• Cognitive Health

The ability to clearly think, learn, and remember — is an important component of performing everyday activities.  National Institute on Ageing

• Empirical Evidence

 Data gained through observation or experimentation.  Open Education Sociology Dictionary

• HCAP

The Harmonised Cognitive Assessment Protocol (HCAP) is a cross-national study, funded by the National Institute on Ageing (NIA), which combines the Northern Ireland Cohort of Longitudinal Ageing (NICOLA) study and The Irish Longitudinal Study of Ageing (TILDA). The HCAP NICOLA study will look at in-depth cognitive assessments of 1000 participants over 65 years old.  The TILDA HCAP study will also concurrently assess 1400 TILDA participants over 65 years of age. By looking at this data, the researchers will produce population prevalence rates of mild cognitive impairment and dementia. It will also enable the association of dementia with neuro-cardiovascular function and sensory impairment to be investigated.

• Mechanistic (theory)

The assumption that psychological processes and behaviors ultimately can be understood in the same way that mechanical or physiological processes are understood. Its explanations of human behavior are based on the model or metaphor of a machine and invoke mechanical causality, reducing complex psychological phenomena to simpler physical phenomena. Also called mechanistic approach.  APA Dictionary of Psychology

• Meta-Analysis

Meta-analysis is the statistical combination of results from two or more separate studies. Cochrane Training

• Multiomic

The word omics refers to a field of study in biological sciences that ends with -omics, such as genomics, transcriptomics, proteomics, or metabolomics. The ending -ome is used to address the objects of study of such fields, such as the genome, proteome, transcriptome, or metabolome, respectively. More specifically genomics is the science that studies the structure, function, evolution, and mapping of genomes and aims at characterization and quantification of genes, which direct the production of proteins with the assistance of enzymes and messenger molecules. Transcriptome is the set of all messenger RNA molecules in one cell, tissue, or organism. It includes the amount or concentration of each RNA molecule in addition to the molecular identities. The term proteome refers to the sum of all the proteins in a cell, tissue, or organism. Proteomics is the science that studies those proteins as related to their biochemical properties and functional roles, and how their quantities, modifications, and structures change during growth and in response to internal and external stimuli. The metabolome represents the collection of all metabolites in a biological cell, tissue, organ, or organism, which are the end products of cellular processes. Metabolomics is the science that studies all chemical processes involving metabolites. More specifically, metabolomics is the study of chemical fingerprints that specific cellular processes establish during their activity; it is the study of all small-molecule metabolite profiles. Overall, the objective of omics sciences is to identify, characterize, and quantify all biological molecules that are involved in the structure, function, and dynamics of a cell, tissue, or organism.  Vailati Riboni, Mario & Palombo, Valentino & Loor, Juan. (2017). What Are Omics Sciences?. 10.1007/978-3-319-43033-1_1.

• NICOLA

The Northern Ireland Cohort for the Longituidinal Study of Ageing (NICOLA) - Life expectancy is rising in Northern Ireland. It is predicted that 1 in 4 children born here today will celebrate their 100th birthday. While this trend is good news, by 2048 almost half of the population will be aged over 50 years, thus posing many challenges for our society and policy makers. For example: how can we best maintain and maximise independence and the health and wellbeing of older people?, how do we organise and fund the delivery of care services for older people and make adequate pension provision? and what are the consequences for the labour market and employment with an increasing population of people reaching the conventional retirement age? In 2012, NICOLA was set up to - explore why and how certain social, economic and biological factors are changing the lives of older people - to understand how health, lifestyle, financial circumstances and wellbeing change with age - to understand what it is like to grow older in Ireland. Our motto is…….“Understanding today for a healthier tomorrow ...” - https://www.qub.ac.uk/sites/NICOLA/AboutNICOLA/

•  Systematic Review

A systematic review attempts to identify, appraise and synthesize all the empirical evidence that meets pre-specified eligibility criteria to answer a specific research question. Researchers conducting systematic reviews use explicit, systematic methods that are selected with a view aimed at minimizing bias, to produce more reliable findings to inform decision making (ref: Cochrane Library)