Creode or chreod is a neologistic portmanteau term coined by the English 20th century biologist C. H. Waddington to represent the developmental pathway followed by a cell as it grows to form part of a specialized organ. Combining the Greek roots for "necessary" and "path," the term was inspired by the property of regulation. When development is disturbed by external forces, the embryo attempts to regulate its growth and differentiation by returning to its normal developmental trajectory. == Developmental biology == Waddington used the term along with canalisation and homeorhesis, which describes...

The seven ill years was a period of national famine in Scotland in the 1690s. It resulted from extreme cold weather, an economic slump created by French protectionism and changes in the Scottish cattle trade, followed by four years of failed harvests (1695, 1696 and 1698–99). The result was severe famine and depopulation, particularly in the north. The 1690s were Scotland's coldest decade in the past 750 years as documented in tree ring records. The famines of the 1690s were seen as particularly severe, partly because famine had become relatively rare in the second half of the seventeenth century...