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20-letter words containing ns

  • database transaction — (database)   A set of related changes applied to a database. The term typically implies that either all of the changes should be applied or, in the event of an error, none of them, i.e. the transaction should be atomic. Atomicity is one of the ACID properties a transaction can have, another is isolation - preventing interference between processes trying to access the database cocurrently. This is usually achieved by some form of locking - where one process takes exclusive control of a database table or row for the duration of the transaction, preventing other processes from accessing the locked data. The canonical example of a transaction is transferring money between two bank accounts by subtracting it from one and adding it to the other. Some relational database management systems require the user to explicitly start a transaction and then either commit it (if all the individual steps are successful) or roll it back (if there are any errors).
  • defense data network — (DDN) A global communications network serving the US Department of Defense. Composed of MILNET, other portions of the Internet, and classified networks which are not part of the Internet. The DDN is used to connect military installations and is managed by the Defense Information Systems Agency.
  • deinstitutionalizing — Present participle of deinstitutionalize.
  • depreciation expense — A depreciation expense is the amount deducted from gross profit to allow for a reduction in the value of something because of its age or how much it has been used.
  • dimensional analysis — a method for comparing the dimensions of the physical quantities occurring in a problem to find relationships between the quantities without having to solve the problem completely. Compare dimension (def 6).
  • disability insurance — insurance providing income to a policyholder who is disabled and cannot work.
  • eight queens problem — eight queens puzzle
  • enterprise javabeans — (specification, business, programming)   (EJB) A server-side component architecture for writing reusable business logic and portable enterprise applications. EJB is the basis of Sun's Java 2 Platform, Enterprise Edition (J2EE). Enterprise JavaBean components are written entirely in Java and run on any EJB compliant server. They are operating system, platform, and middleware independent, preventing vendor lock-in. EJB servers provide system-level services (the "plumbing") such as transactions, security, threading, and persistence. The EJB architecture is inherently transactional, distributed, multi-tier, scalable, secure, and wire protocol neutral - any protocol can be used: IIOP, JRMP, HTTP, DCOM etc. EJB 1.1 requires RMI for communication with components. EJB 2.0 is expected to require support for RMI/IIOP. EJB applications can serve assorted clients: browsers, Java, ActiveX, CORBA etc. EJB can be used to wrap legacy systems. EJB 1.1 was released in December 1999. EJB 2.0 is in development. Sun claims broad industry adoption. 30 vendors are shipping server products implementing EJB. Supporting vendors include IBM, Fujitsu, Sybase, Borland, Oracle, and Symantec. An alternative is Microsoft's MTS (Microsoft Transaction Server).
  • entry qualifications — the qualifications people wishing to enter an organization, university, etc, have to have
  • epitaxial transistor — a transistor made by depositing a thin pure layer of semiconductor material (epitaxial layer) onto a crystalline support by epitaxy. The layer acts as one of the electrode regions, usually the collector
  • equilibrium constant — The equilibrium constant is the ratio between the amount of reactants and the amount of product for a particular chemical reaction, used to calculate chemical behavior.
  • extensional equality — (Or extensionality). Functions, f and g are extensionally equal if and only if f x = g x for all x. where "=" means both expressions fail to terminate (under some given reduction strategy) or they both terminate with the same basic value. Two functions may be extensionally equal but not inter-convertible (neither is reducible to the other). E.g. \ x . x+x and \ x . 2*x. See also observational equivalence, referential transparency.
  • federal constitution — Constitution of the United States.
  • financial consultant — A financial consultant is the same as a financial adviser.
  • financial instrument — A financial instrument is a document or contract that can be traded in a market, that represents an asset to one party and a liability or equity to the other.
  • for sb's consumption — If you do or say something for a particular person's or group's consumption, you do or say it especially for them, although your private thoughts or plans may be very different.
  • forbidden transition — an electronic transition in an atom, molecule, etc, that is not permitted by electric dipole selection rules
  • fridtjof nansen land — Franz Josef Land.
  • fundamental constant — a physical constant, such as the gravitational constant or speed of light, that plays a fundamental role in physics and chemistry and usually has an accurately known value
  • go against the grain — If you say that an idea or action goes against the grain, you mean that it is very difficult for you to accept it or do it, because it conflicts with your previous ideas, beliefs, or principles.
  • group life insurance — a form of life insurance available to members of a group, typically employees of a company, under a master policy.
  • heat of condensation — the heat liberated by a unit mass of gas at its boiling point as it condenses to a liquid: equal to the heat of vaporization.
  • high-density housing — housing with a higher population density than the average, typically blocks of flats, and tower blocks
  • homo sapiens sapiens — the subspecies of the genus Homo in which modern humans are classified.
  • hydraulic suspension — a system of motor-vehicle suspension using hydraulic members, often with hydraulic compensation between front and rear systems (hydroelastic suspension)
  • income tax inspector — a person whose job is to assess individuals' income tax liability
  • incomprehensibleness — The state of being incomprehensible.
  • industrial insurance — industrial life insurance.
  • industrial relations — (used with a plural verb) the dealings or relations of an industrial concern with its employees, with labor in general, with the public, etc.
