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21-letter words containing a, s, i, m, l, t

  • metropolitan district — any of the districts making up the metropolitan counties of England: since 1986 they have functioned as unitary authorities, forming the sole principal tier of local government. Each metropolitan district has an elected council responsible for education, social services, etc
  • modulus of elasticity — the ratio of the stress applied to a body or substance to the resulting strain within the elastic limit
  • motherwell and wishaw — a burgh in the Motherwell district, in S Scotland.
  • motivational 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.
  • multichannel analyser — an electronic instrument, such as a pulse height analyser, that splits an input waveform into a large number of channels in accordance with a particular parameter of the input
  • multiplex transmitter — a transmitter that sends signals by multiplex
  • muon-catalysed fusion — an experimental form of nuclear fusion in which hydrogen and deuterium muonic atoms are formed. Because the mass of the muon is much larger than that of the electron, the atoms are smaller, and the nuclei are close enough for fusion to occur
  • negotiable instrument — order or promise to pay money
  • nightmare file system — Pejorative hackerism for Sun's Network File System (NFS). In any nontrivial network of Suns where there is a lot of NFS cross-mounting, when one Sun goes down, the others often freeze up. Some machine tries to access the down one, and (getting no response) repeats indefinitely. This causes it to appear dead to some messages (what is actually happening is that it is locked up in what should have been a brief excursion to a higher spl level). Then another machine tries to reach either the down machine or the pseudo-down machine, and itself becomes pseudo-down. The first machine to discover the down one is now trying both to access the down one and to respond to the pseudo-down one, so it is even harder to reach. This situation snowballs very quickly, and soon the entire network of machines is frozen - worst of all, the user can't even abort the file access that started the problem! Many of NFS's problems are excused by partisans as being an inevitable result of its statelessness, which is held to be a great feature (critics, of course, call it a great misfeature). ITS partisans are apt to cite this as proof of Unix's alleged bogosity; ITS had a working NFS-like shared file system with none of these problems in the early 1970s. See also broadcast storm.
  • northumberland strait — the part of the Gulf of St. Lawrence that separates Prince Edward Island from New Brunswick and Nova Scotia, in SE Canada. About 200 miles (320 km) long; 9–30 miles (15–48 km) wide.
  • oil-in-water emulsion — An oil-in-water emulsion is a mixture in which an oily medicine is dispersed in water or other liquid.
  • operational semantics — (theory)   A set of rules specifying how the state of an actual or hypothetical computer changes while executing a program. The overall state is typically divided into a number of components, e.g. stack, heap, registers etc. Each rule specifies certain preconditions on the contents of some components and their new contents after the application of the rule. It is similar in spirit to the notion of a Turing machine, in which actions are precisely described in a mathematical way. Compuare axiomatic semantics, denotational semantics.
  • payload assist module — a U.S. solid-propellant rocket used to boost a medium-weight spacecraft from a circular low-earth orbit to an elliptical transfer orbit for later insertion into a geosynchronous orbit. Abbreviation: PAM.
  • peephole optimisation — (compiler)   A kind of low-level code optimisation that considers only a few adjacent machine code instructions at a time and looks for certain combinations which can be replaced with more efficient sequences. E.g. ADD R0, #1 ADD R0, #1 (add one to register R0) could be replaced by ADD R0, #2 as long as there were no jumps to the second instruction.
  • prince rupert's metal — a brass composed of from about 60 to 85 percent copper and about 15 to 40 percent zinc, used to imitate gold.
  • private member's bill — In Britain, a Private Member's Bill is a law that is proposed by a Member of Parliament acting as an individual rather than as a member of his or her political party.
  • public address system — loudspeaker
  • public administration — the implementation of public policy, largely by the executive branch.
  • public-address system — a combination of electronic devices that makes sound audible via loudspeakers to many people, as in an auditorium or out of doors.
  • pulse code modulation — a form of modulation that transforms a wave-form, as an audio signal, into a binary signal in which information is conveyed by a coded order of pulses for transmission, storage on a disk, or processing by a computer. Abbreviation: PCM.
