Positive control

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The term positive control has several meanings.

Contents

A positive control is a reactant that causes a known effect when applied to a cluster of test organisms. Benedict's reagent is an example of this. The positive control in experiments reveals that a certain procedure works according to expectations and actually gives you the expected results. It demonstrates that the experiment is functioning as it should; in general practice this means that your subject(s) are exposed to a substance that is known to have a certain effect. Contrast this with the negative control, (or standard scientific control) where you expose your subject (or experiment) to a substance or condition that is known to have no effect.

One says that positive control has been achieved when what happens is what was intended to happen and that's all that happens. The Columbia accident demonstrated that NASA had not achieved positive control of the Shuttle Program.

In air traffic control, positive control is the practice of controlling aircraft whose positions are determined by direct radar observation.

Positive control is a type of gene expression where the transcription is switched on when a regulatory protein binds to the DNA. The regulative protein is namned transcriptional activator or gene activator protein.

Advanced Search
Included Web Search Engines


Safe Search

close

Top Matching Results

Occasionally Search.com will highlight specialized results that are based on the context of your query. Examples of specialized results include specific links to news, images, or video.

Top Matching Results may highlight information from other Search.com pages, content from the CNET Network of sites, or third party content. The listings are based purely on relevance. Search.com does not receive payment for listings in this section but our partners that provide this data may get paid for listing these products.

Sponsored Links

This section contains paid listings which have been purchased by companies that want to have their sites appear for specific search terms and related content. These listings are administered, sorted and maintained by a third party and are not endorsed by Search.com.

Search Results

Search.com sends your search query to several search engines at one time and integrates the results into one list which has been sorted by relevance using Search.com's proprietary algorithm. You can customize the list of search engines included in your metasearch from the preferences.

The search engines that are used in your metasearch may allow companies to pay to have their Web sites included within the results. To view the Paid Inclusion policy for a specific search engine, please visit their Web site. Search.com does not accept payment or share revenue with any search engine partner for listings in this section.