All articles starting with P
28,818 articles
Point cloud segmentation
Point cloud segmentation is the task of labeling every point in a 3D LiDAR scan, a core perception step for autonomous driving, robotics, and mapping.
Point coordination function
The point coordination function (PCF) is an optional IEEE 802.11 wireless LAN access method in which the access point polls stations to transmit, designed for voice and video but rarely implemented commercially.
Point Counter Point
Point Counter Point is Aldous Huxley's 1928 satirical novel of ideas about 1920s English intellectual society, structured on the musical principle of counterpoint and written as a roman à clef featuring characters based on D. H. Lawrence, Oswald Mosley, and Huxley himself.
Point counting (stereology)
Point counting is a stereological method that estimates the volume or volume fraction of a structure by counting how many points of a regularly spaced grid fall on it in sections.
Point diffraction interferometer
The point diffraction interferometer (PDI), introduced by Smartt and Strong in 1972, is a common-path optical interferometer using a pinhole-diffracted reference wave to measure wavefronts with subnanometer accuracy.
Point foot
A point foot is a robot foot modeled as contact at a single point with no actuation, making legged robots underactuated and standard for most quadrupeds.
Point group
A point group is a group of symmetry operations, such as rotations and reflections, that all leave one common point fixed; crystallography has exactly 32 such groups.
Point guard
Point guard ("1", lead guard): basketball's primary ball-handler and playmaker who runs the offense. Covers role, skills, statistics, history from Cousy to Curry, and the pass-first versus scoring-guard debate.
Point in polygon
The point in polygon (PIP) problem asks whether a query point lies inside, outside, or on the boundary of a polygon, a basic operation in computational geometry.
Point interpolation method
The point interpolation method (PIM) is a meshless numerical method for solving partial differential equations of computational mechanics, introduced by G. R. Liu and Y. T. Gu in 2001.
Point Iria wreck
The Point Iria wreck, also known as the Iria wreck, is a Late Bronze Age shipwreck off Cape Iria in the Gulf of Argos, Greece, dated to about 1200 BC.
Point kinetics equations
The point kinetics equations are a pair of coupled differential equations that model changes in a nuclear reactor's neutron population, treating the core as a single point.
Point Lepreau Nuclear Generating Station
Point Lepreau Nuclear Generating Station, also known as Point Lepreau Nuclear Power Plant, is a nuclear power station in New Brunswick, Canada, operating since 1983.
Point location
Point location is a computational geometry method that preprocesses a subdivision of space so repeated queries quickly report the region containing a query point, with optimal structures achieving logarithmic query time in linear space.
Point Lowly
Point Lowly, a peninsula in northern Spencer Gulf near Whyalla, South Australia, hosts the 1883 Point Lowly Lighthouse and the only known large spawning aggregation of giant Australian cuttlefish.
Point Merge System
The Point Merge System is an air traffic method for sequencing arriving aircraft, developed by EUROCONTROL in 2006, first used in Oslo in 2011 and now deployed at 61 airports.
Point mutation
Point mutation (point variant): a genetic alteration at a single nucleotide, defined as substitution by NCI and MeSH, or any single base pair added, deleted, or changed by NHGRI; outcomes include synonymous, missense, nonsense, and splicing effects.
Point Nine
Point Nine, also known as Point Nine Capital, is a Berlin-based seed-stage venture capital firm founded in 2008 that invests in B2B SaaS, marketplaces, and AI.
Point No. 1
Point #1 (also written Point No. 1) is the 1999 debut album by American rock band Chevelle, produced by Steve Albini at Electrical Audio and released on Squint Entertainment, the band's only album for that label.
Point of Entry
Point of Entry, Judas Priest's seventh studio album (February 1981, Columbia/CBS), a commercial hard rock follow-up to British Steel; UK peak No. 14, US No. 39, silver/gold certified, produced by Tom Allom at Ibiza Sound Studios.
Point of Know Return
Point of Know Return is Kansas' fifth studio album, released October 11, 1977 on Kirshner, produced by Jeff Glixman. It peaked at No. 4 on Billboard, went sextuple platinum, and yielded "Dust in the Wind," the band's highest-charting single at No. 6 on the Hot 100.
Point of no return
The point of no return (PNR) in aviation is the last point along a route from which an aircraft can still turn back with required fuel reserves intact.
Point of No Return (1993 film)
Point of No Return (The Assassin) is John Badham's 1993 American remake of Luc Besson's La Femme Nikita, starring Bridget Fonda as Maggie, a condemned killer retrained as a government assassin; it grossed $30 million domestically.
Point of Order
Point of Order! is a 1964 documentary by Emile de Antonio condensing 188 hours of kinescopes of the 1954 Army-McCarthy hearings into 97 narration-free minutes, ending with Welch's decency rebuke.
Point of sale
Point of sale (POS) is the location and card-present payment channel where a consumer pays a merchant, as distinct from ATM withdrawals and online e-commerce payments.
Point of View (hardware company)
Point of View was a Dutch computer hardware company based in Amsterdam that made NVIDIA-based graphics cards and later Mobii tablets; its operating company went bankrupt in November 2016.
Point Olema U.S. Venture Capital Portfolio, L.P.
Point Olema U.S. Venture Capital Portfolio, L.P., formerly Main Post U.S. Venture Capital Portfolio, L.P., is a San Francisco venture capital fund of funds founded in 2019.
Point operation (image processing)
A point operation is an image processing method that computes each output pixel's value from only the corresponding input pixel, through mappings such as brightness, contrast, or gamma adjustment.
Point pair features
Point pair features are local geometric descriptors that encode the relative position and orientation of two oriented points, underpinning a widely used 2010 method for 6D pose estimation in robotic bin picking.
Point pattern analysis
Point pattern analysis is the branch of statistics that tests whether the locations of events in space are clustered, dispersed, or random, fitting point process models.