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Engineering Dictionary

Version 0.0.2

February 15, 2006

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Cambridge-MIT Institute Multidisciplinary Design Project

This Dictionary/Glossary of Engineering terms has been compiled to compliment the work developed as partof the Multi-disciplinary Design Project (MDP), which is a programme to develop teaching material and kitsto aid the running of mechtronics projects in Universities and Schools. The project is being carried out withsupport from the Cambridge-MIT Institute undergraduate teaching programe.

For more information about the project please visit the MDP website at http://www-mdp.eng.cam.ac.uk orcontact

Dr. Peter LongCambridge University Engineering DepartmentTrumpington Street,Cambridge.CB2 1PZ.

e-mail: pjgl2@eng.cam.ac.uktel: +44 (0) 1223 332779

Prof. Alex SlocumMassachusetts Institute of Technology77 Massachusetts Ave.Cambridge MA 02139-4307USA

e-mail: slocum@mit.edutel: +1 617 253 0012

For information about the CMI initiative please seeCambridge-MIT Institute website :- http://www.cambridge-mit.org

CMIUniversity of Cambridge10 Miller’s Yard,Mill Lane,Cambridge.CB2 1RQ.

tel: +44 (0) 1223 327207fax: +44 (0) 1223 765891

CMI,Massachusetts Institute of Technology77 Massachusetts Ave.Cambridge MA 02139-4307

USA

tel. +1 617 253 7732fax. +1 617 258 8539

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1 Introduction

This dictionary/glossary has not been developed as a definative work but as a useful reference book for engi-neering students to search when looking for the meaning of a word/phrase. It has been compiled from a numberof existing glossaries together with a number of local additions.

Each reference has a standard layout

Transistor

[Elec]

Where [Elec] indicates the engineering area where the definition is used and the original source, see section 1.1.In a number of cases there are multiple definitions, these have been kept to indicate the variation in use even

within the same industry.The MDP project is very grateful to the compilers of the other collections for their kind permission to reuse

their data, but accepts responsibility for any errors or mistranscription. Links to some of the original datasources are given in section 1.1 and the users is urged to consult these if additional information is required.

1.1 Engineering Disciplines

Aerospace & thermodynamic engineering involves developing, designing, testing items related to aircraftpower generating systems.

• [aeroth] - general

Agricultural & Food engineering involves every aspect of food production, processing, marketing, anddistribution.

Biomedical engineering applies engineering principles and design to the biology and medical arena to improvehealth care and the lives of those with medical impairments. Bringing together knowledge from manyengineering disciplines and technical fields, biomedical engineers design medical instruments, devices, andsoftware; develop new procedures; conduct research; and solve clinical problems.

Chemical engineering applies principles of chemistry and physics to the design and production of materialsthat undergo chemical changes during their manufacture.

Civil & Structural engineering involves planning, designing, and building a wide variety of structures and fa-cilities, including bridges, roads and highways, dams, high-rise buildings, airports, water treatment centers,industrial manufacturing and processing facilities, and sanitation plants.

• [civilst] - general

• [civil-1] - see http://urban.arch.virginia.edu/km6e/reference/glossary/struc-glossary.html

Computer & Software engineering involves the design, construction, and operation of computer systems.

• [soft] - general

• [soft1] - see http://www.apl.jwww.apl.jhu.edu

Control Systems engineering involves the design and manufacture of instrumentation and ways to controldynamic processes automatically.

Electrical & Electronic engineering is the practical application of electricity. Covering the area from verylow power/voltage to high power and transmission systems.

• [elec] - general

Environmental engineering is the development of processes and infrastructure for the supply of water, thedisposal of waste, and the control of all kinds of pollution.

• [enviro] - general

Geotechnical engineering uses the principles of mechanics to analyze and predict the behavior of earthmaterials in engineering situations.

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• [geotech] - general

Instrumental engineering

• [instrum] - general

• [instrum-1] - see http://www.omega.com

Manufacturing engineering includes all aspects of manufacturing operations, including the behavior andproperties of materials and materials processes; the design of products, equipment, and tooling neces-sary for their manufacture; management of manufacturing enterprises; and, the design and operation ofmanufacturing systems

Materials engineering focusses on materials design, testing and processing techniques (e.g. casting, rolling,welding)

• [mat] - general

• [mat-1] - see http://www.justinline.com/glossary

Mechanical engineering applies the principles of mechanics and energy to the design of machines and devices.Perhaps the broadest of all engineering disciplines, mechanical engineering is generally combined into threebroad areas: energy, structures and motion in mechanical systems, and manufacturing.

• [mech] - general

• [mech-1] - materials related see http://www.tulane.edu/ bmitche/book/glossary.html

• [mech-2] - Welding http://www.meg.co.uk

• [mech-3] - Fasteners see http://www.boltscience.com

Mining engineering comprises all aspects of discovering, removing, and processing minerals from the earth.

Nuclear engineering involves the design, construction, and operation of nuclear power plants for power gen-eration, propulsion of nuclear submarines, the handling of nuclear fuels and the safe disposal of radioactivewastes.

• [nuclear] - general

• [nuclear-1] - see http://www.usanuclear

Petroleum engineering involves sustaining the flow of oil and gas, including discovery, recovery, storage, andtransportation of petroleum.

• [petro] - general

• [petro-1] - see http://www.statoil.com

Sanitary engineering is a branch of civil and environmental engineering that deals with sanitary issues affectingpublic health, such as safe drinking water and sewage disposal. Among other things, sanitary engineersdeal with preventing toxins and dangerous microorganisms from endangering the public in such systems.

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4GL Fourth generation language . [soft]

88open A consortium with the aim of creating amultivendor open computing environment basedon the Motorola 88000 RISC processor family[soft]

AB

AAP DTD A DTD document type for scientificdocuments, defined by the AAP [soft]

AAP The Association of American Publishers: en-gaged in standardisation efforts in documentpreparation. [soft]

ABI Application Binary Interface: the interface bywhich an application program gains access to op-erating system and other services, designed topermit porting of compiled binary applicationsbetween systems with the same ABI. [soft]

abrasion a process where hard particles are forcedagainst and moved along a solid surface. [mat-1]

abrasive a hard and wear-resistant material (com-monly a ceramic) that is used to wear, grind, orcut away other material. [mat-1]

Abrasive A hard and wear-resistant material thatis used to wear, grind or cut away othermaterial.[mech-1]

abrasive wheel a grinding wheel composed of anabrasive grit and bonding agent. [mat-1]

Abstract Class In object-oriented programming,a class designed only as a parent from whichsub-classes may be derived, but which is not it-self suitable for instantiation . Often used to”abstract out” incomplete sets of features whichmay then be shared by a group of sibling sub-classes which add different variations of the miss-ing pieces. [soft]

Abutment - In coal mining, (1) the weight of therocksabove a narrow roadway is transferred tothe solid coal along thesides, which act as abut-ments of the arch of strata spanning theroad-way; and (2) the weight of the rocks over a long-wall face istransferred to the front abutment,that is, the solid coal ahead ofthe face and theback abutment, that is, the settled packs behindtheface.[mining-1]

ACA Application Control Architecture: DEC’s im-plementation of ORB [soft]

Acceleration A vector quantity equal to the ratethat velocity changes with time. [struc-1]

Access hatch An airtight door system that pre-serves the pressure integrity of a reactor contain-ment structure while allowing access to personneland equipment. [nuclear-1]

ACE Adaptive Communication Environment, aC++ Wrapper Library for communications fromthe University of California at Irvine [soft]

ACE Advanced Computing Environment: a consor-tium to agree on an open architecture based onthe MIPS R4000 chip. A computer architectureARCS will be defined, on which either OS/2 orOpen Desktop can be run [soft]

acid a chemical substance that yields hydrogen ionswhen dissolved in water. [mat-1]

Acid deposition or acid rain Refers loosely to amixture ofwet and dry ”deposition” (depositedmaterial) from the atmospherecontaining higherthan ”normal” amount of nitric and sulfuri-cacids. The precursors or chemical forerunnersof acid rain formationresult from both naturalsources, such as volcanoes and decayingvegeta-tion, and man-made sources, primarily emissionsof sulfur andnitrogen oxides resulting from fossilfuel combustion.[mining-1]

Acid mine water - Mine water that contains freesulfuricacid, mainly due to the weathering of ironpyrites.[mining-1]

ACM Association for Computing Machinery [soft]

Acorn Nut A nut (so-called because of its shape)that has a domed top so that [mech-3]

acoustic emission a measure of integrity of a ma-terial determined by sound emission when a ma-terial is stressed. [mat-1]

Acrobat A platform-independent text and imageformatter/viewer from Adobe Systems [soft]

acrylic synthetic resin made from acrylic acid or aderivative thereof; acrylics possess the propertyof transparency and offer flame resistance. [mat-1]

Actis An approach to integrated CASE by Apollo .[soft]

activated rosin flux mixture of rosin and smallamounts of organic-halide activators or organic-acid activators. [mat-1]

activation energy the energy required to initiatea reaction, such as diffusion. [mat-1]

Activation The process of making a radioisotopeby bombarding a stable element with neutronsor protons. [nuclear-1]

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activator substance that enhances the ability of aflux to remove oxides and other contaminantsfrom surfaces being joined. [mat-1]

Active DBMS A conventional or passive DBMScombined with a means of event detection andcondition monitoring. Event handling is oftenrule-based , as with an expert system . [soft]

Active fuel length The end-to-end dimension offuel material within a fuel element. [nuclear-1]

Active object An object that encompasses its ownthread of control. [soft]

Active workings - Any place in a minewhere miners arenormally required to work ortravel and which are ventilated andinspectedregularly.[mining-1]

ActiveX A software development kit from Mi-crosoft for develpment of Internet applicationsand content [soft]

Actor A term in Chorus denoting the unit of re-source allocation. [soft]

Actor In object-oriented programming, an objectwhich exists as a concurrent process. [soft]

Actra A multiprocessor Smalltalk project. [soft]

Ada A high-level computer language sponsored bythe US Department of Defense. It has a mul-titasking mechanism, and a number of featuresuseful for software engineering [soft]

AdaIC Ada Information Clearinghouse - More in-formation. [soft]

Adaline Name given by Widrow to ADAptive LIn-ear NEurons, that is neurons (seeMcCulloch-Pitts ) which learn using the Widrow-Huff DeltaRule (see also Madaline ). [soft]

ADAMO A data management system written atCERN based on the Entity-Relationship model[soft]

Adaptable User Interface A toolkit from Ora-cle allowing applications to be written portablyfor different windowing systems. It provides onecall level interface along with a resource managerand editor across a range of ”standard” GUI s,including Macintosh, Windows and the X Win-dow System . [soft]

Adaptive learning Learning in which a systemprograms itself by adjusting weights or strengthsuntil it produces the desired output. Same asHebbian . [soft]

AD/Cycle (AD = Application Development): a setof SAA -compatible IBM-sponsored products forprogram development, running on workstationsaccessing a central repository on a mainframe.The stages cover requirements, analysis and de-sign,production of the application, building andtesting, and maintenance. Technologies used in-clude code generators and knowledge based sys-tems, as well as languages and debuggers. [soft]

ADDD A Depository of Development Documents.A public domain Software Engineering Envi-ronment from GMD developed as part of theSTONE project [soft]

adhesion (1) the attractive force between adjacentsurfaces in a frictional contact; (2) the state inwhich two surfaces are held together by interfa-cial forces. [mat-1]

Adhesive a substance that bonds together the sur-faces of two other materials.[mech-1]

Adit - A nearly horizontal passage from the surfacebywhich a mine is entered and dewatered. Ablind horizontal opening intoa mountain, withonly one entrance.[mining-1]

ADL Assertion (or API) Definition Language. Aproject for Automatic Interface Test Generation[soft]

ADT Abstract Data Type: a class of data struc-tures described by means of a set of operationsrather than by physical representation, such as aclass in object-oriented programming.. [soft]

Advanced Ceramic a value-added technical ce-ramic .[mech-1]

Advance - Mining in the same direction, or orderofsequence; first mining as distinguished fromretreat.[mining-1]

Aegis A CASE tool for project change management,part of the GNU software. [soft]

AENOR Asociacion Espanola de Normalizacion yCertificacion. The Spanish standards organisa-tion. [soft]

AEP Application environment profile . [soft]

Aerotight Nut it prevents contact with the exter-nal thread. [mech-3]

AES Application environment specification: a setof specifications from OSF for programming anduser interfaces, aimed at providing a consistentapplication environment on different hardwareplatforms. It includes O/S for the operating sys-tem (user commands and program interfaces),U/E for the User Environment (Motif), and N/Sfor Network services. [soft]

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AFIPS American Federation of Information Pro-cessing Societies. [soft]

AFNOR Association Francaise pour la Normalisa-tion: the French national standards institute, amember of ISO . [soft]

AFS Andrew File System . [soft]

aging a change in the properties of certain metalsand alloys that occurs at ambient or moderatelyelevated temperatures after hot working, heattreatment, or a cold working operation. [mat-1]

AGL Atelier de Genie Logiciel: French for IPSE .[soft]

AGOCG Advisory Group on Computer Graphics.Advising UK Higher Education on ComputerGraphics, Visualization and Multimedia [soft]

Agreement State A state that has signed anagreement with the Nuclear Regulatory Commis-sion under which the state regulates the use ofbyproduct, source, and small quantities of spe-cial nuclear material in that state. [nuclear-1]

AIA Application Integration Architecture: DEC’s”open standards” specifications. [soft]

AI Artificial Intelligence . [soft]

AICA Associazione Italiana di Calcolo Automatico.[soft]

AIFF Audio IFF. A format developed by Apple forstoring high-quality sampled sound and musicalinstrument info; also used by SGI and severalprofessional audio packages. [soft]

Airborne radioactivity area A room, enclosure,or area in which airborne radioactive materials,composed wholly or partly of licensed material,exist in concentrations that (1) exceed the de-rived air concentration limits or (2) would resultin an individual present in the area without respi-ratory protection exceeding, during those hours,0.6 percent of the annual limit on intake or 12derived air concentration-hours [nuclear-1]

air-lock an intermediate enclosed chamber of a vac-uum or pressure system through which an objectmay be passed without materially changing thevacuum or pressure of the system. [mat-1]

Air sampling The collection of samples of air tomeasure the radioactivity or to detect the pres-ence of radioactive material, particulate matter,or chemical pollutants in the air. [nuclear-1]

Air Set Cement a cement that sets through lossof water.[mech-1]

Air split - The division of a current of air into twoormore parts.[mining-1]

Airway - Any passage through which air is carried.Alsoknown as an air course.[mining-1]

AIS Advanced Informatics Support project for ad-ministrative work at CERN [soft]

AIX Advanced Interactive eXecutive: IBM’s ver-sion of UNIX , taken as the basis for the OSF[soft]

ALARA Acronym for ”as low as (is) reasonablyachievable.” Means making every reasonable ef-fort to maintain exposures to ionizing radiationas far below the dose limits as practical, con-sistent with the purpose for which the licensedactivity is undertaken, taking into account thestate of technology, the economics of improve-ments in relation to state of technology, the eco-nomics of improvements in relation to benefits tothe public health and safety, and other societaland socioeconomic considerations, and in rela-tion to utilization of nuclear energy and licensedmaterials in the public interest [nuclear-1]

alclad composite wrought product comprised of analuminum alloy core having one or both sur-faces as metallurgically bonded aluminum oraluminum alloy coating that is anodic to thecore, and thus electrochemically protects the coreagainst corrosion. [mat-1]

Algol A high-level programming language devel-oped in the 1950s . [soft]

Algorithm A systematic procedure guaranteed toproduce a result after a finite number of steps.[soft]

alkali metal a metal in group IA of the peri-odic table that form strongly alkaline hydroxides(lithium, sodium, potassium, rubidium, cesium,francium). [mat-1]

alkaline earth metal a metal in group IIA of theperiodic table (beryllium, magnesium, calcium,strontium, barium, radium). [mat-1]

allotriomorphic crystal a crystal having a nor-mal lattice structure, but with an imperfect out-ward shape due to the influence of its surroud-ings. [mat-1]

allotropy the possibility of existence of two or moredifferent crystal structures for a substance (gen-erally an elemental solid). [mat-1]

Allowance An intentional clearance between in-ternal or external thread and the design form of

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the thread when the thread form is on it’s maxi-mum metal condition. Not all classes of fit havean allowance. For metric threads the allowanceis called the fundamental deviation. [mech-3]

Alloy a metallic solid or liquid formed froman intimate combination of two or moreelements.[mech-1]

alloy a metallic substance that is composed of twoor more elements. [mat-1]

alpha iron the body-centered cubic (BCC) form ofpure iron, stable below 910 C (1670 F). [mat-1]

Alpha particle A positively charged particleejected spontaneously from the nuclei of someradioactive elements. It is identical to a he-lium nucleus that has a mass number of 4 andan electrostatic charge of +2. It has low pene-trating power and a short range (a few centime-ters in air). The most energetic alpha particlewill generally fail to penetrate the dead layers ofcells covering the skin and can be easily stoppedby a sheet of paper. Alpha particles are haz-ardous when an alpha-emitting isotope is insidethe body. [nuclear-1]

Alternating Copolymer a polymer , in which thedifferent mer units systematically alternate posi-tions along the molecular chain.[mech-1]

Alvey A funding programme for collaborative re-search in the UK. [soft]

AMADEUS A PC client for Hyper-G . [soft]

ami Applications of Metrics in Industry (Assess,Analyze, Metricate, Improve). A method forsoftware project management and process im-provement [soft]

Amoeba A distributed operating system developedby A.Tanenbaum and others at Amsterdam [soft]

Amorphography the branch of science concernedwith the determination of amorphous solid struc-tures and their systemmatic classification (seealso crystallography ).[mech-1]

Amorphous having no long-range order.[mech-1]

amorphous non-crystalline, without long-range or-der. [mat-1]

AMS Andrew Message System . [soft]

Anaerobic Adhesive An adhesive which hardensin the absence of air, such adhesives are oftenused as a thread locking medium. [mech-3]

analog circuit electrical circuit that provides a con-tinuous relationship between its input and out-put. [mat-1]

Analysis The part of the software development pro-cess concerned with defining the requirements forthe product. [soft]

ANDF Architecture-Neutral Distribution Format:an emerging OSF standard for software distribu-tion. Programs are compiled into ANDF beforedistribution, and executables are produced fromit for the local target system. [soft]

Andrew File System The distributed file systemof the Andrew project , adopted by the OSF .[soft]

Andrew Message System A multimedia interfaceto electronic mail and bulletin boards, developedas part of the Andrew project [soft]

Andrew Project A distributed system project forsupport of educational and research computingat Carnegie Mellon University [soft]

Andrew Toolkit A portable user interface toolkitdeveloped as part of the Andrew project , run-ning on the X Window System and distributedwith X11R5 . [soft]

Anemometer - Instrument for measuring airvelocity.[mining-1]

Angle Controlled Tightening A tightening pro-cedure in which a fastener is first tightened bya pre-selected torque (called the snug torque) sothat the clamped surfaces are pulled together,and then is further tightened by giving the nut anadditional measured rotation. Frequently boltsare tightened beyond their yield point by thismethod in order to ensure that a precise preloadis achieved. Bolts of short length can be elon-gated too much by this method and the bolt ma-terial must be sufficiently ductile to cater for theplastic deformation involved. Because of the boltbeing tightened beyond yield, its re-use is lim-ited. [mech-3]

Angle of dip - The angle at which strata ormineraldeposits are inclined to the horizontalplane.[mining-1]

Angle of draw - In coal mine subsidence, this angleisassumed to bisect the angle between the verti-cal and the angle ofrepose of the material and is20o for flat seams. For dippingseams, the angleof break increases, being 35.8o from the vertical-for a 40o dip. The main break occurs over theseam at an angle fromthe vertical equal to halfthe dip.[mining-1]

Angle of repose - The maximum angle from hor-izontal atwhich a given material will rest on agiven surface without sliding orrolling.[mining-1]

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Anion A negatively charged ion. [nuclear-1]

anion a negatively charged non-metallic ion. [mat-1]

Anisotropic exhibiting different values ofa property in different crystallographicdirections.[mech-1]

anisotropy material characteristic of exhibiting dif-ferent values of a property in different crystallo-graphic directions. [mat-1]

ANL Argonne National Laboratory, USA [soft]

Anna A specification language from Stanford Uni-versity for formally specifying Ada programs. Ithas a Specification Analyzer and a ConsistencyChecking System. [soft]

Annealing a generic term used to denote a heattreatment wherein the microstructrure and, con-sequently, the properties of a material are al-tered. Frequently, refers to heat treatmentwhereby a cold-worked metal is softened by al-lowing it to recrystallize.[mech-1]

annealing a generic term used to denote a heattreatment where the microstructure and proper-ties of a material are altered; it frequently refersto a heat treatment where a previously cold-worked metal is softened by allowing it to re-crystallize. [mat-1]

Annealing A technique which can be applied toany minimization or learning process based onsuccessive update steps (either random or deter-ministic) where the update step length is propor-tional to an arbitrarily set parameter which canplay the role of a temperature. Then, in analogywith the annealing of metals, the temperature ismade high in the early stages of the process forfaster minimization or learning, then is reducedfor greater stability. [soft]

annealing twin a twin formed in a crystal duringrecrystallization. [mat-1]

Annual limit on intake (ALI) The derived limitfor the amount of radioactive material taken intothe body of an adult worker by inhalation or in-gestion in a year. ALI is the smaller value ofintake of a given radionuclide in a year by thereference man that would result in a commit-ted effective dose equivalent of 5 rems (0.05 siev-ert) or a committed dose equivalent of 50 rems(0.5 sievert) to any individual organ or tissue.[nuclear-1]

anode the electrode of an electrolyte cell at whichoxidation occurs; electrons flow away from theanode in the external circuit; it is usually at the

electrode that corrosion occurs and metal ionsenter solution. [mat-1]

anodic protection a technique to reduce the cor-rosion rate of a metal by polarizing it into itspassive region, where dissolution rates are low.[mat-1]

anodic reaction electrode reaction equivalent toa transfer of positive charge from the electronicto the ionic conductor; an anodic reaction is anoxidation process. [mat-1]

anodizing forming a conversion coating on a metalsurface by anodic oxidation; most often appliedto aluminum. [mat-1]

ANSA Advanced Network Systems Architecture:an architecture for distributed computer systemsbased on a model developed as an Esprit project[soft]

ANSI American National Standards Institute, re-sponsible for approving U.S. standards in manyareas, including computers and communications.ANSI is a member of ISO - More information.[soft]

ANSI/SPARC Architecture A layered modelof database architecture comprising a physicalschema, a conceptual schema, and user views.[soft]

ANSI Z39.50 See Z39.50 . [soft]

AnswerGarden A help desk software package fromMIT. [soft]

Anticipated transient without scram (ATWS)ATWS is one of the ”worst case” accidents,consideration of which frequently motivates theNRC to take regulatory action. The accidentcould happen if the system that provides ahighly reliable means of shutting down the re-actor (scram system) fails to work during a re-actor event (anticipated transient). The typesof events considered are those used for designingthe plant. [nuclear-1]

Anticline - An upward fold or arch of rockstrata.[mining-1]

Antiferromagnetism a phenomenon observed insome materials in which complete magnetic mo-ment cancellation occurs as a result of antipar-allel coupling of adjacent atoms or ions. Themacroscopic solid possesses no net magneticmoment.[mech-1]

antiferromagnetism a phenomenon where com-plete magnetic moment cancellation occurs as aresult of antiparallel coupling of adjacent atoms

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or ions; the macroscopic solid possesses no netmagnetic moment. [mat-1]

Anti-Friction Coating AF coatings are dry lu-bricants consisting of suspensions of solid lubri-cants, such as graphite, PTFE or molydbenumdisulphide of small particle size in a binder. Suchcoatings can be applied to fastener threads to re-place metallic coatings such as zinc and cadmiumand offer maintenance free permanent lubrica-tion. By careful selection of the lubricants, AFcoatings can be designed to meet specific applica-tions. The coatings are permanently bonded tothe metal surface and provide a lubricating filmpreventing direct metal to metal contact. [mech-3]

Anti-Seize Compound An anti-seize compoundis used on the threads of fasteners in some appli-cations. The purpose of the compound dependsupon the application. It can prevent galling ofmating surfaces - such compounds are frequentlyused with stainless steel fasteners to prevent thiseffect from occurring. In some applications itis used to improve corrosion resistance to al-low the parts to be subsequently dis-assembledThirdly, it can provide a barrier to water pene-tration since the threads are sealed by use of thecompound. [mech-3]

AOCE Apple Open Collaboration Environment. Aset of software for e-mail, directory services etc.[soft]

APA Application Portability Architecture: DEC’splan for portable applications software. [soft]

apE A graphics package from the Ohio Supercom-puter Centre . [soft]

Apertos An object-oriented operating system fromSony Computer Science Laboratory [soft]

API Application Program Interface: a term for theinterface by which an application program gainsaccess to operating system and other services,defined at source-code level. [soft]

APL A Programming Language developed by Iver-son for mathematical applications. [soft]

Apollo Apollo Computer, now a division ofHewlett-Packard, also the name of a range ofworkstations manufactured by this company.[soft]

AppKit A set of objects used by the applicationbuilder for the NeXTstep environment. [soft]

Apple Apple Computer Inc, manufacturers of theMacintosh range of Personal Computers. [soft]

Appletalk The proprietary local area network pro-tocol developed by Apple for their Macintoshrange of processors. Current implementationsexist on Localtalk and Ethertalk. [soft]

Applet A small application, often downloaded froma remote server and run in a controlled environ-ment. Typically written in a language such asJava browser. [soft]

Applied force see external force. [struc-1]

APSE Ada Programming Support Environment.[soft]

Aquifer - A water-bearing bed of porous rock,oftensandstone.[mining-1]

Arcadia A software engineering research project bya consortium of US universities [soft]

Archie An archive server database and query sys-tem operated by the McGill University School ofComputer Science. Services remote requests forinformation on software kept on archives world-wide and available via ftp [soft]

Arching - Fracture processes around a mineopening, leadingto stabilization by an archingeffect.[mining-1]

ARC (Previously ARCS) Advanced RISC Comput-ing Specification: the standard hardware archi-tecture of ACE ., specifying the baseline hard-ware requirements to create ACE-compatiblesystems. [soft]

ARCS see ARC . [soft]

Area (of an airway) - Average width multipliedby averageheight of airway, expressed in squarefeet.[mining-1]

Arjuna A system for reliable distributed computingfrom the Computing Laboratory, University ofNewcastle upon Tyne. It supports atomic trans-actions on persistent objects. [soft]

ARL ASSET Reuse Library. [soft]

ARL Association of Research Libraries (NorthAmerica) - More information. [soft]

ARPANET U.S. Department of Defense (DARPA) wide area network. It became operational in1968 and was the forerunner of the Internet .[soft]

Artifex A CASE environment from ARTIS of Turinfor the development of large event-driven dis-tributed systems. It has code-generation andrapid prototyping features [soft]

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Artificial Intelligence The subfield of computerscience concerned with the concepts and meth-ods of symbolic inference by computer, and thesymbolic representation of the knowledge to beused in making inferences - More information.[soft]

ASCII American Standard Code for InformationInterchange. [soft]

ASDL Abstract-Type and Scheme-Definition Lan-guage: developed as part of Esprit projectGRASPIN , as a basis for generating language-based editors and environments. It combinesan object-oriented type system, syntax-directedtranslation schemes and a target-language inter-face. [soft]

ASE Advanced Software Environment: an object-oriented application support system from Nix-dorf. [soft]

ASIC Application-Specific Integrated Circuit: anintegrated circuit designed to perform a partic-ular function by defining the interconnection ofa set of basic circuit building blocks drawn froma library provided by the circuit manufacturer.[soft]

ASIS Ada Semantic Interface Specification. An in-terface between an Ada library and any tool re-quiring information in it [soft]

ASIS Application Software Installation Server atCERN [soft]

ASME American Society of Mechanical Engineers:involved in CAD standardisation. [soft]

ASN.1 Abstract Syntax Notation 1: an ISO/CCITT standard for the description of data. Itis intended to facilitate the exchange of data be-tween application programs. [soft]

ASPECT An IPSE developed by an Alvey to spec-ify the object-management system and tool in-terface. [soft]

ASQ Automated Software Quality. The use of soft-ware tools, such as automated testing tools, toimprove software quality. [soft]

ASQC American Society for Quality Control. [soft]

ASSET Asset Source for Software EngineeringTechnology. A programme to promote softwarereuse by the DoD - More information. [soft]

Assumptions (for IPEs, IPEEs, and PRAs)In the context of PRAs, assumptions are those

parts of the mathematical models that the an-alyst expects will hold true for the range of so-lutions used for making decisions. Without as-sumptions, even the most powerful computersmay not be able to provide useful solutions forthe models. [nuclear-1]

Atactic a type of polymer chain configurationwherein side groups are randomly poitionedon one side of the polymer backbone or theother.[mech-1]

atactic a type of polymer chain configuration whereside groups are randomly positioned on one sideof the chain or the other. [mat-1]

AtFS Attributed File System: the basis of theShape VC toolkit. Cooperative work withinprojects is supported by a status model con-trolling visibility of version objects, locking, and”long transactions” for synchronizing concurrentupdates. The concept of object attributes pro-vides a basis for storing management informationwith versions and passing this information be-tween individual tools. This mechanism is usefulfor building integrated environments from a setof unrelated tools. [soft]

Athena Project Athena: a distributed systemproject for support of educational and researchcomputing at MIT . Much of the software devel-oped is now in wider use, especially the X Win-dow System [soft]

Atherton Atherton Technology developed the Soft-ware BackPlane framework. Their AthertonTool Integration Services were the basis for theATIS standard. [soft]

ATIS A Tools Integration Standard: an object-oriented interface to a set of services that allowsthe saving, accessing, and managing of informa-tion in a common repository . Developed byAtherton Technology and DEC, based on an ex-tended version of the Software BackPlane , nowproposed as an industry standard. [soft]

ATK The Andrew Toolkit [soft]

ATM Adobe Type Manager. [soft]

ATM Asynchronous Transfer Mode. A transmis-sion system for telecommunications [soft]

Atomic Energy Commission Federal agency cre-ated in 1946 to manage the development, use,and control of nuclear energy for military andcivilian applications. Abolished by the EnergyReorganization Act of 1974 and succeeded by theEnergy Research and Development Administra-tion (now part of the U.S. Department of En-ergy) and the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commis-sion. [nuclear-1]

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Atomic energy Energy released in nuclear reac-tions. Of particular interest is the energy re-leased when a neutron initiates the breaking upor fissioning of an atom’s nucleus into smallerpieces (fission) or when two nuclei are joinedtogether under millions of degrees of heat (fu-sion). It is more correctly called nuclear energy.[nuclear-1]

Atomic number The number of positively chargedprotons in the nucleus of an atom. [nuclear-1]

atomic packing factor (APF) the fraction of thevolume of a unit cell that is occupied by ”hardsphere” atoms or ions. [mat-1]

atom percent (at%) concentration specificationon the basis of the number of moles (or atoms)of a particular element relative to the total num-ber of moles (or atoms) of all elements within analloy. [mat-1]

Atom The smallest particle of an element that can-not be divided or broken up by chemical means.It consists of a central core of protons and neu-trons, called the nucleus. Electrons revolve inorbits in the region surrounding the nucleus.[nuclear-1]

Attenuation The process by which the number ofparticles or photons entering a body of matter isreduced by absorption and scattered radiation.[nuclear-1]

AUE Andrew User Environment. Part of the An-drew project [soft]

Auger - A rotary drill that uses a screw de-vice topenetrate, break, and then transport thedrilled material(coal). [mining-1]

AUI Adaptable User Interface from Oracle . [soft]

AUIS Andrew user Interface System [soft]

austenite face-centered cubic iron; also iron andsteel alloys that have the FCC crystal structure.[mat-1]

Austenite face-centered cubic iron; also iron andsteel alloys that have the FCC structure.[mech-1]

austenitizing forming austenite by heating a fer-rous alloy above its upper critical temperature- to within the austenite phase region from thephase diagram. [mat-1]

AutoCAD A CAD software package for mechanicalengineering marketed by Autodesk Inc. [soft]

Autolok Nut A torque prevailing nut of anall metal construction. Covered by UK patent1180842 the nut is marketed by GKN Screws andFasteners Limited. [mech-3]

Auxiliary feedwater Backup water supply usedduring nuclear plant startup and shutdown tosupply water to the steam generators during ac-cident conditions for removing decay heat fromthe reactor. [nuclear-1]

Auxiliary operations - All activities supportive ofbut notcontributing directly to mining.[mining-1]

Auxiliary ventilation - Portion of main ventilat-ing currentdirected to face of dead end entry bymeans of an auxiliary fan andtubing.[mining-1]

Average planar linear heat generation rate(APLGHR) The average value of the linearheat generation rate of all the control rods atany given horizontal plane along a fuel bundle.[nuclear-1]

AVL Abstract Visualization Language in the Tecateproject. [soft]

AVS Application Visualisation System: a portablemodular UNIX -based graphics package sup-ported by a consortium of vendors includingConvex, DEC, IBM, HP, SET Technologies,Stardent and WaveTracer [soft]

AWK A pattern scanning and processing languagenamed after its authors: Aho, Weinberger andKernighan. [soft]

aXe A text editor for the X-Window-System . [soft]

Axial force A system of internal forces whose resul-tant is a force acting along the longitudinal axisof a structural member or assembly. [struc-1]

Azimuth - A surveying term that references theanglemeasured clockwise from any meridian (theestablished line ofreference). The bearing is usedto designate direction. The bearing ofa line is theacute horizontal angle between the meridian andtheline. [mining-1]

Bachman Proposed a style of Entity-Relationshipmodeling which differs from the original Chenproposals. [soft]

Backfill Mine waste or rock used to support theroof aftercoal removal.[mining-1]

Background radiation Radiation from cosmicsources; naturally occurring radioactive materi-als, including radon (except as a decay productof source or special nuclear material) and global

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fallout as it exists in the environment from thetesting of nuclear explosive devices. It does notinclude radiation from source, byproduct, or spe-cial nuclear materials regulated by the NuclearRegulatory Commission. The typically quotedaverage individual exposure from background ra-diation is 360 millirems per year. [nuclear-1]

Back-propagation An important algorithm forlearning in feed-forward networks which makesuse of a mathematical trick when the networkis simulated on a digital computer, yielding injust two traversals of the network (once forward,and once back) both the difference between thedesired and actual output, and the derivativesof this difference with respect to the connectionweights. [soft]

Back - The roof or upper part in any undergroundminingcavity.[mining-1]

Backus Naur A formal language for syntax speci-fication. [soft]

B A Formal method of program design - More in-formation. [soft]

Bainite a Fe-C composition consisting of a fine dis-persion of cementite . It is an austenitic trans-formation product that forms at temperaturesbetween those at which pearlite and martensitetransformations occur.[mech-1]

bainite an austenitic transformation product foundin some steels and cast irons; it forms attemperatures between those at which pearliteand martensite transformations occur; the mi-crostructure consists of alpha-ferrite and a finedispersion of cementite. [mat-1]

Bamboo A trusted third-party authentication sys-tem from the University of Iowa, similar to Ker-beros - More information. [soft]

Band Gap Energy for semiconductors and insu-lators, the energies that lie between the valenceand conduction bands.[mech-1]

band gap energy for semiconductors and insula-tors, the energies that lie between the valenceand conduction bands; for intrinsic materialselectrons are forbidden to have energies withinthis range. [mat-1]

Barren - Said of rock or vein material contain-ing nominerals of value, and of strata withoutcoal, or containing coal inseams too thin to beworkable.[mining-1]

Barricading - Enclosing part of a mine to preventinflow ofnoxious gasses from a mine fire or anexplosion.[mining-1]

Barrier - Something that bars or keeps out. Bar-rier pillarsare solid blocks of coal left between twomines or sections of a mineto prevent accidentsdue to inrushes of water, gas, or from explosion-sor a mine fire.[mining-1]

Baseline See Released version . [soft]

BASIC Beginners All-purpose Symbolic Instruc-tion Code: a programming language, usually in-terpreted, suitable for simple applications. [soft]

Basic Thread Profile This is the theoretical pro-file of external and internal threads with no man-ufacturing tolerance applied. [mech-3]

bauxite an ore of aluminum consisting of moder-ately pure hydrated alumina -Al2O32H2O. [mat-1]

Bayesian estimation A mathematical formula-tion, using Bayes’ theorem, by which the like-lihood of an event can be estimated taking ex-plicit consideration of certain contextual features(such as amount of data, nature of decision, etc.).[nuclear-1]

Bayesian prior A way to express the context ofa Bayesian estimation in which initial data areupdated as new data become available. [nuclear-1]

BBN Bolt Beranek and Newman Inc.,of Cambridge,Massachusetts, was awarded the original con-tract to build the ARPANET and has been ex-tensively involved in Internet development. Itis responsible for managing NNSC, CSNET, andNEARnet. [soft]

BCS Binary Compatibility Standard: the ABI of88open . [soft]

BCS British Computer Society. [soft]

BEA Basic programming Environment forinteractive-graphical Applications, fromSiemens-Nixdorf. [soft]

Beam - A bar or straight girder used to supporta span ofroof between two support props orwalls.[mining-1]

Beam building - The creation of a strong, inflex-ible beamby bolting or otherwise fastening to-gether several weaker layers. Incoal mining thisis the intended basis for roof bolting.[mining-1]

Bearing A surveying term used to designate di-rection. Thebearing of a line is the acute hor-izontal angle between the meridianand the line.The meridian is an established line ofreference.Azimuths are angles measured clockwise fromanymeridian.[mining-1]

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Bearing plate - A plate used to distribute a givenload.In roof bolting, the plate used between thebolt head and theroof.[mining-1]

Bearing Stress The surface pressure acting on ajoint face directly as a result of the force appliedby a fastener. [mech-3]

Becquerel (Bq) The unit of radioactive decayequal to 1 disintegration per second. 37 billion(3.7 x 1010 ) becquerels = 1 curie (Ci). [nuclear-1]

Bed - A stratum of coal or other sedimentary de-posit. [mining-1]

Bedrock A C++ class library for Macintosh userinterface portability. [soft]

Belt conveyor - A looped belt on which coal or oth-ermaterials can be carried and which is generallyconstructed offlame-resistant material or of rein-forced rubber or rubber-likesubstance.[mining-1]

Belt idler - A roller, usually of cylindrical shape,whichis supported on a frame and which, in turn,supports or guides aconveyor belt. Idlers arenot powered but turn by contact with themovingbelt.[mining-1]

Belt take-up - A belt pulley, generally under a con-veyorbelt and inby the drive pulley, kept understrong tension parallel tothe belt line. Its pur-pose is to automatically compensate for anyslackin the belting created by start-up, etc.[mining-1]

Benchmark A standard set of programs which canbe run on different platforms to compare perfor-mance [soft]

Bench - One of to or more divisions of a coal seam-separated by slate or formed by the process ofcutting the coal.[mining-1]

Bending moment A system of internal forceswhose resultant is a moment. This term is mostcommonly used to refer to internal forces inbeams. [struc-1]

Beneficiation - The treatment of mined material,making itmore concentrated or richer. [mining-1]

Bento A multi-vendor initiative allowing files tocontain typed parts, to allow standard access be-tween parts of a compound document indepen-dent of the file system. [soft]

Berkeley UNIX see BSD . [soft]

Berm - A pile or mound of material capable of re-straining avehicle.[mining-1]

BETA An object-oriented language and associatedprogramming environment from Mjolner Infor-matics, Aarhus [soft]

Beta particle A charged particle emitted from anucleus during radioactive decay, with a massequal to 1/1837 that of a proton. A negativelycharged beta particle is identical to an electron.A positively charged beta particle is called apositron. Large amounts of beta radiation maycause skin burns, and beta emitters are harm-ful if they enter the body. Beta particles maybe stopped by thin sheets of metal or plastic.[nuclear-1]

Beyond design-basis accidents This term is usedas a technical way to discuss accident sequencesthat are possible but were not fully considered inthe design process because they were judged tobe too unlikely. As the regulatory process strivesto be as thorough as possible, ”beyond design-basis” accident sequences are analyzed to fullyunderstand the capability of a design. [nuclear-1]

BHT Budget Holder’s Toolkit (at CERN ) - Moreinformation. [soft]

Bifunctional Monomer a monomer unit that hastwo active bonding positions.[mech-1]

Bihexagon Head A bolt or screw whose crosssection of its head is in the shape of a 12 pointedstar. [mech-3]

Binder - A streak of impurity in a coalseam.[mining-1]

Binding energy The minimum energy required toseparate a nucleus into its component neutronsand protons. [nuclear-1]

Bioassay The determination of kinds, quantities,or concentrations and, in some cases, locations ofradioactive material in the human body, whetherby direct measurement (in vivo counting) or byanalysis and evaluation of materials excretedor removed (in vitro) from the human body.[nuclear-1]

Biological half-life The time required for a biolog-ical system, such as that of a human, to elimi-nate, by natural processes, half of the amount ofa substance (such as a radioactive material) thathas entered it. [nuclear-1]

Biological shield A mass of absorbing materialplaced around a reactor or radioactive source toreduce the radiation to a level safe for humans.[nuclear-1]

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BITNET An academic and research network con-necting approximately 2500 computers, oftenIBM mainframes. It provides interactive elec-tronic mail, and file transfer services via a store-and-forward technique based on IBM NJE proto-cols. BITNET and Internet traffic are exchangedvia several gateway hosts. It is now operated byCREN . [soft]

Bit - The hardened and strengthened device at theend of adrill rod that transmits the energy ofbreakage to the rock. The sizeof the bit deter-mines the size of the hole. A bit may be eitherde-tachable from or integral with its supporting drillrod.[mining-1]

Bituminous coal A middle rank coal (betweensubbituminousand anthracite) formed by addi-tional pressure and heat onlignite. Usually hasa high Btu value and may be referred to as”softcoal.”[mining-1]

Black Bolts And Nuts The word black refersto the comparatively wider tolerances employedand not necessarily to the colour of the surfacefinish of the fastener. [mech-3]

Black damp - A term generally applied to carbondioxide.Strictly speaking, it is a mixture of car-bon dioxide and nitrogen. Itis also applied to anatmosphere depleted of oxygen, rather thanhav-ing an excess of carbon dioxide.[mining-1]

Blasting agent - Any material consisting of a mix-ture of afuel and an oxidizer. [mining-1]

Blasting cap - A detonator containing a chargeofdetonating compound, which is ignited by elec-tric current or the sparkof a fuse. Used for deto-nating explosives.[mining-1]

Blasting circuit - Electric circuits used to fire elec-tricdetonators or to ignite an igniter cord bymeans of an electricstarter.[mining-1]

Bleeder or bleeder entries - Special air coursesdevelopedand maintained as part of the mineventilation system and designed tocontinuouslymove air-methane mixtures emitted by the gobor at theactive face away from the active work-ings and into mine-return aircourses. Alt: Ex-haust ventilation lateral.[mining-1]

block copolymer a linear copolymer in which iden-tical mer units are clustered in blocks along themolecular chain. [mat-1]

Block Copolymer a linear copolymer unitsare clustered in blocks along the molecularchain.[mech-1]

BMP Bitmap format (for Windows ) - More infor-mation. [soft]

BNF Backus-Naur Form. [soft]

BOCS Berard Object and Class Specifier, anObject-oriented from Berard Software Engineer-ing. [soft]

Body-centered Cubic (BCC) a common crystalstructure that contains atoms located at the cor-ners of a cubic cell and one atom at the cell centerposition.[mech-1]

body-centered cubic (BCC) within the cubicunit cell atoms are located at corner and centercell positions [mat-1]

Body force An external force acting throughoutthe mass of a body. Gravity is a body force. Aninertial force is a body force. [struc-1]

Boehm B. Proposed the COCOMO technique forevaluating the cost of a software project. [soft]

Bohr Magneton[mech-1]

Boiling water reactor (BWR) A reactor in whichwater, used as both coolant and moderator, isallowed to boil in the core. The resulting steamcan be used directly to drive a turbine and elec-trical generator, thereby producing electricity.[nuclear-1]

Bolt A bolt is the term used for a threaded fastener,with a head, designed to be used in conjunctionwith a nut. [mech-3]

Bolt torque - The turning force in foot-poundsapplied to aroof bolt to achieve an installedtension.[mining-1]

Boltzmann’s Constant The gas constant permolecule: 1.381x10−23 J/atom K; 1.381x10−16

erg/atom K; or 8.63x10−5 eV/atom K.[mech-1]

BoM Bill of Materials. [soft]

BON Better Object Notation. Used in the EspritBusiness Classes project [soft]

bonding energy the energy required to separatetwo atoms that are chemically bonded to eachother. [mat-1]

Bonding Energy the energy required to separatetwo atoms that are chemically bonded to eachother.[mech-1]

Bone seeker A radioisotope that tends to accumu-late in the bones when it is introduced into thebody. An example is strontium-90, which be-haves chemically like calcium. [nuclear-1]

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Bookreader DEC’s CD-ROM-based online docu-mentation browser. [soft]

Bookviewer A hypertext documentation systemfrom Oracle based on Oracle Toolkit . It allowsthe user to create private links and bookmarks,and to make multimedia annotations. [soft]

BOOM Berard Object-Oriented Methodology [soft]

Borehole - Any deep or long drill-hole, usually as-sociatedwith a diamond drill.[mining-1]

BOS A data management system written at DESYand used in some HEP programs. [soft]

Boss - Any member of the managerial ranks whois directlyin charge of miners (e.g., ”shift-boss,””face-boss,” ”fire-boss,”etc.).[mining-1]

Bottom - Floor or underlying surface of anundergroundexcavation.[mining-1]

Bourne shell A common UNIX - More information.[soft]

Box-type magazine - A small, portable magazineused tostore limited quantities of explosives ordetonators for short periodsof time at locationsin the mine which are convenient to the blast-ingsites at which they will be used.[mining-1]

BPM Business Process Modelling. [soft]

BPR Business Process Reengineering. [soft]

Bragg’s Law a relationship that stipulates the con-dition for diffraction by a set of crystallographicplanes.[mech-1]

Branched Polymer a polymer having a molecularstructure of secondary chains that extend fromthe primary chains.[mech-1]

branched polymer a polymer having a molecularstructure of secondary chains that extend fromthe primary main chains. [mat-1]

Brass a copper-rich copper-zinc alloy.[mech-1]

brass copper (Cu) based alloy with zinc (Zn) as themain alloying element. [mat-1]

Brattice or brattice cloth - Fire-resistant fab-ric orplastic partition used in a mine passageto confine the air and forceit into the workingplace. Also termed ”line brattice,” ”line can-vas,”or ”line curtain.”[mining-1]

Bravais Lattice[mech-1]

Brazing a metal joining technique that uses amolten filler metal alloy having a melting tem-perature greater than about 425 C.[mech-1]

brazing a metal joining technique that uses amolten filler metal alloy having a melting tem-perature greater than about 425 degrees C (800F). [mat-1]

Breakaway Torque The torque necessary to putinto reverse rotation a bolt that has not beentightened. [mech-3]

Break line - The line that roughly follows the rearedgesof coal pillars that are being mined. Theline along which the roof ofa coal mine is ex-pected to break.[mining-1]

Breakloose Torque The torque required to effectreverse rotation when a pre-stressed threaded as-sembly is loosened. [mech-3]

Breakthrough - A passage for ventilation that iscutthrough the pillars between rooms.[mining-1]

Breeder A reactor that produces more nuclearfuel than it consumes. A fertile material,such as uranium-238, when bombarded by neu-trons, is transformed into a fissile material, suchas plutonium-239, which can be used as fuel.[nuclear-1]

Bridge carrier - A rubber-tire-mounted mobileconveyor,about 10 meters long, used as an in-termediate unit to create a systemof articulatedconveyors between a mining machine and a roomor entryconveyor.[mining-1]

Bridge conveyor - A short conveyor hung from theboom ofmining or lading machine or haulage sys-tem with the other end attachedto a receiving binthat dollies along a frame supported by the roomorentry conveyor, tailpiece. Thus, as the ma-chine boom moves, the bridgeconveyor keeps it inconstant connection with the tailpiece.[mining-1]

Brinell hardness test a test for determining thehardness of a material by forcing a hard steel orcarbide ball of specified diameter into it undera specified load; the result is expressed as theBrinell hardness number. [mat-1]

British Standard Brass A specialist thread formbased upon the Whitworth thread and consist-ing of 26 threads per inch whatever the threaddiameter. [mech-3]

British thermal unit (Btu) The amount of heatrequired to change the temperature of one poundof water one degree Fahrenheit at sea level.[nuclear-1]

Brittle A brittle structure or material exhibitslow ductility, meaning that it exhibits very lit-tle inelastic deformation before complete failure.[struc-1]

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brittle crack propagation a very sudden propa-gation of a crack with the absorption of no en-ergy except that stored elastically in the body.[mat-1]

Brittle Fracture fracture that occur by rapid crackpropagation and without appreciable macro-scopic deformation.[mech-1]

brittle fracture separation of a solid with little orno macroscopic plastic deformation; fracture oc-curs by rapid crack propagation with less expen-diture of energy than for ductile fracture; brittletensile fractures have a bright, granular appear-ance and exhibit little or no necking; typical frac-ture mode of a glass or ceramic. [mat-1]

brittleness the tendency of a material to fracturewithout first undergoing significant plastic defor-mation. [mat-1]

Bronze a copper-rich copper-tin alloy.[mech-1]

bronze copper (Cu) based alloy with tin (Sn) as themain alloying element. [mat-1]

Brow - A low place in the roof of a mine, givingin-sufficient headroom.[mining-1]

Browser A tool for navigating around hypertextdocuments. [soft]

Brushing - Digging up the bottom or tak-ing down the top togive more headroom inroadways.[mining-1]

BSD Berkeley Source Distribution: the versions ofUNIX developed and distributed by the Univer-sity of California at Berkeley. Many commer-cial UNIX implementations such as SunOS andDynix are derived from it. [soft]

Bsf British Standard Fine. A thread form basedupon the British Standard Whitworth form butwith a finer thread (more threads per inch fora given diameter). This thread form was firstintroduced in 1908, the thread form is specifiedin BS 84: 1956. [mech-3]

BSI British Standards Institution: a member of ISO. [soft]

BSP method A CASE method from IBM . [soft]

