16-letter words containing n, c, r, o
- lord chamberlain — (in Britain) the chief official of the royal household
- lorenz attractor — (mathematics) (After Edward Lorenz, its discoverer) A region in the phase space of the solution to certain systems of (non-linear) differential equations. Under certain conditions, the motion of a particle described by such as system will neither converge to a steady state nor diverge to infinity, but will stay in a bounded but chaotically defined region. By chaotic, we mean that the particle's location, while definitely in the attractor, might as well be randomly placed there. That is, the particle appears to move randomly, and yet obeys a deeper order, since is never leaves the attractor. Lorenz modelled the location of a particle moving subject to atmospheric forces and obtained a certain system of ordinary differential equations. When he solved the system numerically, he found that his particle moved wildly and apparently randomly. After a while, though, he found that while the momentary behaviour of the particle was chaotic, the general pattern of an attractor appeared. In his case, the pattern was the butterfly shaped attractor now known as the Lorenz attractor.
- louisiana french — French as spoken in Louisiana; Cajun. Abbreviation: LaF.
- lourenco marques — former name of Maputo.
- low-carbon steel — steel containing between 0.04 and 0.25 per cent carbon
- lower california — Baja California.
- luncheon voucher — a voucher worth a specified amount issued to employees and redeemable at a restaurant for food
- lz77 compression — The first algorithm to use the Lempel-Ziv substitutional compression schemes, proposed in 1977. LZ77 compression keeps track of the last n bytes of data seen, and when a phrase is encountered that has already been seen, it outputs a pair of values corresponding to the position of the phrase in the previously-seen buffer of data, and the length of the phrase. In effect the compressor moves a fixed-size "window" over the data (generally referred to as a "sliding window"), with the position part of the (position, length) pair referring to the position of the phrase within the window. The most commonly used algorithms are derived from the LZSS scheme described by James Storer and Thomas Szymanski in 1982. In this the compressor maintains a window of size N bytes and a "lookahead buffer", the contents of which it tries to find a match for in the window: while (lookAheadBuffer not empty) { get a pointer (position, match) to the longest match in the window for the lookahead buffer; if (length > MINIMUM_MATCH_LENGTH) { output a (position, length) pair; shift the window length characters along; } else { output the first character in the lookahead buffer; shift the window 1 character along; } } Decompression is simple and fast: whenever a (POSITION, LENGTH) pair is encountered, go to that POSITION in the window and copy LENGTH bytes to the output. Sliding-window-based schemes can be simplified by numbering the input text characters mod N, in effect creating a circular buffer. The sliding window approach automatically creates the LRU effect which must be done explicitly in LZ78 schemes. Variants of this method apply additional compression to the output of the LZSS compressor, which include a simple variable-length code (LZB), dynamic Huffman coding (LZH), and Shannon-Fano coding (ZIP 1.x), all of which result in a certain degree of improvement over the basic scheme, especially when the data are rather random and the LZSS compressor has little effect. An algorithm was developed which combines the ideas behind LZ77 and LZ78 to produce a hybrid called LZFG. LZFG uses the standard sliding window, but stores the data in a modified trie data structure and produces as output the position of the text in the trie. Since LZFG only inserts complete *phrases* into the dictionary, it should run faster than other LZ77-based compressors. All popular archivers (arj, lha, zip, zoo) are variations on LZ77.
- lz78 compression — A substitutional compression scheme which works by entering phrases into a dictionary and then, when a reoccurrence of that particular phrase is found, outputting the dictionary index instead of the phrase. Several algorithms are based on this principle, differing mainly in the manner in which they manage the dictionary. The most well-known Lempel-Ziv scheme is Terry Welch's Lempel-Ziv Welch variant of LZ78.
- machine operator — someone who operates mechanical equipment
- macpherson strut — an automobile suspension-system component that consists of a strut combined with a spring and shock absorber and connects the wheel to the frame of the vehicle.
- macro-linguistic — a field of study concerned with language in its broadest sense and including cultural and behavioral features associated with language.
- macroenvironment — (biology) The large-scale and long-term environment and conditions that affect an organism.
- macroinstruction — macro (def 5).
- macrolinguistics — a field of study concerned with language in its broadest sense and including cultural and behavioral features associated with language.
- macrorestriction — In physical gene mapping, the digestion of DNA of high molecular weight with a restriction enzyme having a low number of restriction sites.
- magnesiochromite — (mineral) A chromite species with the formula MgCr2O4.
- magnetic equator — aclinic line.
- magneto-electric — of or relating to the induction of electric current or electromotive force by means of permanent magnets.
- magnetochemistry — the study of magnetic and chemical phenomena in their relation to one another.
- magnetoreceptors — Plural form of magnetoreceptor.
- magnetostriction — a change in dimensions exhibited by ferromagnetic materials when subjected to a magnetic field.
- magnetostrictive — Of or pertaining to magnetostriction.
- man on horseback — a military leader who presents himself as the savior of the country during a period of crisis and either assumes or threatens to assume dictatorial powers.
- manic depression — bipolar disorder.
- marginal costing — a method of cost accounting and decision making used for internal reporting in which only marginal costs are charged to cost units and fixed costs are treated as a lump sum
- maritime command — the naval branch of the Canadian armed forces
- marsh cinquefoil — a variety of cinquefoil, Potentilla palustris, that grows in marshy areas
- mass destruction — devastation on a large scale
- mechanochemistry — the field of chemistry that deals with the direct conversion of chemical into mechanical energy.
- mechanoreception — The action of a mechanoreceptor.
- mechanoreceptive — Responsive to mechanical stimuli such as sound and touch.
- mechanoreceptors — Plural form of mechanoreceptor.
- medieval cornish — the Cornish language of the Middle Ages, usually dated from the 14th century to 1600.
- megacorporations — Plural form of megacorporation.
- melodic interval — an intervening period of time: an interval of 50 years.
- memoria technica — a method or device for assisting the memory
- mercator sailing — sailing according to rhumb lines, which appear as straight lines on a Mercator chart.
- merchant account — A merchant account is a type of bank account that allows a company to accept credit cards.
- meretriciousness — alluring by a show of flashy or vulgar attractions; tawdry.
- microaggressions — Plural form of microaggression.
- microangiopathic — Of, pertaining to or accompanied by microangiopathy.
- microcirculation — the movement of blood through the arterioles, capillaries, and venules.
- microconstituent — a microscopically small constituent of a metal or alloy.
- microcrystalline — minutely crystalline; composed of microscopic crystals.
- microelectronics — the technology dealing with the design, development, and construction of electronic systems utilizing extremely small elements, especially solid-state devices employing microminiaturization.
- microencapsulate — (transitive) To embed by means of microencapsulation.
- microengineering — The engineering of microscopic devices.
- microenterprises — Plural form of microenterprise.
- microenvironment — the environment of a small area or of a particular organism; microhabitat.