ecofact
biofact

In practise, some degree of modification is needed for an artefact to be recognisably different to an ecofact or a geofact.

In archaeology, a biofact (or ecofact) is organic material found at an archaeological site that carries archaeological significance.

By measuring the carbon-14 in organic material, scientists can determine the date of death of the organic matter in an artifact or ecofact.

RepRisk was formed in 1998 as ECOFACT, a Zurich-based environmental and social risk consultancy focused on the financial sector.

ECOFACT stands for ECOlogical FACTors controlling biodiversity in the British Countryside.

The fund awarded a contract in July to Ecofact, a Zurich-based consultancy, to monitor its global investments but decided it needed specialised help to assess companies in China and some other Asian countries.

The use of plants as indicators of key environmental factors was formalised by Professor Ellenberg in central Europe and has been adapted for British plants within the ECOFACT project.

Patterns of artifact and ecofact use within ritual contexts may expose preferences or sacred meanings of certain materials; the ritual use of pine among the ancient Maya is one example (Morehart, Lentz, and Prufer 2005 ).

A common type of biofact is a plant seed.

In biology, a biofact is dead material of a once-living organism.

Wood that has been altered by humans is properly an artifact, not a biofact.

Another type of biofact is wood.

The concept biofact questions if the phenomenon of growth is and was a secure candidate for differentiating between nature and technology.

She introduced the term biofact in philosophy in 2001, to stress the shifting borders between the concepts of nature, biology and technology.

Klein's concept of biofact stressed the dead materials produced by living organisms as sheaths, such as shells.

Biofact may refer to:

In archaeology, a biofact (or ecofact) is organic material found at an archaeological site that carries archaeological significance.

In philosophy, sociology and the arts, the word "biofact" is a hybrid between an artifact and living being, or between concepts of nature and technology.

In philosophy, sociology and the arts, a biofact stands in close relation to the anthropological concept of the human being a composite of nature and technology.

Biofact was introduced as a neologism in 2001 by the German philosopher Nicole C. Karafyllis and fuses the words artifact and bios.

These distinctions are often blurred: for instance, a bone removed from an animal carcass is a biofact, but a bone carved into a useful implement is an artifact.

Addressing both microscopy and philosophy, Klein named a biofact something that is a visible dead product emerging from a living being while this being is still alive (e.g. a shell).

Particularly because the biofact concept deals with the phenomenon of growth and the establishing of a self, it is also influential in the philosophical disciplines phenomenology, anthropology and ontology.

With the term biofact, Karafyllis wants to emphasize that living entities can be highly artificial due to methods deriving from agriculture, gardening (e.g. breeding) or biotechnology (e.g. genetic engineering, cloning).

She is particularly known for her philosophical works on the modeling interfaces between biology and technology (the concept of biofact), and for her union of phenomenology and philosophy of technology.

According to Karafyllis, the word biofact first appeared in a German article (entitled 'Biofakt und Artefakt') in 1943, written by the Austrian protozoologist Bruno M. Klein.

In addition, an educational biofact cart is situated next to the tank to reveal more mysteries of the sea like coral shapes, shark skins, snail and shark egg cases, and shark jaws.

For the sociology of science the biofact concept is fruitful to discuss the exclusiveness of scientific knowledge (the role of the expert) while making scientific objects which are released into the lifeworld or public sphere.

Biofacticity is a philosophical concept that allows to identify a living object as a so-called biofact, i.e. a semi-natural living entitiy in which has been biotechnically interfered during its life-span, e.g. transgenic plants or cloned organisms.

But children may also visit "biofact carts" at the zoo, where "we will maybe have a robin's egg, an ostrich egg or a crocodile egg that the kids can feel," said Linda Corcoran, spokeswoman for the zoo.

The word "biofact" is now widely used in the zoo/aquarium world, but was first used in 1993 in the Education Department at the New England Aquarium, Boston, to refer to preserved items such as animal bones, skins, molts and eggs.