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26-letter words containing m, i, c, r

  • exchange rate mechanism ii — the mechanism used to stabilize the currencies of European Union states that have not adopted the euro but wish to maintain the value of their currency in relation to it
  • external machine interface — (protocol)   (EMI) A protocol primarily used to connect to short message service centres for mobile telephones. EMI is an extension to Universal Computer Protocol (UCP). EMI was was developed by CMG, now a part of LogicaCMG, the current SMSC market leader. Each byte of the message is encoded as two hexadecimal characters using an encoding not quite like ASCII.
  • external-combustion engine — a heat engine in which the working fluid is heated in an external boiler or heat exchanger and is thus isolated from the process of fuel combustion
  • fourth generation computer — (architecture)   A computer built using Very Large Scale Integration (VLSI) integrated circuits, especially a microcomputer based on a microprocesseor, or a parallel processor containing two to thousands of CPUs. VLSI made it routine to fabricate an entire CPU, main memory, or similar device with a single integrated circuit that can be mass produced at very low cost. This has resulted in new classes of machines such as personal computers, and high performance parallel processors that contains thousands of CPUs.
  • freedom of information act — a law enacted in 1966 requiring that government records except those relating to national security, confidential financial data, and law enforcement be made available to the public on request. Abbreviation: FOIA.
  • general officer commanding — a general officer who holds a command position
  • generic expert system tool — (artificial intelligence)   (GEST) An expert system shell for Symbolics Lisp machine, with frames, forward chaining, backward chaining and fuzzy logic; written by John Gilmore(?) at GA Tech.
  • german democratic republic — a former country in central Europe: created in 1949 from the Soviet zone of occupied Germany established in 1945: reunited with West Germany in 1990. 41,827 sq. mi. (108,333 sq. km). Capital: East Berlin.
  • government printing office — the federal agency that prints and disseminates publications for other federal agencies. Abbreviation: G.P.O., GPO.
  • grand army of the republic — an organization, founded in 1866, composed of men who served in the U.S. Army and Navy during the Civil War: its last member died in 1956. Abbreviation: G.A.R.
  • heard and mcdonald islands — a group of islands in the S Indian Ocean: an external territory of Australia from 1947. Area: 412 sq km (159 sq miles)
  • human-computer interaction — (software, hardware)   (HCI) The study of how humans interact with computers, and how to design computer systems that are easy, quick and productive for humans to use. See also Human-Computer Interface.
  • hydraulic submersible pump — A hydraulic submersible pump is a pump which is used offshore and onshore for downhole and subsea boosting, and can combine production and injection duties.
  • innate releasing mechanism — the process by which a stimulus evokes a response when the connection between the two is inborn
  • intermediate care facility — a medical facility specifically providing care for chronically ill, disabled, or elderly people.
  • internal combustion engine — An internal combustion engine is an engine that creates its energy by burning fuel inside itself. Most cars have internal combustion engines.
  • internal-combustion engine — an engine of one or more working cylinders in which the process of combustion takes place within the cylinders.
  • logical interchange format — (file format, file system)   (LIF) A Hewlett-Packard simple file system format used to boot HP-PA machines and to interchange files between older HP machines. A LIF file system is a header, containing a single directory, with 10-character case sensitive filenames and 2-byte file types, followed by the files.
  • lossless audio compression — (audio, compression)   Any kind of audio compression in which the original signal and the decoded signal are bitwise identical. Lossless audio compression algorithms are usually based on a data compression algorithm like PKzip or gzip but specialized for PCM audio data. The signal is divided into predictable tonal components and unpredictable noisy components. Tonal components are stored as coefficients of a predictor, the remaining signal is coded by Rice coding, Huffman coding or arithmetic coding.
  • lysergic acid diethylamide — LSD2 .
  • macintosh operating system — (operating system)   (Mac OS) Apple Computer, Inc.'s proprietary operating system for their Macintosh family of personal computers. The part of the operating system that simulates the desktop is called "Finder." The multitasking version of Finder was called "MultiFinder" until multitasking was integrated into the core of the OS with the introduction of System 7.0 in 1990. The Macintosh series provides a built-in graphics language, called "QuickDraw", which provides a standard for software developers. Mac OS 8, scheduled for delivery in July 1997, included new human-interface features, increased system stability and performance, a PowerPC processor-native Finder, tighter integration of Internet access through panel-based "assistants," Personal Web Sharing and the ability to run Java applets and programs through Mac OS Run Time for Java. Version 9.2 was the last version of the bespoke Mac OS. The next version, Mac OS X is quite different, being based on Unix. See also Macintosh file system, Macintosh user interface.
  • magnetic resonance imaging — MRI.
  • magnetic resonance scanner — MR scanner.
  • mainstream corporation tax — (in Britain) the balance of the corporation tax formerly paid by a company for an accounting period after the advance corporation tax had been deducted
  • make a virtue of necessity — moral excellence; goodness; righteousness.
  • mammoth cave national park — a national park in central Kentucky: limestone caverns with onyx formations, stalagmites, and stalactites. 79 sq. mi. (205 sq. km).