  • insolvency provision — the right of employees of a firm that goes bankrupt or into receivership to receive money owed to them as wages, etc
  • institutionalisation — The process of embedding something within an organization or society as an established custom or norm.
  • institutionalization — to make institutional.
  • instruction mnemonic — (programming)   A word or acronym used in assembly language to represent a binary machine instruction operation code. Different processors have different instruction sets and therefore use a different set of mnemonics to represent them. E.g. ADD, B (branch), BLT (branch if less than), SVC, MOVE, LDR (load register).
  • instruction prefetch — (architecture)   A technique which attempts to minimise the time a processor spends waiting for instructions to be fetched from memory. Instructions following the one currently being executed are loaded into a prefetch queue when the processor's external bus is otherwise idle. If the processor executes a branch instruction or receives an interrupt then the queue must be flushed and reloaded from the new address. Instruction prefetch is often combined with pipelining in an attempt to keep the pipeline busy. By 1995 most processors used prefetching, e.g. Motorola 680x0, Intel 80x86.
  • insulin-coma therapy — a former treatment for mental illness, especially schizophrenia, employing insulin-induced hypoglycemia as a method for producing convulsive seizures.
  • integrity constraint — (database)   A constraint (rule) that must remain true for a database to preserve data integrity. Integrity constraints are specified at database creation time and enforced by the database management system. Examples from a genealogical database would be that every individual must be their parent's child or that they can have no more than two natural parents.
  • islets of langerhans — biology: pancreatic cells
  • isochronous transfer — isochronous
  • joint life insurance — life insurance covering two or more persons, the benefits of which are paid after the first person dies.
  • know all the answers — be opinionated
  • last of the mohicans — a historical novel (1826) by James Fenimore Cooper.
  • laurentian mountains — a range of low mountains in E Canada, in Quebec between the St Lawrence River and Hudson Bay. Highest point: 1191 m (3905 ft)
  • logical construction — anything referred to by an incomplete symbol capable of contextual definition.
  • mail transport agent — Message Transfer Agent
  • menstrual extraction — an abortion procedure involving suction aspiration of the uterine contents early in gestation, before the first missed menstrual period: sometimes performed later.
  • mischaracterizations — Plural form of mischaracterization.
  • mitral insufficiency — abnormal closure of the mitral valve resulting in regurgitation of blood into the atrium and leading to reduced heart function or heart failure.
  • multi-user dimension — (games)   (MUD) (Or Multi-User Domain, originally "Multi-User Dungeon") A class of multi-player interactive game, accessible via the Internet or a modem. A MUD is like a real-time chat forum with structure; it has multiple "locations" like an adventure game and may include combat, traps, puzzles, magic and a simple economic system. A MUD where characters can build more structure onto the database that represents the existing world is sometimes known as a "MUSH". Most MUDs allow you to log in as a guest to look around before you create your own character. Historically, MUDs (and their more recent progeny with names of MU- form) derive from a hack by Richard Bartle and Roy Trubshaw on the University of Essex's DEC-10 in 1979. It was a game similar to the classic Colossal Cave adventure, except that it allowed multiple people to play at the same time and interact with each other. Descendants of that game still exist today and are sometimes generically called BartleMUDs. There is a widespread myth that the name MUD was trademarked to the commercial MUD run by Bartle on British Telecom (the motto: "You haven't *lived* 'til you've *died* on MUD!"); however, this is false - Richard Bartle explicitly placed "MUD" in the PD in 1985. BT was upset at this, as they had already printed trademark claims on some maps and posters, which were released and created the myth. Students on the European academic networks quickly improved on the MUD concept, spawning several new MUDs (VAXMUD, AberMUD, LPMUD). Many of these had associated bulletin-board systems for social interaction. Because these had an image as "research" they often survived administrative hostility to BBSs in general. This, together with the fact that Usenet feeds have been spotty and difficult to get in the UK, made the MUDs major foci of hackish social interaction there. AberMUD and other variants crossed the Atlantic around 1988 and quickly gained popularity in the US; they became nuclei for large hacker communities with only loose ties to traditional hackerdom (some observers see parallels with the growth of Usenet in the early 1980s). The second wave of MUDs (TinyMUD and variants) tended to emphasise social interaction, puzzles, and cooperative world-building as opposed to combat and competition. In 1991, over 50% of MUD sites are of a third major variety, LPMUD, which synthesises the combat/puzzle aspects of AberMUD and older systems with the extensibility of TinyMud. The trend toward greater programmability and flexibility will doubtless continue. The state of the art in MUD design is still moving very rapidly, with new simulation designs appearing (seemingly) every month. There is now a move afoot to deprecate the term MUD itself, as newer designs exhibit an exploding variety of names corresponding to the different simulation styles being explored. See also bonk/oif, FOD, link-dead, mudhead, MOO, MUCK, MUG, MUSE, chat.
  • multimedia extension — Matrix Math eXtensions
  • network transparency — (networking)   A feature of an operating system or other service which lets the user access a remote resource through a network without having to know if the resource is remote or local. For example NFS allow users to access remote files as if they were local files.
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