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19-letter words containing n, o, s, l, a

  • digital electronics — (electronics)   The implementation of two-valued logic using electronic logic gates such as and gates, or gates and flip-flops. In such circuits the logical values true and false are represented by two different voltages, e.g. 0V for false and +5V for true. Similarly, numbers are normally represented in binary using two different voltages to represented zero and one. Digital electronics contrasts with analogue electronics which represents continuously varying quantities like sound pressure using continuously varying voltages. Digital electronics is the foundation of modern computers and digital communications. Massively complex digital logic circuits with millions of gates can now be built onto a single integrated circuit such as a microprocessor and these circuits can perform millions of operations per second.
  • dimethylnitrosamine — a yellow, water-soluble carcinogenic liquid, C 2 H 6 N 2 O, found in tobacco smoke and certain foods: known to be a potent carcinogen. Abbreviation: DMN, DMNA.
  • direct grant school — (in Britain, formerly) a school financed by endowment, fees, and a state grant conditional upon admittance of a percentage of nonpaying pupils nominated by the local education authority
  • disciplinary action — punishment or caution
  • dispersion relation — the relationship between the angular frequency (ω;) of a wave and the magnitude of its wave vector (k). Thus the wave's speed is ω/k
  • distillation column — a type of still fitted with interior baffles, used for fractional distillation. Compare still2 (def 1).
  • diversional therapy — the structured use of leisure time in recreation and play as a form of or supplement to conventional therapy
  • dobsonian telescope — a relatively inexpensive Newtonian telescope, suitable for visual but not photographic use, in which the tube assembly slips freely in the lower base.
  • drill-down analysis — drill down
  • dynamic translation — (architecture)   A virtual machine implementation approach, used to speed up execution of byte-code programs. To execute a program unit such as a method or a function, the virtual machine compiles its bytecodes into (hardware) machine code. The translated code is also placed in a cache, so that next time that unit's machine code can be executed immediately, without repeating the translation. This technique was pioneered by the commercial Smalltalk implementation currently known as VisualWorks, in the early 1980s. Currently it is also used by some implementations of the Java Virtual Machine under the name JIT (Just In Time compilation).
  • dynatron oscillator — type of oscillator
  • east-west relations — relations between the United States and its allies in the western alliance and the Soviet Union, it allies and other Communist countries, especially during the period between the end of World War II and the fall of the Soviet regime
  • eastern coral snake — any of numerous venomous elapid snakes, found chiefly in the New World tropics, as Micrurus fulvius (eastern coral snake) of the southeastern U.S., often brilliantly marked with bands of red, yellow, and black.
  • eat someone's lunch — to take into the mouth and swallow for nourishment; chew and swallow (food).
  • educational adviser — a person who provides advice and training to teachers about teaching methods and educational policies
  • eilean donan castle — a castle near the Kyle of Lochalsh in Highland, Scotland: built in the 13th century; famous for its picturesque setting
  • elastic deformation — In elastic deformation a material changes shape when a stress is applied to it but goes back to its original state when the stress is removed.
  • electro-shock baton — a baton used as a weapon to pass an electric current through part of the body
  • electrodynamometers — Plural form of electrodynamometer.
  • electronegativities — Plural form of electronegativity.
  • electronic graphics — (on television) the production of graphic designs and text by electronic means
  • electrostatic units — the system of CGS electric and magnetic units that assigns the value of one to the dielectric constant of a vacuum
  • english toy spaniel — breed of dog
  • equal opportunities — Equal opportunities refers to the policy of giving everyone the same opportunities for employment, pay and promotion, without discriminating against particular groups.
  • evaluation strategy — reduction strategy
  • exhibitionistically — In an exhibitionistic manner.
  • expressionistically — In an expressionistic manner.
  • fallacy of division — the fallacy of inferring that a property of the whole is also a property of parts or members of the whole (opposed to fallacy of composition).
  • false consciousness — a Marxist theory that people are unable to see things, especially exploitation, oppression, and social relations, as they really are; the hypothesized inability of the human mind to develop a sophisticated awareness of how it is developed and shaped by circumstances.