  • master chief petty officer — a noncommissioned rank above a senior chief petty officer. Abbreviation: MCPO.
  • master of the king's music — (in Britain when the sovereign is male) a court post dating from the reign of Charles I. It is an honorary title and normally held by an established English composer
  • mecklenburg-west pomerania — a state of NE Germany, along the Baltic coast: consists of the former state of Mecklenburg and those parts of W Pomerania not incorporated into Poland after World War II: part of East Germany until 1990. Pop: 1 732 000 (2003 est)
  • mercalli (intensity) scale — a numerical scale for measuring the destructive power and major physical effects of an earthquake, ranging from number I (detectable only by seismographs) to number XII (causing extensive landslides, destruction of nearly all buildings, etc.)
  • michigan algorithm decoder — (language)   (MAD) An early programming language, based on IAL, developed at the University of Michigan by R. Graham, Bruce Arden, and Bernard Galler in 1959. MAD was one of the first extensible languages: the user could define his own operators and data types. MAD ran on the IBM 704, IBM 709 and IBM 7090. It was ported to the IBM 7040 at the City College of New York by Robert Teitel and also to Philco, Univac and CDC computers.
  • micro channel architecture — (architecture)   (MCA) IBM's proprietary 32-bit bus, used in high-end PS/2 personal computers. Micro Channel is designed for multiprocessing. It eliminates potential conflicts that arise when installing new peripheral devices. MCA is *not* compatible with either EISA or XT bus architecture so older cards cannot be used with it. As with the ROM BIOS in the first IBM PCs, figuring out the Micro Channel's secrets has been an arduous task of reverse engineering ever since the PS/2 line was announced. Consequently, the MCA has never become as wide spread as the competing EISA standard.
  • microcrystalline cellulose — Microcrystalline cellulose is a polymer used as a binder in tablets because it is stable, compressible, and disintegrates quickly.
  • micronetics standard mumps — (MSM) A version of MUMPS for the IBM PC RT and R6000.
  • minimum-access programming — a method of programming in which latency is reduced to a minimum.
  • monday morning quarterback — a person who criticizes the actions or decisions of others after the fact, using hindsight to assess situations and specify alternative solutions.
  • mongolian hordes technique — (programming, jargon)   (Or "Chinese Army technique") Assigning a large number of inexperienced programmers to a job which would better performed by a few skilled ones. The term was first used by Dr. Fred Brooks in his book "The Mythical Man-Month", Chapter 3. According to Dr. Brooks, he had in mind the vision of the Mongol Hordes sweeping across Asia and Europe when he created the term.
  • monochrome display adapter — (hardware, graphics)   (MDA) One of IBM's earliest hardware video display standards for use in IBM PC. MDA can display only monochrome 80*25 text (IBM PC video mode 7). It is now obsolete.
  • most-favored-nation clause — a clause in a commercial treaty or contract by which each signatory agrees to give the other the same treatment that is or will be accorded any other nation.
  • multi-color graphics array — (hardware, graphics)   (MCGA) One of IBM's less popular hardware video display standards for use in the IBM PS/2. MCGA can display 80*25 text in monochrome, 40*25 text in 256 colours or 320*200 pixel graphics in 256 colors. It is now obsolete.
  • multifactorial inheritance — polygenic inheritance.
  • mushroom slab construction — beamless reinforced-concrete floor and roof construction employing columns with widely flaring heads having horizontal rings of reinforcement to support the floor or roof slab.
  • mutual assured destruction — a U.S. doctrine of reciprocal deterrence resting on the U.S. and Soviet Union each being able to inflict unacceptable damage on the other in retaliation for a nuclear attack.
  • national merit scholarship — one of some 6000 college scholarships awarded annually since 1956, by the nonprofit, grant-supported National Merit Scholarship Corporation, to high-school students (National Merit Scholars) on the basis of scholastic record, personal character, and score on a test administered nationally.
  • network information center — (NIC) A body that provides information, assistance and services to network users. These will typically include telephone and electronic mail "help desk" type services for users and network information services such as hostnames and addresses which are accessed automatically by computers using some client-server protocol (usually Sun's NIS). See also Network Operations Center.
  • nondeterministic automaton — (theory)   (Or "probabilistic automaton") An automaton in which there are several possible actions (outputs and next states) at each state of the computation such that the overall course of the computation is not completely determined by the program, the starting state, and the initial inputs. See also nondeterministic Turing Machine.
  • nuclear magnetic resonance — the selective absorption of electromagnetic radiation by an atomic nucleus in the presence of a strong, static, magnetic field: used in research and in medicine to monitor tissue metabolism and to distinguish between normal and abnormal cells. Abbreviation: NMR.
  • official production system — (language)   (OPS) The first production system (i.e. rule based) programming language, developed at CMU in 1970 and used for building expert systems. OPS was originally written in Franz Lisp and later ported to other LISP dialects.
  • open document architecture — (standard)   (ODA) ISO standard (8613) for describing documents. It allows text, graphics, and facsimile documents to be transferred between different systems.
  • permanent health insurance — a form of insurance that provides up to 75 per cent of a person's salary, until retirement, in case of prolonged illness or disability
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