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18-letter words containing s, y, r, t, i

  • distributed memory — (architecture)   The kind of memory in a parallel processor where each processor has fast access to its own local memory and where to access another processor's memory it must send a message via the inter-processor network. Opposite: shared memory.
  • distributed system — A collection of (probably heterogeneous) automata whose distribution is transparent to the user so that the system appears as one local machine. This is in contrast to a network, where the user is aware that there are several machines, and their location, storage replication, load balancing and functionality is not transparent. Distributed systems usually use some kind of client-server organisation. Distributed systems are considered by some to be the "next wave" of computing.
  • duty-free shopping — the making of duty-free purchases
  • dysthymic disorder — a psychiatric disorder characterized by generalized depression that lasts for at least a year
  • ecosystem services — the important benefits for human beings that arise from healthily functioning ecosystems, notably production of oxygen, soil genesis, and water detoxification
  • electricity strike — a time when workers at an electricity company stop supplying power as a protest at working conditions
  • employment service — (in the United States) a government department established to collect and supply to the unemployed information about job vacancies and to employers information about availability of prospective workers
  • energy consumption — amount of energy used
  • entry requirements — the types and grades of examination required to enter a university
  • evolution strategy — (ES) A kind of evolutionary algorithm where individuals (potential solutions) are encoded by a set of real-valued "object variables" (the individual's "genome"). For each object variable an individual also has a "strategy variable" which determines the degree of mutation to be applied to the corresponding object variable. The strategy variables also mutate, allowing the rate of mutation of the object variables to vary. An ES is characterised by the population size, the number of offspring produced in each generation and whether the new population is selected from parents and offspring or only from the offspring. ES were invented in 1963 by Ingo Rechenberg, Hans-Paul Schwefel at the Technical University of Berlin (TUB) while searching for the optimal shapes of bodies in a flow.
  • fast-food industry — the industry surrounding fast-food restaurants
  • first duke of york — a member of the royal house of England that ruled from 1461 to 1485.
  • first year infants — a class for young children who have just started school
  • forensic chemistry — the application of facts concerning chemistry to questions of civil and criminal law.
  • gensym corporation — (company)   A company that supplies software and services for intelligent operations management. Common applications include quality management, process optimisation, dynamic scheduling, network management, energy and environmental management, and process modelling and simulation. Their products include G2.
  • geodetic surveying — the surveying of the earth's surface, making allowance for its curvature and giving an accurate framework for smaller-scale surveys
  • go down in history — If someone or something goes down in history, people in the future remember them because of particular actions that they have done or because of particular events that have happened.
  • gravity escapement — an escapement, used especially in large outdoor clocks, in which the impulse is given to the pendulum by means of a weight falling through a certain distance.
  • heteroscedasticity — (statistics) The property of a series of random variables of 'not' every variable having the same finite variance.
  • heteroskedasticity — Alternative spelling of heteroscedasticity.
  • hilary of poitiers — Saint, a.d. c300–368, French bishop and theologian.
  • historical geology — the branch of geology dealing with the history of the earth.
  • hydroxytryptamines — Plural form of hydroxytryptamine.
  • hyperaldosteronism — aldosteronism.
  • hypercholesteremia — Alternative spelling of hypercholesteraemia.
  • hypernationalistic — a person devoted to nationalism.
  • hypersensitiveness — The state of being hypersensitive.
  • hypersensitization — Photography. to treat (a film or emulsion) so as to increase its speed.
  • hypersexualisation — Alternative spelling of hypersexualization.
  • hypersexualization — The act or process of hypersexualizing.
  • hypogastric artery — iliac artery (def 3).
  • hypoparathyroidism — Diminished concentration of parathyroid hormone in the blood, which causes deficiencies of calcium and phosphorus compounds in the blood and results in muscular spasms.
  • hysterical reasons — (Or "hysterical raisins") A variant on the stock phrase "for historical reasons", indicating specifically that something must be done in some stupid way for backward compatibility, and moreover that the feature it must be compatible with was the result of a bad design in the first place. "All IBM PC video adaptors have to support MDA text mode for hysterical reasons." Compare bug-for-bug compatible.
