20-letter words containing m, a, n, g, i, c
- logarithmic function — a function defined by y = log bx, especially when the base, b, is equal to e, the base of natural logarithms.
- macias nguema biyogo — a former name of Bioko.
- macular degeneration — degeneration of the central portion of the retina, resulting in a loss of sharp vision.
- magnetic card reader — a device that scans and interprets information from a card with a magnetic stripe
- magnetic coefficient — any of various factors affecting the sensitivity of a ship's magnetic compass as a result of its construction or environment.
- magnetic declination — variation (def 8).
- magnetic inclination — to plunge (something, as a cloth or sponge) temporarily into a liquid, so as to moisten it, dye it, or cause it to take up some of the liquid: He dipped the brush into the paint bucket.
- 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.
- magnetohydrodynamics — the branch of physics that deals with the motion of electrically conductive fluids, especially plasmas, in magnetic fields. Abbreviation: MHD.
- magnification factor — the size of a magnified image of an object divided by the size of the object itself
- mail exchange record — (messaging) (MX Record) A DNS resource record type that says which SMTP server handles electronic mail for a particular domain. E.g. the MX record foo.co.uk. 1054 IN MX 10 mail.foo.co.uk. means that mail for an address like "[email protected]" should be sent to "mail.foo.co.uk". There can be several servers for a domain. The "10" is a priority - the server with the lowest number will be tried first.
- 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.
- management committee — a committee of managers or senior members of an organization who are in charge of directing that organization
- 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
- mechanical advantage — the ratio of output force to the input force applied to a mechanism.
- medical underwriting — Medical underwriting is the use of medical or health status information in the evaluation of an applicant for life or health insurance.
- mexican jumping bean — jumping bean.
- microwave background — a background of microwave electromagnetic radiation with a black-body spectrum discovered in 1965, understood to be the thermal remnant of the big bang with which the universe began
- molecular geneticist — a specialist in the study of the molecular constitution of genes and chromosomes
- most significant bit — (MSB) Bit n-1 in an n bit binary number, the bit with the greatest weight (2^(n-1)). The first or leftmost bit when the number is written in the usual way.
- multicast addressing — Ethernet addressing scheme used to send packets to devices of a certain type or for broadcasting to all nodes. The least significant bit of the most significant byte of a multi-cast address is one.
- navigable semicircle — the less violent half of a cyclone; the half blowing in the direction opposite to that in which the cyclone is moving and in which a vessel can run before the wind.
- negative campaigning — political campaigning in which a politician or party focuses on criticizing another politician or party rather than emphasizing their own positive qualities
- nictitating membrane — a thin membrane, or inner or third eyelid, present in many animals, capable of being drawn across the eyeball, as for protection.
- no lack of something — If you say there is no lack of something, you are emphasizing that there is a great deal of it.
- nonrepeating decimal — a decimal representation of any irrational number, having the property that no sequence of digits is repeated ad infinitum.
- normal magnification — the magnification produced by a telescope or microscope such that the diameter of the exit pupil of the instrument is equal to the diameter of the pupil of the eye.
- 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 −.
- ontological argument — an a priori argument for the existence of God, asserting that as existence is a perfection, and as God is conceived of as the most perfect being, it follows that God must exist; originated by Anselm, later used by Duns Scotus, Descartes, and Leibniz.
- optical mark reading — the reading of marks by an optical device whereby the information can be stored in machine-readable form
- 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).
- piezomagnetic effect — the production of a magnetic field by applying a mechanical stress to certain crystals
- production agreement — a contract concerning the production or manufacture of something
- psychological moment — the proper or critical time for achieving a desired result: She found the right psychological moment to make her request.
- quantum bogodynamics — /kwon'tm boh"goh-di:-nam"iks/ A theory that characterises the universe in terms of bogon sources (such as politicians, used-car salesmen, TV evangelists, and suits in general), bogon sinks (such as taxpayers and computers), and bogosity potential fields. Bogon absorption causes human beings to behave mindlessly and machines to fail (and may also cause both to emit secondary bogons); however, the precise mechanics of bogon-computron interaction are not yet understood. Quantum bogodynamics is most often invoked to explain the sharp increase in hardware and software failures in the presence of suits; the latter emit bogons, which the former absorb.
- 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
- restriction fragment — a length of DNA cut from the strand by a restriction enzyme.
- send someone packing — to dismiss or get rid of (someone) peremptorily
- skating championship — a competition for ice-skating
- toxemia of pregnancy — an abnormal condition of pregnancy characterized by hypertension, fluid retention, edema, and the presence of protein in the urine.
- visual merchandising — Visual merchandising is the use of attractive displays and floor plans to increase customer numbers and sales volumes.
- winter olympic games — an international contest of winter sports, esp skiing, held every four years
- your marching orders — If you give someone their marching orders, you tell them that you no longer want or need them, for example as your employee or as your lover.