SBF

Sveriges Bridgeförbund. `Swedish Bridge Federation.' The name may have changed, but I don't want to know about it.

SBF

Swiss Badminton Federation.

SBF

Swiss Boomerang Federation.

SBFF

Scanned Blood Flow Field[s]. By MRI, or maybe radioactive dye.

SBI

Silicone Breast Implant.

SBIGFET

Schottky-Barrier (SB) Insulated-Gate Field-Effect Transistor (IGFET).

SBIR

Small Business Innovation Research.

SBIS

Sustaining Base Information Services. A US Army initiative to modernize software in their ``business'' functions (as opposed to their ``business-end'' functions. Extremely ambitious, and way behind and over budget.

The first-phase contract was won in 1993 by a consortium led by IBM Federal Systems, which was sold to Loral.

SBL

Society of Biblical Literature.

Closely associated with the American Academy of Religion (AAR).

SBM

Scientific Basis of Medicine.

SBM

Soy Bean Meal.

SBN

Semiconductor Business News.

SBN

IATA code for Michiana Regional Airport in South Bend, IN, USA (formerly and colloquially still South Bend Regional Airport). Serving Michiana, wherever that is. Here's the status of SBN in real time from the ATCSCC.

SBN

Standard Book Number[ing]. A system that was a precursor to the ISBN system.

The Old SBN's are nine digits long, and become ISBN's by the addition of an initial zero: in the ten-digit ISBN, the first digit identifies a country or group of countries; zero (as well as one) is number for the English group, including the U.S., U.K., Canada, Australia, and New Zealand.

SBO

Station BlackOut. A nuclear-industry term for an event in which a plant loses all sources of power. After the accident at Three Mile Island (TMI) in 1979, this became a kind of event for which US stations were required to plan and prepare.

S body

The design of the Jaguar XKE and related models. Stands for Sport model, but equal credit will be given for the answer ``Sexy'' body.

SBP

Space Bandwidth Product.

SBP

Steroid-Binding Protein.

SBQ

Special Bar-Quality [steel]. Used both as an adjective (e.g., ``1.5 mil tpy of SBQ steel rounds was used by GM's automotive sector in the late 1990's'') and as a noun (``the independent forging industry consumes around 1.4 mil tpy of SBQ in rounds and billets, of which about 900,000 tpy is bar''). Please don't ask me what any of this means.

SBR

Styrene-Butadiene Rubber. The rubber used for wheeled-vehicle tires. Also known as SBS rubber, for which the Macrogalleria offers an informative entry.

SBRT

(Hypofractionated) Stereotactic Body Radiation Therapy. A concentrated, focused radiation therapy for cancer.

SBS

Sick Building Syndrome. Still a rather controversial diagnosis: sometimes a significant poison is found, sometimes mass hysteria is suspected. OSHA apparently defines SBS as whatever building-related problems are left over when you take away building-related illness (BRI's) of known origin, so the term is pretty much guaranteed to remain controversial by definition, regardless of research progress.

One effect of all this is to make housecleaning more glamorous and high-tech than it's been since the widespread introduction of jet-age ``labor-saving'' devices during the fifties, the golden age of home appliances. (Vide remote control.)

Sick Building Syndrome is also called Tight Building Syndrome (I haven't seen ``TBS'' used as an acronym in this connection, though.) I like to think of this as related to the slang sense of tight as drunk; unfortunately, the etymology is related to `air-tight.' Increased care to seal-in temperature-regulated air began in earnest during the oil crisis/embargo of 1973 [a war measure imposed by medieval Persian-Gulf states (GCC) to punish the US for supporting Israel's effort to remain in existence]. Energy-saving measures have meant that indoor pollutants accumulate to higher levels. The claim is bruited about that it's now ten times (or a hundred times, or a thousand times; i.e. much) more dangerous to be indoors than out. In 1994, UB became a non-smoking campus, meaning that you can't smoke indoors. Since then, the entry areas to building have become a million times more dangerous than the indoors.

The new chemistry building on the north campus has one chimney per fume hood, emerging as a silvery stack at the top of the building. This is now the most recognizable building on campus. If you remember that it looks like a chocolate-and-mocca layer birthday cake for a centenarian, you can't miss it.

SBS

Smart Battery System. One that tries to conserve power, that monitors battery power charge and takes increasingly aggressive measures as charge falls. Deep discharge of any kind of battery degrades it and reduces its subsequent ability to take, hold, and deliver a charge. Loss of power to a microelectronic circuit can result in loss of information. Gradual loss of power to a disk drive, if mishandled, can lead to physical damage.

A smart battery system is a peripheral device that communicates with the system it powers. In addition to one or more ``primary'' bateries, it includes testing and recharging components, all controlled through a smart battery management system. It looks like batteries have pulled ahead of toasters in the race to be the smartest dumb device.

PowerSmart and ON Semiconductor sell smart battery IC's.

SBS

Stimulated Brillouin Scattering.

SBSC

Schottky-Barrier Solar Cell.

SBS-IF

Smart Battery System Implementers Forum. The open standard for SBS in portable electronics is ACPI, closely coordinated with SMBus.

SBST

Smart Battery System Table. An ACPI system description table.

SBS rubber

Styrene-Butadiene-Styrene RUBBER. The rubber used for wheeled-vehicle tires. There's an informative SBS entry in the Macrogalleria.

SBT

Single Business Tax. It's a tax unique to the state of Michigan, but I don't think that's what the ``single'' refers to. I think it means there's no other direct tax on all business income (i.e., excluding sales tax). The tax is described as ``essentially taxing payroll.'' As of June 2006, Michigan has a 7.2% unemployment rate -- far above the US average. (The unemployment rate actually fell marginally from May, with no increase in employment: fewer people sought jobs.) Income is declining. Legislation has been introduced to replace the tax with some other form of business tax. (You know, a bad economy is simply the fault of the government. The fact that US automakers based in Michigan have been losing market share for a few decades has nothing to do with it.)

SBT

South Bend Tribune. Represents the interests of plebians before the Roman Senate. Okay, maybe not. They have this promotional slogan: ``South Bend Tribune: Discover what's in it for you.'' Oh, I see -- ``in it'' -- inside the newspaper, I get it now. Very clever. It would never occur to anyone that ``what's in it for you'' is the mantra of selfish cynicism, nah.

SBT

Surface-Barrier Transistor.

SBTC

State Board of Tax Commissioners.

SBTTL

Schottky-Barrier Transistor-Transistor Logic (TTL). Logic gate family in which a Schottky diode is used to clamp the collector-base junction into reverse bias, to prevent the long charge-storage delays that occur if a transistor goes into saturation. You could check out ``Design of Schottky-Barrier Diode Clamped Transistor Layouts,'' by R. A. Heald and D. A. Hodges: IEEE Journal of Solid-State Circuits, vol. SC-7, pp. 269-275 (August 1973).

SBU

Sensitive But Unclassified. US government acronym.

SBVT

Swift Boat Veterans for Truth.

SBWP

Space BandWidth Product. The bandwidth is presumably of spatial frequency.

SBZ

German: Sowjetische Besatzungszone, `Soviet Zone of Occupation' (following WWII).

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