A form of helical scan in which the tape is wrapped around the head drum for a full 360 degrees (the tape looking like the lowercase Greek letter alpha). There is only one head which writes a complete stripe for every revolution of the head.

plural of alpha wrap

(biochemistry) The predominant form of vitamin E.

plural of alpha strike

(military) A sudden, massive, devastating concentration of fire upon a single opponent in order to immediately neutralize the opponent with overwhelming force.

A program or application that is not feature-complete and is not usually released to the public. Developers are usually still deciding on what features the program should have at this stage of software development. This stage comes before the alpha version, and is the first software development stage given to a program.

(organic chemistry) Any hydroxy acid, of general formula RCH(OH)COOH, used in the cosmetic industry for their supposed property of reducing wrinkles.

(biochemistry) Any amino acid that has the amino and carboxylic functional groups attached to the same carbon atom; especially those amino acids that occur naturally as peptides and proteins.

plural of alpha-amino acid

(computing theory) An algorithm for pruning a search tree by eliminating any branch that is demonstrably inferior to a branch previously encountered.