  • feel strongly about — to have decided opinions concerning
  • fellow-servant rule — the common-law rule that the employer is not liable to an employee for injuries resulting from the negligence of a fellow employee.
  • female circumcision — clitoridectomy.
  • female impersonator — a male performer who dresses as and impersonates women.
  • financial ombudsman — any of five British ombudsmen: the Banking Ombudsman, set up in 1986 to investigate complaints from bank customers; the Building Society Ombudsman, set up in 1987 to investigate complaints from building society customers; the Insurance Ombudsman, set up in 1981 to investigate complaints by policyholders (since 1988 this ombudsman has also operated a Unit Trust Ombudsman scheme); the Investment Ombudsman set up in 1989 to investigate complaints by investors (the Personal Investment Authority Ombudsman is responsible for investigating complaints by personal investors); and the Pensions Ombudsman, set up in 1993 to investigate complaints regarding pension schemes
  • first international — a socialistic organization (1864–76) formed to unite and promote the interests of workers throughout the world. Compare international (def 6).
  • first law of motion — any of three laws of classical mechanics, either the law that a body remains at rest or in motion with a constant velocity unless an external force acts on the body (first law of motion) the law that the sum of the forces acting on a body is equal to the product of the mass of the body and the acceleration produced by the forces, with motion in the direction of the resultant of the forces (second law of motion) or the law that for every force acting on a body, the body exerts a force having equal magnitude and the opposite direction along the same line of action as the original force (third law of motion or law of action and reaction)
  • first person plural — a grammatical category of pronouns and verbs used by the speaker to refer to or talk about himself together with others
  • first-sale doctrine — a legal principle allowing the purchaser of a lawfully made copy of a copyright-protected work to sell or give away that copy without permission but not to reproduce it.
  • flannelmouth sucker — a sucker, Catostomus latipinnis, of the Colorado River and its tributaries.
  • floating restaurant — a boat or ship that has been converted for use as a restaurant
  • flowering raspberry — a shrub, Rubus ordoratus, of eastern North America, having loose clusters of showy purplish or rose-purple flowers and inedible, dry, red fruit.
  • focal plane shutter — an opaque shield in a camera, lying in the focal plane of the lens, that, when tripped, admits light to expose the film or plate for a predetermined period, usually a fraction of a second
  • focal-plane shutter — a camera shutter situated directly in front of the film.
  • fractal compression — (algorithm)   A technique for encoding images using fractals.
  • free alongside quay — (of a shipment of goods) delivered to the quay without charge to the buyer
  • free alongside ship — (of a shipment of goods) delivered to the dock without charge to the buyer, but excluding the cost of loading onto the vessel
  • functional analysis — the branch of mathematics that deals with the theory of vector spaces and linear functionals.
  • functional calculus — the branch of symbolic logic that includes the sentential calculus and that deals with sentential functions and quantifiers and with logical relations between sentences containing quantifiers.
  • functional database — (database, language)   A database which uses a functional language as its query language. Databases would seem to be an inappropriate application for functional languages since, a purely functional language would have to return a new copy of the entire database every time (part of) it was updated. To be practically scalable, the update mechanism must clearly be destructive rather than functional; however it is quite feasible for the query language to be purely functional so long as the database is considered as an argument. One approach to the update problem would use a monad to encapsulate database access and ensure it was single threaded. Alternative approaches have been suggested by Trinder, who suggests non-destructive updating with shared data structures, and Sutton who uses a variant of a Phil Wadler's linear type system. There are two main classes of functional database languages. The first is based upon Backus' FP language, of which FQL is probably the best known example. Adaplan is a more recent language which falls into this category. More recently, people have been working on languages which are syntactically very similar to modern functional programming languages, but which also provide all of the features of a database language, e.g. bulk data structures which can be incrementally updated, type systems which can be incrementally updated, and all data persisting in a database. Examples are PFL [Poulovassilis&Small, VLDB-91], and Machiavelli [Ohori et al, ACM SIGMOD Conference, 1998].
  • gain on translation — A gain on translation is the amount of money that is made by a company by converting another currency used in a transaction into the functional currency of the company.
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