process

1. Law

a. a summons, writ, etc., commanding a person to appear in court

b. the whole proceedings in an action at law

2. Biology a natural outgrowth or projection of a part, organ, or organism

3. Computing a distinct subtask of a computer system which can be regarded as proceeding in parallel with other subtasks of the system

4. Film, TV denoting a film, film scene, shot, etc., made by techniques that produce unusual optical effects

Collins Discovery Encyclopedia, 1st edition © HarperCollins Publishers 2005

process

[′prä‚ses]

(anatomy)

A projection from the central mass of an organism.

(computer science)

To assemble, compile, generate, interpret, compute, and otherwise act on information in a computer.

A program that is running on a computer.

(engineering)

A system or series of continuous or regularly occurring actions taking place in a predetermined or planned manner to produce a desired result.

process

1. <operating system, software> The sequence of states of an executing program. A process consists of the program code (which may be shared with other processes which are executing the same program), private data, and the state of the processor, particularly the values in its registers. It may have other associated resources such as a process identifier, open files, CPU time limits, shared memory, child processes, and signal handlers.

One process may, on some platforms, consist of many threads. A multitasking operating system can run multiple processes concurrently or in parallel, and allows a process to spawn "child" processes.

This article is provided by FOLDOC - Free Online Dictionary of Computing (foldoc.org)

process

(1) To manipulate data in the computer. The computer is said to be processing no matter what action it is taking upon the data; whether the data are actually being updated in a database or just being displayed on screen.

In order to evaluate a computer system's performance, the time it takes to process data internally is often analyzed separately from the time it takes to get it in and out of the computer. The I/O (input/output) is usually more time consuming than the processing. For an explanation of how the computer processes data, see "Processing" under the term computer. See also process technology.

(2) Software running in the computer. When a computer is booted, numerous processes are started. Some are parts of the operating system, while others are applications that have been designated to run at startup. In a Windows computer, pressing Ctrl-Alt-Del launches the Task Manager, which displays all running processes. In the Mac, the Activity Monitor in the Applications/Utilities folder shows the processes. See Windows processes.

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References in periodicals archive

Patients such as the one reported here in whom the styloid process was thick and completely continuous with the hyoid bone are rare, with only three previous cases reported [7-9].

Chronological Progression of an Enlarged Styloid Process: A Case Report of Eagle Syndrome

Fractured skulls and skulls with partially or completely damaged styloid process were discarded from the present study.

Morphological study of the styloid process of temporal bone in the population of North-East India

The independent categorical variables were coded as follows: diameter/sheath (the ratio of the arterial diameter to the sheath; 0 stands for diameter/sheath >1 and 1 stands for diameter/sheath ≤1); puncture site (the distance from the radius styloid process to puncture site; 0 stands for 5 cm, 1 stands for 4 cm, 2 stands for 3 cm, 3 stands for 2 cm, 4 stands for 1 cm, and 5 stands for 0 cm).

Influence of Puncture Site on Radial Artery Occlusion After Transradial Coronary Intervention

4% of the general population with enlarged styloid process is symptomatic hence giving the actual incidence of about 0.16%.5 The syndrome usually affects people of age 30.

Eagle syndrome; radiological evaluation and management

Although it is seen more rarely, temporal bone osteomas can originate from other regions such as squamous and mastoidal parts, internal and external auricular canals,glenoid foss, middle ear, eustachian tube, petrous apex and styloid process.1-3

A rare case of petrous apex osteoma

Palpations were carried out on the anterior, middle and posterior fibers of the temporalis, the coronoid process, the TMJ lateral and posterior aspects, the deep and superficial masseter (anterior part, body, gonial part), the styloid process, the anterior belly of the digastric muscle and the medial and lateral pterygoid muscles.

ROLE OF MALOCCLUSION IN TENSION TYPE HEADACHE

The sphenomandibular and stylomandibular ligaments provide medial support coursing from the spine of the sphenoid bone to the lingual of the mandibular foramen and from the styloid process to the mandibular ramus, respectively.

MR imaging of the TMJ: a pictorial essay

(6,11) Additional, critical margins around the styloid process and mastoid may also be resected and sent separately for pathologic evaluation.

Data Set for the Reporting of Ear and Temporal Bone Tumors: Explanations and Recommendations of the Guidelines From the International Collaboration on Cancer Reporting

The styloid process on the left side was elongated, but on the affected right side it was normal in length.

TONSILLOLITH AS A CAUSE OF GLOSSOPHARYNGEAL NEURALGIA--AN UNUSUAL ENTITY

Dominant arm of the participant was kept approximately 20[degrees] abduction, and the arm length was measured from the C7 spinous process to the ulnar styloid process. [13]

Effect of arm length and body mass index on abductor pollicis brevis long latency reflex