Bsw British Standard Whitworth. A thread formdeveloped by Sir Joseph Whitworth in 1841.The thread form has rounded roots and crests,the thread form is specified in BS 84: 1956.This thread form was superceded by the Unifiedthread in 1948 and then the metric thread form.[mech-3]

Btu British thermal unit. A measure of the energyrequiredto raise the temperature of one pound ofwater one degreeFahrenheit.[mining-1]

Bug dust - The fine particles of coal or other ma-terialresulting form the boring or cutting of thecoal face by drill ormachine.[mining-1]

Bump (or burst) - A violent dislocationof the mineworkings which is attributed tosevere stresses in the rocksurrounding theworkings.[mining-1]

Bump Thread A modified thread profile patentedand trade mark of the Bosco Tool Inc. Thethread form has a small projection at the pitchdiameter that eliminates the clearance from thethread assembly on both flanks. By doing this itis claimed that resistance to vibration looseningis significantly improved. [mech-3]

Burgers Vector a vector that denotes the magni-tude and direction of lattice distortion associatedwith a dislocation.[mech-1]

Burgers vector (b) a vector that denotes the mag-nitude and direction of lattice distortion associ-ated with a dislocation. [mat-1]

Butt cleat - A short, poorly defined vertical cleav-ageplane in a coal seam, usually at right anglesto the long facecleat.[mining-1]

Butt entry - A coal mining term that has differentmeaningsin different locations. It can be syn-onymous with panel entry, submainentry, or inits older sense it refers to an entry that is ”butt”ontothe coal cleavage (that is, at right angles tothe face).[mining-1]

Byproduct Byproduct is (1) any radioactive mate-rial (except special nuclear material) yielded in,or made radioactive by, exposure to the radia-tion incident to the process of producing or usingspecial nuclear material (as in a reactor); and (2)the tailings or wastes produced by the extractionor concentration of uranium or thorium from ore[nuclear-1]

Byte A data unit of several bits smaller than a com-puter word: usually 8 bits. [soft]

CD

Cache A small fast memory holding recently-accessed data, designed to speed up further ac-cess. [soft]

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CACI A company marketing SIMSCRIPT , MOD-SIM , and other simulation software products.[soft]

CACM Communications of the ACM . [soft]

CAD/CAM Computer Aided Design/ComputerAided Manufacturing (see CAD ) [soft]

CAD Computer Aided Design: usually applied tothat part of CAE which has to do with the draw-ing or physical layout steps of engineering design.[soft]

CADD Computer Aided Detector Design: a projectto develop standards and methods to allow coop-eration between HEP detector designers workingin different institutes [soft]

Cadmium Electroplating Coating of threadedfasteners with cadmium can provide the partswith excellent corrosion resistance. The appear-ance of the coating is bright silver or yellow ifsubsequently passivated. The friction values as-sociated with this coating are also comparativelylow. A chromate conversion coating is frequentlyapplied to the surface to improve corrosion re-sistance. Cadmium is not now frequently usedbecause of the environmental and worker healthproblems associated with the coating process andshould not be used in applications above 250C orwhen contact with food is possible. [mech-3]

CADRE A software engineering vendor in the US.[soft]

CAE Common Applications Environment ofX/Open , based on POSIX . [soft]

CAE Computer Aided Engineering: a technique forusing computers to help with all phases of engi-neering design work. As CAD , but also involvingthe conceptual and analytical design steps. [soft]

Cage - In a mine shaft, the device, similar to anelevatorcar, that is used for hoisting personneland materials.[mining-1]

CAI Computer Aided Instruction. [soft]

CAIS-A Common APSE Interface Set: DoD-STD-1838A. [soft]

CAIS Common APSE Interface Specification. [soft]

CAiSE Conference on Advanced Information Sys-tems Engineering. [soft]

CAJUN CD-ROM Acrobat Journals Using Net-works. A project at Nottigham University Moreinformation. [soft]

C A language developed in conjunction with theUNIX operating system at AT&T Bell Labora-tories by D.Ritchie and now an ANSI standard.It has grown popular due to its simplicity, ef-ficiency, and flexibility. C programs are ofteneasily adapted to new environments - More in-formation. [soft]

Calcination a high-temperature reaction wherebyone solid material dissociates to form a gas andanother solid.[mech-1]

Calibration The adjustment, as necessary, of ameasuring device such that it responds withinthe required range and accuracy to known val-ues of input. [nuclear-1]

Calorific value - The quantity of heat that can be-liberated from one pound of coal or oil measuredin BTU’s.[mining-1]

CALS Computer-Aided Acquisition and LogisticsSupport: a DoD standard for electronic exchangeof data with commercial suppliers [soft]

Caml A functional programming language in thestyle of ML [soft]

C++ An extension to the C language developedprimarily by B.Stroustrup at AT&T Bell Labora-tories: it supports object-oriented programmingamong other enhancements [soft]

Cannel coal - A massive, non-caking block coalwith a fine,even grain and a conchoidal fracturewhich has a high percentage ofhydrogen, burnswith a long, yellow flame, and is extremely easytoignite.[mining-1]

Canopy - A protective covering of a cab on aminingmachine.[mining-1]

Capability The maximum load that a generatingstation can carry under specified conditions for agiven period of time without exceeding approvedlimits of temperature and stress. [nuclear-1]

Capacitance the charge-storage ability of a capaci-tor, defined as the magnitude of charge stored oneither plate divided by the applied voltage.[mech-1]

capacitance the charge-storing ability of a capac-itor, defined as the magnitude of charge storedon either plate divided by the applied voltage.[mat-1]

Capacity factor (gross) The ratio of the grosselectricity generated, for the time considered, tothe energy that could have been generated atcontinuous full-power operation during the sameperiod. [nuclear-1]

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Capacity factor (net) The ratio of the net elec-tricity generated, for the time considered, to theenergy that could have been generated at con-tinuous full-power operation during the same pe-riod. [nuclear-1]

Cap - A miner’s safety helmet. Also, a highly sensi-tive,encapsulated explosive that is used to deto-nate larger but lesssensitive explosives.[mining-1]

Cap block - A flat piece of wood inserted betweenthe topof the prop and the roof to provide bear-ing support.[mining-1]

CApH Conventions for the Application of HyTime. An activity of the GCA [soft]

CAQ Computer Aided Quality. [soft]

Car - A railway wagon, especially any of the wag-ons adaptedto carrying coal, ore, and wasteunderground.[mining-1]

Carbide bit - More correctly, cemented tungstencarbide. Acutting or drilling bit for rock orcoal, made by fusing an insert ofmolded tung-sten carbide to the cutting edge of a steel bitshank.[mining-1]

carbon steel steel which owes its properties chieflyto various percentages of carbon without sub-stantial amounts of other alloying elements; alsoknown as ordinary, straight carbon, or plain car-bon steel. [mat-1]

Carburizing the process by which the surfacecarbon concentration of a ferrous alloy isincreased by diffusion from the surroundingenvironment.[mech-1]

CARDS Central Archive for Reusable DefenseSoftware of the DoD . [soft]

Car-dump - The mechanism for unloading a loadedcar.[mining-1]

CASE Computer Aided Software Engineering: atechnique for using computers to help with thesystematic analysis, design, implementation andmaintenance of software. Adopting the CASEapproach to building and maintaining systemsinvolves software tools and training for the de-velopers who will use them. [soft]

CASE [soft]

CASE framework A set of products and conven-tions that allow CASE tools to be integrated intoa coherent environment. [soft]

CASE tools Software tools to help in the appli-cation of CASE methods to a software project.[soft]

Cask A heavily shielded container used to storeand/or ship radioactive materials. Lead andsteel are common materials used in the manu-facture of casks. [nuclear-1]

Cast - A directed throw; in strip-mining, the over-burden iscast from the coal to the previouslymined area.[mining-1]

CAST Computer Aided Software Testing. [soft]

casting generic term referring to a process where afluid material (usually a molten alloy) is made toflow into a shaped mold cavity where it solidifies;this method is used to produce complex compo-nent shapes and properties difficult to achieveotherwise. [mat-1]

cast iron a ferrous alloy; the carbon content isgreater than the maximum solubility in austeniteat the eutectic temperature. [mat-1]

Cast Iron a ferrous alloy with carbon content be-tween 2 and 4.5 wt%.[mech-1]

CATE Computer Aided Test Engineering: CASEmethods applied to electronics testing and linkedto CAE [soft]

Cathodic Protection a means of corrosion preven-tion whereby electrons are supplied to the struc-ture to be protected from an external source suchas anoother more reactive metal or a dc powersupply.[mech-1]

Cation A positively charged ion. [nuclear-1]

cation a positively charged metallic ion. [mat-1]

CAUSE An international (mainly North American)nonprofit association for managing and using in-formation technology in higher education - Moreinformation. [soft]

cb C Beautifier . [soft]

C Beautifier A tool for tidying the syntax of Csource code. [soft]

CBT Computer-Based Training. [soft]

CCI Common Client Interface for Mosaic [soft]

CCITT A committee of the ITU responsible formaking technical recommendations about tele-phone and data communication systems forPTTs and suppliers. Plenary sessions are heldevery four years to adopt new standards. [soft]

CCL Common Command Language. A standardfor bibliographic information retrieval systems.[soft]

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CCS Common Communication Services: the stan-dard program interface to networks in SAA .[soft]

CDA Compound Document Architecture: DEC’sset of standards for compound document cre-ation, storage, retrieval, interchange and manip-ulation. [soft]

CDC Control Data Corporation [soft]

CDD/Plus DEC’s CASE . [soft]

CDE C Development environment from IDE [soft]

CDE Common Desktop Environment. A Desktopmanager - More information. [soft]

CDF Common Data Format. A library and toolkitfor multi-dimensional data sets [soft]

CDIF CASE Data Interchange Format: an emerg-ing standard.for interchange of data betweenCASE tools [soft]

CDM Content Data Model. An SGML -based DoDspecification for interactive manuals. [soft]

CEBAF Continuous Electron Beam Facility inNewport News, VA USA - More information.[soft]

Cecil An object-oriented language from WashingtonUniversity intended to support rapid construc-tion of high-quality, extensible software [soft]

CE Concurrent Engineering . [soft]

Cement a substance that can be used to build to-gether aggregates of sand or stone into a cohesivestructure. May be a single compound or a mix-ture. May be hydraulic set .[mech-1]

cementite iron carbide. [mat-1]

Cementite iron carbide (Fe3C).[mech-1]

CEN Conseil Europeen pour la Normalisation: abody coordinating standardisation activities inthe EEC and EFTA. countries. [soft]

CENELEC CEN -electricite. [soft]

Center of Gravity The location of the resultant ofgravity forces on an object or objects [struc-1]

Centroid Similar to the concept of center of grav-ity, except that it applies to a two dimensionalshape rather than an object. For a given shape,the centroid location corresponds to the center ofgravity for a thin flat plate of that shape, madefrom a homogeneous material. [struc-1]

CERA Concurrent Engineering : Research and Ap-plications. An international journal - More infor-mation. [soft]

ceramic a compound of metallic and nonmetallicelements, for which the interatomic bonding ispredominantly ionic. [mat-1]

Ceramic inorganic, nonmetalllic products forwhich the interatomic bonding is predominantlyionic.[mech-1]

CERC Concurrent Engineering Research Center,West Virginia University [soft]

Cermet a composite materials.[mech-1]

CERNLIB The CERN Program Library [soft]

CERN The European Laboratory for ParticlePhysics. [soft]

CERT Computer Emergency Response Team. NowCERT Coordination Center, works with the In-ternet community on security problems [soft]

Certified - Describes a person who has passed anex-amination to do a required job.[mining-1]

CFI CAD Framework Initiative. A consortiumworking on interface standards for integratingCAD tools and data. [soft]

CFOOT Corporate Facilitators of Object-OrientedTechnology. [soft]

CGI A (French) software engineering vendor in theUS. [soft]

CGI Common Gateway Interface. A standard forrunning external programs under a WWW orsimilar information server - More information.[soft]

CGM Computer Graphics Metafile: a standard fileformat for storage and communication of graphi-cal information, widely used on personal comput-ers and accepted by desktop publishing systems.(ANSI/ISO [soft]

Chain conveyor - A conveyor on which the ma-terial is movedalong solid pans (troughs) by theaction of scraper crossbars attachedto poweredchains.[mining-1]

Chain pillar - The pillar of coal left to pro-tect thegangway or entry and the parallelairways.[mining-1]

Chain reaction A reaction that initiates its ownrepetition. In a fission chain reaction, a fission-able nucleus absorbs a neutron and fissions spon-taneously, releasing additional neutrons. These,

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in turn, can be absorbed by other fissionable nu-clei, releasing still more neutrons. A fission chainreaction is self-sustaining when the number ofneutrons released in a given time equals or ex-ceeds the number of neutrons lost by absorptionin nonfissionable material or by escape from thesystem. [nuclear-1]

Change Management A consistent set of tech-niques that aid in evolution, composition andpolicy management of the design and implemen-tation of an object or system. [soft]

Charged particle An ion. An elementary particlecarrying a positive or negative electric charge.[nuclear-1]

Charm A portable object-oriented parallel pro-gramming system from University of Illinois[soft]

Charpy test an impact test in which a V-notched,keyhole-notched, or U-notched specimen, sup-ported at both ends horizontally, is struck be-hind the notch by a striker mounted at the lowerend of a pendulum; the energy that is absorbedin fracture is calculated from the height to whichthe striker would have risen had there been nospecimen and the height to which it actually risesafter fracture of the specimen. [mat-1]

Check curtain - Sheet of brattice cloth hungacross anairway to control the passage of the aircurrent.[mining-1]

Chemical recombination Following an ionizationevent, the positively and negatively charged ionpairs may or may not realign themselves to formthe same chemical substance they formed beforeionization. Thus, chemical recombination couldchange the chemical composition of the materialbombarded by ionizing radiation. [nuclear-1]

Chemical Set Cement a cement that sets throughreaction or precipitation. Often subjectedto a high temperature during manufacture oruse.[mech-1]

Chen Peter Chen developed the Entity-Relationship model. [soft]

CHEOPS A satellite-based batch data dissemina-tion project between CERN and member stateinstitutes. [soft]

Child version A version of a version. See changemanagement . [soft]

CHILL CCITT High-Level Language. A real-timelanguage used in telecommunications. [soft]

Chock - Large hydraulic jacks used to supportroof inlongwall and shortwall mining systems.[mining-1]

Choices An object-oriented operating system fromUniversity of Illinois [soft]

Chorus A distributed operating system developedat INRIA . [soft]

CIAC Computer Incident Advisory Capability ofthe US DoE [soft]

CIC Committee on Institutional Cooperation. Anacademic consortium of American Universities[soft]

CICERO Control Information system Conceptsbased on Encapsulated Real-time Objects. ACERN DRDC proposal . [soft]

CIDR Classless Inter-Domain Routing (on the In-ternet ) [soft]

CIL Component Integration Laboratories. An effortto create a common framework for interoperabil-ity between applications on desktop platforms,formed by Apple, IBM, Novell, Oracle, Taligent,WordPerfect, and Xerox [soft]

CIM Computer Integrated Manufacturing. [soft]

circuit interconnections of electrical elements anddevices that perform a desired electrical function.[mat-1]

CIS Case Integration Services: a committee formedto discuss CASE tool integration standards re-lated to ATIS . [soft]

CISC Complex Instruction Set Computer. [soft]

CISI A French software house. [soft]

CIX Commercial Internet eXchange. A non-profittrade association of Public Data Internetworkservice providers - More information. [soft]

Cladding The thin-walled metal tube that formsthe outer jacket of a nuclear fuel rod. It pre-vents corrosion of the fuel by the coolant andthe release of fission products into the coolant.Aluminum, stainless steel, and zirconium alloysare common cladding materials. [nuclear-1]

Clamping Force The compressive force which afastener exerts on the joint. [mech-3]

Class A language developed by the Andrew Project: one of the first attempts to add object-orientedfeatures to C . [soft]

Class library A library of reusable classes for usewith an object-oriented programming system -More information. [soft]

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Class Of Fit The Class of Fit is a measure of thedegree of fit between mating internal and exter-nal threads. Three main Classes of Fit are de-fined for metric screw threads : FINE: This hasa tolerance class of 5H for internal threads and4h for external threads. MEDIUM: This has atolerance class of 6H for internal threads and 6gfor external threads. COARSE: This has a tol-erance class of 7H for internal threads and 8g forexternal threads. For Unified threads, a similardesignation as for metric threads is used. Thethread classes used are 1A, 2A and 3A for ex-ternal threads and 1B, 2B and 3B for internalthreads. Cleveloc Nut [mech-3]

Class-Relation Method A design technique basedon the concepts of object-oriented programmingand the Entity-Relationship model from theFrench company Softeam. [soft]

Class The prototype for an object in an object-oriented language; analogous to a derived typein a procedural language. [soft]

Clay vein - A body of clay-like material that fills avoidin a coal bed.[mining-1]

Clean Air Act Amendments of 1990 A com-prehensive set ofamendments to the federal lawgoverning the nation’s air quality. TheCleanAir Act was originally passed in 1970 to ad-dress significant airpollution problems in ourcities. The 1990 amendments broadened and-strengthened the original law to address specificproblems such asacid deposition, urban smog,hazardous air pollutants andstratospheric ozonedepletion.[mining-1]

Clean Coal Technologies A number of innovative,newtechnologies designed to use coal in a moreefficient andcost-effective manner while enhanc-ing environmentalprotection. Several promisingtechnologies include: fluidized-bedcombustion,integrated gasification combined cycle, lime-stoneinjection multi-stage burner, enhanced fluegas desulfurization (or”scrubbing”), coal lique-faction and coal gasification.[mining-1]

Cleanroom A software development approachaimed at producing software with the minimumnumber of errors [soft]

Cleanup system A system used for continuouslyfiltering and demineralizing a reactor coolantsystem to reduce contamination levels and tominimize corrosion. [nuclear-1]

Cleat - The vertical cleavage of coal seams. Themain setof joints along which coal breaks whenmined.[mining-1]

cleavage transcrystalline fracture along specificcrystallographic planes; usually associated withlow-energy fracture; may exhibit river patternsand/or tongues. [mat-1]

Cleveloc Nut A torque prevailing nut of all metalconstruction. The collar of the nut is elliptical incross section and it is this that provides the flexi-ble locking element. The nut is pre-lubricated toreduce the tightening torque. Cleveloc is a reg-istered trade name of Forest Fasteners. [mech-3]

CLHEP A C++ class library for high energyphysics applications - More information. [soft]

Client A system or process that requests a servicefrom another system or process. [soft]

CLOS Common Lisp Object System: an object-oriented language derived from Common Lisp[soft]

CLP Constraint Logic Programming. [soft]

CL See Common Lisp . [soft]

CLU An object-oriented programming language de-veloped at MIT by Liskov et al. [soft]

CLX The Common Lisp interface to the X WindowSystem , equivalent to Xlib . [soft]

CMA Concert Multithread Architecture from DEC. [soft]

CM Configuration Management. [soft]

CML Chemical Markup Language. A means forinterchanging chemical information, based onSGML [soft]

CMM Capability Maturity Model for software de-velopment organisations, from SEI [soft]

CMS A code management system from DEC. [soft]

CMVC Configuration Management Version Con-trol from IBM. [soft]

CMZ A portable interactive code management sys-tem from CodeME S.A.R.L in use in the high-energy physics community. [soft]

CNET Centre national d’Etudes des Telecommuni-cations: the French national telecommunicationsresearch centre at Lannion. [soft]

CNI Coalition for Networked Information. Pro-motes the creation of and access to informationresources in networked environments in order toenrich scholarship and enhance intellectual pro-ductivity - More information. [soft]

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CNRI Corporation for National Research Initia-tives, Reston, VA. A US research and devel-opment organisation in information processingtechnology [soft]

Coal - A solid, brittle, more or less distinctlystratifiedcombustible carbonaceous rock, formedby partial to completedecomposition of vege-tation; varies in color from dark brown toblack;not fusible without decomposition and veryinsoluble.[mining-1]

Coal dust - Particles of coal that can pass a No.20sieve.[mining-1]

Coal Gasification The conversion of coal into agaseousfuel.[mining-1]

Coal mine - An area of land and all structures,facilities,machinery, tools, equipment, shafts,slopes, tunnels, excavations, andother property,real or personal, placed upon, under, or abovethesurface of such land by any person, used in ex-tracting coal from itsnatural deposits in the earthby any means or method, and the work ofprepar-ing the coal so extracted, including coal prepara-tionfacilities. British term is ”colliery”.[mining-1]

Coal reserves - Measured tonnages of coal thathave beencalculated to occur in a coal seamwithin a particular property.[mining-1]

Coal washing The process of separating undesir-ablematerials from coal based on differences indensities. Pyritic sulfur,or sulfur combined withiron, is heavier and sinks in water; coal islighterand floats.[mining-1]

Coastdown An action that permits the reactorpower level to decrease gradually as the fuel inthe core is depleted. [nuclear-1]

COBOL COmmon Business Oriented Language:an early and widely-used programming languagefor business applications. [soft]

COCOMO Constructive Cost Model: a method forevaluating the cost of a software package pro-posed by B.Boehm, ”Software Engineering Eco-nomics” Prentice-Hall 1987 [soft]

CODA An object-oriented data-acquisition systemat CEBAF [soft]

Codd’s First Normal Form see Normal Form .[soft]

CodeCenter A proprietary software developmentenvironment for C programs, offering an inte-grated toolkit for developing, testing, debuggingand maintainance (formerly Saber-C) [soft]

Code Management A source code managementsystem helps program developers keep track ofversion history, releases, parallel versions etc.There are several in popular use [soft]

Coefficient Of Friction A dimensionless numberrepresenting the ratio of the friction force to nor-mal force. Typically for threaded connections itis between 0.10 to 0,18 but can vary significantlydepending upon the materials used and whethera lubricant has been used. [mech-3]

Cognitech A French software house specialising inArtificial Intelligence. [soft]

COHESION DEC’s CASE environment. [soft]

Coke A hard, dry carbon substance produced byheating coalto a very high temperature in theabsence of air.[mining-1]

Cold shutdown The term used to define a reac-tor coolant system at atmospheric pressure andat a temperature below 200 degrees Fahrenheitfollowing a reactor cooldown. [nuclear-1]

cold working plastic deformation of a metal at atemperature below that at which it recrystallizes;increasing the amount of cold work causes thedislocation density to rise in the material, mak-ing it more difficult to plastically deform the ma-terial and eventually cause brittle fracture. [mat-1]

Cold Working the plastic deformation at a temper-ature below that at which it recrystallizes.[mech-1]

Collage A synchronous collaborative data analysistool for use over the Internet - More information.[soft]

Collar - The term applied to the timbering or con-cretearound the mouth or top of a shaft. Thebeginning point of a shaft ordrill hole at the sur-face. [mining-1]

Collective dose The sum of the individual doses re-ceived in a given period by a specified populationfrom exposure to a specified source of radiation.[nuclear-1]

Colliery - British name for coal mine.[mining-1]

columnar structure coarse structure of parallelcolumns of grains caused by highly directional so-lidification of molten metal resulting from sharpthermal gradients. [mat-1]

Column flotation A precombustion coal cleaningtechnologyin which coal particles attach to airbubbles rising in a verticalcolumn. The coal isthen removed at the top of the column.[mining-1]

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COM Common Object Model. An open architec-ture from DEC and Microsoft, allowing interop-eration between ObjectBroker - More informa-tion. [soft]

COMIS a COMpilation and Interpretation System.A FORTRAN interpreter use by the PAW sys-tem [soft]

COMMA Common Object-oriented MethodologyMetamodel Architecture from OPEN [soft]

Commingling A term used to describe the unde-sirable practice of mixing fasteners from differentbatches that are the same size and grade in thesame container. [mech-3]

Comminution - The breaking, crushing, or grind-ing of coal,ore, or rock.[mining-1]

Committed dose equivalent This is the dose tosome specific organ or tissue that is received froman intake of radioactive material by an individualduring the 50-year period following the intake[nuclear-1]

Committed effective dose equivalent The com-mitted dose equivalent for a given organ multi-plied by a weighting factor [nuclear-1]

Common Lisp An ANSI standard version of Lisp. [soft]

COMNET A simulation tool from CACI foranalysing wide-area voice or data networks,based on SIMSCRIPT .. [soft]

Compact A group of two or more states formedto dispose of low-level radioactive waste on a re-gional basis. Forty-two states have formed ninecompacts. [nuclear-1]

Compaq A US manufacturer of IBM PC-compatibles. [soft]

Competent rock - Rock which, because of its phys-ical andgeological characteristics, is capable ofsustaining openings withoutany structural sup-port except pillars and walls left during min-ing(stalls, light props, and roof bolts are not con-sidered structuralsupport).[mining-1]

component an element or chemical compound thathelps make up a material system; the composi-tion of a phase or system can be described bygiving the relative amounts of each component.[mat-1]

Component (of a vector) Any vector can be ex-pressed as a collection of vectors whose sum isequal to the original vector. Each vector in thiscollection is a component of the original vector.

It is common to express a vector in terms of com-ponents which are parallel to the x and y axes.[struc-1]

Composite a material brought about by combiningmaterials differing in composition or form on amacroscale for the purpose of obtaining specificcharacteristics and properties. The constituentsretain their identity such that they can be phys-ically identified and they exhibit an interface be-tween one another.[mech-1]

Compound A chemical combination of two or moreelements combined in a fixed and definite propor-tion by weight. [nuclear-1]

Compression Data files are often compressed totake up less network bandwidth, memory etc.Common examples are program executables andvisual images. Many algorithms and utilities ex-ist for this - More information. [soft]

COMSOFT Consortium for the Management ofEmerging Software Technologies - More informa-tion. [soft]

Concentrated force A force considered to actalong a single line in space. Concentrated forcesare useful mathematical idealizations, but can-not be found in the real world, where all forcesare either body forces acting over a volume orsurface forces acting over an area. [struc-1]

Concentrated load An external force which a con-centrated force. [struc-1]

Concrete a composite material consisting of aggre-gate particles bound together in a solid body bya cement.[mech-1]

Concrete Class In object-oriented programming,a class suitable to be instantiated.(as opposed toan abstract class ). [soft]

Concurrent Clean A functional language for theMacintosh from the University of Nijmegen.[soft]

Concurrent Engineering An approach where allaspects of a product’s life-cycle are consideredas early as possible in the design, manufacturingand maintenance process [soft]

Condensate Water that has been produced by thecooling of steam in a condenser. [nuclear-1]

condensation polymerization the formation ofpolymer macromolecules by an intermolecularreaction involving at least two monomer species,usually with the production of a by-product oflow molecular weight, such as water. [mat-1]

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Condensation Polymerization the formation ofpolymers species, usually with the productionof a low molecular weight by-product such aswater.[mech-1]

Condenser A large heat exchanger designed to coolexhaust steam from a turbine below the boil-ing point so that it can be returned to the heatsource as water. In a pressurized water reactor,the water is returned to the steam generator. Ina boiling water reactor, it returns to the reac-tor core. The heat removed from the steam bythe condenser is transferred to a circulating wa-ter system and is exhausted to the environment,either through a cooling tower or directly into abody of water. [nuclear-1]

Conduction Band the lowest-lying electron en-ergy band that is not completely filled withelectrons.[mech-1]

conductivity, electrical the proportionality con-stant between current density and applied elec-tric field; a measure of the ease with which amaterial is capable of conducting an electric cur-rent. [mat-1]

Cone Proof Load This is an axial applied forceapplied to a nut when it is seated on a coneshaped washer which has an included angle of120 degrees. Failure in this test is usually dueto the nut splitting. The intention of the test isto introduce a nut dilation operation which willassess the potential detrimental effects of surfacediscontinuities. This type of test is sometimesapplied to nuts which are intended for high tem-perature service. [mech-3]

Configuration[mech-1]

Configuration management The process of iden-tifying, defining, recording and reporting theconfiguration items in a system and the changerequests. Controlling the releases and change ofthe items throughout the life-cycle See also codemanagement [soft]

conformal coating a thin nonconducting coatingthat is either plastic or inorganic; it is applied toa circuit for environmental and mechanical pro-tection. [mat-1]

Conformation[mech-1]

Congruent Transformation a transformation ofone phase to another that does not involve anychange in composition.[mech-1]

Connection Connection is similar to the concept ofsupport, except that connection refers to a rela-tionship between members in a structural model.A connection restrains degrees of freedom of one

member with respect to another. For each re-strained degree of freedom, there is a correspond-ing force transferred from one member to theother; forces associated with unrestrained de-grees of freedom are zero. See fixed connectionand pin connection. [struc-1]

Construction recapture The maximum numberof years that could be added to the license expi-ration date to recover the period from the con-struction permit to the date when the operatinglicense was granted. A licensee is required to sub-mit an application for such a change. [nuclear-1]

Constructor A function provided by a class inC++ to instantiate an object. [soft]

Contact - The place or surface where two differ-ent kinds ofrocks meet. Applies to sedimentaryrocks, as the contact between alimestone anda sandstone, for example, and to metamorphicrocks; andit is especially applicable between ig-neous intrusions and theirwalls.[mining-1]

Container class A class whose instances are collec-tions of other objects. Examples include stacks,queues, lists and arrays. [soft]

Containment structure A gaslight shell or otherenclosure around a nuclear reactor to confine fis-sion products that otherwise might be releasedto the atmosphere in the event of an accident.[nuclear-1]

Contamination Undesired radioactive materialthat is deposited on the surface of or inside struc-tures, areas, objects, or people. [nuclear-1]

Continuous miner - A machine that constantlyextracts coalwhile it loads it. This is to be distin-guished from a conventional, orcyclic, unit whichmust stop the extraction process in order forload-ing to commence.[mining-1]

Contour - An imaginary line that connectsall points on asurface having the sameelevation.[mining-1]

Controlled area At a nuclear facility, an area out-side a restricted area but within the site bound-ary, access to which the licensee can limit for anyreason. [nuclear-1]

Control rod A rod, plate, or tube containing a ma-terial such as hafnium, boron, etc., used to con-trol the power of a nuclear reactor. By absorb-ing neutrons, a control rod prevents the neutronsfrom causing further fissions. [nuclear-1]

Control room The area in a nuclear power plantfrom which most of the plant power productionand emergency safety equipment can be operatedby remote control. [nuclear-1]

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Conventional mining The first fully-mechanizedundergroundmining method involving the in-sertion of explosives in a coal seam,the blast-ing of the seam, and the removal of the coalonto a conveyoror shuttle car by a loadingmachine.[mining-1]

Conveyor - An apparatus for moving material fromone pointto another in a continuous fashion.This is accomplished with anendless (that is,looped) procession of hooks, buckets, wide rub-berbelt, etc.[mining-1]

COOL A class library for C++ from Texas Instru-ments [soft]

Coolant A substance circulated through a nuclearreactor to remove or transfer heat. The mostcommonly used coolant in the United States iswater. Other coolants include heavy water, air,carbon dioxide, helium, liquid sodium, and asodium-potassium alloy. [nuclear-1]

CooL Combined object-oriented Language from theITHACA project, which combines C -based lan-guages with database technology. [soft]

Cooldown The gradual decrease in reactor fuel rodtemperature caused by the removal of heat fromthe reactor coolant system after the reactor hasbeen shutdown. [nuclear-1]

Cooling tower A heat exchanger designed to aidin the cooling of water that was used to coolexhaust steam exiting the turbines of a powerplant. Cooling towers transfer exhaust heat intothe air instead of into a body of water. [nuclear-1]

coordination number the number of atomic orionic nearest neighbors. [mat-1]

Coordination Number the number of atomic orionic nearest neighbors.[mech-1]

COOTS Conference on Object-Oriented Technolo-gies and Systems. [soft]

cope the top half of a horizontally parted mold.[mat-1]

copolymer a polymer that consists of two or moredissimilar mer units in combination along itsmolecular chains. [mat-1]

Copolymer a polymer that consists of two or moredissimilar mer units in combination along itsmolecular chains.[mech-1]

CORBA Common Object Request Broker Archi-tecture: an OMG [soft]

CORDIS The European Community R&D infor-mation service [soft]

CORE Chemistry Online Retrieval Experiment. Aproject to publish American Chemical Societyjournals electronically. [soft]

Core damage frequency An expression of thelikelihood that, given the way a reactor is de-signed and operated, an accident could cause thefuel in the reactor to be damaged. [nuclear-1]

Core melt accident An event or sequence of eventsthat result in the melting of part of the fuel inthe reactor core. [nuclear-1]

Core sample A cylinder sample generally 1-5 indiameterdrilled out of an area to determine thegeologic and chemical analysisof the overburdenand coal.[mining-1]

Core The central portion of a nuclear reactor con-taining the fuel elements, moderator, neutronpoisons, and support structures. [nuclear-1]

Corrosion Deteriorative loss of a metal as a resultof dissolution environmental reactions.[mech-1]

Cortex An experimental slow controls project atCERN [soft]

COS Corporation for Open Systems: an interna-tional consortium of computer users and vendors,set up to provide ways of testing OSI implemen-tations. [soft]

COSE Common Open Software Environment. Aninitiative by Hewlett-Packard, Sun, IBM, Nov-ell, Univel and SCO to move towards consistencyand interopability between Unix suppliers. [soft]

COSINE Cooperation for Open Systems Intercon-nection Networking in Europe. A EUREKAproject. [soft]

Cosmic radiation Penetrating ionizing radiation,both particulate and electromagnetic, originat-ing in outer space. Secondary cosmic rays,formed by interactions in the Earth’s atmo-sphere, account for about 45 to 50 millirem ofthe 360 millirem background radiation that anaverage individual receives in a year. [nuclear-1]

COSS Common Object Services Specification inCORBA . [soft]

CoST A set of software tools for SGML documents.[soft]

COTS Commercial Off The Shelf solution [soft]

coulombic force a force between charged particles,such as ions. [mat-1]

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Counter A general designation applied to radia-tion detection instruments or survey meters thatdetect and measure radiation. The signal thatannounces an ionization event is called a count.[nuclear-1]

Couple A system of forces composed of two equalforces of opposite direction, offset by a distance.A couple is statically equivalent to a momentwhose magnitude equals the magnitude of theforce times the offset distance. [struc-1]

Covalent Bond a primary interatomic bond that isformed by the sharing electrons between neigh-boring atoms.[mech-1]

covalent bond a primary interatomic bond thatis formed by the sharing of electrons betweenneighboring atoms. [mat-1]

Cover - The overburden of any deposit.[mining-1]

CPAN Comprehensive Perl Archive Network -More information. [soft]

CPI Common Program Interface: the API of SAA. [soft]

CPSR Computer Professionals for Social Respon-sibility. A US non-profit organisation concernedwith the effects of computers on society - Moreinformation. [soft]

CPU Central Processing Unit, usually applied tothat part of a computer which carries out thearithmetic and controls the instruction flow.[soft]

CRAY Cray Research Inc.: manufacturers of arange of large powerful mainframes. [soft]

CRC Class-Responsibility-Collaboration. A tech-nique described in Object-Oriented Software byWirfs-Brock. [soft]

CREASE Catalog of Resources for Education inAda and Software Engineering. A databasemaintained by AdaIC . [soft]

Creep - The forcing of pillars into soft bottom bytheweight of a strong roof. In surface mining, avery slow movement ofslopes downhill.[mining-1]

creep the time-dependent permanent deformationthat occurs under stress; for most materials it isimportant only at elevated temperatures. [mat-1]

Creep the time-dependent permanent deformationthat occurs under stress; for most materials it isimportant only at elevated temperatures.[mech-1]

CREN Corporation for Research and EducationalNetworking: responsible for providing network-ing service to BITNET and CSNET users [soft]

Crib - A roof support of prop timbers or ties, laidinalternate cross-layers, log-cabin style. It mayor may not be filledwith debris. Also may becalled a chock or cog.[mining-1]

Cribbing - The construction of cribs or timberslaid atright angles to each other, sometimes filledwith earth, as a roofsupport or as a support formachinery.[mining-1]

Criticality A term used in reactor physics to de-scribe the state when the number of neutrons re-leased by fission is exactly balanced by the neu-trons being absorbed (by the fuel and poisons)and escaping the reactor core. A reactor is saidto be ”critical” when it achieves a self-sustainingnuclear chain reaction, as when the reactor is op-erating. [nuclear-1]

Critical mass The smallest mass of fissionable ma-terial that will support a self-sustaining chain re-action. [nuclear-1]

Critical organ That part of the body that is mostsusceptible to radiation damage under the spe-cific conditions under consideration. [nuclear-1]

Critical Point[mech-1]

critical resolved shear stress the shear stress,resolved within a slip plane and direction, whichis required to initiate slip. [mat-1]

cron The clock daemon in UNIX that executes com-mands at specified dates and times according toinstructions in a file - More information. [soft]

Crop coal - Coal at the outcrop of the seam. Itis usuallyconsidered of inferior quality due topartial oxidation, although thisis not always thecase.[mining-1]

Crossbar - The horizontal member of a roof tim-ber setsupported by props located either on road-ways or at the face.[mining-1]

Crosscut - A passageway driven between the en-try and itsparallel air course or air courses forventilation purposes. Also, atunnel driven fromone seam to another through or across thein-tervening measures; sometimes called ”crosscuttunnel”, or”breakthrough”. In vein mining, anentry perpendicular to thevein.[mining-1]

Cross entry - An entry running at an angle withthe mainentry.[mining-1]

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crosslinked polymer a polymer in which adjacentlinear molecular chains are joined at various po-sitions by covalent bonds. [mat-1]

Crosslinked Polymer A polymer in which adja-cent linear molecular chains are joined at variouspositions by covalent bonds.[mech-1]

Cross software Software developed on one kindof computer for use on another (usually becausethe other computer does not have itself adequatefacilities for software development). [soft]

CRS4 Centro di Ricerca, Sviluppo e Studi Superi-ori in Sardegna. ( Center for Advanced Studies,Research and Development in Sardinia). A highperformance computing centre with an interest-ing information server . [soft]

Crud A colloquial term for corrosion and wear prod-ucts (rust particles, etc.) that become radioac-tive (i.e., activated) when exposed to radiation.Because the activated deposits were first discov-ered at Chalk River, a Canadian nuclear plant,”crud” has been used as shorthand for ChalkRiver Unidentified Deposits. [nuclear-1]

Crusher - A machine for crushing rock or othermaterials.Among the various types of crushersare the ball mill, gyratorycrusher, Handsel mill,hammer mill, jaw crusher, rod mill, rolls,stampmill, and tube mill.[mining-1]

crystalline the state of a solid material char-acterized by a periodic and repeating three-dimensional array of atoms, ions, or molecules.[mat-1]

Crystalline the state of a solid materialcharacterized by a periodic and repeatingthree-dimensional arrays of atoms, ions, ormolecules.[mech-1]

Crystallinity for polymers, the state wherein aperiodic and repeating atomic arrangement isachieved by molecular chain alignment.[mech-1]

Crystallite a region within a crystalline polymer inwhich all the molecular chains are ordered andaligned.[mech-1]

crystallization act or process of forming crystalsor bodies by elements or compounds solidifyingso they are bounded by plane surfaces, symmet-rically arranged, and are external expressions ofdefinite internal structure. [mat-1]

Crystallography[mech-1]

Crystal Structure for crystalline materials, themanner in which atoms or ions are arrayed inspace. It is defined in terms of the unit cell

geometry and the atom positions within thecell.[mech-1]

crystal structure for crystalline materials, themanner in which atoms or ions are arrayed inspace; it is defined in terms of the unit cell ge-ometry and the atom positions within the unitcell. [mat-1]

Crystal System a scheme by which crystalstructures are classified according to unit cellgeometry.[mech-1]

CSCW Computer Supported Cooperative Work(also known as Groupware): software tools andtechnology to support groups of people workingtogether on a project, often at different sites [soft]

c shell A common UNIX originating on BerkeleyUNIX [soft]

cshell See c shell [soft]

csh See c shell [soft]

CSL Caml Special Light. An implementation ofCaml - More information. [soft]

CSMA/CD Carrier Sense Multiple Access withCollision Detection: a network arbitrationscheme used on Ethernet . A station with a mes-sage to send starts sending if there is no carrierdetected on the transmission medium. If a col-lision occurs, transmission is abandoned and re-tried after a delay. [soft]

CSNET Computers and Science Network, operatedby CREN for US computer science institutes. Itprovides electronic mail service via dial-up lines,plus X.25 and Internet services. [soft]

CSP Communicating Sequential Processes. A pro-gramming model developed by T. Hoare at Ox-ford University [soft]

CSS Cascading Style Sheets. A simple mechanismfor adding style to WWW documents [soft]

CSTC Computer Security Technology Center of theUS DoE [soft]

CTAN Comprehensive TeX Archive Network [soft]

CTI Computer Telephony Integration. [soft]

CUA Common User Access: the User Interfacestandard of SAA . [soft]

Cumulative dose The total dose resulting from re-peated exposures of ionizing radiation to an oc-cupationally exposed worker to the same portionof the body, or to the whole body, over time.[nuclear-1]

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cure to irreversibly polymerize a thermosettingplastic by subjecting it to a time-temperatureprofile. [mat-1]

Curie (Ci) The basic unit used to describe the in-tensity of radioactivity in a sample of material.The curie is equal to 37 billion (3.7 x 1010 ) dis-integrations per second, which is approximatelythe activity of 1 gram of radium. A curie is alsoa quantity of any radionuclide that decays at arate of 37 billion disintegrations per second. It isnamed for Marie and Pierre Curie, who discov-ered radium in 1898. [nuclear-1]

Curie Temperature that temperatue above whicha ferromagnetic or ferrimagnetic material be-comes paramagnetic.[mech-1]

Curie temperature the temperature above whicha ferromagnetic or ferrimagnetic material be-comes paramagnetic. [mat-1]

curses A set of subroutines in UNIX for handlingnavigation on a terminal screen using the cursor[soft]

Cutter; Cutting machine - A machine, usuallyused in coal,that will cut a 10- to 15-cm slot.The slot allows room for expansionof the brokencoal. Also applies to the man who operates themachineand to workers engaged in the cutting ofcoal by pick or drill.[mining-1]

CVS A code management system based on RCS[soft]

CWI Dutch Centre for Mathematics and ComputerScience, Amsterdam - More information. [soft]

CWIS Campus-Wide Information System. Manyuniversities and other institutes have comput-erised information systems, often based onWWW [soft]

Cycle mining - A system of mining in more thanone workingplace at a time, that is, a miner takesa lift from the face and movesto another facewhile permanent roof support is established intheprevious working face.[mining-1]

DAA Distributed Application Architecture: underdesign by Hewlett-Packard and Sun. A dis-tributed object management environment thatwill allow applications to be developed indepen-dent of operating system, network or windowingsystem. [soft]

DACNOS A prototype network operating systemfor multivendor environments, from IBM Euro-pean Networking Centre Heidelberg and Univer-sity of Karlsruhe. [soft]

Dacromet A high performance surface coatingthat can be applied to fasteners. The coatingconsists of passivated zinc flakes that are stovedonto the metal surface. The coating can becoloured and eliminates the risk of hydrogen em-brittlement associated with electroplated metal.DACROMET is a registered trademark of MetalCoatings International, Inc. of Chardon Ohio[mech-3]

DAD Distributed Adamo Database. An extensionto ADAMO [soft]

daemon A process running in the background per-forming some service (such as handling printqueues) in UNIX or other operating systems.[soft]

DANTE A company established by the nationalresearch networks in Europe to provide interna-tional network services [soft]

DARPA Defense Advanced Research ProjectAgency of the US Department of De-fense,.responsible for the development ofnew technology, including ARPANET . [soft]

DASE Distributed Application Support Environ-ment . [soft]

Data base See DBMS [soft]

Database See DBMS . [soft]

Datacom A DBMS from Computer Associates In-ternational.. [soft]

Data Definition Language A language enablingthe structure and instances of a database to bedefined in a human- and machine-readable form.[soft]

Data dictionary A set of data descriptions thatcan be shared by several applications. [soft]

Data Flow Diagram A graphical notation used todescribe how data flows between processes in asystem. An important tool of most structuredanalysis techniques. [soft]

Data Model A set of data structures with ma-nipulation and validation operators for gen-eral purpose usage. Examples are the Entity-Relationship [soft]

DATATRIEVE A query and report system for usewith DEC’s VMS system (RMS, VAX Rdb/VMSor VAX DBMS). [soft]

DataViews Graphical user interface developmentsoftware from V.I.Corporation, aimed at con-structing platform-independent interactive viewsof dynamic data. [soft]

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Data Warehouse A database of information in-tended for use as part of a decision support sys-tem. The data is typically extracted from anorganisation’s operational databases. [soft]

Daughter products Isotopes that are formed bythe radioactive decay of some other isotope. Inthe case of radium-226, for example, there are10 successive daughter products, ending in thestable isotope lead-206. [nuclear-1]

DAZIX Daisy/Cadnetix Corporation: a supplier ofdigital electronic CAE systems. [soft]

DB2 A DBMS from IBM. [soft]

DBA DataBase Administrator. [soft]

dBASE III A DBMS from Ashton-Tate Corpora-tion. [soft]

DB Database. [soft]

DBMS Database management system: such sys-tems typically manage large structured sets ofpersistent data, offering ad hoc query facilitiesto many users. They are widely used in busi-ness applications: commercial examples includeIngres , Oracle etc. [soft]

DCA Document Content Architecture.from IBM[soft]

DCE Distributed Computing Environment fromOSF - More information. [soft]

DCF Document Composition Facility. [soft]

DCOM Distributed Component Object Model Pro-tocol [soft]

DCSA Distributed Component Software Architec-ture [soft]

DD Data Dictionary . [soft]

DDE Manager An Oracle product that lets Win-dows applications that support the DDE proto-col act as front end tools for Oracle. It allowsapplications like Excel, Word, Ami Professional,WingZ, and ToolBook to query, update, graph,and report information stored in Oracle. [soft]

DDE protocol Dynamic Data Exchange: a Mi-crosoft protocol that allows Windows appli-cations to communicate using a client/servermodel. [soft]

DDIF Digital Document Interchange Format. ACDA specification for representing compounddocuments in revisable format; a DEC standardfor document encoding. [soft]

DDL Data definition language . [soft]

DDL Document Description Language . [soft]

DDTS Distributed Defect Tracking System. [soft]

Decay heat The heat produced by the decay ofradioactive fission products after a reactor hasbeen shut down. [nuclear-1]

Decay, radioactive The decrease in the amount ofany radioactive material with the passage of timedue to the spontaneous emission from the atomicnuclei of either alpha or beta particles, often ac-companied by gamma radiation. [nuclear-1]

DECdesign A software analysis and design toolfrom DEC supporting several methodologies.[soft]

DEC Digital Equipment Corporation: a computermanufacturer and software vendor. [soft]

DECdns Distributed Naming Service: adopted byOSF as the naming service for DCE . [soft]

Declared pregnant woman A woman who is anoccupational radiation worker and has voluntar-ily informed her employer, in writing, of herpregnancy and the estimated date of conception.[nuclear-1]

DECnet The network marketed by DEC to connectits computers together. [soft]

Decommissioning The process of closing down afacility followed by reducing residual radioactiv-ity to a level that permits the release of the prop-erty for unrestricted use. [nuclear-1]

Decompression Point The point at which thereis zero pressure at the joint interface as a resultof forces applied to the joint. If the applied forceis increased beyond the decompression point, agap will form at the interface. Analytically, acriteria of joint failure is often taken as whenthe applied force on the joint reaches the de-compression point. This is because forces actingon the bolt(s) can dramatically increase at thispoint. Loading beyond this point can also re-sult in fretting at the interface that will lead tobolt tension loss that will subsequently lower thedecompression point. This process can continueuntil bolt failure does occur. The failure can beby fatigue or other mechanism but the under-lying cause was loading of the joint beyond thedecompression point. It is for this reason that itis frequently taken as a failure criteria in analysiswork. [mech-3]

DECON A method of decommissioning in whichthe equipment, structures, and portions of a fa-cility and site containing radioactive contami-nants are removed and safety buried in a low-

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level radioactive waste landfill or decontami-nated to a level that permits the property to bereleased for unrestricted use shortly after cessa-tion of operations. [nuclear-1]

Decontamination The reduction or removal ofcontaminating radioactive material from a struc-ture, area, object, or person. Decontaminationmay be accomplished by (1) treating the surfaceto remove or decrease the contamination, (2) let-ting the material stand so that the radioactivityis decreased as a result of natural radioactive de-cay, or (3) covering the contamination to shieldor attenuate the radiation emitted. [nuclear-1]

DECstation A range of RISC based workstationsmanufactured by DEC. [soft]

DECwindows DEC’s windowing environmentbased on the X Window System . [soft]

DECwrite DEC’s CDA document processing ap-plication. It can generate and import SGMLmarked-up documents. [soft]

defect structure relating to the kinds and concen-trations of vacancies and interstitials in a ceramiccompound. [mat-1]

Defense-in-depth A design and operational philos-ophy with regard to nuclear facilities that callsfor multiple layers of protection to prevent andmitigate accidents. It includes the use of con-trols, multiple physical barriers to prevent re-lease of radiation, redundant and diverse keysafety functions, and emergency response mea-sures. [nuclear-1]

Deflection This word usually carries the samemeaning as displacement, although it is some-times used in place of deformation. [struc-1]

Deformation A change in the shape of an objector material. [struc-1]

Degree of Freedom A displacement quantitywhich defines the shape and location of an ob-ject. In the two dimensional plane, a rigid objecthas three degrees of freedom [struc-1]

degree of polymerization the average number ofmer units per polymer chain molecule. [mat-1]

Delphi An object-oriented development systemfrom Borland [soft]

Delta-4 Definition and Design of an open Depend-able Distributed system architecture. An Es-prit project investigating the achievement of de-pendability in open distributed systems, includ-ing real-time systems. [soft]

delta iron an allotropic (polymorphic) form of ironstable above 2550 F and crystallizing in the bodycentered cubic lattice. [mat-1]

DELTASE A distributed processing environ-ment concerned with fault-tolerant and process-control applications from the Esprit project.[soft]

Delta The information which differentiates a ver-sion from members of its immediate family. Seechange management [soft]

DeMarco Tom DeMarco proposed a form of Struc-tured Analysis. [soft]

DEM Digital Elevation Model. A format for mapfiles [soft]

Demeter A CASE tool developed mainly by KarlLieberherr (see Aug/Sep 1988 issue of JOOP,OOPSLA ’89 Proceedings ”Contributions toTeaching Object-Oriented Design and Program-ming”) [soft]

