22-letter words containing p, m
- compass deviation card — a card, sheet, or the like, with two compass roses printed on it concentrically, for recording, on a given voyage, the amount of deviation for which the navigator must compensate in using the ship's compass to steer a magnetic course.
- complementary medicine — the treatment, alleviation, or prevention of disease by such techniques as osteopathy, homeopathy, aromatherapy, and acupuncture, allied with attention to such factors as diet and emotional stability, which can affect a person's wellbeing
- complete metamorphosis — physical changes in the development of certain insects that include egg, larva, pupa, and adult stages, as in beetles, moths, or bees
- complete quadrilateral — a polygon consisting of four lines and their six points of intersection
- component architecture — (programming) A notion in object-oriented programming where "components" of a program are completely generic. Instead of having a specialised set of methods and fields they have generic methods through which the component can advertise the functionality it supports to the system into which it is loaded. This enables completely dynamic loading of objects. JavaBeans is an example of a component architecture. See also design pattern.
- component object model — (programming) (COM) An open software architecture from DEC and Microsoft, allowing interoperation between ObjectBroker and OLE. Microsoft evolved COM into DCOM. On page XV of Box's book in the foreword by Charlie Kindel he says, "It is Mark Ryland's fault that some people call COM the 'Common Object Model.' He deeply regrets it and apologizes profusely."
- compound annual return — the total return available from an investment, deposit, etc, when the interest earned is used to augment the capital
- compulsory liquidation — the liquidation of a business in order to settle its debts
- compuserve corporation — (company) The parent organisation of CompuServe Information Service, CompuServe Network Services and CompuServe Remote Computing Services. CompuServe was owned by H.R. Block but is now (1999) owned by America On-Line.
- computational geometry — (mathematics) The study of algorithms for combinatorial, topological, and metric problems concerning sets of points, typically in Euclidean space. Representative areas of research include geometric search, convexity, proximity, intersection, and linear programming.
- computational learning — grammatical inference
- concurrent massey hope — (language, functional programming) An extension of Massey Hope, by Peter Burgess, Robert Pointon, and Nigel Perry <[email protected]> of Massey University, NZ, that provides multithreading and typed inter-thread communication. It uses C for intermediate code rather than assembly language.
- connecticut compromise — a compromise adopted at the Constitutional Convention, providing the states with equal representation in the Senate and proportional representation in the House of Representatives.
- contract of employment — a written agreement between an employer and an employee, that, taken together with the rights of each under statute and common law, determines the employment relations between them
- corporate manslaughter — the death of someone caused by an act of corporate negligence
- cosmological principle — the theory that the universe is uniform, homogenous, and isotropic, and therefore appears the same from any position
- cytidine monophosphate — a nucleotide constituent of ribonucleic acids; a phosphoric acid ester of cytidine. Abbreviation: CMP.
- d'alembert's principle — the principle that for a moving body the external forces are in equilibrium with the inertial forces; a generalization of Newton's third law of motion
- damn with faint praise — If someone damns something with faint praise, they say something about it which sounds quite nice but is not enthusiastic, and shows that they do not have a high opinion of it.
- decompartmentalization — the act of decompartmentalizing
- decompression sickness — a disorder characterized by severe pain in muscles and joints, cramp, and difficulty in breathing, caused by a sudden and sustained decrease in air pressure, resulting in the deposition of nitrogen bubbles in the tissues
- department of commerce — the department of the U.S. federal government that promotes and administers domestic and foreign commerce. Abbreviation: DOC.
- developmental disorder — any condition, such as autism or dyslexia, that appears in childhood and is characterized by delay in the development of one or more psychological functions, such as language skill
- digital standard mumps — (DSM) DEC's version of MUMPS.
- directional microphone — a microphone that has a greater sensitivity to sounds coming from a particular area in front of it: used to eliminate unwanted sounds.
