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20-letter words containing a, s, c, l, e, p

  • magneto-optical disk — (hardware, storage)   (MO) A plastic or glass disk coated with a compound (often TbFeCo) with special optical, magnetic and thermal properties. The disk is read by bouncing a low-intensity laser off the disk. Originally the laser was infrared, but frequencies up to blue may be possible giving higher storage density. The polarisation of the reflected light depends on the polarity of the stored magnetic field. To write, a higher intensity laser heats the coating up to its Curie point, allowing its magnetisation to be altered in a way that is retained when it has cooled. Although optical, they appear as hard drives to the operating system and do not require a special filesystem (they can be formatted as FAT, HPFS, NTFS, etc.). The initial 5.25" MO drives, introduced at the end of the 1980s, were the size of a full-height 5.25" hard drive (like in IBM PC XT) and the disks looked like a CD-ROM enclosed in an old-style cartridge In 2006, a 3.5" drive has the size of 1.44 megabyte diskette drive with disks about the size of a regular 1.44MB floppy disc but twice the thickness.
  • malpighian corpuscle — Also called kidney corpuscle, Malpighian body. the structure at the beginning of a vertebrate nephron, consisting of a glomerulus and its surrounding Bowman's capsule.
  • multistorey car park — a car park consisting of several levels
  • nephroangiosclerosis — (pathology) sclerosis of the renal arterioles.
  • neurophysiologically — In terms of, or with regard to, neurophysiology.
  • neuropsychiatrically — In terms of neuropsychiatry.
  • neuropsychologically — In terms of or by means of neuropsychology.
  • north celestial pole — the point of intersection of the earth's extended axis and the northern half of the celestial sphere, lying about 1° from Polaris
  • occupational disease — Also called industrial disease. a disease caused by the conditions or hazards of a particular occupation.
  • occupational pension — a pension scheme provided for the members of a particular occupation or by a specific employer or group of employers
  • omega-minus particle — a baryon with strangeness −3, isotopic spin 0, and negative charge; predicted from the mathematics of the Eightfold Way and subsequently discovered. Symbol: Ω −.
  • operational calculus — a method for solving a differential equation by treating differential operators as ordinary algebraic quantities, thus obtaining a simpler problem.
  • packed like sardines — If you say that a crowd of people are packed like sardines, you are emphasizing that they are sitting or standing so close together that they cannot move easily.
  • pale western cutworm — the larva of a noctuid moth, Agrotis orthogonia, of the western U.S. and Canada, that seriously damages grains, beets, potatoes, alfalfa, etc., by feeding underground on roots and stems.
  • paper qualifications — qualifications gained through official examinations, etc, rather than through experience
  • particulate scrubber — A particulate scrubber is a scrubber in which a liquid is mixed with the gas to collect solids.
  • peaceful coexistence — competition without war, or a policy of peace between nations of widely differing political systems and ideologies, especially between Communist and non-Communist nations: peaceful coexistence between the U.S. and the Soviet Union.
  • peasecod breastplate — a breastplate having a long central ridge terminating in a raised area overhanging the waistline.
  • peculiar institution — black slavery in the southern U.S. before the Civil War.
  • pentose nucleic acid — a nucleic acid containing a pentose.
  • people's paths cross — If you cross someone's path or if your paths cross, you meet them by chance.
  • permonosulfuric acid — persulfuric acid (def 1).
  • peroxysulphuric acid — a white hygroscopic crystalline unstable oxidizing acid. Formula: H2SO5
  • personal cleanliness — physical cleanliness; the cleanliness of a person's body and habits
  • photogelatin process — collotype (def 1).
  • physical double star — two stars that appear as one if not viewed through a telescope with adequate magnification, such as two stars that are separated by a great distance but are nearly in line with each other and an observer (optical double star) or those that are relatively close together and comprise a single physical system (physical double star)
  • physical examination — an examination, usually by a physician, of a person's body in order to determine his or her state of health or physical fitness, as for military service or participation in a sport.
  • physical meteorology — the branch of meteorology dealing with the study of optical, electrical, acoustical, and thermodynamic phenomena in the atmosphere, including the physics of clouds and precipitation.
  • physiologic jaundice — a transitory jaundice that affects some infants for the first few days after birth.
  • physiological saline — a salt solution that has the same osmotic pressure as that found in the blood or tissues
  • pipeline burst cache — (hardware, storage)   (PB Cache) A synchronous cache built from pipelined SRAM. A cache in which reading or writing a new location takes multiple cycles but subsequent locations can be accessed in a single cycle. On Pentium systems in 1996, pipeline burst caches are frequently used as secondary caches. The first 8 bytes of data are transferred in 3 CPU cycles, and the next 3 8-byte pieces of data are transferred in one cycle each.
  • planetary precession — the small component of the precession of the equinoxes contributed by the motion of the ecliptic, the change in orientation of the plane of the earth's orbit being produced by the gravitational attraction of the planets.
  • planned obsolescence — a method of stimulating consumer demand by designing products that wear out or become outmoded after limited use.
  • play pass-the-parcel — to try to avoid a responsibility, or blame, by passing it on to someone else
  • prefecture apostolic — a territory in the early stage of missionary development.
  • prescription glasses — corrective spectacles
  • prince edward island — an island in the Gulf of St. Lawrence, forming a province of Canada: 2184 sq. mi. (5655 sq. km). Capital: Charlottetown.
  • prince william sound — a sound in the Gulf of Alaska, on the S coast of Alaska: S end of Trans-Alaska oil pipeline at port of Valdez.
  • property speculation — the buying or selling of property in the hope of deriving capital gains
  • pseudo-psychological — of or relating to psychology.
  • psychological moment — the proper or critical time for achieving a desired result: She found the right psychological moment to make her request.
  • pure lambda-calculus — Lambda-calculus with no constants, only functions expressed as lambda abstractions.
  • pyroligneous alcohol — methyl alcohol.
  • real-time processing — data-processing by a computer which receives constantly changing data, such as information relating to air-traffic control, travel booking systems, etc, and processes it sufficiently rapidly to be able to control the source of the data
  • reciprocal insurance — insurance in which members of a reciprocal exchange, acting through an attorney-in-fact, insure themselves and each other.
  • refracting telescope — an optical instrument for making distant objects appear larger and therefore nearer. One of the two principal forms (refracting telescope) consists essentially of an objective lens set into one end of a tube and an adjustable eyepiece or combination of lenses set into the other end of a tube that slides into the first and through which the enlarged object is viewed directly; the other form (reflecting telescope) has a concave mirror that gathers light from the object and focuses it into an adjustable eyepiece or combination of lenses through which the reflection of the object is enlarged and viewed. Compare radio telescope.
  • republic of maldives — a republic occupying an archipelago of 1087 coral islands in the Indian Ocean, southwest of Sri Lanka: came under British protection in 1887; became independent in 1965 and a republic in 1968; member of the Commonwealth (1982–2016). The economy and infrastructure were severely damaged in the Indian Ocean tsunami of December 2004. Official language: Divehi. Official religion: (Sunni) Muslim. Currency: rufiyaa. Capital: Malé. Pop: 393 988 (2013 est). Area: 298 sq km (115 sq miles)
  • saint james's palace — a palace in London, England: the royal residence from the time of Henry VIII until the accession of Victoria.
  • schizoid personality — sb with identity disorder
  • schwarzschild sphere — the sphere which surrounds a non-rotating uncharged black hole, from within which no information can escape because of gravitational forces
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