Demonstrated reserves A collective term for thesum of coalin both measured and indicated re-sources and reserves. [mining-1]

Departure from nuclear boiling ratio(DNBR) The ratio of the heat flux tocause departure from nucleate boiling to theactual local heat flux or a fuel rod. [nuclear-1]

Departure from nucleate boiling (DNB) Thepoint at which the heat transfer from a fuelrod rapidly decreases due to the insulating ef-fect of a steam blanket that forms on the rodsurface when the temperature continues to in-crease. [nuclear-1]

Depleted uranium Uranium having a percent-age of uranium-235 smaller than the 0.7 per-cent found in natural uranium. It is obtainedfrom spent (used) fuel elements or as byproducttails, or residues, from uranium isotope separa-tion. [nuclear-1]

Deposit - Mineral deposit or ore deposit is usedtodesignate a natural occurrence of a useful min-eral, or an ore, insufficient extent and degree ofconcentration to inviteexploitation.[mining-1]

Depth - The word alone generally denotes verti-cal depthbelow the surface. In the case of in-cline shafts and boreholes it maymean the dis-tance reached from the beginning of the shaftor hole, theborehole depth, or the inclineddepth.[mining-1]

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Derived air concentration (DAC) The concen-tration of radioactive material in air and the timeof exposure to that radionuclide in hours. AnNRC licensee may take 2000 hours to representone ALI, equivalent to a committed effective doseequivalent of 5 rems (0.05 sievert). [nuclear-1]

DES Data Encryption Standard. A NIST encryp-tion standard. [soft]

Design-basis accident A postulated accident thata nuclear facility must be designed and built towithstand without loss to the systems, struc-tures, and components necessary to assure publichealth and safety. [nuclear-1]

Design-basis phenomena Earthquakes, torna-does, hurricanes, floods, etc., that a nuclear fa-cility must be designed and built to withstandwithout loss of systems, structures, and com-ponents necessary to assure public health andsafety. [nuclear-1]

Design-basis threat A profile of the type, com-position, and capabilities of an adversary. TheNRC and its licensees use the design-basis threat(DBT) as a basis for designing safeguards sys-tems to protect against acts of radiological sab-otage and to prevent the theft of special nuclearmaterial. [nuclear-1]

Design Design is usually considered to be the phaseof software development following analysis, andconcerned with how the problem is to be solved.[soft]

Design Form Of Thread The design form of aninternal or external thread is the thread form init’s maximum metal condition. It is the same asthe basic thread profile except that the threadroots are rounded. If either the internal or ex-ternal thread form exceeds the design form ofthe thread profile then a potential interferenceexists. [mech-3]

Design recovery A subset of reverse engineering inwhich domain knowledge, external information,and deduction of fuzzy reasoning are added tothe observations of the subject system to identifymeaningful higher level abstraction beyond thoseobtained directly by examining the system itself.[soft]

Desktop manager A user interface to system ser-vices, usually icon and menu based like the Mac-intosh Finder, enabling the user to run appli-cations and use a filing system without directlyusing the command language of the operatingsystem. [soft]

DESQview A system from Quarterdeck Office Sys-tems implementing multitasking under MS-DOS.[soft]

Destructor A function provided by a class in C++to delete an object. [soft]

DESY Deutsches Electronen Synchrotron Labora-tory, Hamburg, Germany - More information.[soft]

Detector A material or device that is sensitive toradiation and can produce a response signal suit-able for measurement or analysis. A radiationdetection instrument. [nuclear-1]

Detectors - Specialized chemical or electronic in-strumentsused to detect mine gases.[mining-1]

Deterministic effect The health effectsof radia-tion, the severity of which varies with the doseand for which a threshold is believed to exist.Radiation-induced cataract formation is an ex-ample of a deterministic effect (also called a non-stochastic effect). [nuclear-1]

Deterministic (probabilistic) Consistent withthe principles of ”determinism,” which hold thatspecific causes completely and certainly deter-mine effects of all sorts. As applied in nucleartechnology, it generally deals with evaluating thesafety of a nuclear power plant in terms of theconsequences of a predetermined bounding sub-set of accident sequences. The term ”probabilis-tic” is associated with an evaluation that explic-itly accounts for the likelihood and consequencesof possible accident sequences in an integratedfashion. [nuclear-1]

Detonator - A device containing a small detonat-ing chargethat is used for detonating an explo-sive, including, but not limitedto, blasting caps,exploders, electric detonators, and delay elec-tricblasting caps.[mining-1]

Deuterium An isotope of hydrogen with one protonand one neutron in the nucleus. [nuclear-1]

Deuteron The nucleus of deuterium. It containsone proton and one neutron. See also heavy wa-ter. [nuclear-1]

Development mining - Work undertaken to openup coalreserves as distinguished from the work ofactual coalextraction. [mining-1]

Development The process of analysis, design, cod-ing and testing software. [soft]

Devitrification the process in which a glass (non-crystalline or vitreous solid) transforms to a crys-talline solid[mech-1]

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DFD Data Flow Diagram . [soft]

DGL Data Generation Language: a tool for gener-ating test data for hardware or software systems.[soft]

DGL The distributed version of GL . [soft]

Dhrystone A benchmark program in C and Ada.[soft]

DIALOG A commercial bibliographic databaseand retrieval service from DIALOG InformationServices. [soft]

diamagnetism a weak form of induced or nonper-manent magnetism for which the magnetic sus-ceptibility is negative. [mat-1]

Diamagnetism a weak form of induced or nonper-manent magnetism for which the magnetic sus-ceptibility is negative.[mech-1]

DIB Device Independent Bitmap, a format forportable images. [soft]

die (1) a metal form used as a permanent mold fordie casting or for a wax pattern in investmentcasting; (2) an integrated circuit chip as diced orcut from the finished wafer. [mat-1]

dielectric any material that is electrically insulat-ing. [mat-1]

Dielectric any material that is electricallyinsulating.[mech-1]

dielectric constant a relative measurement of thedegree of polarization (shift of positive charge to-ward the negative electrode and negative chargetoward the positive electrode) that occurs whena material is placed in an electric field. [mat-1]

Dielectric Constant the ratio of the permittivityof a medium to that of a vacuum.[mech-1]

Dielectric Strength the magnitude of an electricfield necessary to cause significant current pas-sage through a dielectric material.[mech-1]

Dienst A protocol for a distributed digital docu-ment library built on http [soft]

Differential pressure (dp or dP) The differ-ence in pressure between two points of a system,such as between the inlet and outlet of a pump.[nuclear-1]

diffraction (x-ray) constructive interference of x-ray beams that are scattered by atoms of a crys-tal. [mat-1]

Diffuser fan - A fan mounted on a continuous minertoassist and direct air delivery from the machineto the face.[mining-1]

Diffusion - Blending of a gas and air, resulting inahomogeneous mixture. Blending of two or moregases.[mining-1]

diffusion coefficient (D) the constant of propor-tionality between the diffusion flux and the con-centration gradient in Fick’s first law; its magni-tude is indicative of the rate of atomic diffusion.[mat-1]

Diffusion Coefficient the constant of proportion-ality between diffusion flux and the concentra-tion gradient in Fick’s first law.[mech-1]

diffusion flux (J) the quantity of mass diffus-ing through and perpendicular to a unit cross-sectional area of material per unit time. [mat-1]

Diffusion mass transport by atomic motion.[mech-1]

diffusion motion of atoms, ions, or vacanciesthrough a material. [mat-1]

DII Dynamic Invocation Interface. An OMG spec-ification. [soft]

DIIG Digital Information Infrastructure Guide. Aresource to facilitate the development of the NII[soft]

Dilute - To lower the concentration of a mixture; inthiscase the concentration of any hazardous gasin mine air by addition offresh intake air.[mining-1]

Dilution - The contamination of ore with barrenwall rockin stopping.[mining-1]

DIN Deutsche Institut fuer Normung: the Germanstandardisation body, a member of ISO . [soft]

DIP Document Image Processing: storage, manage-ment and retrieval of images. [soft]

dipole a system or object whose one end has a nega-tive charge and the other a positive charge. [mat-1]

Dipole (electric) a pair of equal yet oppositeelectrical charges that are separated by a smalldistance[mech-1]

Dip - The inclination of a geologic structure (bed,vein,fault, etc.) from the horizontal; dip is al-ways measured downwards atright angles to thestrike. [mining-1]

Direct Tension Indicators Direct Tension Indi-cators (DTI’s) is a term sometimes used to de-scribe load indicating washers. Projections onthe face of the washer (usually on the face abut-ing the bolt head or nut) that deform under load-ing as the bolt is tensioned. An indication of the

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tension in the bolt can be made by measuringthe gap between the washer face and the nut orbolt head. The smaller the gap - the greaterthe tension in the bolt. Commonly used in civilrather than mechanical engineering applications.[mech-3]

Dirt Design In Real Time: a user interface builderfor the X Window System by R.Hesketh [soft]

DISA Data Interchange Standards Association(USA) [soft]

DISA Defense Information Systems Agency (USA)[soft]

Dislocation a linear crystalline defect aroundwhich there is an atomic misalignment.[mech-1]

dislocation a linear crystalline defect around whichthere is atomic misalignment; plastic deforma-tion corresponds to the motion of dislocations inresponse to an applied shear stress; edge, screw,and mixed dislocations are possible. [mat-1]

dislocation line the line that extends along theend of the extra half-plane of atoms for an edgedislocation, and along the center of the spiral ofa screw dislocation. [mat-1]

Displacement A change in position. A displace-ment may be a translation a rotation or a com-bination of those. [struc-1]

Display PostScript An extended form ofPostScript permitting its interactive use withbitmap displays. [soft]

Distributed load An external force which acts overa region of length, surface, or area [struc-1]

DLG Digital Line Graph. A format for map files[soft]

DL/I The data manipulation language of IMS .[soft]

DLM Distributed Lock Manager on distributedVMS systems. [soft]

DME Distributed Management Environment: anOSF standard presently at the RFT stage. [soft]

DMS Document Management System. [soft]

DNS Distributed Name Service: see DECdns .[soft]

DOC Distributed Object Computing. [soft]

Document Examiner A high-performance hyper-text system by Symbolics that provides on-lineaccess to their user documentation. [soft]

Document Style Semantics and SpecificationLanguage An ISO standard under preparation,addressing the semantics of high-quality compo-sition in a manner independent of particular for-matting systems or processes. DSSSL is intendedas a complementary standard to SGML for thespecification of semantics. [soft]

DoD-STD-2167A A DoD standard specifying theoverall process of development and documenta-tion for mission-critical software - More informa-tion. [soft]

DoD-STD-2168 A DoD standard for softwarequality assurance procedures. [soft]

DoD The US Department of Defense, responsiblefor sponsoring many standards in the softwareengineering field [soft]

DOE Distributed Object Environment: a dis-tributed object-oriented application frameworkfrom SunSoft. [soft]

DoE The US Department of Energy [soft]

domain a volume region of a ferromagnetic or fer-rimagnetic material in which all atomic or ionicmagnetic moments are aligned in the same direc-tion. [mat-1]

Domain Distributed Operating Multi Access Inter-active Network:the proprietary network protocolused by Apollo workstations. [soft]

DOMF Distributed Object Management Facility:an OMG -compliant object management system;part of DOE . from SunSoft. [soft]

DOORS Dynamic Object Oriented RequirementsSystem [soft]

doping the intentional alloying of semiconductingmaterials with controlled concentrations of donoror acceptor impurities. [mat-1]

Doping the intentional alloying of semiconductingmaterials with controlled concentrations of donoror acceptor impurities.[mech-1]

Doppler coefficient Another name used forthe fuel temperature coefficient of reactivity.[nuclear-1]

DORIS 3-10 GeV center of mass electron-positronstorage ring/collider at DESY . [soft]

Dose, absorbed The amount of energy depositedin any substance by ionizing radiation per unitmass of the substance. It is expressed numeri-cally in rads or grays. [nuclear-1]

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Dose equivalent The product of absorbed dose intissue multiplied by a quality factor and thensometimes multiplied by other necessary modi-fying factors at the location of interest. It is ex-pressed numerically in rems or sieverts. [nuclear-1]

Dose rate The ionizing radiation dose delivered perunit time. For example, rem or sieverts per hour.[nuclear-1]

Dose The absorbed dose, given in rads (or in SIunits, grays), that represents the energy ab-sorbed from the radiation in a gram of any ma-terial. Furthermore, the biological dose or doseequivalent, given in rem or sieverts, is a measureof the biological damage to living tissue from ra-diation exposure. [nuclear-1]

Dosimeter A small portable instrument (such asa film badge or thermoluminescent or pocketdosimeter) for measuring and recording the totalaccumulated personal dose of ionizing radiation.[nuclear-1]

Dosimetry The theory and application of the prin-ciples and techniques involved in the measure-ment and recording of ionizing radiation doses.[nuclear-1]

DPS Display PostScript . [soft]

DQO Data Quality Objectives [soft]

Dragline A large excavation machine used in sur-face miningto remove overburden (layers of rockand soil) covering a coalseam. The dragline castsa wire rope-hung bucket a considerabledistance,collects the dug material by pulling the buckettowarditself on the ground with a second wirerope (or chain), elevates thebucket, and dumpsthe material on a spoil bank, in a hopper, or onapile.[mining-1]

DRAGON An Esprit project aimed at providingeffective support to reuse in real-time distributedAda applications.. [soft]

DRAGOON A distributed concurrent object-oriented Ada -based language from the Espritproject. [soft]

drag the bottom half of a horizontally parted mold.[mat-1]

Drainage - The process of removing surplus groundorsurface water either by artificial means or bygravity flow.[mining-1]

Drawing a deformation technique used to fabricatemetal wire and tubing. Deformation is accom-plished by pulling the material through a die

by means of a tensile force applied on the exitside.[mech-1]

Draw slate - A soft slate, shale, or rock fromap-proximately 1 cm to 10 cm thick and lo-cated immediately abovecertain coal seams,which falls quite easily when the coal supportiswithdrawn.[mining-1]

Drift - A horizontal passage underground. A driftfollowsthe vein, as distinguished from a crosscutthat intersects it, or alevel or gallery, which maydo either. [mining-1]

Drift mine An underground coal mine in which theentry oraccess is above water level and generallyon the slope of a hill,driven horizontally into acoal seam.[mining-1]

Drill - A machine utilizing rotation, percus-sion(hammering), or a combination of both tomake holes. If the hole ismuch over 0.4m in di-ameter, the machine is called a borer.[mining-1]

Drilling - The use of such a machine to cre-ate holes forexploration or for loading withexplosives.[mining-1]

Drywell The containment structure enclosing aboiling water reactor vessel and its recirculationsystem. The drywell provides both a pressuresuppression system and a fission product barrierunder accident conditions. [nuclear-1]

DS Dansk Standard. The Danish standards associ-ation. [soft]

DSDM Dynamic Systems Development Method. Anon-proprietary Rapid Application Developmentmethod [soft]

DSE Data Structure Editor. [soft]

DSEE Domain Software Engineering Environment:a proprietary CASE framework and configura-tion management system from Apollo . [soft]

DSOM Distributed SOM [soft]

DSP Digital Signal Processing. [soft]

DSS Decision Support Systems. Software tools tohelp with management tasks. [soft]

DSSSL Document Style Semantics and Specifica-tion Language. An ISO standard under prepa-ration, addressing the semantics of high-qualitycomposition in a manner independent of partic-ular formatting systems or processes. DSSSL isintended as a complementary standard to SGMLfor the specification of semantics - More informa-tion. [soft]

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DTD Document Type Definition: the definition ofa document type in SGML , consisting of a setof markup tags and their interpretation. [soft]

DTIC Defense Technical Information Center of theUS Dept. of Defense. [soft]

DTI UK Department of Trade and Industry. [soft]

DTL DVI Text Language. An ASCII DVI format.[soft]

DTLS Descriptive Top-Level Specification lan-guage: used in POSIX . [soft]

DTP Desktop publishing. [soft]

DTS Distributed Time Service . [soft]

ductile fracture a mode of fracture that is at-tended by extensive gross plastic deformation.[mat-1]

ductile-to-brittle transition the transition fromductile to brittle behavior with a decrease in tem-perature exhibited by BCC alloys; the tempera-ture range over which the transition occurs is de-termined by Charpy and Izod impact tests. [mat-1]

Ductility a measure of a material’s ability toundergo appreciable plastic deformation beforefracture.[mech-1]

ductility a measure of a material’s ability toundergo appreciable plastic deformation beforefracture; it may be expressed as percent elonga-tion or percent area reduction from a tensile test.[mat-1]

Ductility Ductility generally refers to the amountof inelastic deformation which a material orstructure experiences before complete failure.Quantitatively, ductility can be defined as theratio of the total displacement or strain at fail-ure, divided by the displacement or strain at theelastic limit. [struc-1]

Dummy - A bag filled with sand, clay, etc., usedforstemming a charged hole. [mining-1]

Dump - To unload; specifically, a load of coal orwaste;the mechanism for unloading, e.g. a cardump (sometimes calledtipple); or, the pile cre-ated by such unloading, e.g. a waste dump(alsocalled heap, pile, tip, spoil pike, etc.).[mining-1]

DVI Device independent file format. A dvi file con-taining a description of the formatted documentis the usual output of TeX . [soft]

DWARF A debugging information format forUNIX System V [soft]

Dylan An object-oriented dynamic language [soft]

Dynamic equilibrium Equilibrium which includesinertial forces. [struc-1]

Dynamic Friction Resistance to relative move-ment of two bodies that are already in motion.[mech-3]

EF

E A database progamming language developed forthe EXODUS project. [soft]

EAPLS European Association for ProgrammingLanguages and Systems - More information.[soft]

EARN European Academic and Research Network.A self-managing network in the research commu-nity originally sponsored by IBM. It uses BIT-NET protocols and connects to BITNET in theUS - More information. [soft]

Earthquake, operating basis An earthquake thatcould be expected to affect the reactor plant site,but for which the plant power production equip-ment is designed to remain functional withoutundue risk to public health and safety. [nuclear-1]

EAST A Eureka project developing a software en-gineering platform. [soft]

EC Electronic Commerce. Managing businesstransactions using networking and electronicmeans. [soft]

ECFA European Committee for Future Accelera-tors. This body, whose principal role is to takecare of Europe’s requirements for future particleaccelerators, has also looked at particle physicsdata handling on a European-wide basis. [soft]

ECHO A public database service of the EuropeanCommunity - More information. [soft]

ECHT European Conference on Hypertext . [soft]

ECIP2 An Esprit Project on the definition of aspecification language at the requirement level.[soft]

ECIS European Committee for Interoperable Sys-tems. [soft]

ECMA European Computer Manufacturers Asso-ciation [soft]

ECM Enterprise Component Modelling. [soft]

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ECO Engineering Change Order. [soft]

ECOOP European Conference on Object-orientedProgramming. [soft]

ECRC Electronic Commerce Resource Centers. Anetwork of US government sponsored centersthat provide support to government and indus-try in developing and implementing strategies forbusiness process improvement, implementing en-abling technologies, and migrating to electroniccommerce [soft]

EDA Product line from Dazix . [soft]

Eden An object-oriented distributed operating sys-tem based on an RPC mechanism . [soft]

edge dislocation a linear crystalline defect associ-ated with the lattice distortion produced in thevicinity of the end of an extra half-plane of atomswithin a crystal; the Burgers vector is perpendic-ular to the dislocation line. [mat-1]

EDH Electronic Document Handling (at CERN ) -More information. [soft]

EDI Electronic Data Interchange: a set of standardsfor exchanging orders and other business trans-actions by electronic mail - More information.[soft]

EDIF Electronic Design Interchange Format . [soft]

EDM Engineering Data Management. [soft]

EDMS Electronic Document Management System.[soft]

EDUCOM A nonprofit consortium of US highereducation institutions promoting access to anduse of information resources and technology -More information. [soft]

EEMA European Electronic Messaging Associa-tion. [soft]

EER An extended entity-relationship model . [soft]

Effective Diameter This is the diameter ofan imaginary cylinder coaxial with the thread,which has equal metal and space widths. It isoften referred to as pitch diameter. Sometimesreferred to as the simple effective diameter todifferentiate from the virtual effective diameter.[mech-3]

Effective half-life The time required for theamount of a radioactive element deposited in aliving organism to be diminished 50 percent as aresult of the combined action of radioactive de-cay and biological elimination. [nuclear-1]

Effective Nut Diameter Twice the effective nutradius. [mech-3]

Effective Nut Radius The radius from the centreof the nut to the point where the contact forces,generated when the nut is turned, can be consid-ered to act. [mech-3]

EFF Electronic Frontier Foundation. An organisa-tion working on civil rights issues in networking[soft]

Efficiency, plant The percentage of the total en-ergy content of a power plant’s fuel that is con-verted into electricity. The remaining energy islost to the environment as heat. [nuclear-1]

EHTS Emacs HyperText System: an experimentalmultiuser hypertext system from the Universityof Aalborg. It consists of a text editor (basedon Epoch and GNU and written in elisp) anda graphical browser (based on XView ) runningunder the X Window System and OpenWindowsBoth tools use HyperBase as database. [soft]

EIA Electronic Industries Association. [soft]

Eiffel An object-oriented programming languagedeveloped by B.Meyer et al. and commercialisedby ISE [soft]

Eiffel shelf A set of user-contributed classes avail-able with the Eiffel system. [soft]

EIS Executive Information System. [soft]

EJO Electronic Journals Online. A service of theOCLC . [soft]

Elastic A material or structure is said to behaveelastically if it returns to its original geometryupon unloading. [struc-1]

elastic deformation nonpermanent deformation,totally recovered upon release of an appliedstress. [mat-1]

Elastic energy The energy stored in deformed elas-tic material (e.g., a watch spring). Elastic energyequals where k is the stiffness, and is the as-sociated deflection. Elastic energy is sometimescalled elastic potential energy because it can berecovered when the object returns to its originalshape; see potential energy. [struc-1]

Elastic limit The point beyond which the defor-mations of a structure or material are no longerpurely elastic. [struc-1]

Elastic Modulus see Modulus of Elasticity [mech-1]

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elastomer a polymeric material that may experi-ence large and reversible elastic deformations.[mat-1]

Elastomer a polymeric material that mayexperience large and reversible elasticdeformations.[mech-1]

Electrical generator An electromagnetic devicethat converts mechanical (rotational) energy intoelectrical energy. Most large electrical generatorsare driven by steam or water turbine systems.[nuclear-1]

Electrical grounding - To connect withthe ground to makethe earth part of thecircuit.[mining-1]

electrodeposition (1) the deposition of a conduc-tive material from a plating solution by the appli-cation of electrical current; (2) the deposition ofa substance on an electrode by passing electriccurrent through an electrolyte; electroplating,electroforming, electrorefining, and electrotwin-ning result from electrodeposition. [mat-1]

Electroless Nickel A relatively thin, hard coatingthat can be applied to threads and deposited uni-formly. Bright metallic in appearance this coat-ing has excellent resistance to wear and corro-sion. [mech-3]

electrolyte a solution through which an electriccurrent may be carried by the motion of ions.[mat-1]

Electromagnetic radiation A traveling wave mo-tion resulting from changing electric or magneticfields. Familiar electromagnetic radiation rangefrom x-rays (and gamma rays) of short wave-length, through the ultraviolet, visible, and in-frared regions, to radar and radio waves of rela-tively long wavelength. [nuclear-1]

electromagnetic radiation energy propagated atthe speed of light by an electromagnetic field.[mat-1]

Electron An elementary particle with a negativecharge and a mass 1/1837 that of the proton.Electrons surround the positively charged nu-cleus and determine the chemical properties ofthe atom. [nuclear-1]

electronegative for an atom, having a tendency toaccept valence electrons; also a term to describenon-metallic elements. [mat-1]

Electronegativity for an atom, having a tendencyto accept valence electrons.[mech-1]

Electronic Mail A system allowing computer usersto exchange messages via a network. [soft]

electropositive for an atom, having a tendency torelease valence electrons; also a term to describemetallic elements. [mat-1]

Element One of the 103 known chemical substancesthat cannot be broken down further withoutchanging its chemical properties. Some exam-ples include hydrogen, nitrogen, gold, lead, anduranium. See the periodic table of elements[nuclear-1]

Ellemtel A C++ style guide originated by EllemtelTelecom Systems, Stockholm. [soft]

ELOT The Greek standards association. [soft]

ELSA Electronic Library Services and Applica-tions. A library of reusable public domain soft-ware supported by NASA - More information.[soft]

emacs A popular editor and associated utilities forUNIX [soft]

email See Electronic mail . [soft]

E-mail See Electronic mail . [soft]

Embedment Localized plastic deformation whichoccurs in the vicinity of clamped fasteners or inthe fastener threads. [mech-3]

EMDIR The CERN Electronic Mail DIRectoryutility. [soft]

Emergency classifications Response by an offsiteorganization is required to protect local citizensnear the site. A request for assistance from off-site emergency response organizations may be re-quired. [nuclear-1]

Emergency core cooling systems (ECCS) Re-actor system components (pumps, valves, heatexchangers, tanks, and piping) that are specifi-cally designed to remove residual heat from thereactor fuel rods should the normal core coolingsystem (reactor coolant system) fail. [nuclear-1]

Emergency feedwater Another name that may beused for auxiliary feedwater. [nuclear-1]

E-Modulus see modulus of elasticity. [struc-1]

Encapsulation The ability to provide users witha well-defined interface to a set of functions ina way which hides their internal workings. Inobject-oriented programming, the technique ofkeeping together data structures and the meth-ods (procedures) which act on them. [soft]

Energy A property of a body related to its abil-ity to move a force through a distance oppositethe force’s direction; energy is the product of themagnitude of the force times the distance. En-ergy may take several forms [struc-1]

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Engineering Ceramics technical ceramics forstructural applications.[mech-1]

Entity-Relationship An approach to data mod-elling proposed by P.Chen in 1976. [soft]

Entity-Relationship diagram A type of diagramused in the Entity-Relationship model. [soft]

ENTOMB A method of decommissioning in whichradioactive contaminants are encased in a struc-turally long-lived material, such as concrete. Theentombment structure is appropriately main-tained and continued surveillance is carried outuntil the radioactivity decays to a level permit-ting decommissioning and ultimate unrestrictedrelease of the property. [nuclear-1]

Entry - An underground horizontal or near-horizontalpassage used for haulage, ventilation,or as a mainway; a coalheading; a working placewhere the coal is extracted from the seam intheinitial mining; same as ”gate” and ”roadway,”both Britishterms.[mining-1]

Environmentally Assisted Cracking (Eac) Aprocess that can occur with the use of highstrength steel fasteners in which crack initiationand growth occurs in the fastener at a compar-atively low stress level as a result of interactionsthat occur with the environment. Hydrogen issuspected of causing EAC in high strength steelfasteners, the hydrogen being produced as a re-sult of chemical reactions (galvanic corrosion ina moist environment) or being present from aplating process that may have been applied tothe fastener. [mech-3]

Environmental qualification A process for en-suring that equipment will be capable of with-standing the ambient conditions that could existwhen the specific function to be performed bythe equipment is actually called upon to be per-formed under accident conditions. [nuclear-1]

EOQ European Organization for Quality. [soft]

EOUG European ORACLE Users Group. [soft]

EPCS Experimental Physics Control Systems: agroup of the European Physical Society, fo-cussing on all aspects of controls, especially in-formatics, in experimental physics, including ac-celerators and experiments. [soft]

EPIC Electronic Privacy Information Center. AUS center working on privacy issues relating tothe National Information Infrastructure - Moreinformation. [soft]

EPICS Experimental Physics and Industrial Con-trol System. Software for accelerator, experi-ment, and process control from ANL - More in-formation. [soft]

Epoch A version of GNU Emacs for the X Windowsystem from NCSA . [soft]

EPO European Patent Office [soft]

EPS Encapsulated PostScript - More information.[soft]

EQA European Quality Award for process improve-ment. [soft]

equiaxed powder or grain shapes with approxi-mately equal dimensions. [mat-1]

Equilibrium An object is in equilibrium if the re-sultant of the system of forces acting on it haszero magnitude. See static equilibrium and dy-namic equilibrium. [struc-1]

equilibrium (phase) the state of a system wherethe phase characteristics remain constant overindefinite time periods; at equilibrium the freeenergy is a minimum. [mat-1]

ERA Entity-Relationship -Attribute. [soft]

ERC An extended entity-relationship model . [soft]

ERCIM European Research Consortium on Infor-matics and Mathematics. An association of Eu-ropean research organizations promoting cooper-ative research on key issues in information tech-nology [soft]

ERCS Extended Reference Concrete Syntaxes forSGML , to support East Asian and other non-English languages - More information. [soft]

ERD Entity-relationship diagram. [soft]

ER Entity-Relationship . [soft]

ESA European Space Agency standards. [soft]

ESF Eureka Software Factory. [soft]

ESI European Software Institute. A network of or-ganisations co-operating in strategic planning ofprocess improvement [soft]

ESIS Element Structure Information Set producedby SGML parsers. [soft]

ESML Extended Systems Modelling Language:a real-time software engineering methodologybased on RTSA . [soft]

ESPIF European Software Process ImprovementFoundation [soft]

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Esprit A funding programme to develop Informaticsin the EEC. - More information. [soft]

Estelle A formal description technique developedfor OSI protocol specification. [soft]

ESUG European Smalltalk Users’ Group. [soft]

etching chemical surface corrosion, usually con-ducted in a controlled fashion on a polished sur-face of a material sample to reveal details of themicrostructure. [mat-1]

Ethernet A 10-megabit/second local area networkdeveloped by Xerox and now widely adopted.Hosts are connected to a coaxial cable, and trans-mission conflicts are avoided by backing off andre-sending later. IEEE standard 802.3 definesthe hardware and transport layers of the net-work. [soft]

ETLA Extended Three Letter Acronym. [soft]

ETM An active DBMS from the University of Karl-sruhe. [soft]

ETSI European Telecommunications Standards In-stitute. [soft]

EUnet The European UNIX network: an Internetservice provider. More information. [soft]

Eureka A European technological development pro-gramme. [soft]

EuropaNET A combination of pan-Europeanbackbone services run by DANTE . [soft]

EUSIDIC European Association of InformationServices [soft]

Eutectic Phase one of the two phases found in theeutectic structure.[mech-1]

eutectic upon cooling, a liquid phase transformsisothermally and reversibly into two intimatelymixed solid phases; the lowest melting composi-tion in a material system. [mat-1]

Eutectoid Phase[mech-1]

eutectoid upon cooling, one solid phase transformsisothermally and reversibly into two new solidphases that are intimately mixed. [mat-1]

EUUG European UNIX User Group. [soft]

Evaluation - The work involved in gaining a knowl-edge ofthe size, shape, position and value ofcoal.[mining-1]

EWOS European Workshop for Open Systems.[soft]

Excelerator A set of CASE tools from Index Tech-nology Corp. [soft]

Exclusion area The area surrounding the reactorwhere the reactor licensee has the authority todetermine all activities, including exclusion or re-moval of personnel and property. [nuclear-1]

Excursion A sudden, very rapid rise in the powerlevel of a reactor caused by supercriticality. Ex-cursions are usually quickly suppressed by thenegative temperature coefficient, the fuel tem-perature coefficient or the void coefficient (de-pending upon reactor design), or by rapid inser-tion of control rods. [nuclear-1]

EXODUS An extensible database project devel-oped at the University of Wisconsin. [soft]

eXodus A package from White Pines allowing theMacintosh to be used as an X server . [soft]

Expert system An intelligent computer programthat contains a knowledge base, specialized soft-ware, and a set of algorithms or rules that in-fer new facts from knowledge and from incomingdata. [soft]

Exploration - The search for mineral deposits andthe workdone to prove or establish the extent of amineral deposit. Alt:Prospecting and subsequentevaluation.[mining-1]

Explosive - Any rapidly combustive or expandingsubstance.The energy released during this rapidcombustion or expansion can beused to breakrock.[mining-1]

Exposure Being exposed to ionizing radiation or toradioactive material. [nuclear-1]

Express A data modelling language adopted by theISO working group on STEP . [soft]

Extensible database A DBMS that allows accessto data from remote sources as if it were part ofthe database. [soft]

External force A surface force or body force act-ing on an object. External forces are sometimescalled applied forces. [struc-1]

External Force Or Load Forces exerted on afastener as a result of an applied loading to thejoint. [mech-3]

External radiation Exposure to ionizing radiationwhen the radiation source is located outside thebody. [nuclear-1]

External Thread A screw thread which is formedon an external cylinder, such as on bolts, screws,studs etc. [mech-3]

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Extraction - The process of mining and removal ofcal orore from a mine.[mining-1]

Extremities The hands, forearms, elbows, feet,knees, leg below the knees, and ankles. (Per-missible radiation exposures in these regions aregenerally greater than in the whole body be-cause they contain fewer blood forming organsand have smaller volumes for energy absorption.)[nuclear-1]

Extrinsic Semiconductor a semi-conducting ma-terial for hich the electrical behavior is deter-mined by impurities.[mech-1]

extrusion a forming technique whereby a materialis forced, by compression, through a die orifice.[mat-1]

Extrusion a forming technique whereby a mate-rial is forced, by compression, through a dieorifice.[mech-1]

EXUG European X [soft]

face-centered cubic (FCC) a crystal structurefound in some of the common elemental metals;within the cubic unit cell atoms are located atall corner and face-centered positions [mat-1]

Face cleat - The principal cleavage plane or jointat rightangles to the stratification of the coalseam.[mining-1]

Face conveyor - Any conveyor used parallel to aworkingface which delivers coal into another con-veyor or into a car.[mining-1]

Face The exposed area of a coal bed from whichcoal isbeing extracted.[mining-1]

Factor of safety - The ratio of the ultimate break-ingstrength of the material to the force exertedagainst it. If a ropewill break under a load of6000 lbs., and it is carrying a load of2000 lbs.,its factor of safety is 6000 divided by 2000 whichequals3.[mining-1]

Fall - A mass of roof rock or coal which has fallenin anypart of a mine.[mining-1]

Fan, auxiliary - A small, portable fan used to sup-plementthe ventilation of an individual workingplace.[mining-1]

Fan, booster - A large fan installed in the mainaircurrent, and thus in tandem with the mainfan.[mining-1]

Fan signal - Automation device designed togive alarm ifthe main fan slows down orstops.[mining-1]

Fast fission Fission of a heavy atom (such asuranium-238) when it absorbs a high energy(fast) neutron. Most fissionable materials needthermal (slow) neutrons in order to fission.[nuclear-1]

Fast neutron A neutron with kinetic energy greaterthan its surroundings when released during fis-sion. [nuclear-1]

Fatigue failure, at relatively low stress levels, ofstructures that are subjected to fluctuating andcyclic stresses.[mech-1]

FATMEN A distributed file and tape managementsystem for HEP data - More information. [soft]

Fault - A slip-surface between two portions of theearth’ssurface that have moved relative to eachother. A fault is a failuresurface and is evidenceof severe earth stresses.[mining-1]

Fault zone - A fault, instead of being a single clean-fracture, may be a zone hundreds or thousandsof feet wide. The faultzone consists of numer-ous interlacing small faults or a confused zoneofgouge, breccia, or mylonite.[mining-1]

FDDI Fiber Distributed Data Interface: a newANSI standard for a 100 megabits/second fibreoptic token ring local area network [soft]

FEA Finite Element Analysis. [soft]

Feature An attribute or function of a class in Eiffel. [soft]

Feeder - A machine that feeds coal onto a conveyorbeltevenly.[mining-1]

feeder part of the gating system that forms thereservoir of molten metal necessary to compen-sate for losses due to shrinkage as the metal so-lidifies; sometimes referred to as a riser. [mat-1]

Feed-forward A multilayer perceptron networkin which the outputs from all neurons (seeMcCulloch-Pitts ) go to following but not preced-ing layers, so there are no feedback loops. [soft]

Feedwater Water supplied to the reactor pressurevessel (in a BWR) or the steam generator (in aPWR) that removes heat from the reactor fuelrods by boiling and becoming steam. The steambecomes the driving force for the plant turbinegenerator. [nuclear-1]

Fermi Energy for a metal, the energy correspond-ing to the highest filled electron state in the va-lence bond at 0 K.[mech-1]

Ferrimagnetism[mech-1]

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ferrimagnetism permanent and large magnetiza-tions found in some ceramic materials; it resultsfrom antiparallel spin coupling and incompletemagnetic moment cancellation. [mat-1]

ferrite (ceramic) ceramic oxide materials com-posed of both divalent and trivalent cations,some of which are ferrimagnetic. [mat-1]

Ferrite (iron) body-centered cubic crystalstructure.[mech-1]

ferrite (iron) body-centered cubic iron; also ironand steel alloys that have the BCC crystal struc-ture. [mat-1]

Ferroelectric a dielectric material that may ex-hibit polarization in the absence of an electricfield.[mech-1]

ferroelectricity spontaneous alignment of electricdipoles within a material under the influence ofan electric field, resulting in a hysteresis loopwhen the direction of electric field is switched.[mat-1]

Ferromagnetism permanent and large magnetiza-tions found in some metals (e.g., Fe, Ni, andCo), which result from the parallel alignmentsof neighboring magnetic moments.[mech-1]

ferromagnetism spontaneous alignment of mag-netic dipoles within a material under the influ-ence of a magnetic field, resulting in a hystere-sis loop when the direction of magnetic field isswitched. [mat-1]

ferrous alloy a metal alloy for which iron is theprime constituent. [mat-1]

Fertile material A material, which is not itself fis-sile (fissionable by thermal neutrons), that canbe converted into a fissile material by irradiationin a reactor. There are two basic fertile materi-als: uranium-238 and thorium-232. When thesefertile materials capture neutrons, they are con-verted into fissile plutonium-239 and uranium-233, respectively. [nuclear-1]

FFT Fast Fourier Transform [soft]

Fiber any material that has been drawn into a cylin-der with a length-to-diameter ratio greater thanabout ten.[mech-1]

Fick’s first law the diffusion flux is proportionalto the concentration gradient; this relationshipis employed for steady-state diffusion situations.[mat-1]

Fick’s second law the time rate of change of con-centration is proportional to the second deriva-tive of concentration; this relationship is em-ployed in nonsteady-state diffusion situations.[mat-1]

Fill - Any material that is put back in place of theex-tracted ore to provide ground support.[mining-1]

Filler an inert foreign substance added to a matrixto improve or modify its properties.[mech-1]

Film badge Photographic film used for measure-ment of ionizing radiation exposure for person-nel monitoring purposes. The film badge maycontain two or three films of differing sensitivi-ties, and it may also contain a filter that shieldspart of the film from certain types of radiation.[nuclear-1]

FIMS Form Interface Management System. [soft]

FIPS Federal Information Processing Standard:U.S. Government standards. [soft]

Fire damp - The combustible gas, methane, CH4.Also, theexplosive methane-air mixtures with be-tween 5

firing a high temperature heat treatment that in-creases the density and strength of a ceramicpiece. [mat-1]

Firing a high-temperature heat treatment that in-creases the density and strength of a ceramicpiece.[mech-1]

Fiscal year The 12-month period, from October 1through September 30, used by the Federal Gov-ernment in budget formulation and execution.The fiscal year is designated by the calendar yearin which it ends. [nuclear-1]

Fissile material Although sometimes used as asynonym for fissionable material, this term hasacquired a more restricted meaning. Namely,any material fissionable by thermal (slow) neu-trons. The three primary fissile materials areuranium-233, uranium-235, and plutonium-239.[nuclear-1]

Fissionable material Commonly used as a syn-onym for fissile material, the meaning of thisterm has been extended to include materialthat can be fissioned by fast neutrons, such asuranium-238. [nuclear-1]

Fission (fissioning) The splitting of a nucleus intoat least two other nuclei and the release of a rel-atively large amount of energy. Two or threeneutrons are usually released during this type oftransformation. [nuclear-1]

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Fission gases Those fission products that exist inthe gaseous state. In nuclear power reactors, thisincludes primarily the noble gases, such as kryp-ton and xenon. [nuclear-1]

Fission products The nuclei (fission fragments)formed by the fission of heavy elements, plus thenuclide formed by the fission fragments’ radioac-tive decay. [nuclear-1]

Fissure - An extensive crack, break, or fracture intherocks.[mining-1]

FITS Flexible Image Transport System. The stan-dard data interchange and archive format of theastronomy community [soft]

Fixed carbon The part of the carbon that remainsbehindwhen coal is heated in a closed vessel untilall of the volatilematter is driven off.[mining-1]

Fixed connection In two dimensions, a fixed con-nection between two members restrains all threedegrees of freedom of the connected member withrespect to one another. A fixed connection issometimes called a rigid connection or moment-resisting connection. [struc-1]

Fixed support In two dimensions, a fixed supportrestrains three degrees of freedom [struc-1]

Flat-lying - Said of deposits and coal seams with adip upto 5 degrees.[mining-1]

Flexibility Flexibility is the inverse of stiffness.When a force is applied to a structure, there isa displacement in the direction of the force; flex-ibility is the ratio of the displacement dividedby the force. High flexibility means that a smallload produces a large displacement. [struc-1]

Flexure Bending deformation, i.e., deformation byincreasing curvature. [struc-1]

Flight - The metal strap or crossbar attached to thedragchain-and-flight conveyor.[mining-1]

Float dust - Fine coal-dust particles carried insuspensionby air currents and eventually de-posited in return entries. Dustconsisting ofparticles of coal that can pass through a No.200sieve.[mining-1]

Floating Type Flange Joint A conventionalflanged joint in which a gasket is compressed bybolts - the gasket is not rigidly located. Calcu-lation methods such as the ASME code in theUSA and the EN1591 code in Europe. [mech-3]

Floor - That part of any underground work-ing upon which aperson walks or upon whichhaulage equipment travels; simply thebot-tom or underlying surface of an undergroundexcavation.[mining-1]

Floppy A Fortran coding convention checker. Thelatest version has a feature for generating HTML. - More information. [soft]

Flue Gas Desulfurization Any of several formsofchemical/physical processes that remove sul-fur compounds formed duringcoal combustion.The devices, commonly called ”scrubbers,” com-binethe sulfur in gaseous emissions with anotherchemical medium to forminert ”sludge” whichmust then be removed for disposal.[mining-1]

Fluidized Bed Combustion A process with a highdegree ofability to remove sulfur from coal duringcombustion. Crushed coal andlimestone are sus-pended in the bottom of a boiler by an upwardstreamof hot air. The coal is burned in this bub-bling, liquid-like (or”fluidized”) mixture. Ratherthan released as emissions, sulfur fromcombus-tion gases combines with the limestone to form asolid compoundrecovered with the ash.[mining-1]

Fluoro-Carbon Thread Coating A low frictioncoating applied to threads. This type of coat-ing is frequently used to prevent thread foulingwhen an assembly containing threaded fasten-ers is painted. Unless masked in some way be-fore painting, electro deposited primers can coverthe threads. If this occurs assembly difficultiescan result unless the expensive chore of clean-ing the threads is completed. A fluoro-carbonthread coating eliminates the need for maskingor cleaning since paint will not adhere to thecoating. This type of coating can also preventproblems caused by weld splatter obstructingthe threads of weld nuts during their placement.Such coatings also have the property of reduc-ing the torque-tension scatter during tightening.[mech-3]

Flux A term applied to the amount of some typeof particle (neutrons, alpha radiation, etc.) orenergy (photons, heat, etc.) crossing a unit areaper unit time. The unit of flux is the number ofparticles, energy, etc., per square centimeter persecond. [nuclear-1]

flux chemically or physically active formulation ca-pable of cleaning oxides and enabling wetting ofmetals with solder. [mat-1]

Fly ash The finely divided particles of ash sus-pended ingases resulting from the combustion offuel. Electrostaticprecipitators are used to re-move fly ash from the gases prior to thereleasefrom a power plant’s smokestack.[mining-1]

FNAL Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory (Illi-nois, USA). [soft]

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foam a polymer that has been made porous (orspongelike) by the incorporation of gas bubbles.[mat-1]

FOOM Formal Object Oriented Method. [soft]

FOOT Forum for Object Oriented Technology atCERN - More information. [soft]

Force A directed interaction between two ob-jects that tends to change the momentum ofboth.Since a force has both direction and mag-nitude, it can be expressed as a vector [struc-1]

Force System see system of forces. [struc-1]

Foresight A software product from Nu Thena pro-viding graphical modelling tools for high levelsystem design and simulation. [soft]

forging mechanical forming of a metal by heatingand hammering. [mat-1]

Forging mechanical forming of a metal by heatingand hammering.[mech-1]

Formal methods Several formal approaches toprogram specification have been developed, suchas those based on VDM or Z . They can beused to develop software with high reliability, forsafety-critical or high-volume applications - Moreinformation. [soft]

Formation Any assemblage of rocks which havesome characterin common, whether of origin,age, or composition. Often, the word islooselyused to indicate anything that has been formedor brought intoits present shape.[mining-1]

FORML Formal Object Role Modeling Language.[soft]

Formula quantity Strategic special nuclear mate-rial in any combination in a quantity of 5000grams or more computed by the formula, grams= (grams contained U-235) + 2.5 (grams U-233+ grams plutonium). This class of material issometimes referred to as a Category I quantityof material. [nuclear-1]

FORTH Greek FOundation for Research and Tech-nology [soft]

FORTRAN FORmula TRANslating system: aprogramming language widely used for manyyears in scientific applications. [soft]

Forward delta The delta which, when combinedwith a version , creates a child version. Seechange management [soft]

Forward engineering The traditional process ofmoving from high-level abstractions and logi-cal, implementation-independent designs to thephysical implementation of a system. [soft]

FORWISS Bayerische Forschungszentrum fuerWissensbasierte Systeme (Bavarian research cen-tre for knowledge-based systems) in Passau -More information (in German). [soft]

FOSI Formatted Output Specification Instancetemplate for SGML [soft]

Fossil fuel Any naturally occurring fuel of an or-ganicnature, such as coal, crude oil and naturalgas.[mining-1]

Fourth generation language A high-level lan-guage, usually non-procedural, to allow users in-experienced in programming to develop databaseapplications. [soft]

FPA Function Point Analysis. [soft]

FPM Function Point Metric. [soft]

Fracture - A general term to include any kind ofdis-continuity in a body of rock if produced by me-chanical failure,whether by shear stress or ten-sile stress. Fractures include faults,shears, joints,and planes of fracture cleavage.[mining-1]

Fracture[mech-1]

Fracture toughness critical value of the stressintensity factor for which crack extensionsoccurs.[mech-1]

fracture toughness . [mat-1]

FrameMaker Commercial publishing softwareavailable on a wide variety of workstations andaddressing technical and scientific needs - Moreinformation. [soft]

Framework In object-oriented systems, a set ofclasses that embodies an abstract design for so-lutions to a number of related problems [soft]

Free energy a thermodynamic quantity that is afunction of both the internal energy and entropyof a system.[mech-1]

free energy a thermodynamic quantity that is afunction of both the internal energy and entropy(or randomness) of a system; at equilibrium thefree energy is at a minimum. [mat-1]

FreeHEP An organisation offering a repository ofsoftware and related information for high energyphysics applications [soft]

Frenkel defect in an ionic solid, a cation-vacancyand cation-interstitial pair. [mat-1]

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Frenkel Defect in an ionic solid, a cation-vacancyand cation-interstitial pair.[mech-1]

Fresco An object-oriented API for graphical userinterfaces, under development by the X consor-tium as an open, multi-vendor standard. [soft]

Friable - Easy to break, or crumbling nat-urally.Descriptive of certain rocks andminerals.[mining-1]

Friction Mechanical resistance to the relativemovement of two surfaces. There are two maintypes of friction; STATIC FRICTION and DY-NAMIC FRICTION. Typically static friction isgreater than dynamic friction. [mech-3]

Friction Stabilizers Coating materials used onfasteners with the intention of reducing the scat-ter in the thread and bearing surface friction co-efficients. [mech-3]

Friend Relationship between class es in the lan-guage C++ . [soft]

FSF Free Software Foundation (675 MassachusettsAve., Cambridge, MA 02139, USA): dedicatedto promoting the development and use of freesoftware, especially the GNU system. [soft]

FSM Finite State Machine. [soft]

FTAM File Transfer, Access, and Management: anapplication layer protocol for file transfer and re-mote manipulation (ISO 8571). [soft]

FTP File Transfer Protocol (based on TCP/IP ).Also the name of a utility program available onseveral operating systems which makes use of thisprotocol to access and transfer files on remotecomputers. [soft]

FTR Formal Technical Review. A software engi-neering technique - More information. [soft]

Fuel assembly A cluster of fuel rods (or plates).Also called a fuel element. Many fuel assembliesmake up a reactor core. [nuclear-1]

Fuel cycle The series of steps involved in supply-ing fuel for nuclear power reactors. It can in-clude mining, milling, isotopic enrichment, fab-rication of fuel elements, use in a reactor, chem-ical reprocessing to recover the fissionable ma-terial remaining in the spent fuel, reenrichmentof the fuel material, refabrication into new fuelelements, and waste disposal. [nuclear-1]

Fuel reprocessing The processing of reactor fuelto separate the unused fissionable material fromwaste material. [nuclear-1]

Fuel rod A long, slender tube that holds fissionablematerial (fuel) for nuclear reactor use. Fuel rodsare assembled into bundles called fuel elementsor fuel assemblies, which are loaded individuallyinto the reactor core. [nuclear-1]

Fuel temperature coefficient of reactivity Thechange in reactivity per degree change in the fueltemperature. The physical property of fuel pelletmaterial (uranium-238) that causes the uraniumto absorb more neutrons away from the fissionprocess as fuel pellet temperature increases. Thisacts to stabilize power reactor operations. Thiscoefficient is also known as the Doppler coeffi-cient. [nuclear-1]

Full-custom A technique used for the design of in-tegrated circuits that involves the manipulationof circuit designs at the semiconductor devicelevel. [soft]

Full-time equivalent A measurement equal to onestaff person working a full-time work schedule forone year. [nuclear-1]

Functional language A general purpose, high-level programming language based on the math-ematical notion of functions. A functional pro-gram consists of a set of (possibly recursive) func-tion definitions. Its execution consists of theevaluation of a function . Programs written ina functional language are generally compact andelegant, but tend to run slowly and consume alot of memory. [soft]

Functional programming See Functional lan-guage [soft]

Function point A unit for estimating the function-ality of a program - More information. [soft]

