Alpha

Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia - Cite This Source

Alpha may refer to:

The Greek letter alpha

Alpha (letter), a letter in the Greek alphabet. α may be used as the symbol for:

• Angle of attack in aerodynamics
• Common-base current gain of a transistor in electronics
• In physics:
• Angular acceleration
• Fine-structure constant, a fundamental physical constant
• Alpha particle, form of particle radiation
• H-alpha, or H-α, an emission line created by hydrogen atoms
• The alpha carbon in organic chemistry
• The significance level in statistical hypothesis testing
• Alpha channel, describing transparency and opacity in computer graphics
• The alpha coefficient in evaluating financial returns
• Thermal diffusivity
• A symbol to denote Direct proportion, in mathematics
• In Astronomy (Bayer designation):
• The brightest star in a constellation.
• The first unit in a sequence.

Place names

Australia

• Alpha, QueenslandUnited States
• Alpha, Illinois
• Alpha, Michigan
• Alpha, Minnesota
• Alpha, New Jersey
• Alpha, Ohio
• Alpha Ridge, AlaskaArctic Ocean
• Alpha Ridge, an undersea ridge

Media, literature and fiction

• Alpha (record label), a record label promoting the connection between music and art in CD packaging, focusing in early music and period instrument recordings.
• Alpha (band), a British electronic music group
• Alpha Books, an imprint of Penguin Group (USA)
• Alpha Comics, an American comic book publisher
• Alpha (Alice Nine album), an album by J-rock/Visual Kei band Alice Nine
• Alpha (Sevendust album), an album by the band Sevendust
• Alpha (album), an album by the band Asia
• Alpha Magazine, Australian men's sport magazine
• Alpha (computer), a fictional computer in Mike Walker's radio play Alpha
• Alpha (search engine), a search engine by Yahoo!
• Alpha (Magic: The Gathering), the first Magic: The Gathering cards set
• Alpha 5/Alpha 6/Alpha 7, nicknames of the characters in the Power Rangers television programs
• Alpha 60, a sentient computer in the film Alphaville
• Alpha TV, a Greek terrestrial channel
• ARC Trooper A-17, nicknamed "Alpha", a clone trooper from various Star Wars comics
• The highest social class in Aldous Huxley's novel Brave New World
• Moonbase Alpha, the primary setting for the television series Space: 1999
• Alpha (DC Comics), a character from DC Comics
• Alpha the Ultimate Mutant, a character featured in Marvel Comics
• Alpha (planet) in Isaac Asimov's novel Foundation and Earth
• Alpha (known as Proto in Japan) is the glitched prototype of the Internet and final boss of the video game MegaMan Battle Network 3
• Alpha (song), instrumental by Vangelis
• In the Earthbound, or Mother, series of Nintendo RPG games by Shigesato Itoi, α (along with other Greek letters) is used as a classification of the strength of a PSI technique.

Science and mathematics

• Alpha Centauri, the brightest star system in the southern constellation of Centaurus
• Alpha (biology), "alpha male" and "alpha female", the highest ranking individuals in a community of social animals
• Alpha (investment), a measurement of risk-adjusted performance
• Alpha waves, recorded by electroencephalography
• Cronbach's alpha, a statistical measure of reliability
• ALPHA, the Antihydrogen Laser PHysics Apparatus, an experiment at CERN.
• Another term for the angle of attack on an aircraft's wing.

Computing

• Alpha (machine learning), the degree to which a learning agent takes into account new information
• ALPHA refers to the set of ASCII characters A-Z and a-z, as defined in RFC 4234
• The ALPHA programming language
• Alpha, a development stage of software
• DEC Alpha, a microprocessor/central processing unit (CPU)
• AlphaServer - DEC now HP machine successor to the VAX
• AlphaStation - DEC now HP workstation successor to the VAX

Other

• Alpha chapter, the original or first chapter of a Greek letter society that has multiple chapters across different college or university campuses.
• Latin alpha, an open front unrounded vowel
• Space Station Alpha, the original name and unofficial call sign for the International Space Station
• The first letter in the NATO phonetic alphabet
• Service "A", one of the uniforms of the United States Marine Corps
• Alpha (radio navigation), a Russian radio navigation system similar to the former Omega Navigation System
• Alpha 2000, a light aircraft built in New Zealand
• Alpha Group, a dedicated counter-terrorism unit that belonged to OSNAZ
• Alpha class submarine, a Russian fast attack nuclear submarine
• Alpha course, an introductory course in Christianity
• Sony α or Sony Alpha, a digital SLR series by Sony
• Minolta α or Minolta Alpha, the Japanese name for a series of SLR cameras known as Maxxum or Dynax elsewhere, and predecessor to Sony's brand of the same name
• Tropical Storm Alpha (2005)
• Alpha Industries, clothing company
• Canada Association for Learning & Preserving the History of WWII in Asia, organization
• Alpha quadra, in Socionics
• H3 Alpha, a variant of the Hummer H3 SUV.
• Alpha Legion, a Chaos Space Marines company from Warhammer 40,000.
• Alpha is the primal Internet in the video game Megaman Battle Network 3.
• Alpha Amplifier is a USA company that has manufactured the finest amateur radio amplfiers in the world for over 30 years.

See also

• Alfa
• Beta

Alpha in financial terms: Expected return not explained by movements in the market. Alpha is usuallymeasured as the excess return of an investment above its benchmark. A positive alpha isthe extra return awarded to the investor for taking active risk, instead of accepting themarket (benchmark) return

Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia © 2001-2006 Wikipedia contributors (Disclaimer)
This article is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License.
Last updated on Sunday March 09, 2008 at 17:47:00 PDT (GMT -0700)
View this article at Wikipedia.org - Edit this article at Wikipedia.org - Donate to the Wikimedia Foundation