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24-letter words containing a, p, o, m

  • european investment bank — a financial institution of the European Union which is based in Luxembourg and which provides loans, especially to the less economically developed countries of the EU
  • european monetary system — the system used in the European Union for stabilizing exchange rates between the currencies of member states and financing the balance-of-payments support mechanism. The original Exchange Rate Mechanism was formed in 1979 but superseded in 1999 when the euro was adopted as official currency of 11 EU member states. A new exchange rate mechanism (ERM II) based on the euro is used to regulate the currencies of participating states that have not adopted the euro
  • evolutionary computation — Computer-based problem solving systems that use computational models of evolutionary processes as the key elements in design and implementation. A number of evolutionary computational models have been proposed, including evolutionary algorithms, genetic algorithms, the evolution strategy, evolutionary programming, and artificial life.
  • evolutionary programming — (EP) A stochastic optimisation strategy originally conceived by Lawrence J. Fogel in 1960. An initially random population of individuals (trial solutions) is created. Mutations are then applied to each individual to create new individuals. Mutations vary in the severity of their effect on the behaviour of the individual. The new individuals are then compared in a "tournament" to select which should survive to form the new population. EP is similar to a genetic algorithm, but models only the behavioural linkage between parents and their offspring, rather than seeking to emulate specific genetic operators from nature such as the encoding of behaviour in a genome and recombination by genetic crossover. EP is also similar to an evolution strategy (ES) although the two approaches developed independently. In EP, selection is by comparison with a randomly chosen set of other individuals whereas ES typically uses deterministic selection in which the worst individuals are purged from the population.
  • family income supplement — a benefit formerly paid to low-income families
  • federal power commission — FPC.
  • floating decimal (point) — a decimal (point) whose position is not fixed
  • follow someone's example — If you follow someone's example, you behave in the same way as they did in the past, or in a similar way, especially because you admire them.
  • free and accepted masons — a member of a widely distributed secret order (Free and Accepted Masons) having for its object mutual assistance and the promotion of brotherly love among its members.
  • frequent shopper program — A frequent shopper program is one that rewards customers for purchases made on multiple visits, and builds up points entitling them to reduced prices and free items.
  • frequent-flyer programme — a plan or system under which frequent flyers earn rewards for being regular customers
  • geographical determinism — the theory that human activity is determined by geographical conditions
  • glasgow haskell compiler — (language)   (GHC) A Haskell 1.2 compiler written in Haskell by the AQUA project at Glasgow University, headed by Simon Peyton Jones <[email protected]> throughout the 1990's [started?]. GHC can generate either C or native code for SPARC, DEC Alpha and other platforms. It can take advantage of features of gcc such as global register variables and has an extensive set of optimisations. GHC features an extensible I/O system based on a "monad", in-line C code, fully fledged unboxed data types, incrementally-updatable arrays, mutable reference types, generational garbage collector, concurrent threads. Time and space profiling is also supported. It requires GNU gcc 2.1+ and Perl. GHC runs on Sun-4, DEC Alpha, Sun-3, NeXT, DECstation, HP-PA and SGI. E-mail: <[email protected]>.
  • graduated pension scheme — (between 1961 and 1975) an earnings-related pension scheme which was based on the amount of an employee's National Insurance contributions
  • hairdressing appointment — an appointment to have your hair cut, styled, coloured, etc, at a hairdresser
  • have had a drop too much — to be drunk
  • have the drop on someone — to have the advantage over someone
  • high performance fortran — (language)   (HPF) A data parallel language extension to Fortran 90 which provides a portable programming interface for a wide variety of target platforms. The original HPF language specification was produced by the High Performance Fortran Forum, a broad consortium of industry and academia, which met regularly throughout 1992 and early 1993. HPF compilers are now available on most commonly-used computing systems, and users are beginning to gain first hand experience with this language. The Forum has continued to meet in order to address advanced topics.
  • high performance routing — (networking)   (HPR) Routing designed to work in conjunction with APPN Intermediate Session Routing (ISR) network nodes. HPR nodes perform many of the same functions as ISR nodes. For example, HPR nodes use the same method of calculating routes based on the Topology Routing Service database and class of service tables. HPR nodes also supports such APPN features as connection networks and support for parallel transmission groups (TGs). In the HPR architecture, both partner nodes must support HPR for RTP connections to take place between the nodes. If one node supports HPR and the partner node does not, then the link will support ISR functionality only.
  • homolographic projection — an equal-area projection in which the proportion between regions of unequal area is correctly shown.