Fundamental Deviation An intentional clear-ance between internal or external thread and thedesign form of the thread when the thread formis on it’s maximum metal condition. For met-ric threads the fundamental deviation are des-ignated by letters, capitals for internal threadsand small letters for external threads. Some tol-erance classes have a fundamental deviation ofzero. For imperial threads the fundamental de-viation is called the allowance. [mech-3]

Fundamental Triangle Height The fundamentaltriangle height is normally designated with theletter H. This is the height of the thread when theprofile is extended to a sharp vee form. For 60degree thread forms such as metric and Unifiedthread series, H equals 0.866025 times the threadpitch. [mech-3]

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Funicular A funicular shape is one similar to thattaken by a suspended chain or string subjectedto a particular loading. [struc-1]

Fuse - A cord-like substance used in the ignitionofexplosives. Black powder is entrained in thecord and, when lit, burnsalong the cord at a setrate. A fuse can be safely used to ignite acap,which is the primer for an explosive.[mining-1]

FUSE A DEC software development environmentfor ULTRIX , offering an integrated toolkitfor developing, testing, debugging and main-tainance. [soft]

Fusion An object oriented analysis and designmethod developed by Hewlett Packard [soft]

Fusion reaction A reaction in which at least oneheavier, more stable nucleus is produced fromtwo lighter, less stable nuclei. Reactions of thistype are responsible for enormous release of en-ergy, as in the energy of stars, for example.[nuclear-1]

Futurebus+ A high performance bus system spec-ified by IEEE Std.896.2 [soft]

Fuzzy logic An alternative to traditional logicwhere truth values range between 0.0 and 1.0,with 0.0 representing absolute Falseness and 1.0representing absolute Truth [soft]

FVWM A window manager for the X Window Sys-tem derived from twm - More information. [soft]

FWEB See Literate Programming [soft]

FWF Free Widget Foundation [soft]

GH

G2 A real-time expert system from Gensym Corpo-ration. [soft]

GAIA GUI Application Interoperability Architec-ture project of OSF [soft]

Gallery - A horizontal or a nearly horizon-tal undergroundpassage, either natural orartificial.[mining-1]

galling (1) a condition whereby excessive frictionbetween mating parts results in localized weld-ing; subsequent spalling and a further roughen-ing of the rubbing surfaces may follow; (2) a se-vere form of scuffing associated with gross dam-age to the surfaces or failure. [mat-1]

Galling A severe form of adhesive wear which oc-curs during sliding contact of one surface relativeto another. Clumps of one part stick to the mat-ing part and break away from the surface. (Canfrequently occur when both the nut and bolt arezinc coated.) [mech-3]

gall to damage the surface of a powder metallurgycompact or die part through adhesion of powderto the die cavity wall or punch surface. [mat-1]

galvanic cell (1) a cell in which chemical changeis the source of electrical energy; it usually con-sists of two dissimilar conductors in contact witheach other and with an electrolyte, or of two sim-ilar conductors in contact with each other andwith dissimilar electrolytes; (2) a cell or systemin which a spontaneous oxidation-reduction re-action occurs, the resulting flow of electrons be-ing conducted in an external part of the circuit.[mat-1]

galvanic corrosion corrosion associated with thecurrent of a galvanic cell consisting of two dis-similar conductors in an electrolyte or two sim-ilar conductors in dissimilar electrolytes; wherethe two dissimilar metals are in contact, the re-sulting reaction is referred to as couple action.[mat-1]

galvanic couple a pair of dissimilar conductors,commonly metals, in electrical contact. [mat-1]

galvanic current the electric current that flows be-tween metals or conductive nonmetals in a gal-vanic couple. [mat-1]

galvanize to coat a metal surface with zinc usingvarious processes. [mat-1]

gamma iron the face-centered cubic form of pureiron, stable from 910 to 1400 C (1670 to 2550 F).[mat-1]

Gamma radiation High-energy, short wavelength,electromagnetic radiation emitted from the nu-cleus. Gamma radiation frequently accompaniesalpha and beta emissions and always accompa-nies fission. Gamma rays are very penetratingand are best stopped or shielded by dense mate-rials, such as lead or depleted uranium. Gammarays are similar to x-rays. [nuclear-1]

gamma ray short-wavelength electromagnetic radi-ation, similar to x-rays but of nuclear origin, witha range of wavelength from about 10−1410−10 m.[mat-1]

GAMS Guide to Available Mathematical Softwareat NIST [soft]

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GANDALF A software development environmentfrom Carnegie Mellon University. [soft]

Gap The space inside a reactor fuel rod that existsbetween the fuel pellet and the fuel rod cladding.[nuclear-1]

Garbage collection The process of reclaiming stor-age which is no longer in use. [soft]

Garnet A user interface development environmentfor Common Lisp or Macintosh from CarnegieMellon [soft]

Gas centrifuge A uranium enrichment process thatuses a large number of rotating cylinders in a se-ries. These series of centrifuge machines, calledtrains, are interconnected to form cascades. Inthis process, UF6 gas is placed in a drum or cylin-der and rotated at high speed. This rotationcreates a strong gravitational field so that theheavier gas molecules (containing U-238) movetoward the outside of the cylinder and the lightergas molecules (containing U-235) collect closer tothe center. The stream that is slightly enrichedin U-235 is withdrawn and fed into the nexthigher stage, while the slightly depleted streamis recycled back into the next lower stage. Signif-icantly more U-235 enrichment can be obtainedfrom a single unit gas centrifuge than from a sin-gle unit gaseous diffusion barrier. No gas cen-trifuge plants are operating in the United States,however, Louisiana Energy Services (LES) andthe U.S. Enrichment Corporation (USEC) hadplans to submit license applications in 2002 and2004, respectively. [nuclear-1]

Gas-cooled reactor A nuclear reactor in which agas is the coolant. [nuclear-1]

Gaseous diffusion plant A facility where uraniumhexafluoride gas is filtered. Uranium-235 is sepa-rated from uranium-238, increasing the percent-age of uranium-235 from 1 to about 3 percent.The process requires enormous amounts of elec-tric power. [nuclear-1]

Gases A substance possessing perfect molecularmobility and the property of indefinite expan-sion, as opposed to a solid or liquid; any suchfluid or mixture of fluids other than air. Nor-mally, these formless substances completely fillthe space, and take the shape of, their container.[nuclear-1]

Gasification Any of various processes by whichcoal isturned into low, medium, or high Btugases.[mining-1]

gas metal arc welding an arc welding process thatproduces coalescence of metals by heating them

with an arc between a continuous filler metalelectrode and the workpieces; shielding is ob-tained entirely from an externally supplied gas.[mat-1]

gate the portion of the runner where the moltenmetal enters the mold cavity. [mat-1]

Gathering conveyor; gathering belt - Any con-veyor which isused to gather coal from otherconveyors and deliver it either intomine cars oronto another conveyor. The term is frequentlyused withbelt conveyors placed in entries wherea number of room conveyorsdeliver coal onto thebelt.[mining-1]

GBIP General Purpose Interface Bus (IEEE 488).[soft]

GCA Graphic Communications Association. [soft]

GCC Gnu Compiler. [soft]

GDB Gnu DeBugger. [soft]

GDMO Guidelines for the Definition of ManagedObjects. A standard (ISO/IEC 10165-4 / ITU-TRec. X.722) for defining data models on ASN.1[soft]

GEANT A simulation, tracking and drawing pack-age for HEP - More information. [soft]

GEI A German software engineering company.[soft]

Geiger-Mueller counter A radiation detectionand measuring instrument. It consists of a gas-filled tube containing electrodes, between whichthere is an electrical voltage, but no current,flowing. When ionizing radiation passes throughthe tube, a short, intense pulse of current passesfrom the negative electrode to the positive elec-trode and is measured or counted. The numberof pulses per second measures the intensity of theradiation field. It was named for Hans Geigerand W. Mueller, who invented it in the 1920s. Itis sometimes called simply a Geiger counter ora G-M counter and is the most commonly usedportable radiation instrument. [nuclear-1]

Generation (gross) The total amount of electricenergy produced by a generating station as mea-sured at the generator terminals. [nuclear-1]

Generation (net) The gross amount of electric en-ergy produced less the electric energy consumedat a generating station for station use. [nuclear-1]

Genericity The possibility for a language to pro-vided parameterized modules or types. e.g.List(of:Integer) or List(of:People). [soft]

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Generic Markup In computerised documentpreparation, a method of adding information tothe text indicating the logical components of adocument, such as paragraphs, headers or foot-notes: SGML is an example of such a system.Specific instructions for layout of the text on thepage do not appear in the markup. [soft]

Genesia An expert system developed by Elec-tricite de France and commercialised by STERIA(Paris). [soft]

GEN-X An expert system developed by GeneralElectric. [soft]

Geologist - One who studies the constitution,structure,and history of the earth’s crust, con-ducting research into theformation and dissolu-tion of rock layers, analyzing fossil and mineral-content of layers, and endeavoring to fix histor-ical sequence ofdevelopment by relating charac-teristics to known geological influences(historicalgeology).[mining-1]

GEOS An object-oriented operating system project[soft]

ghostscript The gnu interpreter. [soft]

ghostview An X window interface to theghostscript interpreter. [soft]

Gibbs free energy determines the relative stabilityof a material system at constant temperature andpressure;G = H - TS, where H is enthalpy, T isabsolute temperature, and S is entropy of thesystem. [mat-1]

GIF Graphics Interchange Format: a standard fordigitised images compressed with the LZW algo-rithm - More information. [soft]

Gigawatthour One billion watt-hours. [nuclear-1]

Gigawatt One billion watts. [nuclear-1]

GILS Government Information Locator Service. Aplan for a decentralised collection of informationlocators and associated public services to find in-formation throughout the US government. [soft]

GINA Generic INteractive Application. A toolkitof useful classes and functions for authoring GUIs built on CLM, CLX , from GMD [soft]

GKS-3D The three-dimensional version of GKS , astandard for graphics I/O (ISO 8805). [soft]

GKS Graphical Kernel System: a standard forgraphics I/O (ANSI X3.124) - More information.[soft]

GL A graphics package from Silicon Graphics. [soft]

glass an amorphous material with three-dimensional primary atomic bonding. [mat-1]

Glass an inorganic product of fusion whichhas cooled to a rigid condition withoutcrystallizing.[mech-1]

Glass-ceramic a fine-grained crystalline materialthat was formed as a glass (crystallized).[mech-1]

glass transition temperature the temperature atwhich, upon cooling, a noncrystalline ceramicor polymer transforms from a supercooled liquidinto a rigid glass. [mat-1]

Global climate change This term usually refers tothegradual warming of the earth caused by thegreenhouse effect. Manybelieve this is the resultof man-made emissions of greenhouse gasessuchas carbon dioxide, chlorofluorocarbons (CFC)and methane.[mining-1]

GLUT OpenGL Utility Toolkit [soft]

GMD Gesellschaft fuer Mathematik und Daten-verarbeitung (German Institute for Mathematicsand Data Processing), D-53754 Sankt Augustin- More information. [soft]

GNAT The GNU 95 compiler [soft]

GNU GNU ’s Not UNIX: a popular range ofportable software from FSF , upwardly compat-ible with UNIX [soft]

Gob - The term applied to that part of the minefrom whichthe coal has been removed and thespace more or less filled up withwaste. Also, theloose waste in a mine. Also called goaf.[mining-1]

GOOD An object-oriented framework for graphi-cal applications from TU Ilmenau running underX Windows with special support to IRIS GL,OpenGL , VOGL, etc. - More information. [soft]

Gopher A Campus Wide Information System de-signed at the University of Minnesota [soft]

GPIB General Purpose Interface Bus: an 8-bit par-allel bus (IEEE 488). [soft]

GPM General Purpose Macrogenerator written byC. Strachey around 1965. The author said ”Itcontains in itself all the undesirable features ofevery possible machine code... It can also be al-most impenetrably opaque”. [soft]

GQM Goal/Question/Metrics. A software engi-neering assessment method by V. Basili. [soft]

grain an individual crystal in a polycrystallinemetal or ceramic. [mat-1]

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Grain - In petrology, that factor of the texture ofa rockcomposed of distinct particles or crystalswhich depends upon theirabsolute size.[mining-1]

Grammar A grammar is a mathematical system fordefining a language, as well as a device for givingthe sentences in the language a useful structure.[soft]

Grapevine A distributed system project . [soft]

Graphite A form of carbon, similar to that usedin pencils, used as a moderator in some nuclearreactors. [nuclear-1]

GRAS A public domain graph-oriented databasesystem for software engineering applicationsfrom RWTH Aachen [soft]

GRASPIN An Esprit project to develop a personalsoftware engineering environment to support theconstruction and verification of distributed andnon-sequential software systems. [soft]

Grasshopper An experimental operating systemfor persistent systems - More information. [soft]

Gravity An attractive force between two objects;each object accelerates at a rate equal to the at-tractive force divided by the object’s mass. Ob-jects near the surface of the earth tend to accel-erate toward the earth’s center at a rate of ; thisvalue is often called the gravitational constantand denoted as g. [struc-1]

Gray (Gy) The international system (SI) unit ofabsorbed dose. One gray is equal to an absorbeddose of 1 Joule/kilogram (one gray equals 100rads) [nuclear-1]

GRIB GRid In Binary. World Meteorological Or-ganization data format - More information. [soft]

Grip Length Total distance between the undersideof the nut to the bearing face of the bolt head;includes washer, gasket thickness etc. [mech-3]

Grizzly - Course screening or scalping device thatpreventsoversized bulk material form enteringa material transfer system;constructed of rails,bars, beams, etc.[mining-1]

Ground control - The regulation and final arrest-ing of theclosure of the walls of a mined area.The term generally refers tomeasures taken toprevent roof falls or coal bursts.[mining-1]

Ground pressure - The pressure to which a rockformation issubjected by the weight of the super-imposed rock and rock material orby diastrophicforces created by movements in the rocks form-ing theearth’s crust. Such pressures may be great

enough to cause rockshaving a low compressionalstrength to deform and be squeezed into and-close a borehole or other underground openingnot adequatelystrengthened by an artificial sup-port, such as casing or timber. [mining-1]

Groupware see CSCW . [soft]

GROW GNU Remote Operations Web. An archi-tecture for building networked applications andservices using WWW [soft]

Guide A hypertext system from the University ofKent (GB) and OWL for displaying online doc-umentation . [soft]

GUIDE Graphical User Interface Development En-vironment from Sun. [soft]

GUI Graphical User Interface. [soft]

GUILE An interpreter for the GROW project.[soft]

Guinier-Preston (G-P) zone a small precipita-tion domain in a supersaturated metallic solidsolution; it has no well-defined crystalline struc-ture of its own and contains an abnormally highconcentration of solute atoms; the formation ofG-P zones constitutes the first stage of precipi-tation and is usually accompanied by a changein properties of the solid solution in which theyoccur. [mat-1]

Gunite - A cement applied by spraying to the roofand sidesof a mine passage.[mining-1]

gunzip The decompression utility corresponding togzip . [soft]

gzip A compression utility available with the gnusoftware. [soft]

Half-life, biological The time required for thebody to eliminate one half of the material takenin by natural biological means. [nuclear-1]

Half-life, effective The time required for a ra-dionuclide contained in a biological system, suchas a human or an animal, to reduce its activityby one-half as a combined result of radioactivedecay and biological elimination. [nuclear-1]

Half-life The time in which one half of the atomsof a particular radioactive substance disintegrateinto another nuclear form. Measured half-livesvary from millionths of a second to billions ofyears. Also called physical or radiological half-life. [nuclear-1]

Half-thickness Any given absorber that will reducethe intensity of an original beam of ionizing ra-diation to one-half of its initial value. [nuclear-1]

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Hall Effect the phenomenon whereby a force isbrought to bear on a moving electron or hole bya magnetic field that is applied perpendicular tothe direction of motion. The force direction isperpendicular to both the magnetic field and theparticle motion directions.[mech-1]

hardenability a measure of the depth to which aspecific ferrous alloy may be hardened by theformation of martensite upon quenching from atemperature above the upper critical tempera-ture. [mat-1]

Hardenability a measure of the depth to whicha specific ferrous alloy may be hardened bythe formation of martensite upon quenchingfrom a temperature above the upper criticaltemperature.[mech-1]

Hardened Washers The force under the head ofa bolt or nut can exceed, at high preloads, thecompressive yield strength of the clamped ma-terial. If this occurs excessive embedding anddeformation can result in bolt preload loss. Toovercome this hardened washers under the bolthead can be used to distribute the force over awider area into the clamped material. A moremodern alternative is to use a flange headed nutsand bolts. [mech-3]

Hard Joint A joint in which the plates and ma-terial between the nut and bolt bearing surfaceshave a high stiffness when subjected to compres-sion by the bolt load. A joint is usually definedas hard if the bolt is tightened to its full torqueand it rotates through an angle of 30 degrees orless after it has been tightened to its snug condi-tion. [mech-3]

hardness the measure of a material’s resistance todeformation by surface indentation or by abra-sion. [mat-1]

Hardness the measure of some materials’ resis-tance to deformation by surface indentation orby abrasion.[mech-1]

Hardware description language A languageused for the conceptual design of integrated cir-cuits. Examples are VHDL and Verilog . [soft]

Harmony A real-time operating system developedby the SEL in Canada. [soft]

Harvest An information discovery and access sys-tem for the Internet from the University of Col-orado - More information. [soft]

h A simple markup language intended for quick con-version of existing text to hypertext - More in-formation. [soft]

Haskell A functional language (Hudak et al.). [soft]

Haulage - The horizontal transport of ore, coal,supplies,and waste. The vertical transport of thesame is called hoisting.[mining-1]

Haulageway - Any underground entry or passage-way that isdesigned for transport of mined ma-terial, personnel, or equipment,usually by the in-stallation of track or belt conveyor.[mining-1]

HBOOK A histogramming package in the CERNprogram library [soft]

HCI Human Computer Interface (or Interaction)[soft]

HCS Heterogeneous Computer System: a dis-tributed system project . [soft]

hc The compiler for the h hyperbook language. [soft]

HDF Hierarchical Data Format from NCSA - Moreinformation. [soft]

HDL Hardware description language . [soft]

HDTV High Definition Television. [soft]

Headframe - The structure surmounting the shaftwhichsupports the hoist rope pulley, and oftenthe hoist itself.[mining-1]

Heading - A vein above a drift. An interior level orairwaydriven in a mine. In longwall workings,a narrow passage driven upwardfrom a gang-way in starting a working in order to give alooseend.[mining-1]

Head, reactor vessel The removable top sectionof a reactor pressure vessel. It is bolted in placeduring power operation and removed during refu-eling to permit access of fuel handling equipmentto the core. [nuclear-1]

Head section - A term used in both belt and chainconveyorwork to designate that portion of theconveyor used for dischargingmaterial.[mining-1]

Health physics The science concerned with therecognition, evaluation, and control of healthand environmental hazards that may arise fromthe use and application of ionizing radiation.[nuclear-1]

Heap leach A method of extracting uranium fromore using a leaching solution. Small ore piecesare placed in a heap on an impervious material(plastic, clay, asphalt) with perforated pipes un-der the heap. Acidic solution is then sprayedover the ore, dissolving the uranium. The solu-tion in the pipes is collected and transferred toan ion-exchange system for concentration of theuranium. [nuclear-1]

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heat capacity the quantity of heat required to pro-duce a unit temperature rise per mole of mate-rial. [mat-1]

Heat exchanger Any device that transfers heatfrom one fluid (liquid or gas) to another fluidor to the environment. [nuclear-1]

Heat sink Anything that absorbs heat. It is usuallypart of the environment, such as the air, a river,or a lake. [nuclear-1]

Heat Tightening Heat tightening utilises the ther-mal expansion characteristics of the bolt. Thebolt is heated and expands: the nut is indexed(using the angle of turn method) and the systemallowed to cool. As the bolt attempts to contractit is constrained longitudinally by the clampedmaterial and a preload results. Methods of heat-ing include direct flame, sheathed heating coiland carbon resistance elements. The process isslow, especially if the strain in the bolt is to bemeasured, since the system must return to ambi-ent temperature for each measurement. This isnot a widely used method and is generally usedonly on very large bolts. [mech-3]

Heatup The rise in temperature of the reactor fuelrods resulting from an increase in the rate of fis-sion in the core. [nuclear-1]

Heaving - Applied to the rising of the bottom afterremovalof the coal; a sharp rise in the floor iscalled a ”hogsback”.[mining-1]

Heavy water (D2O) Water containing signifi-cantly more than the natural proportions (one in6,500) of heavy hydrogen (deuterium, D) atomsto ordinary hydrogen atoms. Heavy water is usedas a moderator in some reactors because it slowsdown neutrons effectively and also has a lowprobability of absorption of neutrons. [nuclear-1]

Heavy water moderated reactor A reactor thatuses heavy water as its moderator. Heavy wateris an excellent moderator and thus permits theuse of unenriched uranium as a fuel. [nuclear-1]

Hebbian Refers to the most common way for a neu-ral network to learn, namely supervised learning.Using a training sample which should produceknown responses, the connection weights are ad-justed so as to minimize the differences betweenthe desired and actual outputs for the trainingsample. [soft]

Helix A hardware description language from Silvar-Lisco. [soft]

HEPDB A database management system for HEP[soft]

HEP High Energy (Particle) Physics. [soft]

HEPiX A recently formed collaboration among var-ious HEP institutes aiming at providing ”com-patible” versions of the UNIX operating systemat their sites [soft]

HEPnet An association concerned with networkingrequirements for high energy physicists [soft]

HEPVM A collaboration among various HEP in-stitutes to implement ”compatible” versions ofIBM’s VM-CMS operating system at their sites.[soft]

HERA An electron-proton collider at DESY, W.Germany. [soft]

Hermes An experimental object-oriented dis-tributed systems language from IBM Watson Re-search Centre. [soft]

hermetic sealing of an object so it is airtight. [mat-1]

Hesiod The name server of the Athena project.[soft]

Heuristic A rule of thumb, simplification or edu-cated guess that reduces or limits the search forsolutions in domains that are difficult and poorlyunderstood. Unlike algorithms, heuristics do notguarantee solutions. [soft]

Hewlett-Packard [soft]

Hexagonal Close-Packed (HCP) a crystal struc-ture found for some metals. The HCP unit cellis of hexagonal geometry and is generated by thestacking of close-packed planes of atoms.[mech-1]

hexagonal close-packed (HCP) the unit cell isof hexagonal geometry and is generated by thestacking of close-packed planes of atoms. [mat-1]

High-enriched uranium Uranium enriched to 20percent or greater in the isotope uranium-235.[nuclear-1]

High-level waste Radioactive materials at the endof a useful life cycle that should be properly dis-posed of, including– 1. The highly radioactivematerial resulting from the reprocessing of spentnuclear fuel, including liquid waste directly inreprocessing and any solid material derived fromsuch liquid waste that contains fission productsin concentrations; 2. Irradiated reactor fuel; and3. Other highly radioactive material that theCommission, consistent with existing law, deter-mines by rule require permanent isolation. High-level waste (HLW) is primarily in the form ofspent fuel discharged from commercial nuclear

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power reactors. It also includes HLW from ac-tivities and a small quantity of reprocessed com-mercial HLW [nuclear-1]

High radiation area Any area with dose ratesgreater than 100 millirems (1 millisievert) in onehour 30 centimeters from the source or fromany surface through which the ionizing radiationpenetrates. Areas at licensee facilities must beposted as ”high radiation areas” and access intothese areas is maintained under strict control.[nuclear-1]

High Strength Friction Grip Bolts Sometimesabbreviated to HSFG bolts. Bolts which are ofhigh tensile strength used in conjunction withhigh strength nuts and hardened steel washers instructural steelwork. The bolts are tightened to aspecified minimum shank tension so that trans-verse loads are transferred across the joint byfriction between the plates rather than by shearacross the bolt shank. [mech-3]

Highwall miner A highwall mining system consistsof aremotely controlled continuous miner whichextracts coal and conveysit via augers, belt orchain conveyors to the outside. The cut istypi-cally a rectangular, horizontal cut from a high-wall bench,reaching depths of several hundredfeet or deeper. [mining-1]

Highwall The unexcavated face of exposed over-burden andcoal in a surface mine or in a faceor bank on the uphill side of acontour mineexcavation.[mining-1]

HIGZ High Level Interface to Graphics and Zebra. Part of the PAW system [soft]

HiPAC An active DBMS from Xerox Advanced In-formation Technology. [soft]

HIPPI HIgh Performance Parallel Interface: a 100Mbyte/sec data transfer system with associatedinterfaces and switches, developed at Los AlamosNational Lab and now ANSI standard X3T9/88-127. [soft]

HISTORIAN A source code management systemsold by OPCODE, Inc.. [soft]

History For more information on the history ofcomputing, see the The Virtual Museum of Com-puting [soft]

Hogsback - A sharp rise in the floor of aseam.[mining-1]

Hoist - A drum on which hoisting rope is wound intheengine house, as the cage or skip is raised inthe hoistingshaft.[mining-1]

Hoisting - The vertical transport coal ormaterial.[mining-1]

HOL An interactive theorem proving system basedon Higher Order Logic - More information. [soft]

Hold And Drive Bolts Special bolts that have atang at the threaded end of the shank. This tangis gripped by the tightening tool during assemblyso that the reaction torque is absorbed whilst thenut is tightened from the same side. Such boltsallow what used to have to be done by two mento become a one-man task. [mech-3]

Hole (electron) for semi-conductors and insula-tors, a vacant electron state in the valence bandthat behaves as a positive charge carrier in anelectric field.[mech-1]

Home Page The starting point for a WWW ses-sion. Many system adminstrators set up ”homepages” which are the default page shown when auser begins a session. These pages usually havea lot of options and menu items that apply tothat particular institution and then have linksto other places. Here is the CERN home page .[soft]

Homopolymer a polymer having a chain structurein which all mer units are of the same type.[mech-1]

HOOD Hierarchical Object Oriented Design: amethod for Architectural Design primarily forsoftware to be developed in Ada , leading to auto-mated checking, documentation and source codegeneration. [soft]

Hope A functional language (Burstall et al. 1980).[soft]

Hopfield John Hopfield in the early 1980’s investi-gated a particular kind of neural network whichis now commonly referred to as the Hopfield net-work or Hopfield model. In the Hopfield network,there are no special input or output neurons (seeMcCulloch-Pitts ), but all are both input andoutput, and all are connected to all others inboth directions (with equal weights in the two di-rections). Input is applied simultaneously to allneurons which then output to each other and theprocess continues until a stable state is reached,which represents the network output. [soft]

Horizon - In geology, any given definite positionorinterval in the stratigraphic column or thescheme of stratigraphicclassification; generallyused in a relative sense.[mining-1]

Horseback - A mass of material with a slip-pery surface inthe roof; shaped like a horse’sback.[mining-1]

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Hot A colloquial term meaning highly radioactive.[nuclear-1]

Hot Bolting This term is used for the completionof maintenance work on a bolted joint when thejoint is under loading. This can involve the re-placement of individual bolts. There are risksboth to the joint itself and to health and safetyassociated with this technique. [mech-3]

hot isostatic pressing (1) a process for simul-taneously heating and forming a compact inwhich the powder is contained in a sealed flexi-ble sheet metal or glass enclosure and subjectedto equal pressure from all directions at a tem-perature high enough to permit plastic deforma-tion and sintering; (2) a process that subjectsa component (casting, powder forgins, etc.) toboth elevated temperature and isostatic gas pres-sure in an autoclave; simultaneous applicationof heat and pressure virtually eliminates inter-nal voids and microporosity through a combina-tion of plastic deformation, creep, and diffusion.[mat-1]

HotJava A WWW browser from Sun based on theJava [soft]

hot pressing a method used to densify a material,whereby heat and pressure are applied simulta-neously, and the pressure is typically applied uni-directionally via rigid tooling. [mat-1]

Hot spot The region in a radiation/contaminationarea where the level of radiation/contaminationis significantly greater than in neighboring re-gions in the area. [nuclear-1]

Hot Working any metal forming operation thatis performed above a metal recrystallizationtemperature.[mech-1]

hot working any metal forming operation that isperformed above a metal’s recrystallization tem-perature. [mat-1]

HP Hewlett-Packard . [soft]

HPLOT A graphical output facility for HBOOK -More information. [soft]

HPPI An earlier name for HIPPI . [soft]

HP-UX The version of UNIX running on Hewlett-Packard workstations. [soft]

HP VEE Visual Engineering Environment fromHewlett-Packard: a package similar in inten-tion to LabVIEW running on UNIX workstationswith OSF . [soft]

HTML HyperText Markup Language. An SGMLdocument type used to mark up hypertext in theWWW [soft]

HTTP HyperText Transfer Protocol. The proto-col used between client and server in the WWWproject. [soft]

Hydraulic - Of or pertaining to fluids in mo-tion.Hydraulic cement has a composition whichpermits it to set quicklyunder water. Hydraulicjacks lift through the force transmitted to the-movable part of the jack by a liquid. Hy-draulic control refers to themechanical controlof various parts of machines, such as coal cut-ters,loaders, etc., through the operation or actionof hydrauliccylinders.[mining-1]

Hydraulic Set Cement a cement that setsthrough reaction with water.[mech-1]

Hydraulic Tensioner A hydraulic tool used totighten a fastener by stretching it rather thanapplying a large torque to the nut. After the fas-tener has been stretched, the nut is run down thethread to snug up with the joint, the hydrauli-cally applied load is then removed resulting intension being induced into the fastener. [mech-3]

Hydrocarbon A family of chemical compoundscontainingcarbon and hydrogen atoms in var-ious combinations, found especially infossilfuels.[mining-1]

Hydrogen Bond a strong secondary interatomicbond which exists between a bound hydrogenatom (its unscreened proton) and the electronsof adjacent atoms.[mech-1]

Hydrogen Embrittlement Steel fasteners ex-posed to hydrogen can fail prematurely ata stress level well below the materials yieldstrength. Hydrogen embrittlement occurs in fas-teners usually as a result of the part being ex-posed to hydrogen at some time during its man-ufacturing process but it can also occur throughin-service corrosion. Electroplating is generallyconsidered to be a major cause of hydrogen ab-sorption in steel fasteners due to the release ofhydrogen during this process. Higher strengthsteels are more susceptible to hydrogen embrit-tlement than lower strength steels, however it isconsidered that there is no lower strength limit.As a rule of thumb, steels below Rockwell C 35are considered to be far less susceptible. Testssuch as the incremental load hydrogen embrittle-ment test can be completed to assess if hydrogenembrittlement is present in a batch of fasteners.[mech-3]

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HyperBase An experimental active multiuserdatabase for hypertext systems from the Univer-sity of Aalborg, written in C++ .It is built on theclient-server model enabling distributed, concur-rent, and shared access from workstations in alocal area network. See EHTS . [soft]

Hyperbole An information management and hy-pertext system [soft]

Hypercard A software package for the Macintoshfor storage and retrieval of information. It canhandle images, and is designed for browsing. Thepowerful customisable interactive user interfaceallows new applications to be easily constructedby manipulating objects on the screen, oftenwithout conventional programming. [soft]

hypereutectoid alloy for an alloy system display-ing a eutectoid, an alloy for which the concentra-tion of solute is greater than the eutectoid com-position. [mat-1]

Hypereutectoid Alloy for an alloy system dis-playing a eutectoid, an alloy for which the con-centration of solute is greater than the eutectoidcomposition.[mech-1]

Hyper-G A hypertext system from TU Graz - Moreinformation. [soft]

Hyper-Man A browser available with Epoch capa-bility for the UNIX manual. [soft]

Hypermedia Hypertext systems where the nodescan contain text, graphics, audio, video, as wellas source code or other forms of data [soft]

HyperNeWS A Hypertext system from the TuringInstitute Glasgow, based on NeWS . [soft]

HyperODA ODA extensions for hypermedia .[soft]

Hypertalk The language for writing procedures as-sociated with objects in Hypercard . [soft]

Hypertext An approach to information manage-ment in which text is stored in a network of nodesconnected by links. The nodes are meant to beviewed through an interactive browser. A linkis something which connects a piece of text to adestination piece of text; the source and desti-nation areas are usually marked on a display byhighlighting or special graphics. You are readinghypertext now by courtesy of WWW [soft]

hypoeutectoid alloy for an alloy system displayinga eutectoid, an alloy for which the concentrationof solute is less than the eutectoid composition.[mat-1]

Hypoeutectoid Alloy for an alloy system dis-playing a eutectoid, an alloy for which the con-centration of solute is less than the eutectoidcomposition[mech-1]

Hysteresis (magnetic) the irreversible magneticflux density-versus-magnetic field strength (B-versus-H) behavior found for ferromagnetic andferrimagnetic materials.[mech-1]

hysteresis (magnetic) the irreversible magneticflux density-versus-magnetic field strength (B-versus-H) behavior found for ferromagnetic andferrimagnetic materials; a closed B-H loop isformed upon field reversal. [mat-1]

HyTime Hypermedia/Time-based StructuringLanguage: an ANSI Standard (ISO/IEC 10744)from the SGML Users’ Group’s Special InterestGroup on Hypertext and Multimedia ) - Moreinformation. [soft]

IJK

IAB The Internet Architecture Board of the Inter-net Society [soft]

IAD A dynamic analyser from IBM giving informa-tion on run time performance and code utilisa-tion. [soft]

IAFA Internet Archives. An IETF working group.[soft]

IANA Internet Assigned Numbers Authority -More information. [soft]

IBM International Business Machines [soft]

IBN The Belgian standards institute. [soft]

ICADD International Committee for AccessibleDocument Design. Dedicated to making printedmaterials accessible to persons with print disabil-ities. Works on the generation of Braille, largeprint or electronically navigable editions of booksfrom desktop publishing files [soft]

I-CASE Integrated CASE : another term for anIPSE . [soft]

ICCP Institute for Certification of Computing Pro-fessionals. [soft]

ICSI International Computer Science Isntitute atBerkeley, CA. - More information. [soft]

IDEA International Data Encryption Algorithm(used by PGP ). [soft]

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IDE Interactive Development Environments: a USSoftware Engineering Company. [soft]

IDL Interactive Data Language. A package for in-teractive reduction, analysis, and visualization ofscientific data, from Research Systems, Inc. [soft]

IDL Interface Definition Language: an OSF stan-dard for defining RPC stubs. [soft]

IDL Interface Definition Language: associated withthe CORBA [soft]

IDSS Intelligent Decision Support Systems. [soft]

IEC International Electrotechnical Commission: astandardisation body at the same level as ISO[soft]

IEEE 1076 The IEEE .. [soft]

IEEE 488 The IEEE . [soft]

IEEE 802 The IEEE standards for local area net-works (LAN standard is 802.3, the IBM TokenRing is IEEE 802.5. [soft]

IEEE Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engi-neers (USA) - More information. [soft]

IEF Information Engineering Facility. A CASE toolfrom Texas Instruments which generates codefrom graphical business process models. [soft]

IESG Internet Engineering Steering Group. Partof the Internet Society responsible for technicalmanagement of IETF activities and the InternetStandards process [soft]

IETF Internet Engineering Task Force. A groupof people who make technical and other contri-butions to the engineering and evolution of theInternet and its technologies. It is the principalbody engaged in the development of new InternetStandard specifications [soft]

IETM Interactive Electronic Technical Manual.[soft]

IFAC International Federation of Automatic Con-trol, involved in informatics related to controlsystems. [soft]

IFDL Independent Form Description Language:DEC’s language for describing form-based hu-man interfaces in DECforms . [soft]

IFIP International Federation of Information Pro-cessing - More information. [soft]

IFPUG International Function-point Users Group[soft]

IGES Initial Graphics Exchange Specification: anASME/ANSI standard for the exchange of CADdata. [soft]

IIDMS/R Integrated database management sys-tem: a DBMS from Cullinet Software Inc. [soft]

IIIS International Institute of Informatics and Sys-temics. [soft]

ILU Inter-Language Unification. A system from Xe-rox PARC that promotes software interoperabil-ity via interfaces [soft]

Immediate roof - The roof strata immediatelyabove thecoalbed, requiring support during theexcavation of coal.[mining-1]

Immediate version See Child version . [soft]

Impact Wrench A wrench, usually powered byelectricity or air, in which repeated blows fromlittle hammers are used to generate torque totighten fasteners. The torque applied to the fas-tener depends upon the time and the air pressureapplied to the tool (for pneumatic wrenches).The torque applied by an impact wrench to a fas-tener is influenced by the joint stiffness. [mech-3]

IMSE Integrated Modelling Support Environment:an Esprit programme. [soft]

IMS Information Management System: a DBMSfrom IBM. [soft]

Inby - In the direction of the working face.[mining-1]

Incline - Any entry to a mine that is not verti-cal (shaft)or horizontal (adit). Often incline isreserved for those entries thatare too steep fora belt conveyor (+17 degrees -18 degrees), inwhichcase a hoist and guide rails are employed.A belt conveyor incline istermed a slope. Alt:Secondary inclined opening, driven upward to-connect levels, sometimes on the dip of a deposit;also called”inclined shaft”.[mining-1]

inclusion foreign particle present as an undesirableimpurity in a material. [mat-1]

Incompetent - Applied to strata, a formation, arock, or arock structure not combining sufficientfirmness and flexibility totransmit a thrust andto lift a load by bending.[mining-1]

INCOSE International Council on Systems Engi-neering. An international organization formedto develop, nurture and enhance the system en-gineering approach to multi-disciplinary systemproduct development [soft]

Index of Refraction see Refractive Index [mech-1]

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Indicated coal resources Coal for which estimatesof therank, quality, and quantity have been com-puted partly from sampleanalyses and measure-ments and partly from reasonable geologicprojec-tions. The points of observation are to 1 mile-sapart. Indicated coal is projected to extend asan mile wide beltthat lies more than mile fromthe outcrop or points of observationor measure-ment. [mining-1]

Individual plant examination for externalevents (IPEEE) While the ?individual plantexamination? takes into account events thatcould challenge the design from things that couldgo awry internally (in the sense that equip-ment might fail because components do not workas expected), the ?individual plant examinationfor external events? considers challenges suchas earthquakes, internal fires, and high winds.[nuclear-1]

Individual plant examination (IPE) As re-quested by the NRC in Generic Letter 88-20,?Individual Plant Examination for Severe Ac-cident Vulnerabilities? (November 23, 1988), arisk analysis that considers the unique aspects ofa particular nuclear power plant, identifying thespecific vulnerabilities to severe accident of thatplant. [nuclear-1]

Inelastic Not surprisingly, the opposite of elastic. Adeformation of a structure or material under loadis described as inelastic when the deformation re-mains after the load is removed. The term plasticis often used with the same meaning. [struc-1]

Inertial Force A fictitious force used for conve-nience in visualizing the effects of forces on bod-ies in motion. For an accelerating body, the in-ertial force is considered as a body force whoseresultant acts at the object’s center of gravity ina direction opposite the acceleration. The mag-nitude of the force is the mass of the object timesthe magnitude of the acceleration. [struc-1]

Inertia The tendency of an object at rest to remainat rest, and of an object in motion to remain inmotion. [struc-1]

Inference engine A program that infers facts froma set of knowledge or inputs. [soft]

Inference The logical process by which new factsare derived from known facts. [soft]

Inferred coal resources Coal in unexplored ex-tensions ofthe demonstrated resources for whichestimates of the quality and sizeare based ongeologic evidence and projection. Quantitativeestimatesare based largely on broad knowledgeof the geologic character of thedeposit and for

which there are few, if any, samples ormeasure-ments. The estimates are based on an assumedcontinuity orrepletion of which there is geologicevidence; this evidence mayinclude comparisonwith deposits of similar type. Bodies that are-completely concealed may be included if there isspecific geologicevidence of their presence. Thepoints of observation are 1 to 6miles apart.[mining-1]

INFN Istituto Nazionale di Fisica Nucleare: anItalian State research organisation [soft]

Informix A relational DBMS vendor. [soft]

infrared reflow technique in which long wave-length light (IR) serves as the heat source to re-flow solder and form solder joints. [mat-1]

INGRES A relational DBMS vendor. [soft]

Inheritance In object-oriented programming, theability to derive new classes from existing classes.A derived class inherits the instance variablesand methods of the base class, and may add newinstance variables and methods. A new methodmay be defined with the same names as one inthe base class, in which case it overrides the orig-inal one. [soft]

inorganic flux an aqueous flux solution of inorganicacids and halides. [mat-1]

INRIA Institut National de Recherche en Informa-tique et Automatique, French computer scienceresearch institute [soft]

In situ - In the natural or original position. Ap-plied to arock, soil, or fossil when occurring inthe situation in which it wasoriginally formed ordeposited.[mining-1]

In situ leach A process using a leaching solutionto extract uranium from underground ore bodiesin place (in other words, in situ). The leachingagent, which contains an oxidant such as oxy-gen with sodium carbonate, is injected throughwells into the ore body in a confined aquiferto dissolve the uranium. This solution is thenpumped via other wells to the surface for pro-cessing. [nuclear-1]

Instantaneous Centre Of Rotation The pointin space that an eccentrically shear loaded jointrotates about. The deformation and the load sus-tained by an individual bolt in a bolt group is de-pendent upon the distance that the bolt is fromthe instantaneous centre. The direction that theindividual bolt force acts is perpendicular to aline joining that bolt to the instantaneous cen-tre. [mech-3]

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Instantiation A more precisely defined version ofsome object which was already partially defined.In object-oriented programming, a particular ex-ample of an object produced from its class tem-plate. [soft]

Instrinsic Semiconductor a semiconductor mate-rial for which the electrical behavior is character-istic of the pure material.[mech-1]

Insulator (electrical) a nonmetallic material thathas filled valence band at 0 K and a relativelywide energy band gap.[mech-1]

insulator (electric) a nonmetallic material thathas a filled valence band at 0 K and a relativelywide energy band gap; consequently the room-temperature electrical conductivity is very low.[mat-1]

Intake - The passage through which fresh air isdrawn orforced into a mine or to a section ofa mine.[mining-1]

Integral Fastener A term used to describe typesof fasteners which are highly resistant to vibra-tion loosening and/or removal. Some types havespecial thread forms. [mech-3]

integrated circuit a microcircuit that consists ofinterconnected elements inseparably associatedand formed in-situ on or within a single sub-strate, usually silicon, to perform an electroniccircuit function. [mat-1]

Integrated plant evaluation An evaluation thatconsiders the plant as a whole rather than systemby system. [nuclear-1]

InterBase A commercial active DBMS . [soft]

interdiffusion diffusion of atoms of one metal intoanother metal. [mat-1]

Interface Architect An interface builder for Mo-tif distributed by Hewlett-Packard (see UIMX ).[soft]

intergranular fracture fracture of polycrystallinematerials by crack propagation along grainboundaries. [mat-1]

Interleaf A document preparation system availableon the Sun, VAX, Apollo and other workstations.[soft]

INTERLINK A commercial product comprisinghardware and software for file transfer betweenIBM and VAX computers. [soft]

Intermedia A hypertext system developed by a re-search group at IRIS (Brown University). [soft]

Intermedia Interchange Format A StandardHypertext Interchange format from IRIS . [soft]

Intermediate section - A term used in belt andchainconveyor network to designate a section ofthe conveyor frameoccupying a position betweenthe head and foot sections.[mining-1]

intermediate solid solution a solid solution orphase having a composition range that does notextend to either of the pure components of thesystem. [mat-1]

Intermetallic a compound of two metals that hasa distinct chemical formula. The bonds in inter-metallic compounds are often partly ionic.[mech-1]

Intermetrics A software engineering company .[soft]

Internal force Forces which hold an object to-gether when external forces or other loads areapplied. Internal forces are sometimes called re-sisting forces since they resist the effects of ex-ternal forces. [struc-1]

Internal hinge see pin connection. [struc-1]

Internal Thread A screw thread which is formedin holes, such as in nuts. [mech-3]

Internet Address A thirty-two-bit number thatuniquely identifies an Internet host. It is usuallyrepresented as four 8-bit numbers separated bydots e.g. 128.121.4.5. It consists of a networknumber and a host number, and can be subdi-vided in several ways. [soft]

Internet A loosely-organized international collabo-ration of autonomous, interconnected networks,supporting host-to-host communication throughvoluntary adherence to open protocols and pro-cedures defined by Internet Standards, typicallybased on the TCP/IP protocol suite [soft]

Interpress A page description language from Xe-rox. [soft]

Interstice[mech-1]

interstitial site octahedral and tetrahedral openspaces within a close-packed arrangment ofatoms or ions in which a cation can fit. [mat-1]

interstitial solid solution a solid solution whereinrelatively small solute atoms occupy interstitialpositions between the solvent or host atoms.[mat-1]

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InterViews An object-oriented toolkit developedat Stanford University for building graphical userinterfaces. It is implemented in C++ and pro-vides a library of objects and a set of protocolsfor composing them. [soft]

Intrinsics A library package on top of Xlib , extend-ing the basic functions of the X Window System. It provides mechanisms for building widget setsand application environments.. [soft]

Invariant Point a point on a binary phase diagramat which three phases are in equilibrium.[mech-1]

Inventor See Open Inventor . [soft]

Inverse engineering The process of extractinghigh-level abstract specifications from sourcecode using program transformations [soft]

investment casting this process is based on sur-rounding (investing) an expendable pattern, typ-ically wax, with a ceramic mold and then re-moving (by melting or vaporizing) the patternprior to pouring molten alloy into the mold; alsoknown as lost wax and precision casting. [mat-1]

In vitro From the Latin for ”in glass,” isolated fromthe living organism and artificially maintained,as in a test tube. [nuclear-1]

In vivo From the Latin for ”in one that is living,”occurring within the living. [nuclear-1]

Iodine spiking factor The magnitude of a rapid,short-term increase in the appearance rate of ra-dioiodine in the reactor coolant system. This in-crease is generally caused by a reactor transientthat results in a rapid drop in reactor coolantsystem pressure relative to the fuel rod internalpressure. [nuclear-1]

ion an atom with a positive charge because it hashad electrons removed or a negative charge be-cause it has had electrons added. [mat-1]

Ion-exchange A common method for concentrat-ing uranium from a solution. The uranium so-lution is passed through a resin bed where theuranium-carbonate complex ions are transferredto the resin by exchange with a negative ion likechloride. After build-up of the uranium complexon the resin, the uranium is eluted with a salt so-lution and the uranium is precipitated in anotherprocess. [nuclear-1]

ionic bonding a coulombic interatomic bond thatexists between two adjacent and oppositelycharged ions; one of the primary types of atomicbonding in ceramics. [mat-1]

ION Implementation-Oriented Notation. A nota-tion designed to graphically document object-oriented programs [soft]

IP address An Internet address . [soft]

IPC Inter-Process Communication. [soft]

IPE Integrated Programming Environment. [soft]

IPF Information Presentation Facility. A documentmarkup system for OS/2 . [soft]

IP Internet transport layer Protocol. [soft]

IPSE Integrated Project Support Environment: aterm for a set of management and technical toolsto support software development, usually inte-grated in a coherent framework: equivalent toan SEE. [soft]

IPTES Incremental Prototyping Technology forEmbedded Realtime Systems, an Esprit project.[soft]

IPVR Institute of Parallel and Distributed High-Performance Systems (Stuttgart). [soft]

IQA Institute of Quality Assurance (UK). [soft]

IRC Internet Relay Chat. A system whereby anumber of people can participate in a discussionin real time on the Internet . [soft]

IRD Internet Resource Discovery. [soft]

IRDS Information Resource Dictionary System. Aset of ISO repositories. It governs the definitionof data dictionaries to be implemented on top ofrelational databases (see repository , data dictio-nary ). [soft]

Iris An object-oriented DBMS . [soft]

IRIS Explorer A visualisation system [soft]

IRIS Institute for Research in Information andScholarship of Brown University (ProvidenceRI). [soft]

IRIS See IRIS Explorer [soft]

ISA An Esprit project continuing the ANSAproject. [soft]

ISA International Smalltalk Association (now dis-banded). [soft]

ISAM Indexed Sequential Access Method: a fileaccess method supporting both sequential andindexed access. [soft]

ISBN International Standard Book Numbering.[soft]

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ISCN International Software Consulting Network.A network of process improvement experts. [soft]

ISDE Integrated Software Development Environ-ment: equivalent to an IPSE . [soft]

ISDN Integrated Services Digital Network: a setof CCITT standards to support many types ofsignal traffic (speech, data, video) via a digitaltransmission system, eventually intended to re-place current telephone systems. The Basic rateis 64 kbits/sec [soft]

ISEE Integrated Software Engineering Environ-ment: equivalent to SEE . [soft]

ISE Interactive Software Engineering: a softwareengineering company marketing Eiffel amongother products. [soft]

ISERN International Software Engineering Re-search Network - More information. [soft]

ISF Information Systems Factory: equivalent to anSEE . [soft]

ISIS A toolkit for implementing fault-tolerant dis-tributed systems, developed at Cornell and nowavailable commercially [soft]

ISOC The Internet Society. A professional societyconcerned with the growth and evolution of theInternet , with the way it is used, and with re-lated social, political, and technical issues [soft]

ISODE ISO Development Environment: softwarethat implements a set of OSI upper-layer ser-vices. It supports OSI applications on top of OSIand TCP/IP networks [soft]

ISO International Organisation for Standardisation[soft]

isomerism the phenomenon whereby two or morepolymer molecules or mer units have the samecomposition but different structural arrange-ments and properties. [mat-1]

Isopach - A line, on a map, drawn through pointsof equalthickness of a designated unit. Synonymfor isopachous line;isopachyte.[mining-1]

isotactic a type of polymer chain configurationwhere all side groups are positioned on the sameside of the chain molecule. [mat-1]

Isotactic a type of polymer chain configurationwherein all side groups are positioned on thesame side of the chain molecule.[mech-1]

isothermal at a constant temperature. [mat-1]

Isotope Any two or more forms of an elementhaving identical or very closely related chemicalproperties and the same atomic number but dif-ferent atomic weights or mass numbers. [nuclear-1]

Isotope atoms of the same element having the dif-ferent masses.[mech-1]

isotropic having identical values of a property inall crystallographic directions. [mat-1]

ISPE International Society for Productivity En-hancement. [soft]

ISTAR An experimental IPSE . from Imperial Soft-ware Technology. [soft]

ISV Independent Software Vendor (not a hardwaremanufacturer). [soft]

ITHACA An Esprit project to put a ”4th genera-tion” object-oriented system to practical use inan industrial environment. The ITHACA envi-ronment offers an application support system in-corporating advanced technologies in the fields ofobject-oriented programming, programming lan-guages, database technologies, user interface sys-tems and software development tools [soft]

