Latent Function

Latency or latent may refer to:

Science and technology

* Latent heat, energy released or absorbed, by a body or a thermodynamic system, during a constant-temperature process
* Latent variable, a variable that is not directly observed but inferred in statistics

Biology and medicine

* Latency period or latent period, the time between development of a disease or exposure to a pathogen, chemical, or radiation and when symptoms first become apparent (e.g. latent tumor) or when the disease becomes infectious (e.g. infectious disease)
* Latent homosexuality, a term proposed by Sigmund Freud
* Sleep onset latency, the time it takes a person to fall asleep
* Virus latency, the ability of a virus to remain dormant

Engineering

* Latency (engineering), a measure of the time delay experienced by a system
** Latency (audio), the delay necessitated by the conversion between analog and digital representations of sound data
** CAS latency, computer memory latency
** Network latency or network delay, a measure of the time delay required for information to travel across a network
** Rotational latency, the delay waiting for the rotation of the disk to bring the required disk sector under the read-write head
** Mechanical latency

Other uses

* Latency stage, a term coined by Sigmund Freud for a stage in a child's psychosexual development
* Latent Recordings, an independent Canadian record label
* Nuclear latency, the condition of a country capable of developing nuclear weapons but not yet possessing them

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