19-letter words containing a, c, e, n, s, t
- licensing agreement — an agreement that sets out the fees and terms of use for something available only under licence
- loss-of-containment — Loss-of-containment happens when a fluid which is usually contained somewhere escapes from that place.
- machine instruction — (programming) The smallest element of a machine code program.
- machine translation — changing language of a text by computer
- magnesium carbonate — a white powder, MgCO 3 , insoluble in water and alcohol, soluble in acids, used in dentifrices and cosmetics, in medicine as an antacid, and as a refractory material.
- magnetic hysteresis — hysteresis in a ferromagnetic material; the lag in the response of magnetic induction to changes of magnetic intensity.
- major seventh chord — a chord much used in modern music, esp jazz and pop, consisting of a major triad with an added major seventh above the root
- male chauvinist pig — male chauvinist.
- malleable cast iron — white cast iron that has been malleablized.
- manchester autocode — (language, history) The predecessor of Mercury Autocode.
- manchester encoding — (communications, protocol) A method of transmitting bits which enables the receiver to easily synchronise with the sender. A simple way of signalling bits might be to transmit a high voltage for some period for a 1-bit and a low voltage for a 0 bit: Bits Sent: 1 1 0 0 Signal: High ___ Low |___ Time: -> . . . . . However, when several identical bits are sent in succession, this provides no information to the receiver about when each bit starts and stops. Manchester encoding splits each bit period into two, and ensures that there is always a transition between the signal levels in the middle of each bit. This allows the receiver to synchronise with the sender. In normal Manchester encoding, a 1-bit is transmitted with a high voltage in the first period, and a low voltage in the second, and vice verse for the 0 bit: Bits Sent: 1 1 0 0 Signal: High Low || |_| || Time: -> . ' . ' . ' . ' . In Differential Manchester encoding, a 1-bit is indicated by making the first half of the signal equal to the last half of the previous bit's signal and a 0-bit is indicated by making the first half of the signal opposite to the last half of the previous bit's signal. That is, a zero bit is indicated by a transition at the beginning of the bit. Like normal Manchester encoding, there is always a transition in the middle of the transmission of the bit. Differential Manchester Encoding Bits Sent: 1 1 0 0 Signal: High __ Low |_| || || Time: -> . ' . ' . ' . ' . With each bit period half as long, twice as much bandwidth is required when using either of the Manchester encoding schemes.
- manned space flight — space travel in vehicles with a human crew
- mary wollstonecraft — Mary (Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin) 1759–97, English author and feminist (mother of Mary Shelley).
- means of production — resources: equipment, workers
- megabits per second — (unit) (Mbps, Mb/s) Millions of bits per second. A unit of data rate. 1 Mb/s = 1,000,000 bits per second (not 1,048,576). E.g. Ethernet can carry 10 Mbps.
- meningoencephalitis — Inflammation of the membranes of the brain and the adjoining cerebral tissue.
- meter-candle-second — a unit of light-exposure equivalent to one lux for one second.
- miniature schnauzer — one of a German breed of sturdily built terriers resembling a smaller version of the standard schnauzer, having a wiry, pepper-and-salt, black, or black-and-silver coat, a rectangular head, bushy whiskers, and a docked tail, and originally developed as a farm dog but now raised primarily as a pet.
- miscellaneous items — various kinds of thing, esp small purchases
- mischaracterization — The act of characterizing something in an inaccurate or misleading way.
- molecular astronomy — the branch of astronomy dealing with the study of molecules in space.
- moses-in-the-cradle — a plant, Rhoeo spathacea, native to the West Indies and Central America, having leaves with purple undersides and white flowers enclosed in a boat-shaped envelope formed by two bracts.
- motivation research — the application of the knowledge and techniques of the social sciences, especially psychology and sociology, to understanding consumer attitudes and behavior: used as a guide in advertising and marketing.
- music to one's ears — something that is very pleasant to hear
- nasty piece of work — malicious person
- national assistance — (in Britain) formerly a weekly allowance paid to certain people by the state to bring their incomes up to minimum levels established by law
- national characters — (character) Characters with accents and other diacritical marks that are used in certain written languages (that are based on the Roman alphabet) but not in others, particularly not in English. A standard list is ISO Latin 1.
- national serviceman — a soldier undertaking compulsory military service
- natural catastrophe — A natural catastrophe is an unexpected event, caused by nature, such as an earthquake or flood, in which there is a lot of suffering, damage, or death.
- neats vs. scruffies — (artificial intelligence, jargon) The label used to refer to one of the continuing holy wars in artificial intelligence research. This conflict tangles together two separate issues. One is the relationship between human reasoning and AI; "neats" tend to try to build systems that "reason" in some way identifiably similar to the way humans report themselves as doing, while "scruffies" profess not to care whether an algorithm resembles human reasoning in the least as long as it works. More importantly, neats tend to believe that logic is king, while scruffies favour looser, more ad-hoc methods driven by empirical knowledge. To a neat, scruffy methods appear promiscuous, successful only by accident and not productive of insights about how intelligence actually works; to a scruffy, neat methods appear to be hung up on formalism and irrelevant to the hard-to-capture "common sense" of living intelligences.
- necessary condition — prerequisite
- negative resistance — a characteristic of certain electronic components in which an increase in the applied voltage increases the resistance, producing a proportional decrease in current
- neufchâtel (cheese) — a soft white cheese prepared from whole milk or skim milk and eaten fresh or cured
- newcastle upon tyne — 1st Duke of, Pelham-Holles, Thomas.
- newtonian mechanics — the branch of mechanics that is based on Newton's laws of motion and that is applicable to systems that are so large that Planck's constant can be regarded as negligibly small (distinguished from quantum mechanics).
- newtonian telescope — a reflecting telescope in which a mirror or reflecting prism is mounted on the axis near the eyepiece so that the image may be viewed from outside the telescope tube at right angles to the axis.
- no strings attached — without conditions
- non-contemporaneous — living or occurring during the same period of time; contemporary.
- north-central state — a state of N Nigeria. Capital: Kaduna. Pop: 4 438 007 (1995 est). Area: 46 053 sq km (17 781 sq miles)
- northwest ordinance — the act of Congress in 1787 providing for the government of the Northwest Territory and setting forth the steps by which its subdivisions might become states.
- noughts and crosses — tick-tack-toe (def 1).
- noughts-and-crosses — tick-tack-toe (def 1).
- nuclear disarmament — the gradual reduction and eventual elimination of all nuclear weapons in the world
- on an empty stomach — If you do something on an empty stomach, you do it without having eaten.
- on no consideration — for no reason whatsoever; never
- open-hearth process — a process of steelmaking in which the charge is laid in a furnace (open-hearth furnace) on a shallow hearth and heated directly by burning gas as well as radiatively by the furnace walls.
- operations director — a director or senior manager who oversees the efficiency of business operations
- operations research — the analysis, usually involving mathematical treatment, of a process, problem, or operation to determine its purpose and effectiveness and to gain maximum efficiency.
- orthopaedic surgeon — a surgeon specializing in the branch of surgery concerned with disorders of the spine and joints and the repair of deformities of these parts
- pancreatic fibrosis — cystic fibrosis.