IT Information Technology. [soft]

ITU International Telecommunications Union [soft]

Izod Impact Test one of two tests that may beused to measure the impact energy of standardnotched specimen.[mech-1]

Izod test a type of impact test in which a V-notchedspecimen, mounted vertically, is subjected to asudden blow delivered by the weight at the end ofa pendulum arm; the energy required to break offthe free end is a measure of the impact strengthor toughness of the material. [mat-1]

Jackleg - A percussion drill used for drifting or stop-pingthat is mounted on a telescopic leg whichhas an extension of about2.5 m. The leg andmachine are hinged so that the drill need not beinthe same direction as the leg.[mining-1]

Jackrock A caltrop or other object manufacturedwith one ormore rounded or sharpened points,which when placed or thrown presentat least onepoint at such an angle that it is peculiar to and-designed for use in puncturing or damaging ve-hicle tires. Jackrocksare commonly used duringlabor disputes.[mining-1]

Jackson method A proprietary structured methodfor software analysis, design and programming.[soft]

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Jam Nuts See LOCKNUT [mech-3]

JANET The Joint Academic NETwork which linksU.K. academic and research institutes. [soft]

Java An Object-Oriented language from Sun, nowwidely used in WWW browsers - More informa-tion. [soft]

JAZELLE A data management system for HEPfrom SLAC. [soft]

JEDI Joint Electronic Document Interchange [soft]

JEPI Joint Electronic Payment Initiative. A jointproject between W3C and CommerceNet in thefield of electronic payment using WWW . [soft]

JFIF A data stream-oriented file format used fortransmitting JPEG encoded bitmap data [soft]

Job Safety Analysis (J.S.A.) - A job breakdownthat gives asafe, efficient job procedure.[mining-1]

Joint - A divisional plane or surface that di-vides a rockand along which there has beenno visible movement parallel to theplane orsurface.[mining-1]

Joint Control Tightening See YIELD CON-TROLLED TIGHTENING [mech-3]

JOOP Journal of Object-Oriented Programming.[soft]

JPEG A standardized image compression mecha-nism. JPEG stands for Joint Photographic Ex-perts Group, the original name of the committeethat wrote the standard. JPEG is designed forcompressing either full-color or gray-scale digi-tal images of ”natural”, real-world scenes. Itdoes not work so well on non-realistic images,such as cartoons or line drawings. JPEG doesnot handle black-and-white (1-bit-per-pixel) im-ages, or motion picture compression. Standardsfor compressing those types of images are beingworked on by other committees, named JBIGand MPEG - More information. [soft]

jpg See JPEG . [soft]

JSA Japanese Standards Association [soft]

JSD Jackson System Development [soft]

JTC Joint Technical Committee (of ISO and IEC).[soft]

Kala A persistent data server: a link library pro-viding an engine for applications needing persis-tence, transactions, crash recovery and rollback,versioning, distribution, and other facilities forwhich DBMSs are commonly used [soft]

KAPPA An object-oriented workbench for Sunworkstations from Intellicorp. [soft]

KBS Knowledge-based system. [soft]

KDD Knowledge Discovery in Databases. A branchof Artificial Intelligence . [soft]

Keps A pre-assembled nut and washer assembly(the washer is attached to the nut so that it won’tfall off)- a trademark of ITW Shakeproof. Theorigin of the word came from Sha [mech-3]

Kerberos An authentication system from theAthena project, adopted by OSF as the basis ofsecurity for DME [soft]

Kerf - The undercut of a coal face.[mining-1]

KERMIT A protocol for file transfer. Mainly usedfor transfers to and from PC’s. [soft]

kernel The essential part of UNIX or other operat-ing systems, responsible for resource allocationetc. [soft]

Kettle bottom - A smooth, rounded piece ofrock,cylindrical in shape, which may drop outof the roof of a mine withoutwarning. The originof this feature is thought to be the remains ofthestump of a tree that has been replaced by sed-iments so that theoriginal form has been ratherwell preserved.[mining-1]

K Factor The factor in the torque tightening equa-tion: T=KDF where T is the fastener tighteningtorque in Newton metres, D is the fastener di-ameter in metres, F is the fasteners preload inNewtons and K is a factor whose value is oftentaken as 0.2. The formula gives the approximatetightening torque for standard fasteners used un-der normal conditions. [mech-3]

Khoros A visualisation system from Khoral Re-search . [soft]

KIF Knowledge Interchange Format. For knowl-edge sharing and communication among hetero-geneous agents. [soft]

killed steel steel treated with a strong deoxidizingagent, such as aluminum or silicon, in order toreduce the oxygen content to a level so no reac-tion occurs between carbon and oxygen duringsolidification. [mat-1]

kiln a furnace in which ceramics are fired. [mat-1]

Kilo- A Greek prefix meaning ”thousand” in thenomenclature of the metric system. This prefixmultiplies a unit by 1000. [nuclear-1]

Kilovolt The unit of electrical potential equal to1000 volts. [nuclear-1]

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Kinetic Energy The energy of a moving mass;equal to . Where m is mass and v is the magni-tude of the velocity. [struc-1]

Kinetic energy The energy that a body possessesby virtue of its mass and velocity. Also calledthe energy of motion. [nuclear-1]

KISS An Object-Oriented analysis and design ap-proach [soft]

KISS Keep It Simple Stupid. A homespun designphilosohpy. [soft]

KMS Knowledge Management System: a dis-tributed hypermedia system for managingknowledge in organisations A commercial systemfrom Knowledge Systems Inc running on work-stations, based on previous research with ZOGat Carnegie Mellon University. [soft]

Knoop hardness test an indentation hardness testusing calibrated machines to force a rhombic-based pyramidal diamond indenter having speci-fied edge angles, under specified conditions, intothe surface of the test material and to measurethe long diagonal after load removal. [mat-1]

Knowledge Engineering The acquisition ofknowledge from a human expert or similar sourceand its coding in an expert system . [soft]

Knowledge Representation A subset of AI . [soft]

Kohonen T. Kohonen of the University of Helsinkihas been studying neural networks for manyyears with the idea of modelling as closely as pos-sible the behaviour of biological systems, and hisname is commonly associated with a particularkind of neural network in which there are onlytwo kinds of neurons (see McCulloch-Pitts ), in-put and others. All the input neurons are con-nected to all others, and the others are connectedonly to their other nearest neighbors. The train-ing algorithm is a relatively simple one based onthe geometric layout of the neurons, and makesuse of annealing . [soft]

KQML Knowledge Query and Manipulation Lan-guage. [soft]

KR Knowledge Representation . [soft]

KUIP Kernel User Interface Package: the humaninterface to PAW . [soft]

LMN

Labview A package from National InstrumentsCorp originally developed to provide a graph-ical interface to instruments connected by the

IEEE 488 (GPIB) bus. It has powerful graphicalediting facilities for defining and interconnecting”virtual instruments”. [soft]

LAMPF Los Alamos Meson Physics Facility (An800 MeV proton and negative H ion high-currentLINAC, 1mA average, 12mA peak). [soft]

Lamp - The electric cap lamp worn for visibility.Also, theflame safety lamp used in coal minesto detect methane gasconcentrations and oxygendeficiency.[mining-1]

Language-Based Editor An editor that is awareof the syntactic, semantic and in some cases thestructural rules of a specific programming lan-guage and provides a framework for the user toenter source code. Programs or changes to previ-ously stored programs are incrementally parsedinto an abstract syntax tree and automaticallychecked for correctness. [soft]

LANL Los Alamos National Laboratory - LosAlamos, NM, USA - More information. [soft]

LAN Local area network [soft]

lapping a surface finishing operation used toachieve a fine polish and close tolerances. [mat-1]

laser acronym for light amplification by stimulatedemission of radiation; a source of concentratedcoherent light generated by stimulating elec-tronic or molecular transitions to lower energylevels. [mat-1]

laser soldering method of soldering in which theheat required to reflow a solder interconnectionis provided by a laser (YAG or CO2); the solderjoints are heated sequentially and cooled rapidly.[mat-1]

latent heat the thermal energy absorbed or re-leased when a material experiences a phasechange. [mat-1]

LaTeX A document preparation system based onTeX , popular in the HEP community. It adds acollection of commands to simplify typesetting,and lets the user concentrate on the structureof the text rather than on formatting commands[soft]

Lattice Parameter the combination of unit celledge lengths and interaxial angles that definesthe unit cell geometry.[mech-1]

lattice parameter the length of any side in a crys-tal structure’s unit cell. [mat-1]

Lattice the regular geometrical arrangement ofpoints in crystal space.[mech-1]

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lattice the space arrangement of atoms in a crystal.[mat-1]

Layout - The design or pattern of the main road-ways andworkings. The proper layout of mineworkings is the responsibility ofthe manageraided by the planning department.[mining-1]

LBE Language-Based Editor . [soft]

LBL Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory, Berkeley, CA,USA. [soft]

LCF Logic for Computable Functions. A system forinteractive automated reasoning. [soft]

leaching process of liquid solder dissolving a metalcoating. [mat-1]

lead a wire that connects two points in a circuit; itis usually self-supporting. [mat-1]

LEAR Low Energy Antiproton Ring. [soft]

LEDA Library of Efficient Data types and Algo-rithms. A class library with graph classes fromUni Saarbruecken. [soft]

Lefthand Thread A screw thread that is screwedin by rotating counterclockwise. [mech-3]

Legacy Legacy system is a term used to describeold software systems still in use but which couldbenefit from re-engineering using more modernmethods. [soft]

Length Of Engagement The axial distance overwhich an external thread is in contact with aninternal thread. [mech-3]

LEP Large Electron Positron Collider. A 27km cir-cumference accelerator at CERN , which bringsbunches of electrons and positrons into collision.[soft]

Lethal dose (LD) The dose of radiation expectedto cause death to 50 percent of an exposed popu-lation within 30 days (LD 50/30). Typically, theLD 50/30 is in the range from 400 to 450 rem (4to 5 sieverts) received over a very short period.[nuclear-1]

lever rule in a phase diagram, the relative propor-tions of the conjugate phases, at a stated valueof temperature and pressure, or both, is suchthat a state of mechanical balance would obtain,if the corresponding weight of each phase wereplaced upon its composition point upon the tie-element (tie-line, tie-triangle, etc.) and the ful-crum were located at the gross composition pointof the mixture. [mat-1]

Lever Rule mathematical expression whereby therelative phase amounts in a two-phase alloy atequilibrium my be computed.[mech-1]

lex A lexical analysis tool for the UNIX environ-ment. [soft]

LHC Large Hadron Collider: proposed to be builtin the LEP . [soft]

Licensing basis The collection of documents ortechnical criteria that provides the basis uponwhich the NRC issues a license to possess ra-dioactive materials, conduct operations involvingemission of radiation, use special nuclear mate-rials, or dispose of radioactive waste. [nuclear-1]

Lifecycle See Life-Cycle . [soft]

Life-Cycle The software life-cycle consists ofphases: requirements analysis, design, construc-tion, testing and maintenance. The developmentprocess tends to run iteratively through thesephases rather than linearly; several models (spi-ral, waterfall etc) have been proposed to describethis process. [soft]

LIFIA Laboratoire d’Informatique Fondamentaleet d’Intelligence Artificielle. [soft]

LIFN Location Independent File Name [soft]

Lift - The amount of coal obtained from a continu-ous minerin one mining cycle.[mining-1]

LIGHT LIfecycle Global HyperText. A project inthe CERN ECP/IPT group whereby documentsresulting from the software life cycle are availableas hypertext [soft]

light metal one of the low-density metals, such asaluminum, magnesium, titanium, beryllium, ortheir alloys. [mat-1]

Light water Ordinary water as distinguishedfrom heavy water ¡/reading-rm/basic-ref/glossary/heavy-water-d2o.html¿. [nuclear-1]

Light water reactor A term used to describe re-actors using ordinary water as coolant, includingboiling water reactors (BWRs) and pressurizedwater reactors (PWRs), the most common typesused in the United States. [nuclear-1]

Limiting condition for operation The section ofTechnical Specifications that identifies the low-est functional capability or performance level ofequipment required for safe operation of the fa-cility. [nuclear-1]

Limiting safety system settings Settings for au-tomatic protective devices related to those vari-ables having significant safety functions. Where

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a limiting safety system setting is specified for avariable on which a safety limit has been placed,the setting will ensure that automatic protectiveaction will correct the abnormal situation beforea safety limit is exceeded. [nuclear-1]

Linda A portable parallel language to simplify par-allel programming. Extensions to C and Fortran,available from Scientific Computing Associates,Inc. [soft]

Linear A structure is said to behave linearly whenits the deformation response is directly propor-tional to the loading (i.e. doubling the load dou-bles the displacement response). For a material,linear means that the stress is directly propor-tional to the strain. [struc-1]

Linear Elastic A force-displacement relationshipwhich is both linear and elastic. For a struc-ture, this means the deformation is proportionalto the loading, and deformations disappear onunloading. For a material, the concept is thesame except strain substitutes for deformation,and stress substitutes for load. [struc-1]

Linear heat generation rate The heat generationrate per unit length of fuel rod, commonly ex-pressed in kilowatts per foot (kw/ft) of fuel rod.[nuclear-1]

Line of Action The line of action of a force is theinfinite line defined by extending along the direc-tion of the force from the point where the forceacts. [struc-1]

link see Hypertext [soft]

lint A C language preprocessor which carries outmore thorough checks on the code than is usualwith C compilers themselves. [soft]

Linux An implementation of UNIX written fromscratch with no proprietary code for IBM PCcompatibles by Linus Torvalds and distributedunder the GNU public licence - More informa-tion. [soft]

Liquefaction The process of converting coalinto asynthetic fuel, similar in nature tocrude oil and/or refinedproducts, such asgasoline.[mining-1]

Liquidus[mech-1]

liquidus the line on the phase equilibrium diagramabove which only liquids are stable and belowwhich some solid is present; the lowest tempera-ture at which a metal or alloy is completely liq-uid. [mat-1]

LISP A List Processing Language suitable for sym-bolic and logical programming [soft]

LispView CLOS based windowing system on Open-Windows . [soft]

Literate programming Combining the use of alanguage such as TeX and a conventional pro-gramming language, so as to maintain documen-tation and source together [soft]

Lithology - The character of a rock described interms ofits structure, color, mineral composi-tion, grain size, and arrangementof its compo-nent parts; all those visible features that intheaggregate impart individuality of the rock.Lithology is the basis ofcorrelation in coal minesand commonly is reliable over a distance ofa fewmiles.[mining-1]

LitProg Literate Programming [soft]

Lml A functional language (Johnson 1984). [soft]

Load An external force. The term load is some-times used to describe more general actions suchas temperature differentials or movements suchas foundation settlements. [struc-1]

Loading machine - Any device for transferring ex-cavatedcoal into the haulage equipment.[mining-1]

Loading pocket - Transfer point at a shaft wherebulkmaterial is loaded by bin, hopper, and chuteinto a skip.[mining-1]

Load - To place explosives in a drill hole.Also, totransfer broken material into a haulagedevice.[mining-1]

Local Area Network Usually abbreviated to LAN:a communications network which is geographi-cally limited (typically to a 1 km. radius) al-lowing easy interconnection of terminals, micro-processors and computers within adjacent build-ings. Ethernet and FDDI are examples of stan-dard LANs. [soft]

Lock Nut There are two common usage’s of thisterm: 1. A nut which provides extra resistanceto vibration loosening by either providing someform of prevailing torque, or, in free spinningnuts, by deforming and/or biting into matingparts when fully tightened. 2. The term is some-times used for thin (or jam) nuts used to lock athicker nut. When used in this way the thin nutshould be adjacent to the joint surface and tight-ened against the thick nut. If placed on top ofthe thick nut the thin nut would sustain loads itwas not designed to sustain. [mech-3]

LOC Line of code. Used as a simple software metric.[soft]

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Locus A distributed system project supportingtransparent access to data through a network-wide file system. [soft]

Logic Programming Programming in a languagesuch as Prolog , which allows the programmer tomake a series of assertions which are interpretedby an inference engine [soft]

LOGISCOPE Software quality analysis tools fromVerilog SA, used to evaluate the quality of soft-ware both statically (based on software metrics)and dynamically [soft]

Lojban An artificial language designed to be usedby people in communication with each other, andpossibly in the future with computers [soft]

Longwall

Looking Glass A desktop manager for UNIX fromVisix. [soft]

Loop In a pressurized water reactor, the coolantflow path through piping from the reactor pres-sure vessel to the steam generator, to the reactorcoolant pump, and back to the reactor pressurevessel. Large PWRs may have as many as fourseparate loops. [nuclear-1]

LOOPS Lisp Object-oriented Programming Systemfrom Intelligent Systems Laboratory, Xerox PaloAlto Research Center. [soft]

Loose coal - Coal fragments larger in size thancoaldust.[mining-1]

Loss of coolant accident (LOCA) Those pos-tulated accidents that result in a loss of reactorcoolant at a rate in excess of the capability ofthe reactor makeup system from breaks in thereactor coolant pressure boundary, up to and in-cluding a break equivalent in size to the double-ended rupture of the largest pipe of the reactorcoolant system. [nuclear-1]

LOTOS A formal description technique used forprotocol specfication in ISO standards (ISO8807). [soft]

Low-level waste A general term for a wide range ofwastes having low levels of radioactivity. Indus-tries; hospitals and medical, educational, or re-search institutions; private or government labo-ratories; and nuclear fuel cycle facilities (e.g., nu-clear power reactors and fuel fabrication plants)that use radioactive materials generate low-levelwastes as part of their normal operations. Thesewastes are generated in many physical and chem-ical forms and levels of contamination Low-levelradioactive wastes containing source, special nu-clear, or byproduct material are acceptable fordisposal in a land disposal facility. [nuclear-1]

Low population zone (LPZ) An area of lowpopulation density often required around a nu-clear installation before it’s built. The numberand density of residents is of concern in emer-gency planning so that certain protective mea-sures (such as notification and instructions toresidents) can be accomplished in a timely man-ner. [nuclear-1]

Low voltage - Up to and including 660 volts byfederalstandards.[mining-1]

LSE Language Sensitive Editor: from DEC . [soft]

Luder bands elongated surface markings or de-pressions in sheet metal caused by discontinuousyielding. [mat-1]

Lynx A WWW browser from University of Kansas- More information. [soft]

LynxOS A POSIX compliant real-time operat-ing system from Lynx Real-Time Systems, LosGatos, California, with a UNIX -like interface toapplication programs. [soft]

LZW Lempel-Ziv-Welch data compression algo-rithm. [soft]

MACAnalyst An analysis CASE tool for the Macfrom Excel Software Inc. [soft]

MACDesigner A design CASE tool for the Macfrom Excel Software Inc. [soft]

Mach An operating system kernel under devel-opment at Carnegie-Mellon University to sup-port distributed and parallel computation. Machis designed to support computing environmentsconsisting of networks of uniprocessors and mul-tiprocessors. Mach is the kernel of the OSF/1system . [soft]

Macintosh A range of personal computers manu-factured by Apple Computer Inc. [soft]

macromolecule a huge molecule made up of thou-sands of atoms. [mat-1]

MacX A package allowing the Macintosh to be usedas an X server . [soft]

Madaline A structure of many ADALINE units.[soft]

magnetic field strength (H) the intensity of anexternally applied magnetic field. [mat-1]

Magnetic Field Strength the intensity of an ex-ternally applied magnetic field.[mech-1]

magnetic flux density (B) the magnetic field pro-duced in a substance by an external magneticfield. [mat-1]

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Magnetic Flux Density the magnetic field pro-duced in a substance by an external magneticfield.[mech-1]

Magnetic Induction see Magnetic Flux Density[mech-1]

Magnetic Susceptibility the proportionality con-stant between the magnetization M and the mag-netic field strength H.[mech-1]

Magnetization the total magnetic moment perunit volume of material. Also, a measure of thecontribution to the magnetic flux by some mate-rial within an H field.[mech-1]

magnetization the total magnetic moment per unitvolume of material; also, a measure of the con-tribution to the magnetic flux by some materialwithin an H field. [mat-1]

Magnitude A scalar value having physical units.[struc-1]

Main entry - A main haulage road. Where the coalhascleats, main entries are driven at right anglesto the facecleats.[mining-1]

Main fan - A mechanical ventilator installed atthesurface; operates by either exhausting orblowing to induce airflowthrough the mine road-ways and workings.[mining-1]

Maintenance An important part of the softwarelife-cycle. Maintenance is expensive in man-power and resources, and software engineeringtechniques aim to reduce its cost. [soft]

Major Diameter This is the diameter of an imag-inary cylinder parallel with the crests of thethread; in other words it is the distance fromcrest to crest for an external thread, or root toroot for an internal thread. [mech-3]

Make A popular tool on UNIX systems to automatethe recompilation, linking etc. of programs, tak-ing account of the interdependencies of modules.[soft]

Makedoc A program from Carleton University, Ot-tawa that generates documentation for ObjectiveC programs. It will also generate a class hierar-chy diagram. The output format is similar tothat used by StepStone . [soft]

malleable cast iron white cast iron that hasbeen heat treated to convert the cementite intographite clusters; a relatively ductile cast iron.[mat-1]

Manhole - A safety hole constructed in the side ofagangway, tunnel, or slope in which miner canbe safe from passinglocomotives and car. Alsocalled a refuge hole.[mining-1]

Man trip - A carrier of mine personnel, by rail orrubbertire, to and from the work area.[mining-1]

Manway - An entry used exclusively for personnelto travelform the shaft bottom or drift mouth tothe working section; it isalways on the intake airside in gassy mines. Also, a small passage atoneside or both sides of a breast, used as a travelingway for theminer, and sometimes, as an airway,or chute, or both.[mining-1]

Maple A mathematics package developed by theUniversity of Waterloo and ETH Zurich. [soft]

MAP Manufacturers Automation Protocol, a set ofprotocols developed by General Motors based onToken Bus (IEEE 802.4) and giving predictableresponse in real time . [soft]

MARC MAchine Readable Cataloging: a recordformat for bibliographic information interchangebased on the ANSI / NISO Z39.2 standard. [soft]

Markowitz The author of the original Simscriptlanguage. [soft]

Markup In computerised document preparation, amethod of adding information to the text indi-cating the logical components of a document, orinstructions for layout of the text on the page.[soft]

Martensite a metastable Fe-C composition consist-ing of supersaturated carbon in iron that is theproduct of a diffusionless (athermal) transforma-tion from austenite .[mech-1]

martensite a metastable iron phase supersaturatedin carbon that is the product of a diffusionless(athermal) transformation from austenite. [mat-1]

Martensitic Transformation[mech-1]

MASCOT Modular Approach to Software Con-struction Operation and Test: a method for soft-ware design aimed at real-time embedded sys-tems from the Royal Signals and Research Es-tablishment, UK. [soft]

Mass A property of an object measured by the de-gree that it resists acceleration. [struc-1]

Mass-energy equation The equation developedby Albert Einstein, which is usually given as E =mc2 , showing that, when the energy of a bodychanges by an amount E (no matter what formthe energy takes), the mass (m) of the body willchange by an amount equal to E/c2 . The fac-tor c squared, the speed of light in a vacuum (3x 10 to the eighth power), may be regarded asthe conversion factor relating units of mass and

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energy. The equation predicted the possibilityof releasing enormous amounts of energy by theconversion of mass to energy. It is also called theEinstein equation. [nuclear-1]

Mass number The number of nucleons (neutronsand protons) in the nucleus of an atom. Alsoknown as the atomic weight. [nuclear-1]

Mathematica A general program for symboliccomputing and programming from Wolfram Re-search [soft]

Matrix The body constituent of a composite ortwo-phase alloy that completely surrounds thedispersed phase and gives the body its bulkform.[mech-1]

matrix the continuous phase in a composite or two-phase alloy microstructure in which a secondphase is dispersed. [mat-1]

Maximum dependable capacity (gross) In anuclear power reactor, dependable main-unitgross generating capacity, winter or summer,whichever is smaller. The dependable capacityvaries because the unit efficiency varies duringthe year due to temperature variations in coolingwater. It is the gross electrical output as mea-sured at the output terminals of the turbine gen-erator during the most restrictive seasonal con-ditions (usually summer). [nuclear-1]

Maximum dependable capacity (net) In a nu-clear power reactor, gross maximum dependablegenerating capacity less the normal station ser-vice loads. [nuclear-1]

MBONE Multicast backbone: a virtual network ontop of the Internet to support routing of IP mul-ticast packets, intended for multimedia transmis-sion [soft]

McCulloch-Pitts The McCulloch-Pitts neuron isthe basic building block of neural networks. Itreceives one or more inputs and produces one ormore identical outputs, each of which is a simplenon-linear function of the sum of the inputs tothe neuron. The non-linear function is typicallya threshhold or step function which is usuallysmoothed (i.e. a sigmoid) to facilitate learning.[soft]

MCS Meta Class System: a portable object-oriented extension of Common Lisp from GMD. It integrates the functionality of CLOS . [soft]

MDL An early object-oriented language from MIT. [soft]

Meanshift The difference in tightening torque val-ues produced by the same tightening tool on hardand soft joints. A hard joint typically gives ahigher torque value than a soft joint. Generallyspeaking, the lower the meanshift of a tighteningtool, the better it will be in achieving a specifiedtorque value irrespective of the joint condition.[mech-3]

Measured coal resources Coal for which esti-mates of therank, quality, and quantity havebeen computed from sample analysesand mea-surements from closely spaced and geologi-cally well-knownsample sites, such as outcrops,trenches, mine workings, and drillholes. Thepoints of observation and measurement are soclosely spacedand the thickness and extent ofcoals are so well defined that thetonnage isjudged to be accurate within 20 percent of true-tonnage. Although the spacing of the points ofobservation necessaryto demonstrate continuityof the coal differs from region to regionaccordingto the character of the coal beds, the points ofobservationare no greater than mile apart. Mea-sured coal is projected to extendas a -mile widebelt from the outcrop or points of observationormeasurement.[mining-1]

Mega- A prefix that multiplies a basic unit by1,000,000 (10 to the sixth power). [nuclear-1]

Megacurie One million curies. [nuclear-1]

Megawatt hour (MWh) One million watt-hours.[nuclear-1]

Megawatt (MW) One million watts. [nuclear-1]

Mellor see Schlaer-Mellor . [soft]

Melting Point the temperature at which a solidsubstance changes to a liquid state.[mech-1]

Member Function In C++ , the name given to amethod . [soft]

Meridian - A surveying term that establishes a lineofreference. The bearing is used to designate di-rection. The bearing ofa line is the acute horizon-tal angle between the meridian and theline. Az-imuths are angles measured clockwise from anymeridian.[mining-1]

MERISE Methode d’Etude et de Realisation In-formatique pour les Systemes d’Enteprise: aSoftware Engineering method popular in France;many IPSE s are based on it. [soft]

mer the group of atoms that constitutes a polymerchain repeat unit. [mat-1]

Mer the group of atoms that constitutes a polymerchain repeat unit.[mech-1]

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Mesa An early object-oriented programming lan-guage developed at the Xerox Palo Alto researchcentre. [soft]

Message In object-oriented programming sendinga message to an object (to invoke a method) isequivalent to calling a procedure in traditionalprogramming languages, except that the actualcode executed may only be selected at run-timedepending on the class of the object. Thus, inresponse to the message ”drawSelf”, the methodcode invoked would be different if the target ob-ject were a circle or a square. [soft]

MetaCard A commercial human interface and hy-pertext system for UNIX , similar to Hypercard. [soft]

Meta-CASE tool A term sometimes used for soft-ware packages (like TBK ) which allow usersto develop or customise their own CASE tools. [soft]

Metaclass The class of a class. A metaclass isa class whose instances are themselves classes.[soft]

Metadata Data definitions describing aspects ofthe actual data items, such as name, format etc.[soft]

Metafile Typically a file of graphics data for trans-port between different machines. [soft]

metal an opaque lustrous elemental chemical sub-stance that is a good conductor of heat and elec-tricity and, when polished, a good reflector oflight; most elemental metals are malleable, duc-tile, and are generally denser than the other el-emental substances; metals are structurally dis-tinguished from nonmetals by their atomic bond-ing and electron availability; the electron bandstructure of metals is characterized by a partiallyfilled valence band; the ”free electrons” lost fromthe outer shells of metallic atoms are available tocarry an electric current; the defining propertyof a metal is that it is an element with a pos-itive thermal coefficient of resistivity, meaningthe electrical resistivity of a metal continuouslyincreases as temperature increases. [mat-1]

metallic bond a primary interatomic bond involv-ing the nondirectional sharing of nonlocalized va-lence electrons (”sea of electrons”) which are mu-tually shared by all the atoms in the metallicsolid. [mat-1]

metallurgy the science and technology of metalsand alloys. [mat-1]

Metal the electroposite elements and alloys basedon these elements.[mech-1]

Metal To Metal Contact Flange Joint Aflanged joint in which a gasket is compressed bybolts - the gasket being located in a recess withinthe joint so that it is compressed by the boltloads until metal to metal contact occurs. Unlikethe FLOATING TYPE FLANGE JOINT, formetal to metal type joints there are no standard-ised gasket factor definitions, test procedures,nor generally acknowledged calculation proce-dures available. [mech-3]

metastable (1) nonequilibrium state of a materialwith respect to some transition, conversion, orreaction but stabilized kinetically either by rapidcooling or by some molecular characteristics; (2)possessing a state of pseudoequilibrium that hasa free energy higher than that of the true equi-librium state. [mat-1]

Metastable nonequilibrium state that may persistfor a very long time.[mech-1]

Methane A potentially explosive gas formed natu-rally fromthe decay of vegetative matter, sim-ilar to that which formedcoal. Methane,which is the principal component of natu-ral gas, isfrequently encountered in under-ground coal mining operations and iskept withinsafe limits through the use of extensive mineventilationsystems.[mining-1]

Methane monitor - An electronic instrument oftenmounted ona piece of mining equipment, that de-tects and measures the methanecontent of mineair.[mining-1]

Methodology A term for a codified set of pro-cedures for some phase of software engineering,such as analysis and design. [soft]

Method The name given in Smalltalk (and some-times in other object-oriented languages) to aprocedure or routine associated with an object.[soft]

Metric see Software Metrics . [soft]

Metric ton Approximately 2200 pounds in the En-glish system of measurements. (Note: In theinternational system of measurements, 1 metricton = 1000 kg.) [nuclear-1]

Meyer Bertrand Meyer, the author of the EiffelLanguage and many articles on object-orientedsoftware techniques. [soft]

Micro- A prefix that divides a unit into one millionparts (0.000001). [nuclear-1]

Microcurie One millionth of a curie. That amountof radioactive material that disintegrates (de-cays) at the rate of 37 thousand atoms per sec-ond. [nuclear-1]

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Microkernel An approach to operating systemsdesign which puts emphasis on small moduleswhich implement the basic features of the sys-tem and can be flexibly configured . [soft]

micron one millionth of a meter (0.000001), andanother term for micrometer (10−6). [mat-1]

microscopy the investigation of microstructural el-ements using some type of microscope, e.g. scan-ning electron microscopy (SEM), light opticalmicroscopy (LOM). [mat-1]

Microsoft A vendor of systems and applicationsoftware for personal computers and similar plat-forms [soft]

microstructure the microscopic assemblage ofgrains, grain boundaries, amorphous phases,pores, and inclusions, that make up a material.[mat-1]

Microstructure the structural features of an al-loy that are subject to observation under amicroscope.[mech-1]

microvoid coalescence (MVC) occurs due tothe nucleation of microvoids, followed by theirgrowth and eventual coalescence; initiation iscaused by particle cracking or interfacial failurebetween an inclusion or precipitate particle andthe surrounding matrix. [mat-1]

Midas A Motif-based toolkit for interactive dataanalysis by T.Johnson, SLAC. The basis for theMidas-WWW browser. [soft]

Midas-WWW A Motif-based browser for WWW[soft]

MIDI Musical Instrument Digital Interface. [soft]

MID Metafile for Interactive Documents. A stan-dard sponsored by the DoD . [soft]

MIFF Machine Independent File Format. Abitmap format [soft]

Miller-Bravis Indices a set of four integers thatdesignate crystallographic planes in hexagonalcrystals.[mech-1]

Miller indices a set of three integers (fourfor hexagonal) that designate crystallographicplanes, as determined from reciprocals of frac-tional axial intercepts. [mat-1]

Miller Indices a set of three integers that desig-nate crystallographic planes, as determined fromreciprocals of fractional axial intercepts.[mech-1]

Milli- A prefix that divides a basic unit by 1000.[nuclear-1]

Millirem One thousandth of a rem (0.001 rem).[nuclear-1]

Milliroentgen (mR) One thousandth of a roent-gen (R). 1mR = 10−3 R = 0.001 R. [nuclear-1]

Mill tailings Naturally radioactive residue fromthe processing of uranium ore into yellowcakein a mill. Although the milling process recoversabout 93 percent of the uranium, the residues, ortailings, contain several naturally-occurring ra-dioactive elements, including uranium, thorium,radium, polonium, and radon. [nuclear-1]

MIMD Multiple Instruction Multiple Data: a formof parallelism in multiprocessor computing wherethere are several instruction streams (programs)operating concurrently on several data streams.[soft]

MIME Multimedia Internet Mail Extensions. Amethod of processing multi-part, multimediamessages on the Internet 1521-1522 etc.) - Moreinformation. [soft]

Mine development - The term employed to des-ignate theoperations involved in preparing amine for ore extraction. Theseoperations in-clude tunneling, sinking, cross-cutting, drifting,andraising.[mining-1]

Mine mouth electric plant A coalburningelectric-generating plant built neara coal mine.[mining-1]

Mineral - An inorganic compound occurring natu-rally in theearth’s crust, with a distinctive set ofphysical properties, and adefinite chemical com-position. [mining-1]

Miner - One who is engaged in the businessor occupation ofextracting ore, coal, precioussubstances, or other natural materialsfrom theearth’s crust.[mining-1]

Mining Engineer - A person qualified by educa-tion,training, and experience in mining engineer-ing. A trained engineerwith knowledge of thescience, economics, and arts of minerallocation,extraction, concentration and sale, and the ad-ministrativeand financial problems of practicalimportance in connection with theprofitable con-duct of mining. [mining-1]

Mining One of three major undergroundcoal min-ing methods currently in use. Employs a stealplow, orrotation drum, which is pulled mechan-ically back and forth across aface of coal that isusually several hundred feet long. The loosened-coal falls onto a conveyor for removal from themine. [mining-1]

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Minor Diameter This is the diameter of an imag-inary cylinder which just touches the roots ofan external thread, or the crests of an internalthread. [mech-3]

MINUIT A Program for Function Minimizationand Error Analysis - More information. [soft]

MIPS A microprocessor vendor . [soft]

Misfire - The complete or partial failure of a blast-ingcharge to explode as planned.[mining-1]

MIS Management Information Systems. [soft]

MIT Massachusetts Institute of Technology [soft]

mixed dislocation a dislocation that has both edgeand screw components. [mat-1]

Mixed Dislocation a dislocation that has bothedge and screw components.[mech-1]

Mixed oxide (MOX) fuel A mixture of uraniumoxide and plutonium oxide used to fuel a reactor.Mixed oxide fuel is often called ”MOX.” Conven-tional nuclear fuel is made of pure uranium oxide.[nuclear-1]

ML A functional language - More information. [soft]

MMM A WWW based on the Caml language [soft]

Model Engineers Thread (M.E.) A threadbased upon the Whitworth thread form that wasestablished in 1912. A very fine thread (a 3/32inch thread having 60 tpi for example). [mech-3]

Moderator A material, such as ordinary water,heavy water, or graphite, that is used in a re-actor to slow down high-velocity neutrons, thusincreasing the likelihood of fission. [nuclear-1]

Moderator temperature coefficient of reac-tivity As the moderator (water) increases intemperature, it becomes less dense and slowsdown fewer neutrons, which results in a negativechange of reactivity. This negative temperaturecoefficient acts to stabilize atomic power reactoroperations. [nuclear-1]

MODSIM A general-purpose modular block-structured language from CACI , which pro-vides support for object-oriented programmingand discrete event simulation. It is intendedfor building large process-based discrete eventsimulation models through modular and object-oriented mechanisms similar to those of Modula-2 - More information. [soft]

Modula-2 A high-level programming language de-signed by N.Wirth. It is a derivative of Pas-cal with well-defined interfaces between modules,and facilities for parallel computation. [soft]

Modula-3 A member of the Pascal family of lan-guages. Designed in the late 1980s at DigitalEquipment Corporation and Olivetti, it aims tocorrect deficiencies of Pascal and Modula-2 [soft]

modulus of elasticity (E) the ratio of stress tostrain when deformation is totally elastic; also ameasure of the stiffness of a material. [mat-1]

Modulus of elasticity The proportional constantbetween stress and strain for material with linearelastic behavior [struc-1]

Modulus of Elasticity the ratio of stress tostrain for a material under perfectly elasticdeformation.[mech-1]

modulus of rupture breaking strength in a non-ductile solid as measured by bending. [mat-1]

Molecule A group of atoms held together by chem-ical forces. A molecule is the smallest unit of acompound that can exist by itself and retain allof its chemical properties. [nuclear-1]

molecule a group of atoms that are bound togetherby primary interatomic bonds. [mat-1]

Molybdenum Disulphide A solid lubricant thatacts as a high pressure resistant film. Can beused by itself as a dry lubricant as well as in withother solid lubricants and in oils and greases.Used in threads, such lubricants act as a sepa-rating film to prevent corrosion formation on thethread surface (even under adverse temperatureand environmental conditions) ensuring the re-lease of the threaded connection. Such films canalso act as friction stabilisers. [mech-3]

Moment of inertia Moment of inertia has two dis-tinct but related meanings [struc-1]

Moment Release see pin connection. [struc-1]

Moment resisting-connection see fixed connec-tion. [struc-1]

Moment The resultant of a system of forces causingrotation without translation. A moment can beexpressed as a couple [struc-1]

Monitoring of radiation Periodic or continuousdetermination of the amount of ionizing radia-tion or radioactive contamination present in aregion, as a safety measure, for the purpose ofhealth or environmental protection. Monitoringis done for air, surface and ground water, soil andsediment, equipment surfaces, and personnel (forexample, bioassay or alpha scans). [nuclear-1]

monomer a molecule consisting of a single mer.[mat-1]

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Monomer a molecule consisting of a single mer.[mech-1]

Montage An object-relational database manage-ment system from Montage Software: the com-mercialisation of POSTGRES [soft]

MOOD Material’s Object-Oriented Database. Anobject oriented database system from TohokuUniversity [soft]

MOOSE An object-oriented R&D project atCERN [soft]

Mosaic An X-Window based browser for WWWfrom NCSA [soft]

MOSES Methodology for Object-oriented SoftwareEngineering of Systems [soft]

MOSFET Metal-oxide-silicon field effect transis-tor, an integrated circuit element.[mech-1]

Motif The standard Graphical User Interface andwindow manager , running on theX Window Sys-tem - More information. [soft]

MPEG Moving Pictures Experts Group of ISO thatgenerates standards for digital video (sequencesof images in time) and audio compression . [soft]

MPV Extension of the VRTX real-time operatingsystem to support multi-processing. [soft]

MS-DOS An operating system developed by Mi-croSoft Corporation for computers using the In-tel 16 and 32-bit family of processors. [soft]

MSHA - Mine Safety and Health Administra-tion; the federalagency which regulates coal minehealth and safety.[mining-1]

MTBF Mean Time Between Faults [soft]

Mud cap - A charge of high explosive fired in con-tact withthe surface of a rock after being cov-ered with a quantity of wet mud,wet earth, orsand, without any borehole being used. Also ter-medadobe, dobie, and sandblast (illegal in coalmining).[mining-1]

Multibus A bus standard for microprocessor-basedsystems, specified by IEEE Std.796 [soft]

Multimedia Human computer interaction involv-ing text, graphics, voice, video etc [soft]

Multi-media See Multimedia . [soft]

Multiple Inheritance In object-oriented program-ming, the possibility that a sub-class may be de-rived from multiple parents which are themselvesnot derived one from the other. [soft]

Muse An electronic journal project at Johns Hop-kins [soft]

MVC Model View Controller architecture for inter-active software - More information. [soft]

MVE Modular Visualisation Environment. A typeof application builder for scientific and other vi-sualisation systems (such as AVS , IBM DataExplorer , IRIS Explorer ). [soft]

NAG Numerical Algorithms Group [soft]

Nano- A prefix that divides a basic unit by onebillion (10−9 ). [nuclear-1]

Nanocurie One billionth 10−9 of a curie. [nuclear-1]

NAPLPS North American Presentation Layer Pro-tocol Syntax. [soft]

NASA National Aeronautics and Space Adminis-tration (USA). NASA has many software engi-neering projects [soft]

NAS Network Application Support: DEC’s ap-proach to applications integration across a dis-tributed multivendor environment. [soft]

Natural circulation The circulation of the coolantin the reactor coolant system without the useof the reactor coolant pumps. The circulationis due to the natural convection resulting fromthe different densities of relative cold and heatedportions of the system. [nuclear-1]

Natural uranium Uranium as found in nature.It contains 0.7 percent uranium-235, 99.3 per-cent uranium-238, and a trace of uranium-234 byweight. In terms of the amount of radioactivity,it contains approximately 2.2 percent uranium-235, 48.6 percent uranium-238, and 49.2 percenturanium-234. [nuclear-1]

Natural ventilation - Ventilation of a mine with-out the aidof fans or furnaces.[mining-1]

NBS National Bureau of Standards: part of theU.S. Department of Commerce, now NIST . [soft]

NCOSE National Council On Systems Engineering(USA) [soft]

NCSA National Center for Supercomputing Appli-cations, Urbana, IL, USA - More information.[soft]

NCS Network Computing System: Apollo’s RPCsystem used by DEC and Hewlett-Packard.Theprotocol has been adopted by OSF . [soft]

NCSS Non-Commented Source Statements. Usedas a simple software metric. [soft]

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NDL National Database Language: a US standardfor portability of database definitions and appli-cation programs. [soft]

necking reduction of the cross-sectional area of amaterial in a localized area caused by uniaxialtension. [mat-1]

Neptune A hypertext system for computer assistedsoftware engineering, developed at Tektronix.[soft]

netCDF Network Common Data Form. Amachine-independent, self-describing file formatfor scientific data [soft]

NetClasses A C++ class library for object trans-port and remote method invocation from Stan-ford [soft]

Net summer capability The steady hourly outputthat generating equipment is expected to sup-ply to system load exclusive of auxiliary power,as demonstrated by tests at the time of summerpeak demand. [nuclear-1]

network polymer a polymer composed of trifunc-tional mer units that form three-dimensionalmolecules. [mat-1]

NeuDL Neural network Description Language fromthe University of Alabama [soft]

Neumann’s Law the symmetry of the physicalproperties of a crystal must include the symme-try of the point group of the crystal. [mat-1]

Neural net See Neural network [soft]

Neural network A computing device which con-verts one or more input signals to one or moreoutput signals by means of an interconnected setof elementary non-linear signal processors calledneurons. Animal brains are examples of biolog-ical neural networks. Artificial Neural Networksare man-made computing devices modelled af-ter their biological counterparts. The featureswhich distinguish artificial neural networks fromtraditional Von Neumann (sequential) comput-ers are: (a) the elementary processors are highlynon-linear (in the limit, they are simple thresh-old discriminators), (b) the neurons are highlyinterconnencted which allows a high degree ofparallelism and (c) there is no idle memory con-taining data and programs, but rather each neu-ron is pre-programmed and continuously active -More information. [soft]

Neural See Neural network [soft]

Neuron See Neural network , also McCulloch-Pitts[soft]

Neutron An uncharged elementary particle, witha mass slightly greater than that of the proton,found in the nucleus of every atom heavier thanhydrogen. [nuclear-1]

Neutron capture The reaction that occurs whena nucleus captures a neutron. The probabilitythat a given material will capture a neutron isproportional to its neutron capture cross sectionand depends on the energy of the neutrons andthe nature of the material. [nuclear-1]

Neutron chain reaction A process in which someof the neutrons released in one fission event causeother fissions to occur. There are three typesof chain reactions: (1) Nonsustaining–An aver-age of less than one fission is produced by theneutrons released by each previous fission (reac-tor subcriticality); (2) Sustaining–An average ofexactly one fission is produced by the neutronsreleased by each previous fission (reactor criti-cality); and (3) Multiplying–An average of morethan one fission is produced by the neutrons re-leased by previous fission (reactor supercritical-ity). [nuclear-1]

Neutron flux A measure of the intensity of neutronradiation in neutrons/cm2 -sec. It is the numberof neutrons passing through 1 square centimeterof a given target in 1 second. Expressed as nv,where n = the number of neutrons per cubic cen-timeter and v = their velocity in centimeters persecond. [nuclear-1]

Neutron generation The release, thermalization,and absorption of fission neutrons by a fissilematerial and the fission of that material pro-ducing a second generation of neutrons. In atypical nuclear power reactor system, there areabout 40,000 generations of neutrons every sec-ond. [nuclear-1]

Neutron leakage Neutrons that escape from thevicinity of the fissionable material in a reactorcore. Neutrons that leak out of the fuel region areno longer available to cause fission and must beabsorbed by shielding placed around the reactorpressure vessel for that purpose. [nuclear-1]

Neutron source Any material that emits neutrons,such as a mixture of radium and beryllium, thatcan be inserted into a reactor to ensure a neutronflux large enough to be distinguished from back-ground to register on neutron detection equip-ment. [nuclear-1]

Neutron, thermal A neutron that has (by colli-sion with other particles) reached an energy stateequal to that of its surroundings, typically on theorder of 0.025 eV (electron volts). [nuclear-1]

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NeWS Network extensible Window System fromSun Microsystems, offering facilities similar tothose of the X Window System . Communica-tion is based on PostScript , and server functionscan be extended. [soft]

NewWave A graphical user interface and object-oriented environment from Hewlett-Packard,based on Windows and available on UNIX work-stations. [soft]

NeXTstep A graphical interface builder, object-oriented application builder, and windowing soft-ware for the NeXT and IBM AIX systems. [soft]

NFF Neutral File Format. A minimal scene descrip-tion language - More information. [soft]

NFS Network File System: developed by Sun toallow a computer to access files over a networkas if they were on local disks; now public domain,a de facto standard. [soft]

NFT Network File Transfer. An INTERLINK com-mand. [soft]

Nial Nested Interactive Array Language. A high-level array-oriented procedural language basedon a mathematical theory of arrays, developedat Queen’s University. It combines APL datastructure ideas with LISP -style evaluation con-cepts and a conventional control structure syntax- More information. [soft]

NIAM Natural Language (or Nijssen) Informa-tion Analysis Method: a method for data mod-elling. (see ”Conceptual Scheme and RelationalDatabase Design”, Nijssen and Halpin, Prentice-Hall, 1989) [soft]

Nicked Threads Nicks or indentations in threadscan occur during the manufacturing processand during fastener transportation. In general,nicked thread problems tend to increase as thethread diameter increases and for fine pitches.There are acceptance tests for nicked threadsthat involve measuring the maximum torque re-quired to drive a GO gauge down the thread. Ex-amples of acceptance tests are SAE J123 and theFord Motor specification WA990 1993. Nicks andindentations in threads are sometimes referred toas gouges. [mech-3]

NIHCL A class library for C++ - More informa-tion. [soft]

NIH The US National Institutes of Health [soft]

NII National Information Infrastructure (USA)[soft]

Nip - Device at the end of the trailing cable of aminingmachine used for connecting the trailingcable to the trolley wire andground.[mining-1]

NISO National Information Standards Organisa-tion (USA). NISO Standards cover many aspectsof library science, publishing, and informationservices, and address the application of both tra-ditional and new technologies to information ser-vices [soft]

NIST National Institute of Standards and Technol-ogy, USA (formerly NBS) - More information.[soft]

NITF National Imagery Transmission Format [soft]

NLP Natural Language Processing. [soft]

NLS Native Language System: a set of interfacesspecified by X/Open for developing applicationsto run in different natural language environ-ments. [soft]

NLSR Natural Language Software Registry. Asummary of the capabilities and sources oflanguage processing software available to re-searchers [soft]

NMF Network Management Forum of OSI [soft]

NNTP Network News Transfer Protocol: the pro-tocol used for distributing news on the Internet. [soft]

Noble gas A gaseous chemical element that doesnot readily enter into chemical combinationwith other elements. An inert gas. Examplesare helium, argon, krypton, xenon, and radon.[nuclear-1]

noble metal a metal with high resistance to chemi-cal reaction, especially oxidation and solution byorganic acids; sometimes called a precious metal.[mat-1]

Node see Hypertext [soft]

Nominal Diameter The diameter equal to theexternal diameter of the threads. [mech-3]

noncrystalline the solid state wherein there is nolong-range atomic order; sometimes the termsamorphous, glassy, and vitreous are used synony-mously. [mat-1]

Noncrystalline the solid state wherein there is nolong-range atomic order. Sometimes used syn-onymously with the terms amorphous .[mech-1]

nondestructive testing (NDT) a procedure for de-termining the quality or characteristics of a ma-terial, part, or assembly without permanently al-tering it or its properties; examples include ultra-sonic and radiographic inspection. [mat-1]

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Nonpower reactor Reactors used for research,training, and test purposes, and for the produc-tion of radioisotopes for medical and industrialuses. [nuclear-1]

nonsteady-state diffusion the diffusion conditionfor which there is some net accumulation or de-pletion of diffusing species; the diffusion flux isdependent on time. [mat-1]

Non-stochastic effect The health effects of radi-ation, the severity of which vary with the doseand for which a threshold is believed to exist.Radiation-induced cataract formation is an ex-ample of a non-stochastic effect (also called adeterministic effect). [nuclear-1]

Non-vital plant systems Systems at a nuclear fa-cility that may or may not be necessary for theoperation of the facility (i.e., power production)but that would have little or no effect on publichealth and safety should they fail. These systemsare not safety related. [nuclear-1]

Normal form A relation in a relational databaseis said to be in normal form if it satisfies certainconstraints. Codd’s original work defined threesuch forms. [soft]

normalizing for ferrous alloys, austenitizing abovethe upper critical temperature, then cooling inair; the objective of this heat treatment is to en-hance toughness by refining the grain size. [mat-1]

Normal strain Strain measuring the intensity ofdeformation along an axis. Normal strain is usu-ally denoted by . Average normal strain betweentwo points is calculated as , where L is the orig-inal distance between the points, and L is thechange in that distance. Normal strain is oftensimply called strain. [struc-1]

