Nursing Informatics and the Foundation of Knowledge, 2nd Edition

552 | Glossary

Building block Basic element or part of nursing informatics such as informa-

tion science, computer science, cognitive science, and nursing science.

Bus Subsystem that transfers data between a computer’s internal components

or between computers.

Byte (B) Unit of memory equal to eight bits or eight informational storage

units and represents one keystroke; e.g., any push of a key on a keyboard such

as pressing the space bar, a lower case a or an upper case T, for example; a

chunk of memory that consists of eight bits, and is considered to be the best

way to indicate computer memory or storage capacity.

Cache memory Smaller and faster memor ...