  • human potential movement — a movement in psychology that includes group therapy, encounter therapy, primal therapy, etc., is based mainly on Freudian and Gestalt psychology, and is aimed at self-realization
  • human-computer interface — (software, hardware)   (HCI) Any software or hardware that allows a user to interact with a computer. Examples are WIMP, command-line interpreter, or virtual reality. See also Human-Computer Interaction.
  • hyperbetalipoproteinemia — An abnormally high level of betalipoprotein in the blood.
  • implicit differentiation — a method of finding the derivative of an implicit function by taking the derivative of each term with respect to the independent variable while keeping the derivative of the dependent variable with respect to the independent variable in symbolic form and then solving for that derivative.
  • incomplete metamorphosis — insect development, as in the grasshopper and cricket, in which the change is gradual and characterized by the absence of a pupal stage. Compare complete metamorphosis.
  • information superhighway — internet
  • jam programming language — (language)   (JPL) A string-based imperative language from JYACC Corporation, part of the JAM tool for developing screen (non-window) applications.
  • komi autonomous republic — an autonomous republic in the NW Russian Federation in Europe. 145,221 sq. mi. (376,122 sq. km). Capital: Syktyvkar.
  • lab for computer science — MIT. http://lcs.mit.edu/.
  • law of supply and demand — the theory that prices are determined by the interaction of supply and demand: an increase in supply will lower prices if not accompanied by increased demand, and an increase in demand will raise prices unless accompanied by increased supply
  • liquid components of gas — Liquid components of gas are associated hydrocarbons in natural gas, which include ethane, propane, and butane.
  • make a production out of — to make an unnecessary fuss about
  • make one's presence felt — If you make your presence felt, you do something which makes people notice you or pay attention to you.
  • mari autonomous republic — autonomous republic in the Russian Federation in Europe. 8994 sq. mi. (23,294 sq. km). Capital: Ioshkar-Ola.
  • mass psychogenic illness — a condition in which a large group of people report similar physical symptoms that are traceable to psychological factors rather than environmental or physiological factors.
  • master-slave manipulator — any of various devices, guided by the hand of the operator, for imitating the motions and tactile sensitivity of the human hand to a greater or lesser extent: used in situations in which direct handling of the objects or materials involved would be dangerous or impossible.
  • mathematical expectation — Mathematics. the product of the probability of the occurrence of an event and the value associated with the occurrence of a given event.
  • mathematical probability — the probability of an event consisting of n out of m possible equally likely occurrences, defined to be n/m
  • michael viii palaeologus — 1234–1282, Byzantine ruler 1259–82, first of the Palaeologus emperors.
  • minister plenipotentiary — plenipotentiary.
  • multiple virtual storage — (operating system)   (MVS) Release 2 of OS/VS2, called MVS because it had multiple 16 MB virtual address spaces, in contrast to SVS. MVS ran on the IBM 390 series mainframes. It became MVS/SP, then MVS/XA (with 31-bit addressing) and then MVS/ESA. MVS/Open Edition (MVS/OE), aimed at the growing open systems market, added TCP/IP and Unix support in an MVS address space, allowing users to run IBM, CICS-type applications, batch applications and Unix. MVS/ESA was repackaged as OS/390 as a marketing exercise but it's basically the same thing. Version: 5.1.
  • multiple-valued function — function (def 4b).
  • mutual insurance company — an insurance company owned by the policyholders and not by shareholders
  • network operating system — (operating system)   (NOS) The operating system on Control Data Corporation's Cyber Computer.
  • new programming language — (language)   (NEWP) A language which replaced ESPOL on the Burroughs Large System.
  • nonparametric statistics — the branch of statistics that studies data measurable on an ordinal or nominal scale, to which arithmetic operations cannot be applied
  • not ready for prime time — Usable, but only just so; not very robust; for internal use only. Said of a program or device. Often connotes that the thing will be made more solid Real Soon Now. This term comes from the ensemble name of the original cast of "Saturday Night Live", the "Not Ready for Prime Time Players". It has extra flavour for hackers because of the special (though now semi-obsolescent) meaning of prime time. Compare beta.
  • open system architecture — (operating system)   (OSA) A competitor to IBM's SNA.
  • operational requirements — (programming)   Qualitative and quantitative parameters that specify the desired capabilities of a system and serve as a basis for determining the operational effectiveness and suitability of a system prior to deployment.
  • parallel cousin marriage — marriage between the children of two brothers or two sisters.
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