Normal stress Stress acting perpendicular to animaginary plane cutting through an object. Nor-mal stress has two senses [struc-1]

NoteCards An ambitious hypertext system devel-oped at Xerox PARC, ”designed to support thetask of transforming a chaotic collection of un-related thoughts into an integrated, orderly in-terpretation of ideas and their interconnections”.[soft]

Novell A proprietary local area network protocoldeveloped by Novell Netware for the intercon-nection of PC s over Ethernet . [soft]

NOWEB A system of structured programming anddocumentation from M.Speh in DESY. See Lit-erate Programming [soft]

Nozzle As used in power water reactors and boilingwater reactors, the interface (inlet and outlet)between reactor plant components (pressure ves-sel, coolant pumps, steam generators, etc.) andtheir associated piping systems. [nuclear-1]

NQIC National Quality Information Centre of theIQA systems. [soft]

NQS Batch processing software for UNIX systems.[soft]

NREN National Research and Education Network(USA) [soft]

NSAI National Stsndards Authority of Ireland.[soft]

NSE Network Software Environment: a proprietaryCASE framework from Sun Microsystems. [soft]

NSF National Science Foundation (USA) [soft]

NSRD National Software Reuse Directory. A di-rectory of reusable software in the ASSET sys-tem, now incorporated in the Asset Reuse Li-brary. [soft]

NTIS National Technical Information Service of theUS Department of Commerce. [soft]

NTP Network Time Protocol: a protocol built ontop of TCP/IP that allows local clocks to be syn-chronised with reference clocks on the Internet .[soft]

Nuclear energy The energy liberated by a nuclearreaction (fission or fusion) or by radioactive de-cay. [nuclear-1]

Nuclear force A powerful short-ranged attractiveforce that holds together the particles inside anatomic nucleus. [nuclear-1]

Nuclear power plant An electrical generating fa-cility using a nuclear reactor as its heat source toprovide steam to a turbine generator. [nuclear-1]

Nuclear steam supply system The reactor andthe reactor coolant pumps (and steam generatorsfor a pressurized water reactor) and associatedpiping in a nuclear power plant used to generatethe steam needed to drive the turbine generatorunit. [nuclear-1]

Nuclear waste A particular type of radioactivewaste that is produced as part of the nuclear fuelcycle (i.e., those activities needed to produce nu-clear fission, or splitting of the atom). Theseinclude extraction of uranium from ore, concen-tration of uranium, processing into nuclear fuel,and disposal of byproducts. Radioactive waste is

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a broader term that includes all waste that con-tains radioactivity. Residues from water treat-ment, contaminated equipment from oil drilling,and tailings from the processing of metals suchas vanadium and copper also contain radioactiv-ity but are not ”nuclear waste” because they areproduced outside of the nuclear fuel cycle. NRCgenerally regulates only those wastes produced inthe nuclear fuel cycle (uranium mill tailings, de-pleted uranium, spent fuel rods, etc.). [nuclear-1]

nucleation the initial stage in a phase transforma-tion; it is evidenced by the formation of smallparticles (nuclei) of the new phase which are ca-pable of growing. [mat-1]

Nucleation the initial stage in a phase transforma-tion. It is evidenced by the formation of smallparticles (nuclei) of the new phase, which are ca-pable of growing.[mech-1]

Nucleon Common name for a constituent particleof the atomic nucleus. At present, applied toprotons and neutrons, but may include any otherparticles found to exist in the nucleus. [nuclear-1]

Nucleus The small, central, positively charged re-gion of an atom. Except for the nucleus of or-dinary hydrogen, which has only a proton, allatomic nuclei contain both protons and neutrons.The number of protons determines the total pos-itive charge or atomic number. This numberis the same for all the atomic nuclei of a givenchemical element. The total number of neutronsand protons is called the mass number. [nuclear-1]

Nuclide A general term referring to all known iso-topes, both stable (279) and unstable (about2,700), of the chemical elements. [nuclear-1]

NURBS Non-Uniform Rational B-Splines, a tech-nique used in CAD [soft]

Nut Dilation Under load, the wedging action ofthe threads causes dilation of the nut resultingin an increase in the minor diameter of the nut,and reducing the effective shear areas of both theexternal and internal threads. [mech-3]

Nu Thena A software vendor specialising in rapidprototyping tools for real-time hardware andsoftware systems, collaborating with DAZIX .[soft]

NuThena See Nu-Thena [soft]

Nut Runner A torque control fastener tighteningtool that is usually powered by compressed air.The design of the tool is such that attempts are

made to ensure that the applied torque is inde-pendent of joint stiffness. Nyloc Nut [mech-3]

Nyloc Nut A torque prevailing nut that uses anylon patented insert to provide a locking fea-ture. The nylon insert, it is claimed, helps toseal the bolt thread against seepage of water,oil, petrol, paraffin and other liquids. The nutis covered by UK patent 8028437 and Europeanpatent 81303450-1. Nyloc is a registered tradename of Forest Fasteners. [mech-3]

OPQ

OAK An early name for Java [soft]

OATH Object-oriented Abstract Type Hierarchy, aclass library from Texas Instruments [soft]

Oberon A programming language developed by N.Wirth and J. Gutknecht as a successor to Modula2 [soft]

ObjectBroker A distributed object system fromDEC based on the CORBA standard. [soft]

ObjectCenter A product offering similar facilitiesto CodeCenter language, plus class browsing fa-cilities etc (formerly Saber-C++) - More infor-mation. [soft]

Objecteering An Object Oriented design tool fromSofteam, based on the Class Relation Methodol-ogy, with C++ code generation [soft]

Object In object-oriented programming, an in-stance of a data structure defined according tothe template provided by its class, and whichcan respond to the messages defined by its class.[soft]

Objective C A Smalltalk -like extension of the Clanguage which provides the possibility to useobject-oriented programming constructs [soft]

Objective PASCAL An extension of the PASCALlanguage which provides the possibility to useobject-oriented programming constructs. [soft]

Object management system In an IPSE , thesystem which maintains information about thesystem under development. [soft]

Object-oriented Applied to analysis, design andprogramming. The basic concept in this ap-proach is that of objects, which consist of datastructures encapsulated with a set of routines,often called ”methods” which operate on thedata. Operations on the data must be performed

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via these methods, which are common to all in-stances of objects of a particular class. Thus, theinterface to objects is well defined, and allows thecode implementing the methods to be changed solong as the interface remains the same [soft]

Object-oriented database A system offeringDBMS facilities in an object-oriented environ-ment. [soft]

Object-oriented programming see object-oriented [soft]

Objectworks An object-oriented development en-vironment developed by ParcPlace, available un-der Smalltalk . [soft]

OBST A persistent object management system de-veloped by FZI Karlsruhe for the STONE [soft]

Occam A programming language which facilitateswriting parallel programs, allowing the program-mer to specify whether processes are to be exe-cuted sequentially or in parallel. Based on CSP, it was originally developed for the Transputer[soft]

OCLC Online Computer Library Center [soft]

OCR Optical Character Recognition: recognition ofprinted or written characters by computer [soft]

OCS Object Compatibility Standard: an 88openstandard for compilers and linkers. [soft]

Octagon Head A bolt or screw whose head crosssection is a regular polygon with 8 sides. [mech-3]

Octahedral position the void space among closed-packed, hard sphere atoms or ions for whichthere are six nearest neighbors. An octahedron(double pyramid) is curcumscribed by lines con-structed from centers of adjacent spheres.[mech-1]

octahedral position the void space among close-packed, hard sphere atoms or ions for which thereare six nearest neighbors; an octahedron (dou-ble pyramid) is circumscribed by the lines con-structed from centers of adjacent spheres. [mat-1]

ODAC The ODA consortium. [soft]

ODA Open (formerly Office) Document Architec-ture: an ISO standard (8613) for describing doc-uments. It allows text, graphics, and facsimiledocuments to be transferred between differentsystems. [soft]

ODIF Open Document Interchange Format: partof the ODA standard. [soft]

ODL Object Definition Language from ODMG .[soft]

ODMG Object Data Management Group. A ven-dor consortium developing standards for ObjectData Definition and Manipulation Languages -More information. [soft]

ODP Open Distributed Processing. An ISO stan-dardisation activity. [soft]

ODT Open Desktop. [soft]

OEW Object Engineering Workbench. A designtool for C++ - More information. [soft]

OFF Object File Format for interchange and archiv-ing of 3D objects, from Digital Equipment Cor-poration [soft]

OLE Object Linking and Embedding. A distributedobject system from Microsoft [soft]

OLTP On-Line Transaction Processing: the pro-cessing of transactions by computers in real time. [soft]

OMA Object Management Architecture: a set ofstandards under study by OMG . [soft]

OMF Object Management Facility: part of theDAA proposed by Hewlett-Packard and Sun.[soft]

OMF Open Model Forum for modelling and simu-lation tool standards - More information. [soft]

OMG Object Management Group: a consortiumaimed at setting standards in object-orientedprogramming, especially for distributed applica-tions [soft]

OML Object Manipulation Language from ODMG. [soft]

OML OPEN Modelling Language [soft]

OMT An object-oriented methodology . [soft]

OMTool A graphical tool from General ElectricAdvanced Concepts Center for design and anal-ysis of systems with the OMT methodology withsome C++/SQL code generation [soft]

ONC Open Network Computing: Sun’s networkprotocols. [soft]

OnX A graphics package from LAL Orsay [soft]

OOA Object-oriented Analysis. [soft]

OODBMS Object-oriented database managementsystem. [soft]

OODL Object-oriented Dynamic Language. [soft]

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OOD Object-oriented Design. [soft]

OO Object-oriented : for example Analysis(OOA), Design (OOD), Programming (OOP),Programming Language (OOPL), Data Bases(OODBMS) etc. [soft]

OOPL Object-oriented programming language: alanguage such as C++ , Objective-C etc designedto support object-oriented programming. [soft]

OOP Object-oriented programming. [soft]

OOPSLA Conference on Object-oriented Program-ming Systems, Languages and Applications.[soft]

OOSD Object-oriented structured design: a designmethod elaborated from structured design andincorporating the essential features of the object-oriented approach. [soft]

Open Desktop A UNIX environment from SCO .(part of the ACE initiative). [soft]

OpenDoc A compound document architecturefrom CIL based on CORBA . It aims to enableembedding of features from different applicationsinto a single working document [soft]

Open end pillaring - A method of mining pillarsin which nostump is left; the pockets driven areopen on the gob side and theroof is supported bytimber.[mining-1]

OpenGL An emerging graphics standard providingadvanced rendering capabilities [soft]

Open Inventor An object-oriented toolkit for de-veloping interactive 3D graphics applications. Italso defines an ASCII file format for exchanging3D data among applications, which is the basisfor VRML [soft]

Open Look A graphical user interface and windowmanager from Sun and AT&T. [soft]

Open Software Foundation See OSF . [soft]

OpenWindows A server program for the Sunwhich handles SunView and X Window Systemprotocols. [soft]

Operable A system, subsystem, train, component,or device is operable or has operability when it iscapable of performing its specified functions andwhen all necessary attendant instrumentation,controls, electrical power, cooling or seal water,lubrication, or other auxiliary equipment thatare required for the system, subsystem, train,component, or device to perform its functions arealso capable of performing their related supportfunctions. [nuclear-1]

Operational mode In a nuclear power reactor,an operational mode corresponds to any one in-clusive combination of core reactivity condition,power level, and average reactor coolant temper-ature. [nuclear-1]

OQL Object Query Language from ODMG . [soft]

Oracle A vendor of database management systems:also their relational DBMS . [soft]

Oracle Card A hypercard -like product from Ora-cle for constructing DB applications, running onPC and Macintosh. [soft]

Oracle [soft]

Oracle Toolkit See Adaptable User Interface .[soft]

ORB Object Request Broker: part of the OMGstandard. [soft]

ordering positioning of host and substitution ionsin an ordered, repetitious pattern rather than ina random arrangement. [mat-1]

ore a natural mineral mined and treated for extrac-tion of its components. [mat-1]

orientation arrangements in space of the axes of acrystal lattice with respect to a coordinate sys-tem. [mat-1]

ORKID Open Real-time Kernel Interface Defini-tion. [soft]

OS/2 An operating system from IBM and Microsoftfor the PS/2 range of microcomputers [soft]

OSA Open Scripting Architecture. A CIL approachto the coexistence of multiple scripting systems.[soft]

OSE Open Systems Environment. [soft]

OSF Open Software Foundation. A foundation cre-ated by nine computer vendors, (Apollo, DEC,Hewlett-Packard, IBM, Bull, Nixdorf, Philips,Siemens and Hitachi) to promote ”Open Com-puting”. It is planned that common operatingsystems and interfaces, based on developmentsof UNIX , the X Window System , etc. will beforthcoming for a wide range of different hard-ware architectures [soft]

OSI Open Systems Interconnection: a seven-layerreference model developed by ISO as a frame-work for the development of standards for inter-connecting heterogeneous computers [soft]

OSTC Open Systems Testing Consortium. An openorganisation operating harmonised conformancetesting services for OSI telecommunications andIT protocols. [soft]

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OTI Open Tool Interface. [soft]

Outby; outbye - Nearer to the shaft, and hencefarther fromthe working face. Toward the mineentrance. The opposite of inby.[mining-1]

Outcrop Coal that appears at or near thesurface.[mining-1]

outgassing gaseous emission or de-aeration of a ma-terial. [mat-1]

Overburden Layers of soil and rock covering acoalseam. Overburden is removed prior to sur-face mining and replaced afterthe coal is takenfrom the seam.[mining-1]

Overcast (undercast) - Enclosed airway whichpermits oneair current to pass over (under) an-other without interruption.[mining-1]

Overtapping Tapping of a thread following a plat-ing operation so that the thread tolerances com-ply within specification allowing the internal andexternal threads to assemble. It is normal prac-tice to overtap the internal rather than the ex-ternal thread. [mech-3]

OVL Object Verification Language from ODMG .[soft]

OWL A software company offering the Guide hy-pertext system . [soft]

oxidation a reaction in which there is an increase invalence resulting from a loss of electrons; oftenassociated with the corrosion of metals, wherethe corroded metal forms an oxide; elevated tem-peratures increase the rate of oxidation. [mat-1]

P2P Person to Person. A range of desktop confer-encing products from IBM [soft]

PACS Public Access Computer Systems. [soft]

Page Description Language A language such asAdobe PostScript or Xerox Interpress which al-low the appearance of a printed page to be de-scribed in a high-level device-independent way.Printing then becomes a two-stage process: anapplication produces a description in the lan-guage, which is then interpreted by a specificoutput device. Such a language can serve as aninterchange standard for transmission and stor-age of printable documents - More information.[soft]

Panda An Internet navigation and information re-trieval system from the University of Iowa [soft]

Panel - A coal mining block that generally com-prises oneoperating unit.[mining-1]

Panic bar - A switch, in the shape of a bar, usedto cutoff power at the machine in case of anemergency.[mining-1]

Pansophic A Software Engineering company in theUS. [soft]

PARADIGM PLUS A configurable object-oriented CASE tool from Proto Soft Inc. - Moreinformation. [soft]

Paramagnetism a relatively weak form of mag-netism that results from the independent align-ment of atomic dipoles (magnetic) with an ap-plied magnetic field.[mech-1]

paramagnetism property of a material that, whenplaced in a magnetic field, is magnetized parallelto the field to an extent proportional to the field;this does not apply at very low temperatures orin extremely large magnetic fields. [mat-1]

PaRC A workstation cluster for engineering com-puting at CERN [soft]

PARC See Xerox PARC . [soft]

Parent A radionuclide that upon radioactive de-cay or disintegration yields a specific nuclide (thedaughter). [nuclear-1]

Parlog++ An object-oriented extension to Mac-Parlog. It combines object-oriented and parallellogic programming , giving the benefits of bothparadigms within a single coherent developmentenvironment. [soft]

Parser A function that recognizes valid sentences ofa language by analysing the syntax structure of aset of tokens passed to it from a lexical analyzer.[soft]

Parting - (1) A small joint in coal or rock; (2) alayer ofrock in a coal seam; (3) a side track orturnout in a haulageroad.[mining-1]

Parts per million (ppm) Parts (molecules) of asubstance contained in a million parts of anothersubstance (e.g., water). [nuclear-1]

Pascal A programming language designed byN.Wirth for teaching purposes, emphasisingstructured programming constructs, data struc-tures and strong typing. [soft]

PATCHY A FORTRAN code management pro-gram written at CERN . [soft]

Pattern A formal way to describe a solution to acommonly recurring programming problem [soft]

PAW++ An extended version of PAW with a Motifhuman interface. [soft]

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PAW Physics Analysis Workbench - general pur-pose portable tool for analysis and presentationof physics data [soft]

PCA A dynamic analyser from DEC giving infor-mation on run time performance and code utili-sation. [soft]

P-CAD A CAE system marketed by CADAM, anIBM company. [soft]

PCL Portable Common LOOPS . A portable CLOSimplementation. [soft]

PCL Printer Control Language (from HewlettPackard). [soft]

PC Personal Computer . [soft]

PCTE+ A European NATO specification based onPCTE with security enhancements. [soft]

PCTE Portable Common Tool Environment: anECMA standard framework for software tools de-veloped in the Esprit programme. It is based onan entity-relationship Object Management Sys-tem and defines the way in which tools accessthis [soft]

PCX A bitmap format from Zsoft [soft]

PDDM Product Data and Document Management.[soft]

PDF Portable Document Format from Adobe Sys-tems - More information. [soft]

PDL Page Description Language . [soft]

PDL Program Design Language. [soft]

PDM Product Data Management. An integratedsystem for managing all types of technical dataconcerning a product. [soft]

PDSA cycle Plan, Do, See, Approve (from Japan).[soft]

PDS Planetary Data Systems format from - Moreinformation. [soft]

Pearlite a two-phase microstructure found in somesteels and cast irons. It results from the trans-formation of austenite of eutectoidcompositionsand consists of alternating layers of alpha-ferriteand cementite.[mech-1]

Peat The partially decayed plant matter found inswamps andbogs, one of the earliest stages of coalformation.[mining-1]

Peierls stress the stress required to move a dislo-cation. [mat-1]

Pellet, fuel As used in pressurized water reactorsand boiling water reactors, a pellet is a smallcylinder approximately 3/8-inch in diameter and5/8-inch in length, consisting of uranium fuel ina ceramic form–uranium dioxide, UO2 . Typicalfuel pellet enrichments in nuclear power reactorsrange from 2.0 percent to 3.5 percent uranium-235. [nuclear-1]

PEM Privacy Enhanced Mail. An Internet stan-dard (RFC 1421-1424). [soft]

PEP Protocol Extension Protocol. A proposed sys-tem to allow HTTP clients and servers to nego-tiate protocol extensions. [soft]

Percentage extraction - The proportion of a coalseam whichis removed from the mine. Theremainder may represent coal in pillarsor coalwhich is too thin or inferior to mine or lost in-mining. Shallow coal mines working under town-ships, reservoirs, etc.,may extract 50

Perceptron This term is sometimes used to refer toa single McCulloch-Pitts neuron, but may alsorefer to a network of neurons in which the out-put(s) of some neurons are connected throughweighted connections to the input(s) of otherneurons. The term multilayer perceptron specif-ically refers to a network composed of more thanone layer of neurons, with some or all of the out-puts of each layer connected to one or more ofthe inputs of another layer. The first layer iscalled the input layer, the last one is the outputlayer, and in between there may be one or morehidden layers. [soft]

Percussion drill - A drill, usually air powered,thatdelivers its energy through a pounding orhammering action.[mining-1]

Performance-based regulation Required resultsor outcome of performance rather than aprescriptive process, technique, or procedure.[nuclear-1]

Performance-based regulatory action Licenseeattainment of defined objectives and resultswithout detailed direction from the NRC on howthese results are to be obtained. (See the Com-munication Plan for Performance-Based Regula-tion by using accession number ML021120533 inADAMS ¡/reading-rm/adams.html¿.) [nuclear-1]

Periodic table An arrangement of chemical ele-ments in order of increasing atomic number. El-ements of similar properties are placed one underthe other, yielding groups or families of elements.Within each group, there is a variation of chemi-cal and physical properties, but in general, there

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is a similarity of chemical behavior within eachgroup. [nuclear-1]

peritectic an isothermal reversible reaction in met-als where a liquid phase reacts with a solid phaseto produce a single (and different) solid phaseupon cooling. [mat-1]

Peritectic[mech-1]

peritectoid an isothermal reversible reaction wherea solid phase reacts with a second solid phase toproduce a single (and different) solid phase uponcooling. [mat-1]

Peritectoid[mech-1]

Perl Practical Extraction and Report Language.An interpreted scripting language for scanningtext files, extracting information, and printingreports. It combines features of c , sed , awk andsh [soft]

permeability (1) passage or diffusion of a gas, va-por, liquid, or solid through a material withoutphysically or chemically affecting it; (2) termused to express various relationships betweenmagnetic induction and magnetizing force; ei-ther absolute permeability or specific (relative)permeability. [mat-1]

Permissible - That which is allowable or permit-ted. It ismost widely applied to mine equipmentand explosives of all kindswhich are similar in allrespects to samples that have passed certaintestsof the MSHA and can be used with safety in ac-cordance withspecified conditions where hazardsfrom explosive gas or coal dustexist.[mining-1]

Permit As it pertains to mining, a document is-sued by aregulatory agency that gives approvalfor mining operations to takeplace.[mining-1]

Permittivity the proportionality constant betweenthe dielectric displacement D and the electricfield E.[mech-1]

Personal Computer A general-purpose single-usermicrocomputer designed to be operated by oneperson at a time. [soft]

Personnel monitoring The use of portable sur-vey meters to determine the amount of radioac-tive contamination on individuals, or the use ofdosimetry to determine an individual’s occupa-tional radiation dose. [nuclear-1]

Petri net A graphical representation of concurrentsystems in terms of tokens, places and transitionbars [soft]

pewter tin-base white metal containing antimonyand copper; 1 to 8% Sb and 0.25 to 3% Cu. [mat-1]

PEX (PHIGS Extension to X) Extension to the XWindow System providing 3-D graphics support.[soft]

PGP Pretty Good Privacy. A set of encryptiontools for electronic mail etc. [soft]

Phase a homogeneous region of matter.[mech-1]

phase a portion of a material system whose proper-ties and composition are homogeneous and whichis physically distinct from other parts of the sys-tem. [mat-1]

Phase Diagram a graphical representation of therelationships between environmental constraints,composition, and regions of phase stability, ordi-narily under conditions of equilibrium.[mech-1]

phase diagram graphical representation of thetemperature and composition limits of phasefields in an alloy or ceramic system; it canbe an equilibrium diagram, approximation toan equilibrium diagram, or a representation ofmetastable conditions or phases. [mat-1]

phase rule this states that the maximum numberof phases (P ) that may coexist at equilibrium istwo plus the number of components (C) in themixture minus the number of degrees of freedom(F): P + F = C + 2. [mat-1]

Phase Transformation a change in the numberand/or character of the phases that constitutethe microstructure of an alloy.[mech-1]

phase transformation changes that can occurwithin a given material system; how one or morephases in an alloy change into a new phase ormixture of phases; transformation occurs be-cause the initial state of the alloy is unstable rel-ative to the final state; at constant temperatureand pressure the relative stability of a system isdetermined by its Gibbs free energy. [mat-1]

PHIGS Programmers Hierarchical InteractiveGraphics System: an ANSI/ISO standard. [soft]

Phonon a single quantum of vibrational or elasticenergy.[mech-1]

photolithography science of replicating complexcircuitry onto the surface of a specimen. [mat-1]

Photon A quantum (or packet) of energy emit-ted in the form of electromagnetic radiation.Gamma rays and x-rays are examples of photons.[nuclear-1]

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Photon a quantum unit of electromagneticenergy.[mech-1]

pH the negative logarithm of hydrogen-ion activ-ity denoting the degree of acidity or basicity ofa solution; at 25 degrees C 7.0 (on a scale of 0to 14) is the neutral value, with decreasing val-ues below 7.0 indicating increasing acidity, andincreasing values above 7.0 indicating increasingbasicity. [mat-1]

pickling the chemical removal of surface oxides andother contaminants from a material by immer-sion in an aqueous acid solution; sulfuric and hy-drochloric acids are common pickling solutions.[mat-1]

Pico- A prefix that divides a basic unit by one tril-lion (10−12 ). [nuclear-1]

Picocurie One trillionth (10−12 ) of a curie.[nuclear-1]

PICS Platform for Internet Content Selection.[soft]

Piezoelectric a dielectric material in which polar-ization is induced by the application of externalforces.[mech-1]

piezoelectricity elastic strain caused when an elec-trical current is applied to a piezoelectric mate-rial and conversely, an electric current producedwhen pressure is applied to a piezoelectric mate-rial; these materials exhibit the Perovskite crys-tal structure. [mat-1]

Pig A colloquial term describing a container (usu-ally lead or depleted uranium) used to ship orstore radioactive materials. The thick walls ofthis shielding device protect the person handlingthe container from radiation. Large containersused for spent fuel storage are commonly calledcasks. [nuclear-1]

pig a metal casting used in remelting. [mat-1]

Piggy-back - A bridge conveyor.[mining-1]

PII Process Improvement Institute [soft]

Pile A colloquial term describing the first nuclearreactors. They are called piles because the earli-est reactors were ”piles” of graphite and uraniumblocks. [nuclear-1]

Piles Term used in structural engineering for thejoint plates. [mech-3]

Pillar - An area of coal left to support the overly-ingstrata in a mine; sometimes left permanentlyto support surfacestructures. [mining-1]

Pillar robbing - The systematic removal of thecoal pillarsbetween rooms or chambers to reg-ulate the subsidence of the roof. Alsotermed”bridging back” the pillar, ”drawing” the pillar,or ”pulling”the pillar.[mining-1]

PIM Product Information Management. See PDM[soft]

Pinch A compression of the roof and floor of a coalseam soas to ”squeeze” out the coal.[mining-1]

Pinch - A compression of the walls of a vein or theroofand floor of a coal seam so as to ”squeeze”out the coal.[mining-1]

Pin connection In two dimensions, a pin connec-tion restrains two translation degrees of freedombut does not restrain rotation. Since the rota-tion degree of freedom is unrestrained at a pinconnection, it transfers no moment. [struc-1]

PinK PinK is not KUIP . An interface between Tcl, BLT, ADAMO from DESY [soft]

Pinning - Roof bolting.[mining-1]

Pin support In two dimensions, a pin support re-strains two translation degrees of freedom butdoes not restrain rotation. When considering re-action forces, a pin support is usually consideredto have two force components [struc-1]

Pitch - The inclination of a seam; the rise of aseam.[mining-1]

Pitch The nominal distance between two adjacentthread roots or crests. [mech-3]

Plan - A map showing features such as mineworkings orgeological structures on a horizontalplane.[mining-1]

Planck’s Constant a universal constant that hasa value of 6.63 x 10-34 J.[mech-1]

plane strain thin plate and ω = 0; 2D strain / 3Dstress. [mat-1]

plane stress thick sections; 2D stress / 3D strain.[mat-1]

Planned special exposure An infrequent expo-sure to radiation, separate from and in additionto the annual dose limits . [nuclear-1]

Plastic a solid material in the primary ingredientof which is an organic polymer of high molecularwight.[mech-1]

Plastic Deformation deformation that is perma-nent or nonrecoverable after release of the ap-plied load.[mech-1]

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plastic deformation the permanent (inelastic) dis-tortion of a material under an applied stress thatstrains the material beyond its elastic limit; theability of a material to be permanently deformedwithout fracture. [mat-1]

Plasticizer a low molecular weight polymer addi-tive that enhances flexibility and workability andreduces stiffness and brittleness.[mech-1]

Plastic see inelastic. [struc-1]

plating forming an adherent layer of metal on anobject; often used as a shop term for electroplat-ing. [mat-1]

Plausible accidents Postulated events that meeta probability test rather than the more chal-lenging test represented by a design-basis event.[nuclear-1]

Plexus A set of modular WWW server softwarewritten in Perl [soft]

Plutonium (Pu) A heavy, radioactive, manmademetallic element with atomic number 94. Itsmost important isotope is fissile plutonium-239,which is produced by neutron irradiation ofuranium-238. It exists in only trace amounts innature. [nuclear-1]

Ply A single thickness of steel forming part of astructural joint. [mech-3]

PMM Process Maturity Model. [soft]

Pneumoconiosis - A chronic disease of the lungarising frombreathing coal dust.[mining-1]

PNG Portable Network Graphics. A standard forbitmapped image files - More information. [soft]

Pocket dosimeter A small ionization detection in-strument that indicates ionizing radiation expo-sure directly. An auxiliary charging device isusually necessary. [nuclear-1]

Point Defect a crystalline defect associated withone or, at most, several atomic sites.[mech-1]

Poison, neutron In reactor physics, a materialother than fissionable material in the vicinityof the reactor core that will absorb neutrons.The addition of poisons, such as control rods orboron, into the reactor is said to be an additionof negative reactivity. [nuclear-1]

Poisson’s Ratio for elastic deformation, the nega-tive ratio of lateral and axial strains that resultfrom an applied axial stress.[mech-1]

Poisson’s ratio the ratio of the transverse contract-ing strain to the longitudinal elongational strainwhen a tensile stress is applied to a material.[mat-1]

polarization displacement of the centers of positiveand negative charge. [mat-1]

Polarization (electronic) for an atom, the dis-placement of the center of the negatively chargedelectron cloud relative to the positive nucleus,which is induced by an electric field.[mech-1]

Polarization (ionic) polarization as a result of thedisplacement of anions and cations in oppositedirections.[mech-1]

Polarization (orientation) polarization resultingfrom the alignment (by rotation) of permanentelectric dipole moments with an applied electricfield.[mech-1]

Polar Molecule a molecule in which there existsa permanent electric dipole moment by virtue ofthe asymmetrical distribution of positively andnegatively charged regions.[mech-1]

Polycrystalline referring to crystalline materialsthat are composed of more than one crystal orgrain.[mech-1]

polyimide thermosetting ring chain polymer char-acterized by -NH group; it’s increasingly used asdielectrics in high performance circuits. [mat-1]

Polymer a solid, nonmetallic (normally organic)compound of high molecular weight the struc-ture of which is composed of small repeat (ormer) units.[mech-1]

polymorphism different crystal structures at dif-ferent temperatures or pressures for a single com-pound. [mat-1]

Polymorphism In object-oriented programming,the term is used to describe variables which mayrefer at run-time to objects of different classes.For example, the variable ”myVehicle” could re-fer to an object of class ”motorCar” or ”Truck”.[soft]

Polymorphism the ability of a solid materialto exist in more than one form or crystalstructure.[mech-1]

Pooching Pooching is a term sometimes used todescribe the effect of the area immediately sur-rounding a tapped hole being raised up as a re-sult of the tension from the stud. Tapped holesare often bored out for the first couple of threadsto eliminate this problem. [mech-3]

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Pool reactor A reactor in which the fuel elementsare suspended in a pool of water that serves asthe reflector, moderator, and coolant. Popularlycalled a ”swimming pool reactor,” it is used forresearch and training, not for electrical genera-tion. [nuclear-1]

porosity fine holes, voids, interstitials, or openspaces between grains or trapped in grains of amaterial’s microstructure. [mat-1]

Portal bus - Track-mounted, self-propelled person-nelcarrier that holds 8 to 12 people.[mining-1]

Portal - The structure surrounding the immedi-ate entranceto a mine; the mouth of an adit ortunnel.[mining-1]

Portland Cement[mech-1]

Positron Particle equal in mass but opposite incharge to the electron. A positive electron.[nuclear-1]

POSIX Portable Operating System Interface forcomputer environments. A set of IEEE stan-dards designed to provide application portabil-ity. IEEE1003.1 defines a UNIX -like operatingsystem interface, 1003.2 the shell and utilities,and 1003.4 real-time extensions. [soft]

Possession-only license A form of license that al-lows possession but not operation. [nuclear-1]

POSS Persistent Object Service Specification: anOMG specification. [soft]

POSTGRES An active DBMS from Univ. of Calif.Berkeley. [soft]

Postscript A page description language fromAdobe Systems Inc. Its primary application isto describe the appearance of text, graphicalshapes and sampled images on printed or dis-played pages. A program in PostScript can com-municate a document description from a compo-sition system to a printing system in a device-independent way. Many printers now interpretPostScript directly [soft]

Post - The vertical member of a timber set.[mining-1]

Potential Energy The energy stored in a raisedobject (e.g. the weights in a grandfather clock).Potential energy equals mgh, where m is mass, gis the acceleration of gravity, and h is the verticaldistance from a reference location. It is calledpotential energy because the energy can be re-gained when the object is lowered. This typeof potential energy is sometimes called gravita-tional potential energy in order to distinguish itfrom elastic potential energy [struc-1]

Power coefficient of reactivity The change inreactivity per percent change in power. Thepower coefficient is the summation of the mod-erator temperature coefficient of reactivity, thefuel temperature coefficient of reactivity, and thevoid coefficient of reactivity. [nuclear-1]

Power defect The total amount of reactivity addeddue to a given change in power. It can also beexpressed as the integrated power coefficient overthe range of the power change. [nuclear-1]

Power reactor A reactor designed to produce heatfor electric generation (as distinguished from re-actors used for research), for producing radiationor fissionable materials or for reactor componenttesting. [nuclear-1]

PPP Point to Point Protocol. [soft]

PPTP Point to Point Tunneling Protocol. [soft]

Pragma A standardised form of kluge in Ada . [soft]

Precipitation Hardening hardening andstrengthening of a metal alloy by extremely smalland uniformly dispersed particles that precipi-tate from a supersaturated solid solution.[mech-1]

precipitation hardening increase the hardness ofa supersaturated solid solution by heat treatingit to cause a second phase to precipitate out; co-herency of the precipitate/matrix interface andhow well the two lattices match up greatly influ-ence the effect of precipitate. [mat-1]

precipitation heat treatment artificial aging ofmetals in which a constituent precipitates froma supersaturated solid solution. [mat-1]

precipitation in metals, the separation of a newphase from solid or liquid solution, usually withchanging conditions of temperature, pressure, orboth. [mat-1]

Predicate calculus A notation for representinglogical statements which goes beyond proposi-tional calculus in certain ways. [soft]

Preload The tension created in a fastener whenfirst tightened. Reduces after a period of timedue to embedding and other factors. [mech-3]

PREMO Presentation Environment for Multime-dia Objects. An ISO standard under develop-ment for creation, presentation and interactionwith information using single or multiple media[soft]

Preparation plant - A place where coal is cleaned,sized,and prepared for market.[mining-1]

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Prepreg continuous fiber reinforcement pre-impregnated with a polymer resin which is thenpartially cured.[mech-1]

Presentation Manager The user interface to theOS/2 system. [soft]

Pressure Pressure is a similar idea to stress, theforce intensity at a point, except that pressuremeans something acting on the surface of an ob-ject rather than within the material of the object.When discussing the pressure within a fluid, themeaning is equivalent to stress. [struc-1]

Pressure vessel A strong-walled container housingthe core of most types of power reactors. It usu-ally also contains the moderator, neutron reflec-tor, thermal shield, and control rods. [nuclear-1]

Pressurized water reactor (PWR) A power re-actor in which heat is transferred from the core toan exchanger by high temperature water kept un-der high pressure in the primary system. Steamis generated in a secondary circuit. Many re-actors producing electric power are pressurizedwater reactors. [nuclear-1]

Pressurizer A tank or vessel that acts as a headtank (or surge volume) to control the pressure ina pressurized water reactor. [nuclear-1]

Prevailing Torque The torque required to runa nut down a thread on certain types of nutsdesigned to resist vibration loosening. The re-sistance can be provided by a plastic insert or anoncircular head. [mech-3]

Primary Bond interatomic bonds that are rela-tively strong and for which bonding energies arerelatively large.Proportional Limit[mech-1]

Primary roof - The main roof above the immediatetop. Itsthickness may vary from a few to severalthousand feet.[mining-1]

Primary system A term that may be used for re-ferring to the reactor coolant system. [nuclear-1]

Primer (booster) - A package or cartridge of ex-plosivewhich is designed specifically to transmitdetonation to otherexplosives and which does notcontain a detonator.[mining-1]

Probabilistic risk analysis A systematic methodfor addressing the risk triplet as it relates tothe performance of a complex system to under-stand likely outcomes, sensitivities, areas of im-portance, system interactions, and areas of un-certainty. The risk triplet is the set of three ques-tions that the NRC uses to define ?risk?: (1)What can go wrong? (2) How likely is it? and

(3) What are the consequences? NRC identi-fies important scenarios from such an assessment.[nuclear-1]

ProDoc A set of tools for software documentationfrom SPC [soft]

Production expense Production expenses are acomponent of generation expenses that includescosts associated with operation, maintenance,and fuel. [nuclear-1]

Project assurance The process of specifying thesupport system: techniques, internal standards,measurements, tools, and training for a project;counseling the project team in the application ofthese elements and monitoring the adherence tothe standards. [soft]

Project management The process of planning, or-ganizing, staffing, directing, and controlling theproduction of a system. Software tools are avail-able to help with this [soft]

Project planning See Project management . [soft]

PROLOG A language for PROgramming inLOGic. [soft]

Prometheus A high-level programming languagedesigned for logic, mathematics, and artificial in-telligence. It contains elements from C, Pascal,LISP and Prolog plus novel features [soft]

Proof Load The proof load of a nut is the axi-ally applied load the nut must withstand with-out thread stripping or rupture. The proof loadof a bolt, screw or stud is the specified load theproduct must withstand without permanent set.[mech-3]

Prop - Coal mining term for any single post usedas roofsupport. Props may be timber or steel; ifsteel–screwed, yieldable,or hydraulic.[mining-1]

Property Class A designation system which de-fines the strength of a bolt or nut. For metric fas-teners, property classes are designated by num-bers where increasing numbers generally repre-sent increasing tensile strengths. The designa-tion symbol for bolts consists of two parts: 1.The first numeral of a two digit symbol or thefirst two numerals of a three digit symbol approx-imates 1/100 of the minimum tensile strength inMPa. 2. The last numeral approximates 1/10 ofthe ratio expressed as a percentage between min-imum yield stress and minimum tensile stress.Hence a fastener with a property class of 8.8 hasa minimum tensile strength of 800 MPa and ayield stress of 0.8x800=640 MPa. The designa-tion system for metric nuts is a single or doubledigit symbol. The numerals approximate 1/100

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of the minimum tensile strength in MPa. For ex-ample a nut of property class 8 has a minimumtensile strength of 800 MPa. A bolt or screwof a particular property class should be assem-bled with the equivalent or higher property classof nut to ensure that thread stripping does notoccur. [mech-3]

Proportional counter A radiation instrument inwhich an electronic detection system receivespulses that are proportional to the number ofions formed in a gas-filled tube by ionizing radi-ation. [nuclear-1]

Propositional calculus A system of symboliclogic. [soft]

Proprietary information Privately owned knowl-edge or data, such as that protected by a regis-tered patent, copyright, or trademark. [nuclear-1]

PROST Programme for Research in Open SystemsTesting of the DTI [soft]

Protocol An agreement about how to transmitdata, especially across networks. Low level pro-tocols define the electrical and physical stan-dards to be observed, and deal with the transmis-sion and error detection and correction of the bitstream. High level protocols deal with the dataformatting, including the form of messages, theterminal to computer dialogue, files, etc. [soft]

Proton An elementary nuclear particle with a pos-itive electric charge located in the nucleus of anatom. [nuclear-1]

Prototyper An interface builder for the Macintoshfrom Smethers Barnes . [soft]

Prototyping The creation of a model and the sim-ulation of all aspects of a product. CASE toolssupport different degrees of prototyping. Someoffer the end-user the ability to review all aspectsof the user interface and the structure of docu-mentation and reports before code is generated.[soft]

Proximate analysis - A physical, or non-chemical,test ofthe constitution of coal. Not precise, butvery useful for determiningthe commercial value.Using the same sample (1 gram) under con-trolledheating at fixed temperatures and time pe-riods, moisture, volatilematter, fixed carbon andash content are successfullydetermined. Sulfurand Btu content are also generally reported withaproximate analysis.[mining-1]

Prying The amplification of an external force act-ing on a bolt by a lever action which can oc-cur when that force is an eccentric tensile load.[mech-3]

PSA Problem Statement Analyzer: see PSL/PSA .[soft]

Pseudocode A notation resembling a programminglanguage but not intended for actual compila-tion. It usually combines some of the struc-ture of a programming language with an infor-mal natural-language description of the compu-tations to be carried out. It is often produced byCASE systems as a basis for later hand coding.[soft]

PSL Problem Statement Language: see PSL/PSA .[soft]

PSL Problem Statement Language: see PSL/PSA .[soft]

PSL/PSA Problem Statement Language/ProblemStatement Analyser: a CASE system developedby D.Teichroew. It allows computer-based devel-opment and analysis of a statement of require-ments, and assistance during the design phase.[soft]

PS PostScript . [soft]

PSP Personal Software Process. Methods to im-prove the quality of work of software engineers.[soft]

PTI Portable Tool Interface: a standard such asPCTE , allowing interworking between differentsoftware tools via defined interfaces to the userand to the repository or object management sys-tem. [soft]

p-type Semiconductor a semiconductor for whichthe predominant charge carriers responsible forelectrical conduction are holes. Normally, ac-ceptor impurity atoms give rise to the excessholes.[mech-1]

PureLink An incremental linker from Pure Soft-ware [soft]

Purify A debugging tool from Pure Software [soft]

PURL Persistent URL . Instead of pointing directlyto the location of an Internet resource, a PURLpoints to a resolution service that associates thePURL with the actual URL and returns thatURL to the client. See the OCLC PURL Ser-vice . [soft]

PV WAVE Interactive scientific visualisation soft-ware from Visual Numerics - More information.[soft]

Pyrite - A hard, heavy, shiny, yellow mineral, FeS2or irondisulfide, generally in cubic crystals. Alsocalled iron pyrites,fool’s gold, sulfur balls. Ironpyrite is the most common sulfidefound in coalmines.[mining-1]

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QAM Quality Assurance Management. [soft]

QA Quality Assurance. [soft]

QBE A query language. [soft]

QIP Quality Improvement Paradigm. [soft]

Quality factor The factor by which the absorbeddose (rad or gray) is to be multiplied to obtaina quantity that expresses, on a common scalefor all ionizing radiation, the biological damage(rem or sievert) to an exposed individual. It isused because some types of radiation, such asalpha particles, are more biologically damaginginternally than other types. [nuclear-1]

Quantify A performance analysis tool from PureSoftware [soft]

Quantum theory The concept that energy is ra-diated intermittently in units of definite magni-tude, called quanta, and absorbed in a like man-ner. [nuclear-1]

quench rapidly cool a material; typically done to re-tain a structure at room temperature that other-wise is only stable at high temperature. [mat-1]

Query language A language such as SQL wherebyusers of a database system can interactively for-mulate requests, generate reports etc. [soft]

RST

Racking The distortion of a rectangular shape to askewed parallelogram. [struc-1]

Radiation area Any area with radiation levelsgreater than 5 millirems (0.05 millisievert) in onehour at 30 centimeters from the source or fromany surface through which the radiation pene-trates. [nuclear-1]

Radiation detection instrument A device thatdetects and displays the characteristics of ioniz-ing radiation. [nuclear-1]

Radiation (ionizing radiation) Alpha parti-cles, beta particles, gamma rays, x-rays, neu-trons, high-speed electrons, high-speed protons,and other particles capable of producing ions.[nuclear-1]

Radiation, nuclear Particles (alpha, beta, neu-trons) or photons (gamma) emitted from the nu-cleus of unstable radioactive atoms as a result ofradioactive decay. [nuclear-1]

Radiation shielding Reduction of radiation by in-terposing a shield of absorbing material betweenany radioactive source and a person, work area,or radiation-sensitive device. [nuclear-1]

Radiation sickness (syndrome) The complex ofsymptoms characterizing the disease known asradiation injury, resulting from excessive expo-sure (greater than 200 rads or 2 gray) of thewhole body (or large part) to ionizing radiation.The earliest of these symptoms are nausea, fa-tigue, vomiting, and diarrhea, which may be fol-lowed by loss of hair (epilation), hemorrhage, in-flammation of the mouth and throat, and generalloss of energy. In severe cases, where the radia-tion exposure has been approximately 1000 rad(10 gray) or more, death may occur within twoto four weeks. Those who survive six weeks af-ter the receipt of a single large dose of radiationto the whole body may generally be expected torecover. [nuclear-1]

Radiation source Usually a sealed source of radi-ation used in teletherapy and industrial radiog-raphy, as a power source for batteries (as in usein space craft), or in various types of industrialgauges. Machines, such as accelerators and ra-dioisotope generators, and natural radionuclidesmay be considered sources. [nuclear-1]

Radiation standards Exposure standards, per-missible concentrations, rules for safe handling,regulations for transportation, regulations for in-dustrial control of radiation, and control of ra-dioactive material by legislative means. [nuclear-1]

Radiation warning symbol An officially pre-scribed symbol (a magenta or black trefoil) on ayellow background that must be displayed wherecertain quantities of radioactive materials arepresent or where certain doses of radiation couldbe received. [nuclear-1]

Radioactive contamination Deposition of ra-dioactive material in any place where it mayharm persons or equipment. [nuclear-1]

Radioactive decay Large unstable atoms can be-come more stable by emitting radiation. Thisprocess is called radioactive decay. This radia-tion can be emitted in the form of a positivelycharged alpha particle, a negatively charged betaparticle, or gamma rays or x-rays. RadioactiveDecay of an Atom [nuclear-1]

Radioactive series A succession of nuclides, eachof which transforms by radioactive disintegra-tion into the next until a stable nuclide results.The first member is called the parent, the inter-mediate members are called daughters, and the

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final stable member is called the end product.[nuclear-1]

radioactivity spontaneous decay of some isotopesin nuclei. [mat-1]

Radioactivity The spontaneous emission of radia-tion, generally alpha or beta particles, often ac-companied by gamma rays, from the nucleus ofan unstable isotope. Also, the rate at which ra-dioactive material emits radiation. Measured inunits of becquerels or disintegrations per second.Radioactive Decay of an Atom [nuclear-1]

radiography nondestructive method of internal ex-amination in which metal objects are exposed toa beam of X-ray or gamma radiation; differencesin thickness, density, or absorption caused by in-ternal defects or inclusions are apparent in theshadow image produced on a fluorescent screenor photographic film placed behind the object.[mat-1]

Radiography The making of a shadow image onphotographic film by the action of ionizing radi-ation. [nuclear-1]

Radioisotope An unstable isotope of an elementthat decays or disintegrates spontaneously, emit-ting radiation. Approximately 5,000 naturaland artificial radioisotopes have been identified.[nuclear-1]

Radiological survey The evaluation of the radia-tion hazards accompanying the production, use,or existence of radioactive materials under a spe-cific set of conditions. Such evaluation custom-arily includes a physical survey of the disposi-tion of materials and equipment, measurementsor estimates of the levels of radiation that maybe involved, and a sufficient knowledge of pro-cesses affecting these materials to predict haz-ards resulting from expected or possible changesin materials or equipment. [nuclear-1]

Radiology That branch of medicine dealing withthe diagnostic and therapeutic applications of ra-diant energy, including x-rays and radioisotopes.[nuclear-1]

Radionuclide A radioisotope. [nuclear-1]

Radiosensitivity The relative susceptibility ofcells, tissues, organs, organisms, or other sub-stances to the injurious action of radiation.[nuclear-1]

Radium (Ra) A radioactive metallic element withatomic number 88. As found in nature, the mostcommon isotope has a mass number of 226. Itoccurs in minute quantities associated with ura-nium in pitchblende, camotite, and other miner-als. [nuclear-1]

Radon (Rn) A radioactive element that is one ofthe heaviest gases known. Its atomic number is86. It is a daughter of radium. [nuclear-1]

RAD Rapid Application Development. Often ap-plied to tools such as Microsoft Visual Basic ,Borland Delphi, Oracle Power Objects. [soft]

Rad The special unit for radiation absorbed dose,which is the amount of energy from any typeof ionizing radiation (e.g., alpha, beta, gamma,neutrons, etc.) deposited in any medium (e.g.,water, tissue, air). A dose of one rad means theabsorption of 100 ergs (a small but measurableamount of energy) per gram of absorbing tissue(100 rad = 1 gray). [nuclear-1]

RAID Redundant Array of Inexpensive Disks. Adata storage technique. [soft]

Raise - A secondary or tertiary inclined opening,verticalor near-vertical opening driven upwardform a level to connect withthe level above, orto explore the ground for a limited distanceaboveone level.[mining-1]

RAL Rutherford Appleton Laboratory (UK) [soft]

Ramp - A secondary or tertiary inclined opening,driven toconnect levels, usually driven in a down-ward direction, and used forhaulage.[mining-1]

Random Copolymer a polymer in which two dif-ferent mer units are randomly distributed alongthe molecular chain.[mech-1]

Ranks of coal The classification of coal by degreeofhardness, moisture and heat content. ”An-thracite” is hard coal, almostpure carbon, usedmainly for heating homes. ”Bituminous” is soft-coal. It is the most common coal found in theUnited States and isused to generate electricityand to make coke for the steelindustry. ”Subbi-tuminous” is a coal with a heating value between-bituminous and lignite. It has low fixed carbonand high percentagesof volatile matter and mois-ture. ”Lignite” is the softest coal and hasthehighest moisture content. It is used for gener-ating electricityand for conversion into syntheticgas. In terms of Btu or ”heating”content, an-thracite has the highest value, followed by bitu-minous,subbituminous and lignite.[mining-1]

RARE Reseaux Associes pour la Recherche Eu-ropeenne: an association of national and inter-national European networks and users - Moreinformation. [soft]

RBSE Repository Based Software Engineering. ANASA research and development programme[soft]

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RCS A code management system. [soft]

RDBA Remote Database Access: a standard per-mitting the exchange of information between dif-ferent DBMS systems. [soft]

Rdb DEC’s SQL-based relational DBMS forVAX/VMS. [soft]

RDBMS Relational database management system.[soft]

Reaction Any process involving a chemical or nu-clear change. [nuclear-1]

Reaction A reaction is a force exerted by a supporton an object [struc-1]

