24-letter words containing s, o, l, e, r, a
- electronic point of sale — a computerized system for recording sales in retail shops, using a laser scanner at the cash till to read bar codes on the packages of the items sold
- emotional roller coaster — a situation or experience that alternates between making you feel excited, exhilarated, or happy and making you feel sad, disappointed, or desperate
- endotracheal anaesthesia — a method of administering gaseous anaesthetics to animals through a tube inserted into the trachea
- environmental assessment — a formal assessment of the impact a project will have on the environment
- erythroblastosis fetalis — an anaemic blood disease of a fetus or newborn child, characterized by erythroblasts in the circulating blood: caused by a blood incompatibility between mother and fetus
- exponential distribution — a continuous single-parameter distribution used esp when making statements about the length of life of certain materials or waiting times between randomly occurring events. Its density function is p(x) = λe–λx for positive λ and nonnegative x, and it is a special case of the gamma distribution
- federal power commission — FPC.
- federal trade commission — FTC.
- ferdinand lewis alcindor — (Ferdinand) Lew(is, Jr.) original name of Abdul-Jabbar.
- floating-point specratio — SPECfp92
- flue gas desulfurization — Flue gas desulfurization is the removal of pollutants containing sulfur from flue gas.
- footloose and fancy-free — If you describe someone as footloose and fancy-free, you mean that they are not married or in a similar relationship, and you therefore consider them to have very few responsibilities or commitments.
- general purpose language — (GPL) An ALGOL 60 variant with user-definable types and operators.
- geographical determinism — the theory that human activity is determined by geographical conditions
- glasgow haskell compiler — (language) (GHC) A Haskell 1.2 compiler written in Haskell by the AQUA project at Glasgow University, headed by Simon Peyton Jones <[email protected]> throughout the 1990's [started?]. GHC can generate either C or native code for SPARC, DEC Alpha and other platforms. It can take advantage of features of gcc such as global register variables and has an extensive set of optimisations. GHC features an extensible I/O system based on a "monad", in-line C code, fully fledged unboxed data types, incrementally-updatable arrays, mutable reference types, generational garbage collector, concurrent threads. Time and space profiling is also supported. It requires GNU gcc 2.1+ and Perl. GHC runs on Sun-4, DEC Alpha, Sun-3, NeXT, DECstation, HP-PA and SGI. E-mail: <[email protected]>.
- glycogen storage disease — any of several inherited disorders of glycogen metabolism that result in excess accumulation of glycogen in various organs of the body.
- head and shoulders above — vastly superior to
- heart is a lonely hunter — a novel (1940) by Carson McCullers.
- hexaethyl tetraphosphate — a yellow, very poisonous liquid, (C 2 H 5 O) 6 P 4 O 7 , soluble in water, used as an insecticide.
- immunofluorescence assay — a diagnostic blood test using the technique of immunofluorescence. Abbreviation: IFA.
- in words of one syllable — simply; bluntly
- incomplete metamorphosis — insect development, as in the grasshopper and cricket, in which the change is gradual and characterized by the absence of a pupal stage. Compare complete metamorphosis.
- industrial correspondent — a journalist who specializes in reporting the industrial news
- instructional technology — (education) Design, development, use, management and evaluation of process and resources for learning. Instructional technology aims to promote the application of validated, practical procedures in the design and delivery of instruction. It is often defined either in terms of media and other technology used (e.g. audiovisual media and equipment and computers), or in terms of a systematic process which encompasses instructional design, development, delivery and evaluation.
- internal auditory meatus — the canal extending through the petrous portion of the temporal bone, through which the glossopharyngeal nerve, the facial nerve, and the auditory nerve and artery pass.
- international morse code — a form of Morse code used in international radiotelegraphy.
- involuntary manslaughter — the unlawful but unintentional killing of a human being
- irritable bowel syndrome — any combination of common disturbances of the bowel, as diarrhea or constipation, occurring with abdominal pain, sometimes accompanied by psychological stress. Abbreviation: IBS.
- knowledge representation — The subfield of artificial intelligence concerned with designing and using systems for storing knowledge - facts and rules about some subject. A body of formally represented knowledge is based on a conceptualisation - an abstract view of the world that we wish to represent. In order to manipulate this knowledge we must specify how the abstract conceptualisation is represented as a concrete data structure. An ontology is an explicit specification of a conceptualisation.
- knowledge sharing effort — (project) An ARPA project developing techniques and methods for building large-scale knowledge bases which are sharable and reusable.
- komi autonomous republic — an autonomous republic in the NW Russian Federation in Europe. 145,221 sq. mi. (376,122 sq. km). Capital: Syktyvkar.
- lab for computer science — MIT. http://lcs.mit.edu/.
- lady washington geranium — show geranium.
- laryngotracheobronchitis — A respiratory disease, a form of croup.
- laugh in a person's face — to show open contempt or defiance towards a person
- least common denominator — the smallest number that is a common denominator of a given set of fractions.
- leave much to be desired — be inadequate
- leave no stone un turned — the hard substance, formed of mineral matter, of which rocks consist.
- like a fish out of water — out of place, out of one's element
- line of least resistance — the easiest, but not necessarily the best or most honourable, course of action
- local loopback addresses — The special Internet address, 127.0.0.1, defined by the Internet Protocol. A host can use local the loopback address to send messages to itself.
- logical block addressing — (storage) (LBA) A hard disk sector addressing scheme used on all SCSI hard disks, and on ATA-2 conforming IDE hard disks. The addressing conversion is performed by the hard disk firmware. Prior to LBA, combined limitations of IBM PC BIOS and ATA restricted the useful capacity of IDE hard disks on IBM PCs and compatibles to 1024 cylinders * 63 sectors per track * 16 heads * 512 bytes per sector = 528 million bytes = 504 megabytes. Modern BIOSes select LBA mode automatically, and work around the 1024-cylinder BIOS limit by representing a hard disk to the OS as having e.g. half as many cylinders and twice as many heads. However, there is still an unbreakable BIOS disk size limit of 1024 cylinders * 63 sectors per track * 256 heads * 512 bytes per sector = 8 gigabytes, but modern OSes (including Windows 9x, Windows NT and Linux) are not affected by it, since they issue direct LBA-based calls, bypassing the BIOS hard disk services completely.
- long-spined sea scorpion — Cottus bubalis or Taurulus bubalis
- long-term care insurance — Long-term care insurance is insurance for people who may require long-term health or nursing care, and pays for things such as nursing homes and adult day care.
- lunar (excursion) module — the component of the Apollo spacecraft used to carry astronauts to the moon's surface and return them to the command and service modules in lunar orbit
- make one's presence felt — If you make your presence felt, you do something which makes people notice you or pay attention to you.
- mari autonomous republic — autonomous republic in the Russian Federation in Europe. 8994 sq. mi. (23,294 sq. km). Capital: Ioshkar-Ola.
- master-slave manipulator — any of various devices, guided by the hand of the operator, for imitating the motions and tactile sensitivity of the human hand to a greater or lesser extent: used in situations in which direct handling of the objects or materials involved would be dangerous or impossible.
- medium-scale integration — MSI.
- meteorological satellite — an artificial satellite that gathers data concerning the earth's atmosphere and surface in order to aid meteorologists in understanding weather patterns and producing weather forecasts.