Construct · 3 fields · 3 citations
One name. Different field. Different construct. One map.
● jingle · one word, three constructs Nearest construct by meaningtexturecompare the meaningsEvery construct on the map is compared with every other by the meaning of its definitions, and the closest one is surfaced here. The nearest construct to fabric is texture.
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In computing and networking a fabric is a switching interconnect: a mesh of small crossbar switches arranged so that many inputs can reach many outputs at once, without any pair blocking another. Clos's A Study of Non-Blocking Switching Networks gave the classic design, a three-stage arrangement of crossbars whose middle stage is sized so that a free path always exists between an idle input and an idle output. The referent is the topology of the interconnect, and its unit is a stage of switching elements and the links between them. Modern switch fabrics and data-center fabrics inherit this Clos structure, so the construct names a wiring pattern engineered to carry traffic, not a cloth and not a community.[1]
In geology a rock's fabric is the spatial and orientation arrangement of its grains: whether the mineral particles lie randomly or share a preferred alignment imposed by flow or deformation. Borradaile's review shows how this petrofabric can be quantified through the anisotropy of magnetic susceptibility, where the susceptibility ellipsoid of a small sample records the average alignment of its magnetic minerals and often tracks strain. The referent is the internal geometry of a rock body, and its unit is the orientation distribution of grains within a sample. What the construct names is how the constituents are arranged in space, read as a record of the rock's history, so it is a geometry of mineral grains, not of threads, switches, or people.[3]
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Sociology
the web of relationships and shared expectations that binds the people of a place into a working whole.In sociology the social fabric is the web of relationships and shared expectations that binds the people of a place into a working whole. Sampson, Raudenbush, and Earls operationalized it as collective efficacy, the combination of social cohesion among neighbours and their willingness to act for the common good, and showed it predicts lower violence net of poverty and residential turnover. The referent is a property of a community, not of any one person, and its unit is the neighbourhood and the density and trust of ties within it. Here fabric is a metaphor for cohesion that can fray or hold, measured by survey, so it names a state of a social group rather than a cloth, a circuit, or a rock.[2]