Reactivity A term expressing the departure of a re-actor system from criticality. A positive reactiv-ity addition indicates a move toward supercrit-icality (power increase). A negative reactivityaddition indicates a move toward subcriticality(power decrease). [nuclear-1]

Reactor coolant system The system used to re-move energy from the reactor core and transferthat energy either directly or indirectly to thesteam turbine. [nuclear-1]

Reactor, nuclear A device in which nuclear fis-sion may be sustained and controlled in a self-supporting nuclear reaction. The varieties aremany, but all incorporate certain features, in-cluding fissionable material or fuel, a moderatingmaterial (unless the reactor is operated on fastneutrons), a reflector to conserve escaping neu-trons, provisions of removal of heat, measuringand controlling instruments, and protective de-vices. The reactor is the heart of a nuclear powerplant. [nuclear-1]

Real-time Generally used to describe systems thatmust guarantee a response to an external eventwithin a given time [soft]

Realtime see real-time [soft]

Reasonable Rational, sensible, or resulting fromsound judgment. [nuclear-1]

reciprocal lattice a group of points arranged abouta center in such a way that the line joining eachpoint of the center is perpendicular to a familyof planes in the crystal, and the length of thisline is inversely proportional to their interplanardistance. [mat-1]

Reciprocal Lattice[mech-1]

Reclamation The restoration of land and environ-mentalvalues to a surface mine site after the coalis extracted. Reclamationoperations are usually

underway as soon as the coal has been removed-from a mine site. The process includes restoringthe land to itsapproximate original appearanceby restoring topsoil and plantingnative grassesand ground covers.[mining-1]

Recovery - The proportion or percentage ofcoal or oremined from the original seam ordeposit.[mining-1]

Recrystallization the formation of a new setof strain-free grains within a previously cold-worked material; normally an annealing heattreatment is necessary.[mech-1]

Red dog - A nonvolatile combustion product of theoxidationof coal or coal refuse. Most commonlyapplied to material resultingfrom in situ, uncon-trolled burning of coal or coal refuse piles. Itissimilar to coal ash.[mining-1]

Redocumentation The creation or revision of a se-mantically equivalent representation within thesame relative abstraction level. The resultingforms of representation are usually consideredalternate views intended for a human audience.[soft]

Reduced Shank Bolt A bolt whose shank diam-eter is smaller than the nominal diameter of thebolt (normally the shank diameter of such a boltis approximately equal to the effective diameterof the thread). [mech-3]

Reengineering see Reverse engineering [soft]

Re-engineering The examination and modificationof a system to reconstitute it in a new form andthe subsequent implementation of the new form- More information. [soft]

Reference man A person with the anatomical andphysiological characteristics of an average indi-vidual that is used in calculations assessing in-ternal dose (also may be called ”standard man”).[nuclear-1]

REFINE A set of reverse engineering tools fromReasoning Systems [soft]

Reflection deflection of a light beam at the inter-face between two media.[mech-1]

Reflector A layer of material immediately sur-rounding a reactor core that scatters back (orreflects) into the core many neutrons that wouldotherwise escape. The returned neutrons canthen cause more fissions and improve the neutroneconomy of the reactor. Common reflector mate-rials are graphite, beryllium, water, and naturaluranium. [nuclear-1]

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reflow soldering process of joining metallic sur-faces through the mass heating of solder/solderpaste to form solder fillets at metallized areas;it creates a mechanical and electrical connectionbetween components and a PCB. [mat-1]

Refraction bending of a light beam upon passingfrom one medium into another.[mech-1]

Refractive Index the ratio of the velocity of lightin a vacuum to the velocity of light in somemedium.[mech-1]

refractory a heat-resistant material. [mat-1]

Refractory a metal or ceramic that may be exposedto extremely high temperatures without deterio-rating rapidly or without melting.[mech-1]

Regulator - Device (wall, door) used to control thevolumeof air in an air split.[mining-1]

Reinforcement[mech-1]

Relational database See Relational DBMS . [soft]

Relational DBMS A DBMS based on the rela-tional model developed by Codd. It allows thedefinition of data structures, storage and re-trieval operations, and integrity constraints. Insuch a database, the data and relations betweenthem are organised in tables. INGRES and Or-acle are well-known examples. [soft]

Relation A table in a relational database [soft]

Relative Magnetic Permeability the ratio of themagnetic permeability of some medium to thatof a vacuum.[mech-1]

Relaxation The loss of clamping force in a boltwhich commonly occurs as a result of embed-ment. Can also be caused by gasket creep, differ-ential temperature expansion or vibration loos-ening. [mech-3]

Released version A version of an object that is notmodifiable, as designated by some person. Alsoknown as baseline. See change management .[soft]

Rem The acronym for roentgen equivalent man isa standard unit that measures the effects of ion-izing radiation on humans. The dose equivalentin rems is equal to the absorbed dose in radsmultiplied by the quality factor of the type ofradiation. [nuclear-1]

Rendezvous In Ada , the method of synchronisingthe activity of different tasks. [soft]

Repository The core of a CASE tool is typicallya DBMS where all development documents arestored. [soft]

REQUEST REliability and QUality of EuropeanSoftware Technology. An Esprit project (nowterminated). [soft]

Requirements The first stage of software develop-ment should be to define requirements with thepotential users. In modern methods these re-quirements should be testable, and will usuallybe traceable in later development stages [soft]

Reserve That portion of the identified coal resourcethatcan be economically mined at the time ofdetermination. The reserve isderived by apply-ing a recovery factor to that component of thei-dentified coal resource designated as the reservebase.[mining-1]

residual stress internal stress in a material oftenresulting from thermal or mechanical straining.[mat-1]

resilience the tendency of a material to return toits original shape after the removal of a stressthat has produced elastic strain. [mat-1]

resin an organic polymer that crosslinks to form athermosetting plastic when mixed with a curingagent. [mat-1]

Resin bolting - A method of permanent roofsupport in whichsteel rods are grouted withresin.[mining-1]

resin flux a resin and small amounts of organic ac-tivators in an organic solvent. [mat-1]

resistance welding type of welding process inwhich the work pieces are heated by the passageof an electric current through the contact; thisincludes spot welding, seam or line welding, andpercussion welding; flash and butt welding aresometimes considered as resistance welding pro-cesses. [mat-1]

Resisting force see internal force. [struc-1]

Resistivity the reciprocal of electrical conductivity,and a measure of a material’s resistance to thepassage of electric current.[mech-1]

Resources Concentrations of coal in such formsthateconomic extraction is currently or may be-come feasible. Coalresources broken down byidentified and undiscoveredresources. Identifiedcoal resources are classified as demonstratedandinferred. Demonstrated resources are furtherbroken down asmeasured and indicated. Undis-covered resources are broken down ashypotheti-cal and speculative.[mining-1]

Respirable dust - Dust particles 5 microns or lessinsize.[mining-1]

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Respirable dust sample - A sample collected withanapproved coal mine dust sampler unit attachedto a miner, or sopositioned as to measure the con-centration of respirable dust to whichthe mineris exposed, and operated continuously over anentire workshift of such miner.[mining-1]

Restricted area Any area to which access is con-trolled for the protection of individuals from ex-posure to radiation and radioactive materials.[nuclear-1]

Restructuring The transformation from one rep-resentation form to another at the same relativeabstraction level, while preserving the subjectsystem’s external behavior (functionality and se-mantics). [soft]

Resultant The resultant of a system of forces is asingle force or moment whose magnitude, direc-tion, and location make it statically equivalentto the system of forces. [struc-1]

Retreat mining - A system of robbing pil-lars in which therobbing line, or line throughthe faces of the pillars beingextracted, re-treats from the boundary toward the shaft orminemouth.[mining-1]

Return idler - The idler or roller underneath thecover orcover plates on which the conveyor beltrides after the load which itwas carrying has beendumped at the head section and starts the re-turntrip toward the foot section.[mining-1]

Return - The air or ventilation that has passedthrough allthe working faces of a split.[mining-1]

Reusability The possibility of using code devel-oped for one application in another application:traditionally achieved using program libraries.Object-oriented programming offers the poten-tial for greater reusability of code via its tech-niques of inheritance , genericity etc. Class li-braries with intelligent browsers and applicationgenerators are under development to help in thisprocess. [soft]

Reuse The planned use of software artefacts for thesolution of multiple problems [soft]

Reverse Engineering The process of analyzing anexisting system to identify its components andtheir interrelationships, and create representa-tions of the system in another form or at a higherlevel of abstraction. Usually undertaken in orderto redesign the system for better maintainability[soft]

RFC Request For Comment. The name by whichInternet standards are known [soft]

RFT Request For Technology - process establishedby OSF to get proposals for new standards. [soft]

rheology study of flow characteristics. [mat-1]

Rib - The side of a pillar or the wall of an entry.Thesolid coal on the side of any undergroundpassage. Same as ribpillar.[mining-1]

Rider - A thin seam of coal overlying a thickerone.[mining-1]

RIFF Resource Interchange File Format from Mi-crosoft [soft]

Righthand Thread A screw thread that isscrewed in by rotating clockwise. The majorityof screw threads are right handed. [mech-3]

Rigid An idealized concept meaning somethingwhich does not deform under loading. In fact, allobjects deform under loading, but in modellingit can be useful to idealize very stiff objects asrigid. [struc-1]

Rigid connection see fixed connection. [struc-1]

RIPE Reseaux IP Europeens. A collaborative or-ganisation of European Internet service providers- More information. [soft]

Ripper - A coal extraction machine that works bytearingthe coal from the face.[mining-1]

RISC Reduced Instruction Set Computer; onewhose design is based on the rapid execution ofa sequence of simple instructions rather than onthe provision of a large variety of complex in-structions. [soft]

Risk-based decisionmaking An approach to reg-ulatory decisionmaking in which such decisionsare made solely based on the results of a proba-bilistic risk analysis. [nuclear-1]

Risk-informed decisionmaking An approach todecisionmaking in which insights from proba-bilistic risk analyses are considered with otherengineering insights. [nuclear-1]

Risk-informed regulation Incorporating an as-sessment of safety significance or relative risk inNRC regulatory actions. Making sure that theregulatory burden imposed by individual regu-lations or processes is commensurate with theimportance of that regulation or process to pro-tecting public health and safety and the environ-ment. [nuclear-1]

Risk-significant When used to qualify an object,such as a system, structure, component, accident

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sequence, or cut set, this term identifies that ob-ject as exceeding a predetermined criterion re-lated to its contribution to the risk from the fa-cility being addressed. One that is associatedwith a level of risk that exceeds a predeterminedsignificance criterion. [nuclear-1]

Risk The combined answers to (1) What can gowrong? (2) How likely is it? and (3) What arethe consequences? [nuclear-1]

RLF Reuse Library Framework of the DoD [soft]

RM-ODP The ISO Reference Model for Open Dis-tributed Environments. [soft]

RMP Reliable Multicast Protocol [soft]

RNIS Reseau Numerique a Integration de Services.French for ISDN . [soft]

Robbed out area - Describes that part ofa mine from whichthe pillars have beenremoved.[mining-1]

Rob - To extract pillars of coal previously leftforsupport.[mining-1]

Roentgen (R) A unit of exposure to ionizing ra-diation. It is the amount of gamma or x-raysrequired to produce ions resulting in a charge of0.000258 coulombs/kilogram of air under stan-dard conditions. Named after Wilhelm Roent-gen, the German scientist who discovered x-raysin 1895. [nuclear-1]

Roll - (1) A high place in the bottom or a low placein thetop of a mine passage, (2) a local thickeningof roof or floor strata,causing thinning of a coalseam.[mining-1]

Rolled Thread A thread formed by plasticallydeforming a blank rather than by cutting. Themajority of standard fasteners have their threadsformed by rolling. Most threads are rolled be-fore any heat treatment operation. Significantimprovements in fatigue life can be achieved byrolling the thread after heat treatment, this im-provement is due to compressive stresses beinginduced in the roots of the thread. However, be-cause of the increased hardness of the bolt blank,the die life can be significantly reduced. Rollingthe thread also generally improves the surfacefinish which can have a beneficial effect on fa-tigue life. [mech-3]

Roller support In two dimensions, a roller sup-port restrains one translation degree of freedom.[struc-1]

Roll protection - A framework, safety canopy, orsimilarprotection for the operator when equip-ment overturns.[mining-1]

Roof bolt - A long steel bolt driven into theroof ofunderground excavations to support theroof, preventing and limitingthe extent of rooffalls. The unit consists of the bolt (up to 4feetlong), steel plate, expansion shell, and palnut. The use of roofbolts eliminates the need fortimbering by fastening together, or”laminating,”several weaker layers of roof strata to builda”beam.”[mining-1]

Roof fall - A coal mine cave-in especially in perma-nentareas such as entries.[mining-1]

Roof jack - A screw- or pump-type hydraulic ex-tension postmade of steel and used as temporaryroof support.[mining-1]

Roof sag - The sinking, bending, or curving ofthe roof,especially in the middle, from weight orpressure.[mining-1]

Roof stress - Unbalanced internal forces in the rooforsides, created when coal is extracted.[mining-1]

Roof support Posts, jacks, roof bolts and beamsused tosupport the rock overlying a coal seamin an underground mine. A goodroof sup-port plan is part of mine safety and coalextraction.[mining-1]

Roof - The stratum of rock or other material abovea coalseam; the overhead surface of a coal work-ing place. Same as ”back” or”top.”[mining-1]

Roof trusses - A combination of steel rods an-chored intothe roof to create zones of com-pression and tension forces and providebet-ter support for weak roof and roof over wideareas.[mining-1]

Room and pillar mining A method of under-ground mining inwhich approximately half of thecoal is left in place to support theroof of the ac-tive mining area. Large ”pillars” are left while”rooms”of coal are extracted. [mining-1]

Room neck - The short passage from the entry intoaroom.[mining-1]

ROOM Real-Time Object-Oriented Modeling. AnObject-Oriented analysis and design approach -More information. [soft]

ROOT An object oriented framework for large scaledata analysis at CERN [soft]

Root Diameter Identical to MINOR DIAMETER[mech-3]

Root version The initial value of an object. Seechange management . [soft]

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rosin a hard, natural resin, consisting of abietic acidand pimaric acids and their isomers, some fattyacids, and terepene hydrocarbons; the resin is ex-tracted from pine trees and subsequently refined.[mat-1]

rosin flux rosin in an organic solvent or rosin as apaste with activators. [mat-1]

Rotation Motion of an object where the path ofevery point is a circle or circular arc. A rotationis defined by a point and vector which determinethe axis of rotation. The direction of the vectoris the direction of the axis and the magnitude ofthe vector is the angle of rotation. [struc-1]

Round - Planned pattern of drill holes fired in se-quence intunneling, shaft sinking, or stopping.First the cut holes are fired,followed by relief,lifter, and rib holes.[mining-1]

Royalty - The payment of a certain stipulated sumon themineral produced. [mining-1]

RPC Remote Procedure Call: a call to a routinethat results in code being executed on a differ-ent system from the one where the request origi-nated. An RPC system allows calling proceduresand called procedures to execute on different sys-tems without the programmer needing to explic-itly code for this. [soft]

RSA Rivest, Shamir, Adleman public key encryp-tion technique (used by PGP ) [soft]

RSVP Rapid System Virtual Prototyping. [soft]

RTEE Real Time Engineering Environment: a setof CASE tools produced by Westmount Technol-ogy B.V. [soft]

RTF Rich Text Format: an interchange format fromMicrosoft for exchange of documents betweenWord and other document preparation systems -More information. [soft]

RTL Register Transfer Language: a kind of HDLused in describing the registers of a computer ordigital electronic system, and the way in whichdata is transferred between them. [soft]

RTSA Real-time structured analysis: versions ofstructured analysis capable of modelling real-time aspects of software. [soft]

Rubbing surface - The total area (top, bottom,and sides)of an airway.[mining-1]

Rubblization A decommissioning technique in-volving demolition and burial of formerly operat-ing nuclear facilities. All equipment from build-ings is removed and the surfaces are decontam-inated. Above-grade structures are demolished

into rubble and buried in the structure’s founda-tion below ground. The site surface is then cov-ered, regraded and, landscaped for unrestricteduse. [nuclear-1]

Rule-based Having to do with systems that inferor use ”rules” (i.e.logical statements). [soft]

Run-of-mine - Raw material as it exists in themine;average grade or quality.[mining-1]

Rupture failure that is accompanied by significantplastic deformation.[mech-1]

SAA Systems Application Architecture: IBM’sfamily of standard interfaces which enable soft-ware to be written independently of hardwareand operating systems. [soft]

Saber-C see CodeCenter . [soft]

Saber-C++ see ObjectCenter . [soft]

SADT Structured Analysis and Design Technique.[soft]

Safeguards As used in regulation of domestic nu-clear facilities and materials, the use of mate-rial control and accounting programs verify thatall special nuclear material is properly controlledand accounted for, and the physical protection(also referred to as physical security) equipmentand security forces. As used by the InternationalAtomic Energy Agency (IAEA), verifying thatthe ”peaceful use” commitments made in bind-ing non-proliferation agreements, both bilateraland multilateral, are honored. [nuclear-1]

Safe shutdown earthquake Is the maximumearthquake potential for which certain struc-tures, systems, and components, important tosafety, are designed to sustain and remain func-tional. [nuclear-1]

Safety fuse - A train of powder enclosed in cotton,juteyarn, or waterproofing compounds, whichburns at a uniform rate; usedfor firing a cap con-taining the detonation compound which in turnsetsoff the explosive charge.[mining-1]

Safety injection The rapid insertion of a chemi-cally soluble neutron poison (such as boric acid)into the reactor coolant system to ensure reactorshutdown. [nuclear-1]

Safety lamp - A lamp with steel wire gauze cover-ing everyopening from the inside to the outsideso as to prevent the passage offlame should ex-plosive gas be encountered.[mining-1]

Safety limit A restriction or range placed upon im-portant process variables that are necessary to

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reasonably protect the integrity of the physicalbarriers that guard against the uncontrolled re-lease of radioactivity. [nuclear-1]

Safety related In the regulatory arena, this termapplies to systems, structures, components, pro-cedures, and controls of a facility or process thatare relied upon to remain functional during andfollowing design-basis events. Their functional-ity ensures that key regulatory criteria, such aslevels of radioactivity released, are met. Exam-ples of safety related functions include shuttingdown a nuclear reactor and maintaining it in asafe shutdown condition. [nuclear-1]

Safety-significant When used to qualify an object,such as a system, structure, component, accidentsequence, or cut set, this term identifies that ob-ject as having an impact on safety, whether de-termined through risk analysis or other means,that exceeds a predetermined significance crite-rion. [nuclear-1]

SAFSTOR A method of decommissioning in whichthe nuclear facility is placed and maintained insuch condition that the nuclear facility can besafely stored and subsequently decontaminatedto levels that permit release for unrestricted use.[nuclear-1]

SAGE System Administrators Guild. A SpecialTechnical Group within USENIX . [soft]

Sampling - Cutting a representative part of an ore(orcoal) deposit, which should truly represent itsaverage value.[mining-1]

Sandstone - A sedimentary rock consisting ofquartz sandunited by some cementing material,such as iron oxide or calciumcarbonate.[mining-1]

saponifier an alkaline chemical added to water toimprove its ability to dissolve rosin flux residues.[mat-1]

SARA Stichting Academisch Rekencentrum Ams-terdam (Academic Computing Services Amster-dam) [soft]

SASD Structured Analysis, Structured Design.[soft]

SA Structured Analysis. [soft]

SATAN Security Administrator Tool for AnalyzingNetworks - More information. [soft]

Sather An object-oriented programming languagethat is a simplified optimized variant of Eiffel[soft]

SBM Solution Based Modelling. a software devel-opment process described in the book ”Develop-ing Object-Oriented Software for the Macintosh”written by Neal Goldstein and Jeff Alger, pub-lished by Addison Wesley in 1992. [soft]

Scalar A mathematical entity which has a numericvalue but no direction (in contrast to a vector).[struc-1]

Scaling - Removal of loose rock from the roof orwalls.This work is dangerous and a long bar(called a scaling bar)is oftenused.[mining-1]

Scattered radiation Radiation that, during itspassage through a substance, has been changedin direction. It may also have been modified bya decrease in energy. It is one form of secondaryradiation. [nuclear-1]

SCCS Source Code Control System: a popular codemanagement systems. [soft]

Schematic capture The process of entering thelogical design of an electronic circuit into a CAEsystem by creating a schematic representation ofcomponents and interconnections. [soft]

Scheme A dialect of Lisp . [soft]

Schlaer-Mellor An Object-Oriented Analysis(OOA) modeling method that addresses the theintegration of structural and behavioral proper-ties. [soft]

Scintillation detector The combination of phos-phor, photomultiplier tube, and associated elec-tronic circuits for counting light emissions pro-duced in the phosphor by ionizing radiation.[nuclear-1]

SCI Scalable Coherent Interface, IEEE Std 1596-1992 [soft]

SCM Software Configuration management orSource Code management . [soft]

Scoop - A rubber tired-, battery- or diesel-poweredpieceof equipment designed for cleaning runwaysand hauling supplies. [mining-1]

SCOPE Software Assessment and CertificationProgramme. An Esprit [soft]

SCO The Santa Cruz Operation, a leading sup-plier of UNIX systems for systems based on Intelmicroprocessors. Suppliers of Xenix and OpenDesktop [soft]

SCPI Standard Commands for Programmable In-struments: a standard complementing IEE 488developed by Hewlett-Packard and promotedby the SCPI Consortium, 8380 Hercules Drive,Suite P3, La Mesa, CA 91942, USA [soft]

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Scram The sudden shutting down of a nuclear re-actor, usually by rapid insertion of control rods,either automatically or manually by the reactoroperator. May also be called a reactor trip. It isactually an acronym for ”safety control rod axeman,” the worker assigned to insert the emer-gency rod on the first reactor (the Chicago Pile)in the U.S. [nuclear-1]

Screw A headed threaded fastener that is designedto be used in conjunction with a pre formed in-ternal thread or alternatively forming its ownthread. Historically, it was a threaded fastenerwith the thread running up to the head of thefastener that has no plain shank. However thisdefinition has largely been superseded to avoidconfusion over the difference between a bolt anda screw. [mech-3]

Screw Thread A ridge of constant section which ismanufactured so that a helix is developed on theinternal or external surface of a cylinder. [mech-3]

ScriptX A dynamic object-oriented programminglanguage and class library for multimedia fromKaleida Labs - More information. [soft]

Scrubber Any of several forms of chemical/physicaldevicesthat remove sulfur compounds formedduring coal combustion. Thesedevices, tech-nically know as flue gas desulfurization sys-tems, combinethe sulfur in gaseous emissionswith another chemical medium to forminert”sludge,” which must then be removed fordisposal.[mining-1]

SCSI Small Computer Systems Interface. [soft]

SDD Software Design Description. ANSI/IEEE1016-1987 specifies IEEE Recommended Prac-tice for SDD. [soft]

SDE Software Development Environment: equiva-lent to SEE . [soft]

SDIF SGML Document Interchange Format. [soft]

SDL Specification and Design Language: definedby the CCITT (recommendation Z100) to pro-vide a tool for unambiguous specification and de-scription of the behaviour of telecommunicationssystems. The area of application also includesprocess control and real-time applications. SDLprovides a Graphic Representation (SDL/GR)and a textual Phrase Representation (SDL/PR),which are equivalent representations of the samesemantics. A system is specified as a set of in-terconnected abstract machines which are exten-sions of the Finite State Machine (FSM) [soft]

SDM Schematic Data Model. [soft]

SDS Schema Definition Set in PCTE . [soft]

SD Structured Design: a program design method.[soft]

Sealed source Any radioactive material or byprod-uct encased in a capsule designed to prevent leak-age or escape of the material. [nuclear-1]

Seam - A stratum or bed of coal.[mining-1]

Secondary radiation Radiation originating as theresult of absorption of other radiation in matter.It may be either electromagnetic or particulatein nature. [nuclear-1]

Secondary roof - The roof strata immediatelyabove thecoalbed, requiring support during theexcavating of coal.[mining-1]

Secondary system The steam generator tubes,steam turbine, condenser, and associated pipes,pumps, and heaters used to convert the heatenergy of the reactor coolant system intomechanical energy for electrical generation.Most commonly used in reference to pres-surized water reactors. (see also ¡/reading-rm/doc-collections/cfr/part020/part020-1003.html¿10 CFR 20.1003 ¡/reading-rm/doc-collections/cfr/part020/part020-1003.html¿).[nuclear-1]

Section - A portion of the working area of a mine.[mining-1]

Section Modulus A property of a cross sectionalshape, which depends on shape, and orientation.Section modulus is usually denoted S, and S =I/c, where I = moment of inertia about an axisthrough the centroid, and c is the distance fromthe centroid to the extreme edge of the section.[struc-1]

SEE Simultaneous Engineering Environment: aCAE framework from DAZIX. [soft]

SEE Software Engineering Environment: a set ofmanagement and technical tools to support soft-ware development, usually integrated in a coher-ent framework; equivalent to an IPSE. [soft]

Seismic category I Structures, systems, and com-ponents that are designed and built to withstandthe maximum potential earthquake stresses forthe particular region where a nuclear plant issited. [nuclear-1]

SEI Software Engineering Institute (Carnegie Mel-lon University) - More information. [soft]

Selective mining - The object of selective miningis toobtain a relatively high-grade mine product;

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this usually entails theuse of a much more expen-sive stopping system and high exploration andde-velopment costs in searching for and developingthe separatebunches, stringers, lenses, and bandsof ore.[mining-1]

Selector In Smalltalk or Objective-C , the syntaxof a message which selects a particular methodin the target object. [soft]

Self An object oriented programming language fromStanford, and an object oriented programmingsystem from Sun Microsystems [soft]

Self-contained breathing apparatus - A self-containedsupply of oxygen used during rescuework from coal mine fires andexplosions; sameas SCSR (self-contained self rescuer).[mining-1]

Self-rescuer A small filtering device carried by acoalminer underground, either on his belt or inhis pocket, to provide himwith immediate pro-tection against carbon monoxide and smoke incase ofa mine fire or explosion. It is a smallcanister with a mouthpiecedirectly attached toit. The wearer breathes through the mouth,thenose being closed by a clip. The canister con-tains a layer of fusedcalcium chloride that ab-sorbs water vapor from the mine air. Thedeviceis used for escape purposes only because it doesnot sustainlife in atmospheres containing defi-cient oxygen. The length of time aself-rescuercan be used is governed mainly by the humidityin themine air, usually between 30 minutes andone hour.[mining-1]

SEL Software Engineering Laboratory. The Insti-tute for Information Technology of the NationalResearch Council Canada - More information .Also NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center [soft]

Semaphore The classic method for restricting ac-cess to data shared between several cooperatingprocesses . [soft]

Sems A screw and washer assembly. A screw orbolt which has a captive washer. The washer isfrequently loose on the plain shank of the fas-tener, the shank diameter being equal to the ef-fective diameter of the thread; the thread be-ing rolled from this diameter. The origin of theword is a frequent question. In the 1930’s E.C. Crowther was a representative for a companythat sold both shakeproof washers and screws.He came up with the idea of placing the washeron the screw before it was thread rolled. The ma-jor diameter of the screw being larger than thewasher hole prevents it from coming off. The Illi-nois Tool Works made machines that producedthese patented pre-as [mech-3]

SE-ODP Support Environment for Open Dis-tributed Processing: an ECMA standard. [soft]

SEP A SASD . [soft]

SERC Software Engineering Research Center (Pur-due University). [soft]

Server A computer which, by means of networkconnections, carries out parts of a computingtask on behalf of one or more remote comput-ers. [soft]

SE Software Engineering, the methods used in de-veloping software. [soft]

SES/workbench An iconic simulation and designtool, linked to some of the major CASE systemsnow available or in development. [soft]

Setext A markup scheme intended for documentsthat are both human- and computer-readable[soft]

Set Screw A set screw is a threaded fastenerthat is typically used to hold a sleeve, collar orgear on a shaft to prevent relative motion. Itis a threaded member that normally does nothave a head. Unlike most other threaded fasten-ers it is basically a compression device normallyused to generate axial thrust. Various sockettypes are provided to allow the set screw to berotated. These types include hexagon socket,fluted socket, screwdriver slot and square head.Various point designs are available (the part ofthe set screw that rotates against the shaft beingsecured) and include: Cup - Hollowed end, is themost commonly used point style. Used when thedigging in of the point is not undesirable. Cone -Pointed end, this type generates the highest tor-sional holding power and is typically used for apermanent connection. Oval - Rounded end thatis typically used when frequent adjustment is re-quired. The oval end prevents/reduces indenta-tion. Flat - Cause little damage to the shaft andare used when frequent adjustment is required.Dog - Flat end with the threads stopping short ofthe end with the end fitting into a hole. [mech-3]

SET Standard d’Echange et de Transfert: a Frenchstandard for exchange of CAD data. [soft]

Severance The separation of a mineral interestfrom otherinterests in the land by grant or reser-vation. A mineral dead or grantof the land re-serving a mineral interest, by the landowner be-foreleasing, accomplishes a severance as does hisexecution of a minerallease.[mining-1]

Severe accident A type of accident that may chal-lenge safety systems at a level much higher thanexpected. [nuclear-1]

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SFA Software Frameworks Association - More in-formation. [soft]

SGI Silicon Graphics Incorporated, a vendor ofgraphical workstations and software [soft]

SGML Open A non-profit, international consor-tium of providers of products and services, ded-icated to accelerating the further adoption, ap-plication, and implementation of SGML - Moreinformation. [soft]

SGML Standard Generalised Markup Language(ISO 8879). A generic markup language for rep-resenting documents. SGML is a system fordefining structured document types, and markuplanguages to represent instances of those docu-ment types [soft]

Shaft - A primary vertical or non-vertical open-ing throughmine strata used for ventilationor drainage and/or for hoisting ofperson-nel or materials; connects the surface withundergroundworkings.[mining-1]

Shaft mine An underground mine in which themain entry oraccess is by means of a verticalshaft.[mining-1]

Shale - A rock formed by consolidation of clay,mud, orsilt, having a laminated structure andcomposed of mineralsessentially unaltered sincedeposition.[mining-1]

Shank That portion of a bolt between the headand the threaded portion. [mech-3]

ShapeTools A code management system for UNIXfrom TU Berlin. [soft]

Shape VC A code management system which offersversion control functionality similar to systemslike RCS with some extensions and a more UNIX-like command interface. [soft]

SHARE An international users group of IBM andcompatible hardware and software [soft]

Shear An system of internal forces whose resultantis a force acting perpendicular to the longitudinalaxis of a structural member or assembly [struc-1]

Shearer - A mining machine for longwall facesthat uses arotating action to ”shear” the ma-terial from the face as it progressesalong theface.[mining-1]

Shear modulus The ratio of shear stress divided bythe corresponding shear strain in a linear elasticmaterial. [struc-1]

Shear strain Strain measuring the intensity ofracking in the material. Shear strain is measuredas the change in angle of the corners of a smallsquare of material. [struc-1]

Shear stress Stress acting parallel to an imaginaryplane cut through an object. [struc-1]

Shelf A public library of classes for the Eiffel lan-guage. [soft]

Shell Script A program written to be interpretedby the shell of an operating system, especiallyUNIX . [soft]

Shell The outer part of an operating system, espe-cially UNIX , which provides the user interface,as opposed to the kernel which provides the ba-sic services to processes. The commonest UNIXshells are the c shell (csh) and the Bourne shell(sh) . [soft]

Shen A security scheme for WWW [soft]

Shielding Any material or obstruction that absorbsradiation and thus tends to protect personnel ormaterials from the effects of ionizing radiation.[nuclear-1]

SHIFT Scalable Heterogeneous Integrated FacilityTestbed. A parallel processing project at CERN. [soft]

Shift - The number of hours or the part of anydayworked.[mining-1]

Shortwall An underground mining method inwhich small areasare worked (15 to 150 feet) bya continuous miner in conjunction withthe use ofhydraulic roof supports.[mining-1]

Shoulder Screws A threaded fastener with aplain, precision machined, shank that is used forlocation purposes. They are typically used forpulleys and linkages. [mech-3]

Shutdown A decrease in the rate of fission (andheat production) in a reactor (usually by the in-sertion of control rods into the core). [nuclear-1]

Shutdown margin The instantaneous amount ofreactivity by which the reactor is subcritical orwould be subcritical from its present conditionassuming all full-length rod cluster assemblies(shutdown and control) are fully inserted exceptfor the single rod cluster assembly of highest re-activity worth that is assumed to be fully with-drawn. [nuclear-1]

Shuttle car A self-discharging truck, generally withrubbertires or caterpillar-type treads, used for

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receiving coal from theloading or mining ma-chine and transferring it to an underground-loading point, mine railway or belt conveyorsystem.[mining-1]

SICL Standard Instrument Control Library: aplatform-independent API for software to con-trol and test electronic instruments conformingto IEE 488 [soft]

SICS Swedish Institute for Computer Science [soft]

Sievert (Sv) The international system (SI) unitfor dose equivalent equal to 1 Joule/kilogram.1 sievert = 100 rem. Named for physicist RolfSievert. [nuclear-1]

SIGhyper Special Interest Group on Hypertext andMultimedia of the SGML [soft]

SIMD Single Instruction Multiple Data: a form ofparallelism in multiprocessor computing wherethere is a single instruction stream (programs)operating concurrently on several data streams.[soft]

SIMEX A set of C++ classes from the University ofMinnesota, that provides a framework for build-ing discrete event simulation models [soft]

SIMON System of Internet Mapping for OrganisedNavigation [soft]

Simscript A free-form, English-like general-purpose simulation language. SIMSCRIPT II.5from CACI has evolved from the original workon SIMSCRIPT by H.Markowitz. [soft]

SIMULA A program based on Algol 60 with ex-tensions for simulation, which was a precursor ofthe object-oriented approach. [soft]

Single Inheritance The property of an object-oriented language which restricts a sub-class tobe derived from only one parent. [soft]

Sinking - The process by which a shaft isdriven.[mining-1]

sintering densification of a particulate ceramiccompact involving a removal of the pores be-tween the starting particles (accompanied byequivalent shrinkage) combined with coalescenceand strong bonding between adjacent particles.[mat-1]

Sisal Streams and Iterations in a Single-AssignmentLanguage. A general-purpose functional lan-guage . [soft]

Skid - A track-mounted vehicle used to hold tripsor carsfrom running out of control. Also it is aflat-bottom personnel orequipment carrier usedin low coal.[mining-1]

Skidmore Bolt Tension Calibrator TheSkidmore-Wilhelm bolt tension calibrator is ahydraulic load cell used to determine the tensionin a bolt or other threaded fastener. The tensionin the bolt compresses fluid in a hydraulic cylin-der, a pressure gauge connected to the cylinderis then calibrated to read in terms of force ratherthan pressure. [mech-3]

Skip - A car being hoisted from a slope orshaft.[mining-1]

Slack - Small coal; the finest-sized soft coal, usual-lyless than one inch in diameter.[mining-1]

Slag - The waste product of the process ofsmelting.[mining-1]

Slate - A miner’s term for any shale or slate ac-companyingcoal. Geologically, it is a dense, fine-textured, metamorphic rock,which has excellentparallel cleavage so that it breaks into thinplatesor pencil-like shapes.[mining-1]

Slate bar - The proper long-handled tool used topry downloose and hazardous material from roof,face, and ribs.[mining-1]

Slickenside - A smooth, striated, polished surfaceproducedon rock by friction.[mining-1]

Slip - A fault. A smooth joint or crack where thestratahave moved on each other.[mining-1]

SLIP Serial Line IP . [soft]

Slope mine An underground mine with an openingthat slopesupward or downward to the coal seam.[mining-1]

Slope - Primary inclined opening, connection thesurfacewith the underground workings.[mining-1]

Sloughing - The slow crumbling and falling awayof materialfrom roof, rib, and face.[mining-1]

Smalltalk A pioneering object-oriented program-ming system developed at the Xerox Palo Altoresearch centre. It includes a language (usuallyinterpreted), a programming environment, andan extensive object library [soft]

SMA Software Maintenance Association. [soft]

SMCC Sun Microsystems Computer Corporation[soft]

SMDL Standard Music Description Language,based on HyTime [soft]

SMG Screen Management Guidelines - a VMSpackage of run-time library routines providingwindows on VT100 terminals. [soft]

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SML/NJ Standard ML of New Jersey. [soft]

SML Standard ML : a functional language . [soft]

SMSL Standard Multimedia Scripting Language[soft]

SNA Systems Network Architecture - IBM’s net-working standard. [soft]

Sniff A C++/C programming environment provid-ing browsing, cross-referencing, design visualiza-tion, documentation, and editing support. De-veloped by UBS Switzerland and marketed bytakeFive Salzburg. (See also SNiFF+ ) [soft]

SNOBOL String Oriented Symbolic Language. Alanguage from the 1960s for string manipluation.[soft]

Snugging The process of pulling parts of a jointtogether, most of the input turn during this pro-cess is absorbed in the joint with little tensionbeing given to the bolt. [mech-3]

Snug Torque The torque required to pull platestogether so that direct contact occurs; often usedin angle control tightening. The snug torque en-sures that metal to metal contact occurs at allthe interfaces within the joint. It is only at thispoint that the required angle of rotation start inorder that the bolt is tightened sufficiently. Thesnug torque is usually determined experimentallyon the actual joint. [mech-3]

Socket Head Cap Screw A screw with a roundhead, usually with a hexagon indentation in thehead for tightening purposes. Used on machineparts and is typically made from high strengthsteel (grade 12.9 in metric). [mech-3]

SoftBench An IPSE from Hewlett-Packard. [soft]

Soft Joint A joint in which the plates and ma-terial between the nut and bolt bearing surfaceshave a low stiffness when subjected to compres-sion by the bolt load. In such a joint, the bolt (ornut) typically has to be tightened by two or morecomplete turns, after it has been torqued to thesnug condition, before the full tightening torqueis achieved. Often the placement of a gasket ina joint results in a soft joint. [mech-3]

Softlab A software engineering company strong inUK and Germany. [soft]

Soft Torque An alternative name, used by somemanufacturers, for snug torque. [mech-3]

Software AG SE company from FRG. [soft]

Software BackPlane A CASE framework fromAtherton . [soft]

Software bus A support environment for heteroge-neous distributed processing, such as the ANSATestbench. [soft]

Software Engineering A systematic approach tothe analysis, design, implementation and main-tenance of software. It usually involves the useof CASE tools . There are various models of thesoftware life-cycle, and many methodologies forthe different phases. [soft]

Software Metrics Measures of software qualitywhich indicate the complexity, understandabil-ity, testability, description and intricacy of code.[soft]

Software through Pictures see StP . [soft]

SOIF Summary Object Interchange Format in theHarvest system. [soft]

solder a low melting point alloy, usually of lead (Pb)and tin (Sn), that can wet copper, conduct cur-rent, and mechanically join conductors. [mat-1]

solder balls small spheres of solder adhering to thelaminate, mask, or conductor surfaces usually af-ter wave or reflow soldering. [mat-1]

solder bridging when solder paste or solder on twoor more adjacent pads come into contact to forma conductive path or bridge. [mat-1]

soldering process of joining metallic surfaces withsolder without melting the base material. [mat-1]

solder mask a dielectric material used to cover theentire surface (except where the joints are to beformed) of a PCB primarily to protect the cir-cuitry from environmental damage; it also helpsto reduce bridging. [mat-1]

solder paste mixture of minute spherical solderparticles, activators, solvent, and a gelling or sus-pension agent. [mat-1]

solidification range the temperature between theliquidus and solidus. [mat-1]

solidification shrinkage crack a crack that formsdue to internal stresses developed from shrink-age during solidification of a metal casting; alsocalled a hot crack. [mat-1]

solidification the change from liquid state to solidstate upon cooling through the melting temper-ature or melting range. [mat-1]

Solid - Mineral that has not been under-mined, sheared out,or otherwise prepared forblasting.[mining-1]

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solid solution a single, solid, homogeneous crys-talline phase containing two or more chemicalspecies. [mat-1]

solidus the temperature in a phase equilibrium di-agram below which no liquids are present; thehighest temperature at which a metal or alloy iscompletely solid. [mat-1]

solution heat treatment heating an alloy to asuitable temperature, holding at that tempera-ture for enough time to allow one or more con-stituents to enter into solid solution, and thenrapidly cooling to hold the consituents in solu-tion. [mat-1]

solvent solution capable of dissolving a solute.[mat-1]

solvus the curve on a phase equilibrium diagramthat defines the limits of solid solubility. [mat-1]

SOMA Semantic Object Modelling Approach. AnObject-Oriented analysis and design approach -More information. [soft]

Somatic effects of radiation Effects of radia-tion limited to the exposed individual, as distin-guished from genetic effects, that may also affectsubsequent unexposed generations. [nuclear-1]

SOM System Object Model. An implementation ofCORBA [soft]

Sounding - Knocking on a roof to see whether it issoundand safe to work under. [mining-1]

Source material Uranium or thorium, or any com-bination thereof, in any physical or chemicalform or ores that contain by weight 1/20 of onepercent (0.05 percent) or more of (1) uranium,(2) thorium, or (3) any combination thereof.Source material does not include special nuclearmaterial. [nuclear-1]

Spad A spad is a flat spike hammered into a woodenpluganchored in a hole drilled into the mine ceil-ing from which isthreaded a plumbline. The spadis an underground survey stationsimilar to theuse of stakes in marking survey points on thesur-face. A pointer spad, or sight spad, is a stationthat allows amine foreman to visually align en-tries or breaks from the mainspad. [mining-1]

Span - The horizontal distance between the sidesupports orsolid abutments along sides of aroadway.[mining-1]

SPARC see ANSI/SPARC Architecture . [soft]

Sparcstation A family of workstations from Sun .[soft]

SPC Software Productivity Centre. A non-profitorganization based in Vancouver, BC, Canadawith the mandate to assist software developers toimprove their software engineering process [soft]

SPDL Standard Page Description Language : adraft within the ODA standard. [soft]

Special nuclear material Plutonium, uranium-233, or uranium enriched in the isotopesuranium-233 or uranium-235. [nuclear-1]

Specific gravity - The weight of a substance com-pared withthe weight of an equal volume of purewater at 4 degrees Celsius.[mining-1]

Specific markup In computerised documentpreparation, a method of adding formatting com-mands to the text to control layout, such as newline, new page, center text etc. (see Genericmarkup ). [soft]

SPEC Standard Performance Evaluation Corpora-tion. Formed to establish, maintain and endorsea standardized set of relevant benchmarks thatcan be applied to the newest generation of high-performance computers [soft]

Spent (depleted) fuel Nuclear reactor fuel thathas been used to the extent that it can no longereffectively sustain a chain reaction. [nuclear-1]

Spent fuel pool An underwater storage and cool-ing facility for spent (used) fuel elements thathave been removed from a reactor. [nuclear-1]

Spent nuclear fuel Fuel that has been removedfrom a nuclear reactor because it can no longersustain power production for economic or otherreasons. [nuclear-1]

spinodal structure a fine homogeneous mixtureof two phases that form by growth of compo-sition waves in a solid solution during suitableheat treatment; the phases differ in compositionfrom each other and the parent phase, but havethe same crystal structure as the parent phase.[mat-1]

SPIN Software Process Improvement Network. Lo-cal interest groups sponsored by SEI . [soft]

SPI Software Process Improvement. [soft]

Split - Any division or branch of the ventilating cur-rent.Also, the workings ventilated by one branch.Also, to divide a pillarby driving one or moreroads through it.[mining-1]

Spreadsheet A type of application which manip-ulates data in rows and columns of cells. Thevalue in a cell is calculated by a formula whichcan involve other cells. Popular in commercialapplications. [soft]

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Spring A distributed object-oriented operating sys-tem from Sun [soft]

Sprite An operating system from Berkeley support-ing multiprocessing and distributed files. [soft]

SPT Software Process Technology. [soft]

SQL2 An extended version of the SQL standard.[soft]

SQL/DS A database package from IBM includinga relational DBMS. [soft]

SQL Structured Query Language: ISO , ANSI stan-dard user front end to a relational database man-agement system. [soft]

Squeeze - The settling, without breaking, ofthe roof andthe gradual upheaval of the floorof a mine due to the weight of theoverlyingstrata.[mining-1]

SRI Stanford Research Institute. [soft]

SSADM A software engineering method andtoolset required by some UK government agen-cies. [soft]

SSII Societe de Service en Ingenierie Informatique.[soft]

SSL Secure Sockets Layer. A scheme for secureWWW communications [soft]

Stability Stability is best defined as the oppositeof instability, which is the occurrence of largestructural deformations which are not the resultof material failure. [struc-1]

Stable isotope An isotope that does not undergoradioactive decay. [nuclear-1]

stainless steel any steel containing at least 10.5%Cr as the principal alloying element. [mat-1]

Standard Review Plan A document that providesguidance to the staff for reviewing an applicationto obtain an NRC license to construct or oper-ate a nuclear facility or to possess or use nuclearmaterials. [nuclear-1]

Standards Although boring, standards are neces-sary for interworking, portability and reusabil-ity. They may be de facto standards for variouscommunities, or officially recognised national orinternational standards. Some important bodiesconcerned in one way or another with Softwarestandards are ISO , ANSI , ECMA , IETF [soft]

Standard Technical Specifications NRC staffguidance on model technical specifications for anoperating license. (See also Technical Specifica-tions.) [nuclear-1]

StarBurst An active DBMS from IBM AlmadenResearch Center. [soft]

STARS Software Technology for Adaptable Reli-able Systems. A DARPA project [soft]

Startup An increase in the rate of fission (and heatproduction) in a reactor (usually by the removalof control rods from the core). [nuclear-1]

STAS Scientific and Technical Attribute and ele-ment Set. Defines standard identifiers for refer-ring to searchable fields in scientific databases.[soft]

State Diagram see State Transition Diagram.[soft]

State transition diagram A diagram consistingof circles to represent states and directed linesegments to represent transitions between thestates. One or more actions may be associatedwith each transition. The diagrom represents aFinite State Machine. [soft]

Statically determinate A statically determinatestructure is one where there is only one distribu-tion of internal forces and reactions which sat-isfies equilibrium. In a statically determinatestructure, internal forces and reactions can be de-termined by considering nothing more than equa-tions of equilibrium. [struc-1]

Statically equivalent Two force systems are stat-ically equivalent when their resultants are equal.Physically, this means that the force systemstend to impart the same motion when appliedto an object; note that the distribution of result-ing internal forces in the object may be different.[struc-1]

Statically indeterminate A statically indetermi-nate structure is one where there is more thanone distribution of internal forces and/or reac-tions which satisfies equilibrium. [struc-1]

Static equilibrium Equilibrium which does not in-clude inertial forces. [struc-1]

Static Friction Friction at rest; a force is requiredto initiate relative movement between two bodies- static friction is the force that resists such rel-ative movement. Sometimes referred to as stic-tion. [mech-3]

Stay time The period during which personnel mayremain in a restricted area in a reactor before ac-cumulating some permissible occupational dose.[nuclear-1]

STD State Transition Diagram . [soft]

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STDWIN A windowing interface from CWI withwindows, menus, modal dialogs, mouse and key-board input, scroll bars, drawing primitives, etcthat is portable between platforms. STDWIN isavailable for Macintosh and the X Window Sys-tem . [soft]

Steam generator The heat exchanger used in somereactor designs to transfer heat from the pri-mary (reactor coolant) system to the secondary(steam) system. This design permits heat ex-change with little or no contamination of the sec-ondary system equipment. [nuclear-1]

steel an iron-based alloy containing manganese,usually carbon, and other alloying elements.[mat-1]

Steeply inclined - Said of deposits and coal seamswith adip of from 0.7 to 1 rad (40 degrees to 60degrees).[mining-1]

Stemming - The noncombustible material used ontop or infront of a charge or explosive.[mining-1]

Step-Lock Bolt (Slb) The Step-Lock Bolt (SLB)is a thread form that has been modified to re-sist vibration loosening. The thread has severalhorizontal portions (i.e. no lead angle) whosepurpose is to prevent torsion being developedin the bolt as a result of the loosening pur-pose. It is these horizontal portions that areknown as steps. Published literature indicatesthat the thread form performs well when testedon a transverse vibration test machine. How-ever manufacturing difficulties may prevent itswidespread adoption. [mech-3]

STEP Standard for the exchange of product modeldata: a draft ISO standard for the exchange ofCAD data. [soft]

StepStone Corporation founded by Brad Cox, re-sponsible for Objective-C . [soft]

Stiffness This is a general term which may be ap-plied to materials or structures. When a force isapplied to a structure, there is a displacement inthe direction of the force; stiffness is the ratio ofthe force divided by the displacement. High stiff-ness means that a large force produces a smalldisplacement. When discussing the stiffness of amaterial, the concept is the same, except thatstress substitutes for force, and strain substi-tutes for displacement; see modulus of elasticity.[struc-1]

Stiffnut A term used to describe a lock nut whichhas a prevailing torque. [mech-3]

STL Semantic Transfer Language. IEEE 1175:IEEE Trial-Use Standard Reference Model forComputing System Tool Interconnections. [soft]

STL Standard Template Library for C++ - Moreinformation. [soft]

Stochastic effects Effects that occur by chance,generally occurring without a threshold level ofdose, whose probability is proportional to thedose and whose severity is independent of thedose. In the context of radiation protection, themain stochastic effects are cancer and genetic ef-fects. [nuclear-1]

stoichiometry refers generally to the compositionof a material and specifically to the relativeatomic proportions of cations and anions. [mat-1]

STONE A Structured and Open Environment: aproject supported by the German Ministry ofResearch and Technology (BMFT) to design, im-plement and distribute a SEE for research andteaching. [soft]

StP Software through Pictures: a set of CASE tools- More information. [soft]

Strain The intensity of deformation at a point inan object. See normal strain and shear strain.[struc-1]

strain the unit of change in the size or shape of abody due to force; a dimensionless number thatcharacterizes the change in dimensions of an ob-ject during a deformation or flow process. [mat-1]

Strand A concurrent programming language fromStrand Software Technologies Limited. [soft]

Strength A very general term that may be ap-plied to a material or a structure. In a material,strength refers to a level of stress at which thereis a significant change in the state of the ma-terial, e.g., yielding or rupture. In a structure,strength refers to a level of level of loading whichproduces a significant change in the state of thestructure, e.g., inelastic deformations, buckling,or collapse. [struc-1]

Strength Grade See PROPERTY CLASS [mech-3]

