Glycocalyx is unmanifest - (May/23/2013 )

I am reading a paper and one sentence is the following: Glycocalyx is unmanifest

now, what does it mean?

I think that manifest means evident, so unmanifest must mean not evident? Thus not present?

Manifest means more like "clearly revealed to the eye" or "obvious" so unmanifest would mean not clearly evident (but could still be present).

according to wikipedia english:

The unmanifested is the Absolute, the pure and formless ground of being from which creation and manifestation arise. As such, the unmanifested is free from change, the unmoved mover. It also, necessarily, cannot be explained or comprehended in terms of any manifest reality.

mdfenko on Fri May 24 13:57:44 2013 said:

This is only making it worse because now I think it is present... Or does it mean that its not yet there and its the "ground of being formed" , meaning the glycocalyx still has to be formed?

I already saw that definition and thats why I started to doubt: is it present or not?

i would think, without reading the paper for the context, that the authors were saying that they didn't see it. they probably should have said that it was "not manifest" rather than unmanifest (which, to me, would mean that it was lost or no longer present due to the conditions...).

mdfenko on Fri May 24 16:32:30 2013 said:

would make sense because normally there is a glycocalyx

I was using the Oxford English Dictionary definition for unmanifest as an adjective.