Snow Leopard (redirected from Uncia uncia)

snow leopard

 or ounce

Endangered species ( Uncia uncia;) of nocturnal long-haired cat that inhabits the high mountains of Central Asia and India. It is about 6 ft (1.8 m) long, including the 3-ft (1-m) tail, stands about 2 ft (0.5 m) tall, and weighs 60–120 lb (27–55 kg). Its dense, soft coat, consisting of an insulating undercoat and outer coat of 2-in. (5-cm) hairs, is pale grayish with dark rosettes and a dark streak along the spine. The whitish fur of the underparts may be 4 in. (10 cm) long. It preys on marmots, wild sheep and goats, birds, and other animals. It is hunted principally for the market in goods used in Asian traditional medicine.

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Snow Leopard

Version 10.6 of the Mac OS X operating system, released in 2009. Although faster than Leopard because all system components support 64 bits, for most users, Snow Leopard is considered more of a refinement than a major update. It includes support for 16TB (that's terabytes!) of memory, as well as enhancements to QuickTime (QuickTime X) and the user interface.

Snow Leopard only runs on Intel-based Macs. Apple switched to Intel in 2006, and Snow Leopard marks an official break from PowerPC Macs such as the G4 and G5. Also included is native support for Exchange, Microsoft's corporate mail server.

For the Programmer
Snow Leopard enables application programmers to take advantage of multiple cores with its "Grand Central" programming interface (API), which also makes the Mac OS more multicore efficient. In addition, Open Compute Language (OpenCL) lets programmers access the graphics processor (GPU) for general-purpose computing. See Leopard.

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Snow Leopard 

(Uncia uncia), also called irbis or ounce, a carnivorous mammal of the family Felidae. Body length, approximately 130 cm; tail length, approximately 90 cm; weight, 26–40 kg. The snow leopard’s fur is smoky gray, almost white, with dark spots forming rings; it is particularly luxuriant during the winter. The snow leopard inhabits the mountain ranges of Central Asia at altitudes between 3,000 and 5,000 m. In the winter it descends to the coniferous forest zone. It preys primarily on mountain goats and is rarely a threat to livestock. The number of snow leopards in the USSR has sharply dwindled owing to their capture for zoos and to the decrease in the number of mountain goats.