Stress Area The effective cross sectional area ofa thread when subjected to a tensile force. It isbased upon a diameter which is the mean of thepitch (or effective) and the minor (or root) di-ameters of the thread. The use of this diameterstems from the work of E. M. Slaughter in the1930’s. He completed carefully controlled tests

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using various sizes of standard threads and com-pared their strength with machined bars madefrom the same bar of material. He found thatthis mean diameter gave results that agreed withthe tensile test results to within about 3%. Theerror on the minor and pitch diameters wasabout 15%. Tests completed subsequent to theseby other investigators have also shown that thestress diameter is a reasonable approximation toa thread’s tensile strength. (Referance: ’Testson Thread Sections Show Exact StrengtheningEffect of Threads.’ by E. M. Slaughter, MetalProgress, vol 23, March 1933 pp. 18-20) [mech-3]

stress intensity factor (K) a scale factor to definethe magnitude of the crack-tip stress field; thefunctionality depends on the configuration of thecracked component and the manner in which theloads are applied. [mat-1]

stress ω, force per unit area. [mat-1]

Stress resultant A system of forces which is stat-ically equivalent to a stress distribution over anarea. [struc-1]

Stress The intensity of internal force acting at apoint in an object. Stress is measured in unitsof force per area. See shear stress and normalstress. [struc-1]

Strike - The direction of the line of intersectionof a bedor vein with the horizontal plane. Thestrike of a bed is thedirection of a straight linethat connects two points of equalelevation on thebed.[mining-1]

Stripping ratio The unit amount of overburdenthat must beremoved to gain access to a similarunit amount of coal or mineralmaterial.[mining-1]

Struct A data type in C corresponding to a recordin Ada . [soft]

Structural Bolt A structural bolt is a heavyhexagon head bolt having a controlled threadlength intended for use in structural connectionsand assembly of such structures as buildings andbridges. The controlled thread length is to en-able the thread to stop before the joint ply inter-face to improve the fastener’s direct shear perfor-mance.This term is used in civil and structuralengineering but is not frequently used in mechan-ical engineering. [mech-3]

Structural model An idealization for analysis pur-poses of a real or conceived structure. A struc-tural model includes boundaries limiting thescope of the analysis. Supports occur at these

boundaries, representing things which hold thestructure in place. [struc-1]

Structured analysis One of a number of require-ments analysis methods used in software engi-neering. [soft]

Structured design One of a number of systematictop-down design techniques used in software en-gineering, usually after structured analysis. [soft]

Stud A fastener which is threaded at both endswith an unthreaded shank in between. One end(which often has a thread tolerance which resultsin more thread interference) is secured into atapped hole, the other is used with a nut. [mech-3]

Stump - Any small pillar.[mining-1]

Subbituminous Coal of a rank intermediate be-tween ligniteand bituminous.[mining-1]

Subcriticality The condition of a nuclear reactorsystem when the rate of production of fissionneutrons is lower than the rate of production inthe previous generation owing to increased neu-tron leakage and poisons. [nuclear-1]

Sublanguage One of the languages associated witha DBMS , for example data-definition languageor query language . [soft]

Subsidence The gradual sinking, or sometimesabruptcollapse, of the rock and soil layersinto an undergroundmine. Structures and sur-face features above the subsidence area canbeaffected.[mining-1]

Sumping - To force the cutter bar of a machine intoorunder the coal. Also called a sumping cut, orsumping in.[mining-1]

Sump - The bottom of a shaft, or any other placein a mine,that is used as a collecting point fordrainage water.[mining-1]

SunOS The version of UNIX running on Sun work-stations. [soft]

Sun Sun Microsystems, a US workstation manu-facturer with manufacturing capacity in Europe.[soft]

SunView A windowing system from Sun Microsys-tems, superseded by NeWS . [soft]

Superclass The class from which another class in-herits (see Inheritance ). [soft]

Supercriticality The condition for increasing thelevel of operation of a reactor. The rate offission neutron production exceeds all neutronlosses, and the overall neutron population in-creases. [nuclear-1]

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Supercritical reactor A reactor in which thepower level is increasing with time. [nuclear-1]

Superheating The heating of a vapor, particu-larly steam, to a temperature much higher thanthe boiling point at the existing pressure. Thisis done in some power plants to improve effi-ciency and to reduce water damage to the tur-bine. [nuclear-1]

Support A support contributes to keeping a struc-ture in place by restraining one or more degreesof freedom. In a structural model, supports rep-resent boundary entities which are not includedin the model itself, e.g., foundations, abutments,or the earth itself. For each restrained transla-tion degree of freedom at a support, there is acorresponding reaction force; for each restrainedrotation degree of freedom, there is a reactionmoment. [struc-1]

Support - The all-important function of keep-ing the mineworkings open. As a verb, itrefers to this function; as a noun itrefers toall the equipment and materials–timber, roofbolts,concrete, steel, etc.–that are used to carryout this function.[mining-1]

Surface force A force applied to the surface of anobject. [struc-1]

surface insulation resistance the electrical resis-tance of an insulating material between a pair ofcontacts or conductors; SIR is determined underspecified environmental and electrical conditions.[mat-1]

Surface mine A mine in which the coal lies nearthe surfaceand can be extracted by removing thecovering layers of rock andsoil.[mining-1]

surface mount technology method of assemblingprinted circuit boards where the components aremounted onto the surface of the board ratherthan being inserted into holes in the board. [mat-1]

Survey meter Any portable radiation detectioninstrument especially adapted for inspecting anarea or individual to establish the existence andamount of radioactive material present. [nuclear-1]

Suspension - Weaker strata hanging from stronger,overlyingstrata by means of roof bolts.[mining-1]

SVID System V Interface Definition: allowingsource code portability between different plat-forms running UNIX System V . [soft]

SWOT Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities,Threats commercial product analysis. [soft]

Sybase A relational DBMS vendor. [soft]

Symmetrical Thread A symmetrical thread isone which has both flanks of the thread profileinclined at the same angle. [mech-3]

Syncline - A fold in rock in which thestrata dip inwardfrom both sides toward theaxis. The opposite of anticline.[mining-1]¡palign=”center”¿¡a name=”T”¿¡font face=”CGTimes” size=”4”¿T¡/font¿¡/a¿¡/p¿

System of Forces One or more forces and/or mo-ments acting simultaneously. [struc-1]

System V One of the two major versions of theUNIX system, due to AT&T. (see BSD ). [soft]

TAE Plus A GUI builder from Century Computing- More information. [soft]

TAFIM Technical Architecture Framework for In-formation Management: a DoD standard [soft]

Tailgate - A subsidiary gate road to a conveyor faceasopposed to a main gate. The tailgate com-monly acts as the returnairway and supplies roadto the face.[mining-1]

Tailpiece - Also known as foot section pulley. Thepulleyor roller in the tail or foot section of a beltconveyor around whichthe belt runs.[mining-1]

Tail section - A term used in both belt and chainconveyorwork to designate that portion of theconveyor at the extreme oppositeend from thedelivery point. In either type of conveyor it con-sists ofa frame and either a sprocket or a drumon which the chain or belttravels, plus such otherdevices as may be required for adjusting beltorchain tension.[mining-1]

Taligent A software company set up by Apple, IBMand Hewlett-Packard - More information. [soft]

Taos An operating system kernel for parallel sys-tems from Tao Systems - More information.[soft]

TAPI Telephony Application Programming Inter-face. A CTI standard from Microsoft and Intel.[soft]

Taylor-Forge Method A method developed byfour engineers of the Taylor-Forge Company inChicago in the 1930’s that subsequently formedthe basis of the ASME code for flanged joint de-sign. The assumptions made by the method arenow generally regarded as too simplistic. Thismethod gives rise to the m and y gasket factors.[mech-3]

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TBK Tool Builder Kit: a product from IPSYSwhich allows users to develop CASE tools appro-priate to any software engineering methodology[soft]

TCA Trigger, Condition, Action model. [soft]

TC/IX The LynxOS kernel ported to the MIPSR3000 RISC processor by CDC. [soft]

Tcl/Tk See Tk . [soft]

Tcl Tool command language. A command lan-guage and associated library package running ona number of platforms [soft]

TCP/IP A reliable connection-oriented protocoloriginated by DARPA for internetworking, en-compassing both network and transport levelprotocols. While the terms TCP and IP specifytwo protocols, TCP/IP is often used to refer tothe entire DoD protocol suite based upon these,including Telnet , UDP . [soft]

Teamwork A SASD tool from CADRE Technolo-gies. [soft]

Tecate A software system for exploratory visual-ization of data from networked sources includingWWW - More information. [soft]

Technical Ceramic a ceramic that exhibits ahigh degree of industrial efficiency through care-fully designed microstructures and superb di-mensional precision.[mech-1]

Technical Specifications Part of an NRC licenseauthorizing the operation of a nuclear productionor utilization facility. A Technical Specificationestablishes requirements for items such as safetylimits, limiting safety system settings, limitingcontrol settings, limiting conditions for opera-tion, surveillance requirements, design features,and administrative controls. (See also StandardTechnical Specifications.) [nuclear-1]

TEI Text Encoding Initiative. Defines a com-mon interchange format for literary and linguis-tic data [soft]

TELEPAC The Swiss PTT X.25 Network. [soft]

TeleUSE An interface builder for Motif . [soft]

Telnet The Internet standard protocol for re-mote terminal connection service, running overTCP/IP . Telnet allows a user to log onto a re-mote host computer. [soft]

TELOS The object system of LeLisp Version 16 andEULISP. [soft]

Template code Pseudocode generated by an auto-mated CASE system and requiring further hand-coding before compilation. [soft]

Tension - The act of stretching.[mining-1]

Tension Washers A general name given to springwashers, curved washers, Belleville washers anddisc springs. This type of washer provides a rel-atively low stiffness (compared to the joint stiff-ness) and can be used to act as a spring take-upwith a bolt to prevent movement between parts.[mech-3]

Terrestrial radiation The portion of the nat-ural background radiation that is emitted bynaturally occurring radioactive materials, suchas uranium, thorium, and radon in the earth.[nuclear-1]

Tertiary - Lateral or panel openings (e.g.,ramp,crosscut).[mining-1]

TestCenter A testing environment for C and C++programs from CenterLine Software - More in-formation. [soft]

Testing The process of exercising a product toidentify differences between expected and actualresults and performance. Typically testing isbottom-up: unit test, integrate test and finallysystem test - More information. [soft]

TET Test Environment Toolkit project coordinatedby X/Open [soft]

TeX A computer typesetting program byD.E.Knuth popular for document prepara-tion in the HEP community. It provides specificmarkup for text processing - More information.. [soft]

Texel An object-oriented methodology (see ”ObjectOriented Methods” by Ian Graham). [soft]

Thermal breeder reactor A breeder reactor inwhich the fission chain reaction is sustained bythermal neutrons. [nuclear-1]

thermal expansion change in dimensions of a ma-terial resulting from a change in temperature.[mat-1]

Thermalization The process undergone by high-energy (fast) neutrons as they lose energy by col-lision. [nuclear-1]

Thermal power The total core heat transfer rateto the reactor coolant. [nuclear-1]

Thermal reactor A reactor in which the fissionchain reaction is sustained primarily by thermalneutrons. Most current reactors are thermal re-actors. [nuclear-1]

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Thermal shield A layer, or layers, of high-densitymaterial located within a reactor pressure vesselor between the vessel and the biological shieldto reduce radiation heating in the vessel and thebiological shield. [nuclear-1]

thermal shock stresses induced in a material be-cause of a rapid temperature change or a thermalgradient. [mat-1]

Thermoluminescent dosimeter A small deviceused to measure radiation by measuring theamount of visible light emitted from a crystal inthe detector when exposed to ionizing radiation.[nuclear-1]

Thermonuclear An adjective referring to the pro-cess in which very high temperatures are usedto bring about the fusion of light nuclei, suchas those of the hydrogen isotopes deuterium andtritium, with the accompanying liberation of en-ergy. [nuclear-1]

Think C An extension of ANSIC for the Macin-tosh by Symantec Corporation, similar to C++, to support object-oriented programming tech-niques. [soft]

Thread Crest The top part of the thread. Forexternal threads, the crest is the region of thethread which is on it’s outer surface, for internalthreads it is the region which forms the innerdiameter. [mech-3]

Thread Flank The thread flanks join the threadroots to the crest. [mech-3]

Thread Height This is the distance between theminor and major diameters of the thread mea-sured radially. [mech-3]

Thread Length Length the portion of the fastenerwith threads. [mech-3]

Threadlocker Can be a term used for a numberof vibration resistant products but is now usu-ally reserved for threadlocking adhesives. Specif-ically, a liquid anaerobic adhesive applied to nutor bolt thread, once hardened it fills the innerspaces between the threads to produce a solidplastic of a known shear strength. [mech-3]

Thread Root The thread root is the bottom of thethread, on external threads the roots are usuallyrounded so that fatigue performance is improved.[mech-3]

Thread Runout The portion at the end of athreaded shank which is not cut or rolled tofull depth, but which provides a transition be-tween full depth threads and the fastener shankor head. [mech-3]

Through-steel - A system of dust collection fromrock orroof drilling. The drill steel is hollow, anda vacuum is applied atthe base, pulling the dustthrough the steel and into a receptacle onthe ma-chine. [mining-1]

TickIT A software industry quality assessmentscheme [soft]

TIFF Tag Image File Format from Aldus [soft]

Timber - A collective term for undergroundwoodensupports.[mining-1]

Timbering - The setting of timber supports inmine workingsor shafts for protection againstfalls from roof, face, or rib.[mining-1]

Timber set - A timber frame to support the roof,sides, andsometimes the floor of mine roadwaysor shafts.[mining-1]

Tin/Zinc Alloy Electroplating Tin/zinc alloycoatings (typically 70% tin and 30% zinc) areapplied to threaded fasteners to provide a corro-sion resistant coating. One of the advantages ofsuch coatings is that bimetallic corrosion will notoccur when placed into contact with such metalsas aluminium or steel. [mech-3]

Tipple - Originally the place where the mine carsweretipped and emptied of their coal, and stillused in that same sense,although now moregenerally applied to the surface structures ofamine, including the preparation plant and load-ing tracks.[mining-1]

Tk An extension to Tcl providing an interface tothe X windows . [soft]

TLA Three Letter Acronym. [soft]

Token A basic, grammatically indivisible unit of alanguage. [soft]

Token ring A computer network arbitrationscheme in which conflicts in the transmission ofmessages are avoided by the granting of ”tokens”which give permission to send. A station keepsthe token while transmitting a message, if it hasa message to transmit, and then passes it on tothe next station. [soft]

Tolerance Class A combination of tolerance gradeand a fundamental deviation which is given toan internal or external thread. A tolerance classfor an internal thread when combined with thetolerance class for an external thread gives theclass of fit for the mating threads. [mech-3]

Tolerance Grade The difference between maxi-mum and minimum metal conditions for a tol-erance applied to a screw thread. For metric

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threads the tolerance grade is given a number.[mech-3]

Ton A short or net ton is equal to 2,000 pounds; along orBritish ton is 2,240 pounds; a metric tonis approximately 2,205pounds.[mining-1]

Toolbuilder see TBK [soft]

Top - A mine roof; same as ”back.”[mining-1]

TOP Technical/Office Protocol: a protocol stackfor office automation developed by Boeing fol-lowing the OSI model. This protocol is very sim-ilar to MAP except at the lowest levels, where ituses Ethernet (IEEE 802.3) rather than TokenBus (IEEE 802.4). [soft]

Torque Multiplier A gearbox used to increase thetorque produced by a small hand wrench. [mech-3]

Torque Wrench A manual wrench which incor-porates a gauge or other method to indicate theamount of torque transferred to the nut or bolt.[mech-3]

Torque wrench - A wrench that indicates, as ona dial, theamount of torque (in units of foot-pounds) exerted in tightening aroof bolt.[mining-1]

toughness a measure of the energy absorbed beforeand during the fracture process; it is equal to thearea under the tensile stress-strain curve. [mat-1]

Tractor - A battery-operated piece of equipmentthat pullstrailers, skids, or personnel carriers.Also used for supplies.[mining-1]

Tram - Used in connection with moving self-propelled miningequipment. A tramming motormay refer to an electric locomotive usedfor haul-ing loaded trips or it may refer to the motor in acuttingmachine that supplies the power for mov-ing or tramming themachine.[mining-1]

Transaction A unit of interaction with a DBMS orsimilar system. It must be treated in a coherentand reliable way independent of other transac-tions . [soft]

Transfer - A vertical or inclined connection be-tween two ormore levels and used as an orepass.[mining-1]

Transfer point - Location in the materialshandling system,either haulage or hoist-ing, where bulk material is transferredbetweenconveyances.[mining-1]

transgranular through or across crystals or grains;also called intracrystalline or transcrystalline.[mat-1]

Transient A change in the reactor coolant systemtemperature and/or pressure due to a change inpower output of the reactor. Transients can becaused (1) by adding or removing neutron poi-sons, (2) by that is increasing or decreasing elec-trical load on the turbine generator, or (3) byaccident conditions. [nuclear-1]

transition metal a metal having available electronenergy levels occupied so that the d-band con-tains less than its maximum number of ten elec-trons per atom; the incompletely filled d-levelscause the unique properties of the transition met-als; included in this class are iron, cobalt, nickel,and tungsten. [mat-1]

transition temperature an arbitrarily definedtemperature that lies within the tempera-ture range where metal fracture characteristicschange rapidly; an example is the ductile-to-brittle transition temperature (DBTT). [mat-1]

Translation Motion of an object where the path ofevery point is a straight line. [struc-1]

Transmissibility The principle stating that a forcehas the same external effect on an object re-gardless of where it acts along its line of action.[struc-1]

Transputer A family of microprocessors from In-mos with interprocessor links, programmable inOccam . [soft]

Transuranic element An artificially made, ra-dioactive element that has an atomic numberhigher than uranium in the periodic table of el-ements such as neptunium, plutonium, ameri-cium, and others. [nuclear-1]

Transuranic waste Material contaminated withtransuranic elements that is produced primar-ily from reprocessing spent fuel and from useof plutonium in fabrication of nuclear weapons.[nuclear-1]

Trellis An object-oriented application developmentsystem from DEC, based on the Trellis language.[soft]

tribology the science and technology of interactingsurfaces in relative motion and of the practicesrelated thereto; the science concerned with thedesign, friction, lubrication, and wear of contact-ing surfaces that move relative to one another(e.g. bearings, cams, gears). [mat-1]

triclinic having three axes of any length with noneof the included angles being equal to one anotheror 90 degrees. [mat-1]

Trip - A train of mine cars.[mining-1]

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Trip, reactor A term that is used by pressurizedwater reactors for a reactor scram (see Scram).[nuclear-1]

Tritium A radioactive isotope of hydrogen (one pro-ton, two neutrons). Because it is chemically iden-tical to natural hydrogen, tritium can easily betaken into the body by any ingestion path. Itdecays by beta emission. It has a radioactivehalf-life of about 12.5 years. [nuclear-1]

Troughing idlers - The idlers, located on the up-perframework of a belt conveyor, which sup-port the loaded belt. They areso mountedthat the loaded belt forms a trough in the di-rection oftravel, which reduces spillage and in-creases the carrying capacity ofa belt for a givenwidth.[mining-1]

true strain the ratio of the change in dimension,resulting from a given load, to the magnitude ofthe dimension immediately prior to applying theload; the natural logarithm of the ratio of thegage length at the moment of observation to theoriginal gage length. [mat-1]

true stress the load applied to a material dividedby the cross sectional area over which it acts.[mat-1]

TRUSIX TRUSted unIX operating system. [soft]

TSAPI Telephony Services Application Program-ming Interface. A CTI standard from Novell andAT&T. [soft]

TSEE Technical and Engineering Environment:part of the RTEE toolset. [soft]

TULIP The University Licensing Program. A co-operative research project for networked deliveryand use of journals, by Elsevier Science and nineUS Universities. [soft]

Tunes A project to design a new computing envi-ronment at all levels of software [soft]

Tunnel - A horizontal, or near-horizontal, un-dergroundpassage, entry, or haulageway, thatis open to the surface at bothends. A tun-nel (as opposed to an adit) must pass com-pletely through ahill or mountain.[mining-1]¡palign=”center”¿¡a name=”U”¿¡font face=”CGTimes” size=”4”¿U¡/font¿¡/a¿¡/p¿

Turbine A rotary engine made with a series ofcurved vanes on a rotating shaft, usually turnedby water or steam. Turbines are considered themost economical means to turn large electricalgenerators. [nuclear-1]

Turbine generator (TG) A steam (or water) tur-bine directly coupled to an electrical generator.The two devices are often referred to as one unit.[nuclear-1]

Turn Of The Nut Method See ANGLE CON-TROLLED TIGHTENING [mech-3]

twin bands bands across a crystal grain where crys-tallographic orientations have a mirror image re-lationship to the orientation of the matrix grainacross a composition plane usually parallel to thesides of the band. [mat-1]

twin two portions of a crystal with a definite orien-tation relationship; the orientation of one portionis a mirror image of the orientation of the otherportion across a twinning plane or an orientationderived by rotating one portion about a twinningaxis. [mat-1]

TXL A hybrid functional and rule-based lan-guage for source transformation applicationsfrom Queen’s Univ. Canada. [soft]

UVW

UAA Unified Agent Architecture. [soft]

U Bolt A U shaped fastener threaded at both endsused primarily in suspension and related areas ofvehicles. [mech-3]

UCS Universal Character Set (Universal Multiple-Octet Coded Character Set) of ISO 10646. [soft]

UDP User Datagram Protocol: the Internet stan-dard protocol for sending datagrams betweenuser programs. This protocol neither guaranteesdelivery nor does it require a connection. As aresult it is lightweight and efficient, but all er-ror processing and retransmission must be takencare of by the application program. This proto-col is built on top of IP and uses IP for datagramdelivery (see TCP/IP ). . [soft]

UIL User Interface Language: in OSF /Motif , alanguage for specifying widget hierarchies etc.[soft]

UIMS User Interface Management System: a sys-tem supporting the development and executionof user interfaces, usually on top of windowingsystems. [soft]

UIMX An interface builder for Motif from VisualEdge. [soft]

UIS A VMS graphics programming interface pack-age for VAXstations. [soft]

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UI UNIX International: a consortium includingSun and AT&T, promoting an open environmentbase on UNIX System V including the OpenLook windowing system. [soft]

Ultimate analysis - Precise determination, bychemicalmeans, of the elements and compoundsin coal.[mining-1]

Ultimate Tensile Strength[mech-1]

Ultrasonic Extensometer An instrument whichcan measure the change in length of a fastener ul-trasonically as the fastener is tightened (or mea-sure the length before and after it is tightened).[mech-3]

Ultraviolet Electromagnetic radiation of a wave-length between the shortest visible violet and lowenergy x-rays. [nuclear-1]

Ultrix A version of UNIX based on the Berkeleyversion, designed and implemented by DEC torun on their VAX and DECstation series of pro-cessors. [soft]

Uncertainty range Defines an interval withinwhich a numerical result is expected to lie withina specified level of confidence. The interval of-ten used is the 5-95 percentile of the distributionreporting the uncertainty. [nuclear-1]

under-cooling cooling a material below the tem-perature of an equilibrium phase change fastenough to not allow the occurrence of the trans-formation. [mat-1]

Undercut - To cut below or undermine the coal facebychipping away the coal by pick or mining ma-chine. In some localitiesthe terms ”undermine”or ”underhole” are used.[mining-1]

Underground mine Also known as a ”deep” mine.Usuallylocated several hundred feet below theearth’s surface, an undergroundmine’s coal is re-moved mechanically and transferred by shuttlecar orconveyor to the surface. [mining-1]

Underground station - An enlargement of anentry, drift, orlevel at a shaft at which cagesstop to receive and discharge cars,personnel,and material. An underground station is anylocation wherestationary electrical equipmentis installed. This includes pumprooms, com-pressor rooms, hoist rooms, battery-chargingrooms,etc.[mining-1]

UNI Ente Nazionale Italiano di Unificazione: theItalian national standards body, a member ofISO . [soft]

Unit Cell the basic structural unit of a crystalstructure.[mech-1]

unit cell the smallest repetitive volume that com-prises the complete pattern of a crystal. [mat-1]

Unit train A long train of between 60 and 150 ormorehopper cars, carrying only coal between asingle mine anddestination.[mining-1]

Universal coal cutter - A type of coal cutting ma-chinewhich is designed to make horizontal cutsin a coal face at any pointbetween the bottomand top or to make shearing cuts at any point-between the two ribs of the place. The cutterbar can be twisted tomake cuts at any angle tothe horizontal or vertical.[mining-1]

UNIX Computer operating system developed byBell Labs. Since it was written in C , it waspossible to port it to run on different hardwarearchitectures. It is now offered by many manu-facturers and is the subject of an internationalstandardisation effort. See also OSF [soft]

UNIX International A consortium of AT&T andothers formed to advise on the development ofUNIX . [soft]

Unnecessary regulatory burden Regulatory cri-teria that go beyond the levels that would bereasonably expected to be imposed on licenseesgiven that regulations apply to conditions thatincorporate normal operation and design-basisconditions. [nuclear-1]

UNO Universal Network Objects. [soft]

Unrestricted area The area outside the owner-controlled portion of a nuclear facility (usuallythe site boundary). An area in which a personcould not be exposed to radiation levels in ex-cess of 2 millirems in any one hour from externalsources. [nuclear-1]

Unstable isotope A radioactive isotope (see alsostable isotope). [nuclear-1]

Upcast shaft - A shaft through which airleaves themine.[mining-1]¡p align=”center”¿¡aname=”V”¿¡font face=”CG Times”size=”4”¿V¡/font¿¡/a¿¡/p¿

Uranium A radioactive element with the atomicnumber 92 and, as found in natural ores, anatomic weight of approximately 238. The twoprincipal natural isotopes are uranium-235 (0.7percent of natural uranium), which is fissile, anduranium-238 (99.3 percent of natural uranium),which is fissionable by fast neutrons and is fertile.Natural uranium also includes a minute amountof uranium-234. [nuclear-1]

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Uranium fuel fabrication facility A facility that(1) manufactures reactor fuel containing ura-nium for any of the following: (i) preparationof fuel materials; (ii) formation of fuel materi-als into desired shapes; (iii) application of pro-tective cladding; (iv) recovery of scrap material;and (v) storage associated with such operations;or (2) conducts research and development activ-ities. [nuclear-1]

Uranium hexafluoride production facility Afacility that receives natural uranium in the formof ore concentrate, processes the concentrate,and converts it into uranium hexafluoride (UF6).[nuclear-1]

URC Uniform (previously Universal) ResourceCharacteristic (Citation) - More information.[soft]

URI Uniform (previously Universal) Resource Iden-tifier - More information. [soft]

URL Uniform (previously Universal) Resource Lo-cator [soft]

URN Uniform (previously Universal) ResourceName [soft]

Usenet The practice of using computer networksto exchange items of information grouped into”newsgroups” by topic. This is supported by anumber of diverse and informally applied mech-anisms and conventions [soft]

USENIX The UNIX and Advanced ComputingSystems Professional and Technical Association[soft]

USL UNIX System Laboratories: the software sub-sidiary of AT&T, responsible for UNIX SystemV and related software. [soft]

USMARC See MARC . [soft]

UTF UCS Transformation Format of ISO 10646.[soft]

UTF Universal Text Format, an SGML standardfor the news distribution indistry [soft]

UUCP The large international network of UNIXmachines using the UUCP protocol to exchangenews and electronic mail. . [soft]

Vacancy a normally occupied lattice site fromwhich an atom or ion is missing.[mech-1]

vacancy an unfilled lattice site in a crystal struc-ture. [mat-1]

valence the charge on an ion based on the number ofelectrons transferred or shared within a specificstructure. [mat-1]

Validation The process of evaluating software atthe end of the development process to ensurecompliance with software requirements. [soft]

Valuation - The act or process of valuing or of es-timatingthe value or worth; appraisal.[mining-1]

van der Waals Bond a secondary interatomicbond between adjacent molecular dipoles, whichmay be permanent or induced.[mech-1]

Vapor The gaseous form of substances that are nor-mally in liquid or solid form. [nuclear-1]

V A testbed for distributed system research . [soft]

VAX A range of 32-bit computers manufactured byDEC. [soft]

VAX DOCUMENT A document preparation sys-tem from DEC. [soft]

VAXset A set of software development tools fromDEC, including a language-sensitive editor, com-pilers etc. [soft]

VAXstation A family of workstations from DECbased on their VAX computer architecture. [soft]

VAX/VMS see VMS . [soft]

VB Visual Basic [soft]

VDL Vienna Definition Language: an algebraic def-inition language, see VDM . [soft]

VDM Vienna Definition Method: a program de-velopment method based on formal specificationusing the Meta-IV language [soft]

VDM Virtual Device Metafile. [soft]

Vector A mathematical entity having a magnitudeand a direction in space. [struc-1]

VEE see HP VEE . [soft]

Velocity A vector quantity equal to the rate thatposition changes with time. [struc-1]

Velocity - Rate of airflow in lineal feet perminute.[mining-1]

Ventilation - The provision of a directed flowof fresh andreturn air along all undergroundroadways, traveling roads, workings,and serviceparts.[mining-1]

Verification The process of determining whether ornot the products of a given phase in the life-cyclefulfill a set of established requirements. [soft]

Verilog A Hardware Description Language for elec-tronic design and gate level simulation. [soft]

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Verilog SA A French real-time software engineer-ing company. [soft]

Version A variant of the original value of an object.See change management [soft]

Very high radiation area An area accessible toindividuals, in which radiation levels exceed 500rad (5 gray) in one hour at 1 meter from thesource or from any surface that the radiationpenetrates. [nuclear-1]

VHDL Very High Speed Integrated Circuit De-scription Language: a high-level VLSI designlanguage, now standardised as IEEE Std.1076 -More information. [soft]

VHE Virtual Home Environment: a tool for usingNFS on HP UX . [soft]

Viability assessment A Department of Energy de-cisionmaking process to judge the prospects forgeologic disposal of high-level radioactive wastesat Yucca Mountain based on (1) specific designwork on the critical elements of the repositoryand waste package, (2) a total system perfor-mance assessment that will describe the probablebehavior of the repository, (3) a plan and cost es-timate for the work required to complete a licenseapplication, and (4) an estimate of the costs toconstruct and operate the repository. [nuclear-1]

VIFF Visualization Image File Format [soft]

Viola An experimental hypercard -like interpretedhypertext system by Pei Y. Wei of Berkeley.[soft]

Violation - The breaking of any state or federalmininglaw.[mining-1]

VIPA VMEbus International Physics Association.[soft]

VIP Virtual Internet Protocol - More information.[soft]

virgin a metal made directly from ore by smelting.[mat-1]

Virgin - Unworked; untouched; often said of areaswherethere has been no coal mining.[mining-1]

Virtual Effective Diameter The effective diam-eter of a thread but allowing for errors in pitchand flank angles. [mech-3]

Viscoelasticity a type of deformation exhibitingthe mechanical characteristics of viscous flow andelastic deformation.[mech-1]

viscosity coefficient of resistance to flow. [mat-1]

Viscosity the ratio of the magnitude of an ap-plied shear stress to the velocity gradient thatit produces.[mech-1]

Visual Basic A programming language and devel-opment environment for Windows - More infor-mation. [soft]

Visualisation A method by which a computer sys-tem presents data to the user - More information.[soft]

Visualization A method by which a computer sys-tem presents data to the user - More information.[soft]

VITAL VHDL Initiative Towards ASIC Libraries[soft]

VITA VMEbus International Trade Association.[soft]

VLIW Very Long Instruction Word. [soft]

VLSI Very Large Scale Integration. Refers to semi-conductor chips composed of very many tightlypacked logic elements or memories - More infor-mation. [soft]

VM/CMS Virtual Machine / Conversational Mon-itor System: an IBM operating system runningon 43xx and 30xx series machines, providing ef-ficient support for large numbers of interactiveusers. [soft]

VMEbus A widely accepted backplane interconnec-tion bus system developed by a consortium ofcompanies led by Motorola, now standardized asIEEE Std. 1014. [soft]

VME Common abbreviation for VMEbus . [soft]

VM see VM/CMS . [soft]

VMS The operating system offered by DEC as thestandard system for their VAX range of proces-sors. [soft]

Void - A general term for pore space or other re-openings inrock. In addition to pore space, theterm includes vesicles, solutioncavities, or anyopenings either primary or secondary. [mining-1]

Void coefficient of reactivity A rate of change inthe reactivity of a water reactor system resultingfrom a formation of steam bubbles as the powerlevel and temperature increase. [nuclear-1]

Void In a nuclear power reactor, an area of lowerdensity in a moderating system (such as steambubbles in water) that allows more neutron leak-age than does the more dense material aroundit. [nuclear-1]

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Volatile matter - The gaseous part, mostly hydro-carbons, ofcoal.[mining-1]¡p align=”center”¿¡aname=”W”¿¡font face=”CG Times”size=”4”¿W¡/font¿¡/a¿¡/p¿

VPN Virtual Private Network. A computer net-work that appears to be a dedicated network toa particular set of users, whilst in fact using theinfrastructure of public switched networks. [soft]

VRML Virtual Reality Modeling Language [soft]

VRTX Virtual Real-Time Executive: a real-timeoperating system from ReadySystems for theMotorola 68000 family of microprocessors. [soft]

VSF Virtual Software Factory: a product from Sys-tematica which allows users to develop CASEtools appropriate to any software engineeringmethodology. [soft]

VSX Verification Suite.for X/open [soft]

VTS A suite of test programs for Motif from OSF .[soft]

VUE Visual User Environment: a desktop managerfrom Hewlett-Packard. [soft]

VUIT Visual User Interface Tool: a WYSIWYGeditor from DEC for building human interfacesto applications using OSF . It provides an in-teractive interface to UIL and the Motif toolkit.[soft]

Vulcanization nonreversible chemical reaction in-volving sulfur or other suitable agent whereincross-links are formed between molecular chainsin rubber materials.[mech-1]

VxWorks A real-time software development envi-ronment and multitasking operating system fromWind River Systems that uses the VRTX kernel.[soft]

W3C The World Wide Web Consortium [soft]

W3 See WWW . [soft]

WABI A software package to emulate Windows un-der X [soft]

Waisted Shank Bolt A bolt whose diameter isless than the minor diameter of the thread. Fre-quently the shank of the bolt is 0.9 times the rootdiameter. [mech-3]

WAIS Wide Area Information Servers: a dis-tributed document retrieval system supportedby Apple, Thinking Machines and Dow Jones.Servers answer questions from personal worksta-tions following a standard protocol [soft]

WAN Wide Area Network. [soft]

Warehouse See Data Warehouse . [soft]

WARIA Workflow And Reengineering Interna-tional Association [soft]

Wasserman A.I.(Tony) Wasserman: president ofIDE . [soft]

Waste, radioactive Radioactive materials at theend of a useful life cycle or in a product that isno longer useful and should be properly disposedof. [nuclear-1]

Waste - That rock or mineral which must be re-moved from amine to keep the mining schemepractical, but which has no value.[mining-1]

Waterfall A software life-cycle model showing thephases of the cycle and their interrelations on acharacteristic diagram. [soft]

Water Gauge (standard U-tube) - Instrumentthat measuresdifferential pressures in inches ofwater.[mining-1]

Watt An electrical unit of power. 1 watt = 1Joule/second. It is equal to the power in a circuitin which a current of one ampere flows across apotential difference of one volt. [nuclear-1]

Watt-hour An electrical energy unit of measureequal to 1 watt of power supplied to, or takenfrom, an electrical circuit steadily for 1 hour.[nuclear-1]

WE A hypertext authoring system developed at theUniversity of North Carolina. [soft]

WEB See Literate Programming and also World-Wide Web [soft]

Web See WWW . [soft]

Wedge - A piece of wood tapering to a thinedge and usedfor tightening in conventionaltimbering.[mining-1]

Weight - Fracturing and lowering of the roof strataat theface as a result of mining operations, as in”taking weight”.[mining-1]

Weighting factor (WT) Multipliers of the equiv-alent dose to an organ or tissue used for radi-ation protection purposes to account for differ-ent sensitivities of different organs and tissues tothe induction of stochastic effects of radiation.[nuclear-1]

Weight The force on an object resulting from grav-ity. [struc-1]

welding the joining of two metal surfaces that havebeen heated, melted, and fused together. [mat-1]

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Well-logging All operations involving the loweringand raising of measuring devices or tools thatcontain licensed material or are used to detectlicensed materials in wells for the purpose of ob-taining information about the well or adjacentformations that may be used in oil, gas, mineral,groundwater, or geological exploration. [nuclear-1]

Westmount A Netherlands software engineeringvendor of RTEE and other products. [soft]

WFMS WorkFlow Management System. Softwareto manage workflow in an organisation. [soft]

Wheeling service The movement of electricityfrom one system to another over transmissionfacilities of intervening systems. Wheeling ser-vice contracts can be established between two ormore systems. [nuclear-1]

Whetstone A benchmark program. [soft]

White damp - Carbon monoxide, CO. A gas thatmay be presentin the afterdamp of a gas- or coal-dust explosion, or in the gasesgiven off by a minefire; also one of the constituents of the gasespro-duced by blasting. Rarely found in mines un-der othercircumstances. It is absorbed by thehemoglobin of the blood to theexclusion of oxy-gen. One-tenth of 1

Whole-body counter A device used to identifyand measure the radioactive material in thebody of human beings and animals. It usesheavy shielding to keep out naturally existingbackground radiation and ultrasensitive radia-tion detectors and electronic counting equip-ment. [nuclear-1]

Whole-body exposure Whole body exposure in-cludes at least the external exposure, head,trunk, arms above the elbow, or legs above theknee. Where a radioisotope is uniformly dis-tributed throughout the body tissues, ratherthan being concentrated in certain parts, the ir-radiation can be considered as whole-body expo-sure. [nuclear-1]

Widget In the X Window System , a window withits associated input and output functions. Wid-gets, provided by a library package, are used asbuilding blocks to construct a wide variety of ap-plication environments [soft]

Width - The thickness of a lode measured at rightangles tothe dip.[mining-1]

Willow A Motif -based user interface program forbibliographic information retrieval systems, fromWashington University [soft]

WIMP Windows, Icons, Menus and Pointers(or maybe Windows, Icons, Mouse, Pull-downmenus). The style of user interface made popu-lar by the Apple Macintosh and now available inother GUI s, such as OSF and NeWS . [soft]

Windowing The ability to interact at will with sev-eral processes in a computer through reserved ar-eas, or windows, on a VDU screen. [soft]

Window manager In a window system , a pro-gram which manages windows on a screen. Itis responsible for moving and resizing windows,and other practical functions. [soft]

Windows 4GL INGRES/Windows 4GL is a graph-ical tool running on top of workstation nativewindowing systems, to help developers to builduser interfaces to INGRES applications. [soft]

Windows A window system and user interface soft-ware from Microsoft for MS-DOS . [soft]

Window system Software which supports window-ing . Examples are the X Window System , andproprietary systems on the Macintosh, NeXTand Sun. [soft]

Winning - The excavation, loading, and removalof coal orore from the ground; winning followsdevelopment.[mining-1]

Winze - Secondary or tertiary vertical or near-verticalopening sunk from a point inside a minefor the purpose of connectingwith a lower level orof exploring the ground for a limited depthbelowa level.[mining-1]

Wipe sample A sample made for the purpose ofdetermining the presence of removable radioac-tive contamination on a surface. It is done bywiping, with slight pressure, a piece of soft filterpaper over a representative type of surface area.It is also known as a ”swipe” or ”smear” sample.[nuclear-1]

Wire rope - A steel wire rope used for wind-ing in shaftsand underground haulages. Wireropes are made from medium carbonsteels. Var-ious constructions of wire rope are designatedby thenumber of strands in the rope and thenumber of wires in eachstrand. The followingare some common terms encountered: airplanes-trand; cablelaid rope; cane rope; elevator rope;extra-flexiblehoisting rope; flat rope; flattened-strand rope; guy rope; guy strand;hand rope;haulage rope; hawser; hoisting rope; lang layrope; lay;left lay rope; left twist; nonspinningrope; regular lay; reverse-laidrope; rheostat rope;right lay; right twist; running rope; specialflexi-ble hoisting rope; standing rope; towing hawser;transmissionrope.[mining-1]

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Wire Thread Insert A threaded insert that istypically used for tapped hole repair or to im-prove the thread stripping strength of softer met-als such as zinc and aluminium. The inserts areassembled into a previously tapped hole using aspecial driving tool. A thread locking compoundis frequently used to secure the insert if the as-sembly is subject to vibration. [mech-3]

WISE Web-Integrated Software metrics Environ-ment. A WWW based software management andmetrics system from NASA [soft]

WISE World Wide Information System for Sup-port of R&D Efforts. A project funded by theCommission of the European Communities toencourage ”Transborder Telework and ResearchCo-operation” [soft]

WIT WWW Interactive Talk [soft]

WizDOM Software for distributed UNIX systemmanagement from TIVOLI Systems of Austin,Texas [soft]

Word A document processing program from Mi-crosoft. [soft]

work angle in arc welding, the angle between theelectrode and one of the joints. [mat-1]

Workflow The way in which work units (informa-tion or actions) are routed through an organi-sation. It can be formalised in terms of rulesincorporating dependencies, staff roles etc. andhence automated - More information. [soft]

work hardening (strain hardening) increase dis-location density in metals through straining amaterial with an applied stress; degree of hard-ening may be manipulated through recovery andrecrystallization. [mat-1]

Working face - Any place in a mine where materialisextracted during a mining cycle.[mining-1]

Working place - From the outby side of the lastopencrosscut to the face.[mining-1]

Working section - From the faces to the pointwhere coal isloaded onto belts or rail cars to be-gin its trip to the outside.[mining-1]

Workings - The entire system of openings in a minefor thepurpose of exploitation.[mining-1]

Working - When a coal seam is being squeezed bypressurefrom roof and floor, it emits creakingnoises and is said to be”working”. This oftenserves as a warning to the miners thatadditionalsupport is needed.[mining-1]

Workstation A general-purpose computer designedto be used by one person at a time and which of-fers higher performance than normally found in aPC, especially with respect to graphics, process-ing power and the ability to carry out severaltasks at the same time. [soft]

WOSC World Organisation of Systemics and Cy-bernetics. [soft]

wrought alloy an alloy that is suitable for mechan-ical forming below melting-point temperatures.[mat-1]

wrought iron commercial iron that contains lessthan 0.3% carbon and 1.0 or 2.0% slag, giving itductility and toughness. [mat-1]

WSL Wide Spectrum Language developed for pro-gram transformation - More information. [soft]

WSRD Worldwide Software Resources Discovery.An ASSET service. [soft]

WWW World-Wide Web: a project originated atCERN , aimed at providing hypertext -style ac-cess to information from a wide range of sources[soft]

WYSIWYG What You See Is What You Get: afeature of document preparation systems allow-ing the user to work on a document displayedon a screen in exactly the same form as it willappear when printed. [soft]

XYZ

X11R4 Version 11 release 4 of the X protocol ; thecurrent standard. [soft]

X11R5 Version 11 release 5 of the X protocol ; thenew standard. [soft]

X.25 A standard networking protocol suite ap-proved by the CCITT and ISO . This protocolsuite defines standard physical, link, and net-working layers (layers 1 through 3). X.25 net-works are in use throughout the world. [soft]

X3J16 The C++ standard technical committee.[soft]

X.400 The set of CCITT communications stan-dards covering mail services provided by datanetworks. [soft]

X.500 The set of CCITT standards covering elec-tronic mail directory services. [soft]

X An abbreviation for the X Window System . [soft]

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Xanadu An electronic publishing project due toTed Nelson, the inventor of the term hypertext[soft]

Xaw The Athena Set: a set of widgets distributedwith the X Window System . [soft]

X client An application process in the X WindowSystem : it gains access to windowing servicesvia the Xlib library. These are translated by thesystem into messages to an X server . [soft]

X Consortium A vendor consortium supportingdevelopment of the X Window System [soft]

X-designer A user interface builder for Motif fromImperial Software Technology. [soft]

X.desktop A desktop manager for UNIX from IXI.[soft]

XDR eXternal Data Representation - universal ma-chine independent form of data sent by RPC sys-tems. Described in RFC 1014. [soft]

XENIX UNIX . [soft]

Xerox PARC The Palo Alto Research Center ofthe Xerox Corporation [soft]

Xerox The Document Company [soft]

XIE X Image Extension: extensions to the X pro-tocol to handle images. [soft]

Xlib X library: program interface to the X WindowSystem . [soft]

XML Xperimental Markup Language based onCML . [soft]

xmosaic See Mosaic [soft]

XMP The X/Open Management Protocols. [soft]

XNS Xerox Network Services: a proprietary net-working architecture developed by Xerox. [soft]

XOM The X/Open Abstract Data ManipulationAPI . [soft]

X/Open An international consortium of vendorswhose purpose is to define the X/Open Com-mon Applications Environment designed to pro-vide applications portability [soft]

Xopen See X/Open [soft]

XPG3 Version 3 of XPG . [soft]

XPG X/open Portability Guide: defines the inter-faces of the X/Open Common Applications En-vironment. [soft]

X protocol A standard used by clients (applica-tions) and servers in the X Window System forexchanging requests for window manipulations.[soft]

X-radiation electromagnetic radiation of the samenature as visible light, but having a wavelengthapproximately one thousandth that of visiblelight. [mat-1]

X-rays Penetrating electromagnetic radiation (pho-ton) having a wavelength that is much shorterthan that of visible light. These rays are usu-ally produced by excitation of the electron fieldaround certain nuclei. In nuclear reactions, it iscustomary to refer to photons originating in thenucleus as x-rays. [nuclear-1]

X-ray tube a device that produces X-rays by theimpact of high-speed electrons on a metal target.[mat-1]

XRemote A serial line protocol for the X WindowSystem . [soft]

XRN A newsreader program for Usenet news baseon the X Window System . host. [soft]

X server A process which controls a bitmap displaydevice.in an X Window System . It performsoperations on request from client applications.[soft]

XSI X/Open System Interface specification: partof the X/Open Common Applications Environ-ment. [soft]

X terminal An intelligent terminal which operatesas an X server directly connected to Ethernet .[soft]

X-terminal An intelligent terminal with a built-in implementation of an X server , which cantherefore communicate with computers runningX clients . [soft]

Xterminal See X-terminal [soft]

XTI X/open Transport Interface. [soft]

Xt The intrinsics of theX Window System Toolkit.[soft]

XUI X User Interface: program interface to the XWindow System supported by DEC. [soft]

Xv++ A library of classes from Interface Engineer-ing, Stevenage, providing a C++ ApplicationProgrammer’s Interface to the XView toolkit.[soft]

XView A toolkit from Sun, derived from SunView, providing an Open Look user interface for Xapplications. [soft]

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XVT eXtensible Virtual Toolkit: a product allow-ing applications to be developed independent ofGUI . [soft]

Xwindow See X Window System [soft]

X Windows See X Window System . [soft]

X Window System A specification for device-independent windowing operations on bitmapdisplay devices, developed by MIT and now a defacto standard supported by the X consortium -More information. [soft]

yacc Yet Another Compiler Compiler. A parser gen-erator for UNIX by S.C.Johnson [soft]

YACL Yet Another Class Library - More informa-tion. [soft]

Y++ An Object-Oriented analysis and design ap-proach [soft]

Yellowcake Yellowcake is the product of the ura-nium extraction (milling) process; early produc-tion methods resulted in a bright yellow com-pound, hence the name /yellowcake/. The ma-terial is a mixture of uranium oxides that canvary in proportion and in color from yellow to or-ange to dark green (blackish) depending at whichtemperature the material was dried (level of hy-dration and impurities). Higher drying temper-atures produce a darker, less soluble material.Yellowcake is commonly referred to as U3O8 andis assayed as pounds U3O8 equivalent. This finepowder is packaged in drums and sent to a con-version plant that produces uranium hexafluo-ride (UF6) as the next step in the manufactureof nuclear fuel. [nuclear-1]

Yield Controlled Tightening A fastener tight-ening method which allows a fastener to be tight-ened to yield. The angle of rotation of the fas-tener is measured relative to the applied torque,yield being assessed when the slope of the rela-tionship changes to below a certain value. Some-times called joint controlled tightening. [mech-3]

Yield strain A material deformed beyond its yieldstrain, no longer exhibits linear elastic behavior.See yield stress. [struc-1]

Yield Strength the stress required to producea very slight yet specified amount of plasticstrain.[mech-1]

Yield stress A material loaded beyond its yieldstress, no longer exhibits linear elastic behavior.Metals, particularly mild steel, generally have avery well defined yield stress compared to othermaterials. Yield stress is sometimes called yieldstrength. [struc-1]

Young’s Modulus see Modulus of Elasticity theratio of stress to strain when deformation is to-tally elastic.[mech-1]

YP Yellow Pages: a name server in NFS to linkclients desiring a service with servers who canprovide it. [soft]

YSM Yourdon Structured Method [soft]

Z39.50 Information Retrieval Service Definitionand Protocol Specification for Library Applica-tions. Developed by NISO , this standard speci-fies an OSI application layer service to allow anapplication on one computer to query a databaseon another; it is used by WAIS [soft]

Z A formal specification language developed at Ox-ford University for describing computing sys-tems, based on set theory and predicate calculus[soft]

ZEBRA A data management package in the CERNProgram Library [soft]

Zinc/Cobalt Alloy Electroplating This coatingis similar to zinc electroplating completed in anacid chloride bath - a small amount of cobalt(typically about 1%) is added to increase theplating speed. [mech-3]

Zinc Electroplating Zinc electroplating is a com-mon way to protect threaded fasteners from theeffects of corrosion. Zinc electroplating can becompleted in acid chloride, alkaline or cyanidebaths. Supplemental coatings are frequently ap-plied to zinc electroplating. These coatings,such as zinc phosphate or chromate conversion,provide a protective passivation layer on thezinc which assists in reducing the corrosion rate.[mech-3]

Zinc Phosphate Conversion Coating A zincphosphate conversion coating is frequently addedto zinc electroplated parts, such as bolt threads,to improve corrosion resistance. This type ofchemical conversion coating provides a protec-tive passivation layer on the zinc improving itscorrosion resistance. [mech-3]

ZOG A high-performance hypertext system devel-oped at Carnegie-Mellon University. [soft]

zone any group of crystal planes that are all parallelto one line, called the zone axis. [mat-1]

CMI-MDP Programme

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CMI-MDP Programme