Where does proliferation collide?

In cell biology, proliferation is the increase in cell number produced by repeated cycles of growth and division, the process by which tissues grow, renew, and heal and whose dysregulation underlies tumour growth. Hayflick and Moorhead's 1961 The serial cultivation of human diploid cell strains showed that normal human cells proliferate only for a limited number of divisions in culture, and Alberts and colleagues' Molecular biology of the cell sets out the cell-cycle control that governs it. The referent is the multiplication of cells through division, sharing only the word with the spread of weapons among states.[1][2]

Unit

The rate at which a cell population increases through division

Recovery means

Not applicable

Measured by

Quantified by growth curves, division or doubling counts, and markers of cells in the division cycle

In security studies, proliferation is the spread of weapons, above all nuclear weapons and the capacity to make them, to additional states or actors, with nonproliferation the body of policy aimed at halting it. Sagan and Waltz's The spread of nuclear weapons debates whether the spread of such weapons stabilises or endangers the international system. The referent is the diffusion of weapons capability across political actors, a construct in international politics that borrows the biological image of multiplication but denotes something entirely distinct from cells dividing in a tissue.[3]

Unit

The spread of weapons capability to additional states or actors

Recovery means

Not applicable

Measured by

Tracked by the number of actors acquiring a weapon capability and the diffusion of enabling technology and materials