  • pulse-code modulation — a form of modulation that transforms a wave-form, as an audio signal, into a binary signal in which information is conveyed by a coded order of pulses for transmission, storage on a disk, or processing by a computer. Abbreviation: PCM.
  • pulse-time modulation — radio transmission in which the carrier is modulated to produce a series of pulses timed to transmit the amplitude and pitch of a signal. Abbr.: PTM.
  • racial discrimination — prejudice based on race
  • real operating system — (operating system, abuse)   The sort the speaker is used to. People from the BSDophilic academic community are likely to issue comments like "System V? Why don't you use a *real* operating system?", people from the commercial/industrial Unix sector are known to complain "BSD? Why don't you use a *real* operating system?", and people from IBM object "Unix? Why don't you use a *real* operating system?" See holy wars, religious issues, proprietary, Get a real computer!.
  • requirements analysis — (project)   The process of reviewing a business's processes to determine the business needs and functional requirements that a system must meet.
  • residual unemployment — the unemployment that remains in periods of full employment, as a result of those mentally, physically, or emotionally unfit to work
  • rocky mountain locust — a migratory locust, Melanoplus spretus, that occurs in North America, especially the Great Plains, where swarms cause great damage to crops and other vegetation.
  • saint elias mountains — a mountain range between SE Alaska and the SW Yukon, Canada. Highest peak: Mount Logan, 5959 m (19 550 ft)
  • salam-weinberg theory — the electroweak theory.
  • sampling distribution — the distribution of a statistic based on all possible random samples that can be drawn from a given population.
  • san gabriel mountains — a mountain range in S California, N of Los Angeles. Highest peak, San Antonio Peak, 10,080 feet (3072 meters).
  • scalar multiplication — an operation used in the definition of a vector space in which the product of a scalar and a vector is a vector, the operation is distributive over the addition of both scalars and vectors, and is associative with multiplication of scalars
  • sealed-beam headlight — a headlight in which the reflector and lens are hermetically sealed together with the filament in a single unit.
  • secure hash algorithm —
  • semantic differential — a technique for measuring the connotative meaning of concepts by having an individual rate each concept on a series of graduated scales, each scale defined by a pair of polar adjectives, as good–bad or strong–weak.
  • seven-segment display — (electronics)   (SSD) A kind of display element consisting of seven independently controllable lines arranged as a rectangular figure eight. A seven-segment display is the simplest device that can display any of the digits zero to nine (and some other characters) by lighting different combinations of lines. They are often seen in electronic calculators or measuring equipment.
  • sierra madre oriental — the system of mountains in the east of Mexico
  • simple actor language — (language)   (SAL) A minimal actor language, used for teaching in:
  • slatwall merchandiser — A slatwall merchandiser is a three-dimensional display unit with grooves cut into its surface into which metal hanging rails can be fixed at various heights.
  • social administration — the administration and maintenance of issues to do with social policies and welfare
  • sodium metabisulphite — an inorganic compound with the chemical formula Na2S2O5 that is used as a preservative, antioxidant and disinfectant
  • special court-martial — a court-martial established to try violations of military law less serious than those tried by a general court-martial but more serious than those tried by a summary court-martial.
  • spin angular momentum — to make (yarn) by drawing out, twisting, and winding fibers: Pioneer women spun yarn on spinning wheels.
  • splice the main brace — to join together or unite (two ropes or parts of a rope) by the interweaving of strands.
  • statistical mechanics — the science that deals with average properties of the molecules, atoms, or elementary particles in random motion in a system of many such particles and relates these properties to the thermodynamic and other macroscopic properties of the system.
  • stem-and-leaf diagram — a histogram in which the data points falling within each class interval are listed in order
  • stock list department — (in an American stock exchange) the department dealing with monitoring compliance with its listing requirements and rules
  • subliminal perception — perception of or reaction to a stimulus that occurs without awareness or consciousness
  • summary court-martial — a court-martial composed of one commissioned officer, authorized to try minor offenses against military law.
  • supplementary benefit — (formerly) an extra amount of money that is paid to someone by the government, in addition to their normal income. Replaced by income support in 1988
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