21-letter words containing c, a, m, i, s, o
- continuous assessment — If pupils or students undergo continuous assessment, they get qualifications partly or entirely based on the work they do during the year, rather than on exam results.
- conway's game of life — (simulation) The first popular cellular automata based artificial life simulation. Life was invented by British mathematician John Horton Conway in 1970 and was first introduced publicly in "Scientific American" later that year. Conway first devised what he called "The Game of Life" and "ran" it using plates placed on floor tiles in his house. Because of he ran out of floor space and kept stepping on the plates, he later moved to doing it on paper or on a checkerboard and then moved to running Life as a computer program on a PDP-7. That first implementation of Life as a computer program was written by M. J. T. Guy and S. R. Bourne (the author of Unix's Bourne shell). Life uses a rectangular grid of binary (live or dead) cells each of which is updated at each step according to the previous state of its eight neighbours as follows: a live cell with less than two, or more than three, live neighbours dies. A dead cell with exactly three neighbours becomes alive. Other cells do not change. While the rules are fairly simple, the patterns that can arise are of a complexity resembling that of organic systems -- hence the name "Life". Many hackers pass through a stage of fascination with Life, and hackers at various places contributed heavily to the mathematical analysis of this game (most notably Bill Gosper at MIT, who even implemented Life in TECO!; see Gosperism). When a hacker mentions "life", he is more likely to mean this game than the magazine, the breakfast cereal, the 1950s-era board game or the human state of existence.
- coronal mass ejection — a cloud of particles ejected from the sun's surface during a solar flare
- cosmological argument — one of the arguments that purport to prove the existence of God from empirical facts about the universe, esp the argument to the existence of a first cause
- cosmological constant — a term introduced by Einstein into his field equations of general relativity to permit a stationary, nonexpanding universe: it has since been abandoned in most models of the universe.
- cosmological redshift — the part of the redshift of celestial objects resulting from the expansion of the universe.
- counterdemonstrations — Plural form of counterdemonstration.
- crankcase compression — Crankcase compression is the method of starting some smaller two-stroke engines, where the mixture charge is compressed in a sealed crankcase by the descending piston before passing to the combustion chamber.
- criminal conversation — (formerly) a common law action brought by a husband by which he claimed damages against an adulterer
- croscarmellose sodium — Croscarmellose sodium is a substance used in tablets and capsules as a disintegrant.
- cross-cousin marriage — marriage between the children of a brother and sister.
- customer satisfaction — When customers are pleased with the goods or services they have bought, you can refer to customer satisfaction.
- dacryocystorhinostomy — A surgical procedure to restore the flow of tears into the nose from the lacrimal sac when the nasolacrimal duct does not function.
- dark-field microscope — ultramicroscope
- decompression chamber — a chamber in which the pressure of air can be varied slowly for returning people from abnormal pressures to atmospheric pressure without inducing decompression sickness
- democratic centralism — the Leninist principle that policy should be decided centrally by officials, who are nominally democratically elected
- denominational school — a school associated with a particular religious denomination
- department of justice — the department of the U.S. federal government charged with the responsibility for the enforcement of federal laws. Abbreviation: DOJ.
- diapason normal pitch — a standard of pitch in which A above middle C is established at 435 vibrations per second.
- discriminant function — a linear function of measurements of different properties of an object or event that is used to assign the object or event to one population or another (discriminant analysis)
- electromagnetic pulse — a surge of electromagnetic radiation, esp one resulting from a nuclear explosion, which can disrupt electronic devices and, occasionally, larger structures and equipment
- emotional correctness — pressure on an individual to be seen to feel the same emotion as others
- endoplasmic reticulum — an extensive intracellular membrane system whose functions include synthesis and transport of lipids and, in regions where ribosomes are attached, of proteins
- exposure compensation — the act of overriding a camera's automatic exposure in order to achieve a particular effect or due to difficult lighting conditions
- ferric sodium oxalate — an emerald-green, crystalline, extremely water-soluble salt, used in photography and blueprinting.
- fort lesley j. mcnair — a military reservation in SW Washington, D.C., on the Potomac River, SW of the Capitol.
- framing specification — A specification of the "protocol bits" that surround the "data bits" on a communications channel to allow the data to be "framed" into chunks, like start and stop bits in EIA-232. It allows a receiver to synchronize at points along the data stream.
- franco-belgian system — French system.
- gastrohepatic omentum — lesser omentum.
- give place to someone — to make room for or be superseded by someone
- highest common factor — greatest common divisor. Abbreviation: H.C.F.
- homogeneous catalysis — Homogeneous catalysis is catalysis in which the catalyst takes part in the reaction that it increases.
- host command facility — (operating system) (HCF) Used to access IBM S/36 and AS/400 computers from a mainframe.
- humanistic psychology — an approach to psychology that emphasizes emotions and the better understanding of the self in terms of observation of oneself and one's relations with others
- hypercholesterolaemia — the condition of having a high concentration of cholesterol in the blood
- immediate constituent — one of the usually two largest constituents of a construction: The immediate constituents of He ate his dinner are he and ate his dinner; of ate his dinner are ate and his dinner; etc. Abbreviation: IC.
- immunohistochemically — By means of or in regard to immunohistochemistry.
- imprecise probability — (probability) A probability that is represented as an interval (as opposed to a single number) included in [0,1].
- in good circumstances — (of a person) in a good financial situation
- in no uncertain terms — If you say that someone tells a person something in no uncertain terms, you are emphasizing that they say it strongly and clearly so that there is no doubt about what they mean.
- in saecula saeculorum — for ever and ever.
- industrial misconduct — behaviour by an employee that is considered to be negligent or irregular to such an extent that disciplinary action may be taken, usually by agreement between management and the employee's representatives
- infectious ectromelia — ectromelia (def 2).
- information scientist — someone who works in information science
- joseph-marie jacquard — (person) /zhoh-zef' mah-ree' zhah-kar'/ (1752-07-07 to 1834-08-07) The inventor of the Jacquard loom.
- knights of st columba — an international, semi-secret fraternal and charitable order for Catholic laymen, which originated in New Haven, Connecticut in 1882 (the Knights of Columbus)
- lady of the camellias — French La Dame aux Camélias. a novel (1848) and play (1852) by Alexandre Dumas fils.
- law of thermodynamics — any of three principles variously stated in equivalent forms, being the principle that the change of energy of a thermodynamic system is equal to the heat transferred minus the work done (first law of thermodynamics) the principle that no cyclic process is possible in which heat is absorbed from a reservoir at a single temperature and converted completely into mechanical work (second law of thermodynamics) and the principle that it is impossible to reduce the temperature of a system to absolute zero in a finite number of operations (third law of thermodynamics)
- least common multiple — lowest common multiple.
- macintosh common lisp — (language) (MCL) Common Lisp for the Apple Macintosh. Guillaume Cartier, of the Mathematics Department at UQAM, Canada, has written some libraries.