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 infantry fighting vehicle — a heavily armored combat vehicle, as a tank, used to carry infantry into battle and provide support. Abbreviation: IFV. 
 
 interstate highway system — a network of U.S. highways connecting the 48 contiguous states and most of the cities with populations above 50,000, begun in the 1950s and estimated to carry about a fifth of the nation's traffic. 
 
 local education authority — a body that is responsible for education in a particular area 
 
 magnetohydromagnetic wave — Physics. Alfvén wave. 
 
 metal-free phthalocyanine — phthalocyanine (def 1). 
 
 methylrosaniline chloride — gentian violet. 
 
 neurocirculatory asthenia — cardiac neurosis. 
 
 never do things by halves — If you say that someone never does things by halves, you mean that they always do things very thoroughly. 
 
 oxidative phosphorylation — the aerobic synthesis, coupled to electron transport, of ATP from phosphate and ADP. 
 
 peripheral nervous system — the portion of the nervous system lying outside the brain and spinal cord. 
 
 petropavlovsk-kamchatskiy — seaport in E Asian Russia, on Kamchatka Peninsula: pop. 210,000 
 
 polymerase chain reaction — a technique in which a known DNA sequence is synthesized at high temperatures by means of a polymerase, producing millions of copies for statistical analysis: used in DNA fingerprinting, in detecting minute quantities of cancer cells, etc. 
 
 polynomial-time algorithm — (complexity)   A known algorithm (or Turing Machine) that is guaranteed to terminate within a number of steps which is a polynomial function of the size of the problem. See also computational complexity, exponential time, nondeterministic polynomial-time (NP), NP-complete. 
 
 psychiatric social worker — (in Britain) a qualified person who works with mentally-ill people and their families, based in a psychiatric hospital, child guidance clinic, or social services department area team, and who may also be an approved social worker 
 
 ruby-throated hummingbird — a small hummingbird, Archilochus colubris, the only hummingbird of eastern North America, having metallic-green upper plumage and a bright red throat in the male. 
 
 selective synchronization — a sound-recording process that facilitates overdubs by feeding the recorded track to the performer straight from the recording head 
 
 sympathetic introspection — a study of human conduct in which the investigator imagines himself or herself engaged in that conduct. 
 
 thank one's (lucky) stars — to be thankful for what appears to be good luck 
 
 the ball is in your court — you are obliged to make the next move 
 
 the politically incorrect — politically incorrect people considered collectively 
 
 the trash heap of history — a figurative or imaginative place where forgotten things or people go 
 
 thermodynamic equilibrium — the condition of an isolated system in which the quantities that specify its properties, such as pressure, temperature, etc, all remain unchanged 
 
 thermodynamic temperature — temperature defined in terms of the laws of thermodynamics and not in terms of the properties of any real material. It is usually expressed on the Kelvin scale 
 
 thin-layer chromatography — chromatography in which glass plates coated with thin layers of alumina, silica gel, or cellulose are used as an adsorbent.