- disciplinary committee — a committee charged with examining alleged breaches of discipline within an organization, profession, etc and adjudicating on them
- disposable soma theory — the theory that ageing is caused by the body having increasingly fewer resources to allocate towards repairing wear and damage to tissues
- earth inductor compass — a compass actuated by induction from the earth's magnetic field.
- ectotrophic mycorrhiza — a type of mycorrhiza, typical of temperate and Boreal trees, in which the fungus forms a layer on the outside of the roots of the plant
- electrothermal printer — a printer that produces characters by burning the image on specially coated paper
- employers' association — a body of employers, usually from the same sector of the economy, associated to further the interests of member companies by conducting negotiations with trade unions, providing advice, making representations to other bodies, etc
- endotrophic mycorrhiza — the most widespread and common type of mycorrhiza, in which the fungus lives within the cells of the roots of the plant
- entertainment expenses — the money paid to employees to cover the cost of meals and other entertainment incurred while doing their job
- european economic area — a free-trade area created in 1994 by an agreement between the European Free Trade Association (EFTA), excluding Switzerland, and the European Union (EU)
- experimental condition — one of the distinct states of affairs or values of the independent variable for which the dependent variable is measured in order to carry out statistical tests or calculations
- extra-mural department — a university department that offers courses for part-time students
- fall prey to something — To fall prey to something bad means to be taken over or affected by it.
- fallacy of composition — the fallacy of inferring that a property of parts or members of a whole is also a property of the whole (opposed to fallacy of division).
- family planning clinic — a clinic that provides family planning services
- field emission display — (hardware) (FED) A type of flat panel display in which field emitting cathodes bombard a phosphor coating causing it to emit light. A field emission display is similar to a cathode ray tube but only a few millimeters thick. They use a large array of fine metal tips or carbon nanotubes (which are the most efficient electron emitters known), to emit electrons through a process known as field emission. Many of these are behind each phosphor dot so FEDs do not display dead pixels like LCDs even if 20% of the emitters fail. Sony is researching FED because it is the flat-panel technology that comes closest to matching the picture of a CRT.
- fixed point combinator — (mathematics) (Y) The name used in combinatory logic for the fixed point function, also written as "fix".
- functional programming — (programming) (FP) A program in a functional language consists of a set of (possibly recursive) function definitions and an expression whose value is output as the program's result. Functional languages are one kind of declarative language. They are mostly based on the typed lambda-calculus with constants. There are no side-effects to expression evaluation so an expression, e.g. a function applied to certain arguments, will always evaluate to the same value (if its evaluation terminates). Furthermore, an expression can always be replaced by its value without changing the overall result (referential transparency). The order of evaluation of subexpressions is determined by the language's evaluation strategy. In a strict (call-by-value) language this will specify that arguments are evaluated before applying a function whereas in a non-strict (call-by-name) language arguments are passed unevaluated. Programs written in a functional language are generally compact and elegant, but have tended, until recently, to run slowly and require a lot of memory. Examples of purely functional languages are Clean, FP, Haskell, Hope, Joy, LML, Miranda, and SML. Many other languages such as Lisp have a subset which is purely functional but also contain non-functional constructs. See also lazy evaluation, reduction.
- garmisch-partenkirchen — a city in S Germany, in the Bavarian Alps.
- geographic determinism — a doctrine that regards geographical conditions as the determining or molding agency of group life.
- get/come to grips with — If you get to grips with a problem or if you come to grips with it, you consider it seriously, and start taking action to deal with it.
- give it up for someone — to applaud someone
- government corporation — a corporation set up by a national government to carry out business transactions on its behalf
- government expenditure — the overall public spending carried out by the government
- government osi profile — (networking, standard) (GOSIP) A subset of OSI standards specific to US Government procurements, designed to maximize interoperability in areas where plain OSI standards are ambiguous or allow excessive options.
- graph rewriting system — An extension of a term rewriting system which uses graph reduction on terms represented by directed graphs to avoid duplication of work by sharing expressions.