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17-letter words containing a, n, l, e, m

  • margaret hamilton — (person)   (born 1936-08-17) A computer scientist, systems engineer and business owner, credited with coining the term software engineering. Margaret Hamilton published over 130 papers, proceedings and reports about the 60 projects and six major programs in which she has been involved. In 1965 she became Director of Software Programming at MIT's Charles Stark Draper Laboratory and Director of the Software Engineering Division of the MIT Instrumentation Laboratory, which developed on-board flight software for the Apollo space program. At NASA, Hamilton pioneered the Apollo on-board guidance software that navigated to and landed on the Moon and formed the basis for software used in later missions. At the time, programming was a hands-on, engineering descipline; computer science and software engineering barely existed. Hamilton produced innovations in system design and software development, enterprise and process modelling, development paradigms, formal systems modelling languages, system-oriented objects for systems modelling and development, automated life-cycle environments, software reliability, software reuse, domain analysis, correctness by built-in language properties, open architecture techniques for robust systems, full life-cycle automation, quality assurance, seamless integration, error detection and recovery, man-machine interface systems, operating systems, end-to-end testing and life-cycle management. She developed concepts of asynchronous software, priority scheduling and Human-in-the-loop decision capability, which became the foundation for modern, ultra-reliable software design. The Apollo 11 moon landing would have aborted when spurious data threatened to overload the computer, but thanks to the innovative asynchronous, priority based scheduling, it eliminated the unnecessary processing and completed the landing successfully. In 1986, she founded Hamilton Technologies, Inc., developed around the Universal Systems Language and her systems and software design paradigm of Development Before the Fact (DBTF).
  • marital relations — a euphemistic term for sexual intercourse between married partners
  • marquesas islands — a group of volcanic islands in the S Pacific, in French Polynesia. Pop: 8712 (2002). Area: 1287 sq km (497 sq miles)
  • mascarene islands — a group of islands in the Indian Ocean, E of Madagascar, including Mauritius, Reunion, and Rodrigues.
  • masculine caesura — a caesura occurring immediately after a stressed or a long syllable.
  • materials science — the study of the characteristics and uses of various materials, as glass, plastics, and metals.
  • maternal instinct — motherly urge to protect and nurture
  • maximum principle — the theorem that a function of a complex variable that is analytic in a domain and on its boundary attains its maximum absolute value on the boundary.
  • maxwell equations — equations developed by James Clerk Maxwell (1831–79) upon which classical electromagnetic theory is based
  • mean proportional — (between two numbers a and b) a number x for which a/x = x/b : The number 3 is a mean proportional between 1 and 9.
  • mechanical digger — a machine used for excavation
  • mechanical pencil — a pencil for holding lead that can be extended by mechanical means.
  • mechanical tissue — a plant tissue made up of hard, thick-walled cells that add strength to an organ
  • mechanoelectrical — Describing the production of electricity by mechanical motion; especially in a transducer.
  • medical insurance — a type of insurance intended to cover possible future medical expenses
  • medical librarian — a person who works in a library of medical information kept for reference in a teaching hospital
  • medical marijuana — marijuana prescribed by a doctor and used as a medicine: medical marijuana in pill form or oral spray.
  • medulla oblongata — the lowest or hindmost part of the brain, continuous with the spinal cord.
  • megaelectron volt — million electron volts.
  • meissen porcelain — Dresden china.
  • melissopalynology — The study of honey and its composition.
  • mensural notation — a system of musical notation of the 13th to the late 16th centuries, marked by the use of note symbols such as the longa and brevis, the absence of bar lines and ties, and the equivalence in value of one note to either two or three of the next smaller degree.
  • mental arithmetic — sums done in your head
  • mental deficiency — mental retardation
  • mental disability — a general or specific intellectual handicap, resulting directly or indirectly from injury to the brain or from abnormal neurological development
  • mental impairment — (in England, according to the Mental Health Act 1983) a state of arrested or incomplete development of mind, which includes significant impairment of intelligence and social functioning and is associated with abnormally aggressive or seriously irresponsible conduct
  • mentally impaired — with reduced or weakened mental capacity
  • mercantile agency — commercial agency.
  • mercantile marine — the merchant navy
  • mercantile system — a system of political and economic policy, evolving with the modern national state and seeking to secure a nation's political and economic supremacy in its rivalry with other states. According to this system, money was regarded as a store of wealth, and the goal of a state was the accumulation of precious metals, by exporting the largest possible quantity of its products and importing as little as possible, thus establishing a favorable balance of trade.
  • metallofullerenes — Plural form of metallofullerene.
  • metalloproteinase — (enzyme) Any of several proteinases that have a metal atom (often zinc) at their active centre.
  • methemoglobinemia — (medicine) A form of toxic anemia characterized by the presence of methemoglobin in the blood.
  • methyl isocyanate — Chemistry. a highly toxic, flammable, colorless liquid, CH 3 NCO, used as an intermediate in the manufacture of pesticides: in 1984, the accidental release of a cloud of this gas in Bhopal, India, killed more than 1700 people and injured over 200,000.
  • methylnaphthalene — a compound, C 1 1 H 1 0 , whose alpha isomer, a colorless liquid, is used in determining cetane numbers.
  • methyltransferase — any of a class of enzymes that catalyze the transfer of methyl groups from one molecule to another.
  • microencapsulated — Encapsulated using microencapsulation.
  • microevolutionary — Of or pertaining to microevolution.
  • micropaleontology — the branch of paleontology dealing with the study of microscopic fossils.
  • middle low german — Low German of the period c1100–c1500.
  • middle management — the middle echelon of administration in business and industry.
  • midsagittal plane — a plane passing through the nasion when the skull is oriented in the Frankfurt horizontal.
  • mileage allowance — the number of miles allowed to be travelled on a rented vehicle such as a car during the period it is rented or leased
  • mileage indicator — a device on a vehicle such as a car, plane, etc which indicates the number of miles travelled
  • militant tendency — (in Britain) a Trotskyist group formerly operating within the Labour Party
  • military covenant — the supposed understanding that members of the armed forces and their families will be supported by the state in the event of injury or death in the course of duty
  • military governor — the military officer in command of a military government.
  • millennial church — the church of the Shakers.
  • mineralocorticoid — Biochemistry. any of a group of corticosteroid hormones, synthesized by the adrenal cortex, that regulate the excretion or reabsorption of sodium and potassium by the kidneys, salivary glands, and sweat glands.
  • minimal free form — the smallest unit of language that can make sense on its own
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