2. A knob or nodosity; a circumscribed swelling; in anatomy, a circumscribed mass of tissue.
3. The plot of a story or drama.
4. In astronomy, either of the two points at which the intersection of the planes of two orbits; especially, those of a satellite and its primary, pierces the celestial sphere; specifically, the point where the orbit of a heavenly body intersects the ecliptic.
5. A knuckle, or a finger joint.
6. In fungi, a swelling on a stolon where the rhizomes arise.
A stolon is a shoot that bends to the ground or that grows horizontally above the ground and produces roots and shoots at the nodes.
7. Etymology: from "a knot" or "complication"; from Latin nodus, "knot". Originally borrowed around 1400 in Latin form, meaning "lump in the flesh". The meaning "point of intersection" (originally of planetary orbits with the ecliptic) was first recorded 1665.The term node is widely used in medicine; for example, the smaller lymphatic glands are often termed "lymph nodes".
It is also applied to a collection of nerve cells forming a subsidiary nerve center found in various places in the sympathetic nervous system; such as, the sinuatrial node and the atrio-ventricular node which control the beating of the heart.
"The atrioventricular note, or AV node, which controls the heart rate, is one of the major elements in the cardiac conduction system (specialized tissue that carries bodily electrical impulses)."
It is also called mucocutaneous lymph node syndrome, a name that is quite descriptive because the disease is characterized by the typical changes in the mucus membranes that line the lips and mouth and by the enlarged and tender lymph glands.
Kawasaki disease affects the blood vessels and is now the main cause of acquired heart disease in children. It is most common in people of Asian descent, and it is more common with males than with females.
The syndrome was first described in the late 1960's in Japan by the pediatrician Tomisaku Kawasaki.
The purpose is to examine the time for impulse conductions from the node to the atrium, one of the upper chambers on either side of the heart, which receive blood from the body and transmit it to the ventricles.