  • incommensurability — not commensurable; having no common basis, measure, or standard of comparison.
  • indiscriminatingly — In an indiscriminating manner.
  • industrial hygiene — the science that assesses, controls, and prevents occupational factors or sources of stress in the workplace that may significantly affect the health and well-being of employees or of the community in general
  • information system — a computer system or set of components for collecting, creating, storing, processing, and distributing information, typically including hardware and software, system users, and the data itself: the use of information systems to solve business problems.
  • infrared astronomy — the study of infrared radiation emitted by celestial objects.
  • interface analysis — (testing)   A software test which checks the interfaces between program elements for consistency and adherence to predefined rules or axioms.
  • involuntary muscle — muscle: contracts involuntarily
  • isometric joystick — (hardware)   Any kind of joystick where the input depends on the force exerted rather than the position of the control, e.g. TrackPoint.
  • john birch society — an ultraconservative organization, founded in December 1958 by Robert Welch, Jr., chiefly to combat alleged Communist activities in the U.S.
  • keep your shirt on — refrain from losing your temper (often used as an exhortation to another)
  • lincoln's birthday — February 12, a legal holiday in some states of the U.S., in honor of the birth of Abraham Lincoln.
  • literary criticism — study and review of literature
  • loosestrife family — the plant family Lythraceae, characterized by herbaceous plants, shrubs, and trees having usually opposite or whorled, simple leaves, clusters of flowers, and fruit in the form of a capsule, and including the crape myrtle, loosestrifes of the genus Lythrum, and the henna shrub.
  • magic switch story — Some years ago, I was snooping around in the cabinets that housed the MIT AI Lab's PDP-10, and noticed a little switch glued to the frame of one cabinet. It was obviously a homebrew job, added by one of the lab's hardware hackers (no-one knows who). You don't touch an unknown switch on a computer without knowing what it does, because you might crash the computer. The switch was labelled in a most unhelpful way. It had two positions, and scrawled in pencil on the metal switch body were the words "magic" and "more magic". The switch was in the "more magic" position. I called another hacker over to look at it. He had never seen the switch before either. Closer examination revealed that the switch had only one wire running to it! The other end of the wire did disappear into the maze of wires inside the computer, but it's a basic fact of electricity that a switch can't do anything unless there are two wires connected to it. This switch had a wire connected on one side and no wire on its other side. It was clear that this switch was someone's idea of a silly joke. Convinced by our reasoning that the switch was inoperative, we flipped it. The computer instantly crashed. Imagine our utter astonishment. We wrote it off as coincidence, but nevertheless restored the switch to the "more magic" position before reviving the computer. A year later, I told this story to yet another hacker, David Moon as I recall. He clearly doubted my sanity, or suspected me of a supernatural belief in the power of this switch, or perhaps thought I was fooling him with a bogus saga. To prove it to him, I showed him the very switch, still glued to the cabinet frame with only one wire connected to it, still in the "more magic" position. We scrutinized the switch and its lone connection, and found that the other end of the wire, though connected to the computer wiring, was connected to a ground pin. That clearly made the switch doubly useless: not only was it electrically nonoperative, but it was connected to a place that couldn't affect anything anyway. So we flipped the switch. The computer promptly crashed. This time we ran for Richard Greenblatt, a long-time MIT hacker, who was close at hand. He had never noticed the switch before, either. He inspected it, concluded it was useless, got some diagonal cutters and diked it out. We then revived the computer and it has run fine ever since. We still don't know how the switch crashed the machine. There is a theory that some circuit near the ground pin was marginal, and flipping the switch changed the electrical capacitance enough to upset the circuit as millionth-of-a-second pulses went through it. But we'll never know for sure; all we can really say is that the switch was magic. I still have that switch in my basement. Maybe I'm silly, but I usually keep it set on "more magic".
  • magnetocrystalline — (physics) Describing the interaction between the magnetization and the crystal structure of a material.
  • marketing strategy — a general plan or set of plans dealing with marketing, especially over a long period
  • maternity hospital — birthing facility
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