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20-letter words containing g, r, a, p

  • magnetoencephalogram — a record of the magnetic field of the brain. Abbreviation: MEG.
  • mail transport agent — Message Transfer Agent
  • 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.
  • marginal probability — (in a multivariate distribution) the probability of one variable taking a specific value irrespective of the values of the others
  • marketing department — the department of a commercial organization that deals with the marketing of products
  • matched-pairs design — (of an experiment) concerned with measuring the values of the dependent variables for pairs of subjects that have been matched to eliminate individual differences and that are respectively subjected to the control and the experimental condition
  • megabytes per second — (unit)   (MBps, MB/s) Millions of bytes per second. A unit of data rate. 1 MB/s = 1,000,000 bytes per second (not 1,048,576).
  • megakaryocytopoiesis — (biology) The cellular development process that leads to platelet production.
  • mickey mouse program — (jargon)   The North American equivalent of a "noddy program", i.e. trivial. The term doesn't necessarily have the belittling connotations of mainstream slang "Oh, that's just mickey mouse stuff!"; sometimes trivial programs can be very useful.
  • mopping-up operation — an operation after a battle or campaign to root out remaining enemy forces or installations
  • mpeg-1 audio layer 1 — (audio, compression, algorithm)   (MP1) A simple 32-subband audio compressor using a floating point representation for subband samples. Resolution and scale factor are stored for groups of 12 subsamples. MP1 is only used for Philips DCC Digital Compact cassette with data rates of 384 kbps.
  • mpeg-1 audio layer 3 — (music, file format)   (MP3) A digital audio compression algorithm that acheives a compression factor of about twelve while preserving sound quality. It does this by optimising the compression according to the range of sound that people can actually hear. MP3 is currently (July 1999) the most powerful algorithm in a series of audio encoding standards developed under the sponsorship of the Moving Picture Experts Group (MPEG) and formalised by the International Organization for Standardization (ISO). MP3 is very different from Layer 2, using an additional MDCT layer to increase frequency resolution. Its scale factor groups are more optimised for the human ear, and it uses nonlinear sample quantisation and Huffman coding. MP3 files (filename extension ".mp3") can be downloaded from many websites and can be played using software available for most operating systems (also downloadable), e.g. Winamp for PC, MacAmp for Macintosh, and mpeg123 for Unix. MP3 files are usually downloaded completely before playing but streaming MP3 is also possible. A program called a "ripper" can be used to copy a selection from a music CD onto your hard disk and another program called an encoder can convert it to an MP3 file.
  • mpeg-2 audio layer 3 — (compression, standard, algorithm, file format)   An extention of MPEG-1 audio layer 3 for lower sampling rates (16-24 kHz) targeting bit rates from 32-64 kbps (possibly 8-160 kbps). It is often combined with MPEG-2 LSF.
  • multiplicative group — a group in which the operation of the group is multiplication.
  • nephroangiosclerosis — (pathology) sclerosis of the renal arterioles.
  • neurophysiologically — In terms of, or with regard to, neurophysiology.
  • neuropsychologically — In terms of or by means of neuropsychology.
  • next program counter — (architecture)   (nPC) A register in a CPU that contains the address of the instruction to be executed next.
  • nonrepeating decimal — a decimal representation of any irrational number, having the property that no sequence of digits is repeated ad infinitum.
  • not put a foot wrong — If you never put a foot wrong, you never make any mistakes.
  • occupation groupings — a system of classifying people according to occupation, based originally on information obtained by government census and subsequently developed by market research. The classifications are used by the advertising industry to identify potential markets. The groups are A, B, C1, C2, D, and E
  • 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 −.
  • open learning centre — an establishment which provides further education on a flexible part-time basis
  • operant conditioning — conditioning (def 1).
  • operating conditions — Operating conditions are a set of conditions for operating a particular system or process.
  • operational strategy — a plan or set of plans for successfully running a business, etc
  • operator overloading — overloading
  • optical mark reading — the reading of marks by an optical device whereby the information can be stored in machine-readable form
  • organization expense — the costs associated with organizing a business entity and bringing it into existence
  • pan-american highway — a road system proposed in the 1920s linking nations of the Western Hemisphere, extending from Alaska to Santiago, Chile, with some gaps remaining in Panama and Colombia. The section between Nuevo Laredo, Mexico and Panama City is known as the Inter-American Highway Total length about 16,000 miles (25,744 km).
  • paper chromatography — the separation of mixtures into their constituents by preferential adsorption by a solid, as a column of silica (column chromatography) or a strip of filter paper (paper chromatography) or by a gel.
  • paranoid programming — (programming)   A programming style that tries to prepare for the worst external conditions, including incorrect input, resource limitations, hardware and software failure and even can't happen errors, to the fullest possible extent. While some believe in the motto "professional programming is paranoid programming", the expression usually has the connotation that the efforts are unnecessary or too costly ("Maybe this code is just paranoid programming, but I think it is necessary to avoid a possible overflow condition".)
  • part way through sth — in the course of something; in the middle of something
  • paternal grandfather — the father of someone's father
  • paternal grandmother — the mother of someone's father
  • pay through the nose — the part of the face or facial region in humans and certain animals that contains the nostrils and the organs of smell and functions as the usual passageway for air in respiration: in humans it is a prominence in the center of the face formed of bone and cartilage, serving also to modify or modulate the voice.
  • peak programme meter — an instrument for assessing the maximum levels of an electrical sound signal
  • pedal steel (guitar) — a steel guitar mounted on legs and equipped with pedals that serve as an additional means of changing pitch
  • peremptory challenge — a formal objection to the service of a juror by a party to a criminal prosecution or a civil action that requires no showing of cause.
  • perpendicular gothic — the style of Gothic architecture in England during the 14th and 15th centuries, characterized by tracery having vertical lines, a four-centred arch, and fan vaulting
  • personnel management — the branch of management dealing with staff recruitment and matters relating to employees
  • photogelatin process — collotype (def 1).
  • phthalocyanine green — a pigment used in painting, derived from chlorinated copper phthalocyanine and characterized chiefly by its intense green color and permanence.
  • 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.
  • poor man's something — a (cheaper) substitute for something
  • portrait photography — the activity or art of taking portrait photos
  • portuguese water dog — one of a breed of medium-sized dogs originally developed to assist Portuguese fishermen and having a profuse black or brown coat with or without white markings and webbed feet.
  • postgraduate student — a student who has obtained a degree from a university, etc, and is pursuing studies for a more advanced qualification
  • pound cost averaging — a method of accumulating capital by investing a fixed sum in a particular security at regular intervals, in order to achieve an average purchase price below the arithmetic average of the market prices on the purchase dates
  • poza rica de hidalgo — a city in N Veracruz, in E Mexico.
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