23-letter words containing a, c, u, s
- data acquisition system — A data acquisition system is a system that acquires data, generally by digitizing analog channels and storing the data in digital form.
- deterministic automaton — (theory) A finite-state automaton in which the overall course of the computation is completely determined by the program, the starting state, and the initial inputs. The class of problems solvable by such automata is the class P (see polynomial-time algorithm).
- digital subscriber line — (communications, protocol) (DSL, or Digital Subscriber Loop, xDSL - see below) A family of digital telecommunications protocols designed to allow high speed data communication over the existing copper telephone lines between end-users and telephone companies. When two conventional modems are connected through the telephone system (PSTN), it treats the communication the same as voice conversations. This has the advantage that there is no investment required from the telephone company (telco) but the disadvantage is that the bandwidth available for the communication is the same as that available for voice conversations, usually 64 kb/s (DS0) at most. The twisted-pair copper cables into individual homes or offices can usually carry significantly more than 64 kb/s but the telco needs to handle the signal as digital rather than analog. There are many implementation of the basic scheme, differing in the communication protocol used and providing varying service levels. The throughput of the communication can be anything from about 128 kb/s to over 8 Mb/s, the communication can be either symmetric or asymmetric (i.e. the available bandwidth may or may not be the same upstream and downstream). Equipment prices and service fees also vary considerably. The first technology based on DSL was ISDN, although ISDN is not often recognised as such nowadays. Since then a large number of other protocols have been developed, collectively referred to as xDSL, including HDSL, SDSL, ADSL, and VDSL. As yet none of these have reached very wide deployment but wider deployment is expected for 1998-1999.
- digital subscriber loop — Digital Subscriber Line
- discontinuous variation — variation in phenotypic traits in which types are grouped into discrete categories with few or no intermediate phenotypes. Compare continuous variation.
- dishonourable discharge — dismissal from the US armed forces by a court martial as a result of serious misconduct
- disjunctive normal form — (DNF) A logical formula consisting of a disjunction of conjunctions where no conjunction contains a disjunction. E.g. the DNF of (A or B) and C is (A and C) or (B and C).
- eastern orthodox church — Orthodox Church (def 1).
- education correspondent — a journalist who reports news in the field of education or teaching
- electronic surveillance — use of electronic devices to spy, observe
- encapsulated postscript — (EPS) An extension of the PostScript graphics file format developed by Adobe Systems. EPS is used for PostScript graphics files that are to be incorporated into other documents. An EPS file includes pragmas (special PostScript comments) giving information such as the bounding box, page number and fonts used. On some computers, EPS files include a low resolution version of the PostScript image. On the Macintosh this is in PICT format, while on the IBM PC it is in TIFF or Microsoft Windows metafile format.
- entrance qualifications — academic requirements
- fall through the cracks — to break without complete separation of parts; become fissured: The plate cracked when I dropped it, but it was still usable.
- fraunhofer gesellschaft — (company) (FhG, FhG IIS, Institut für Integrierte Schaltungen) A german company, named after the physicist. IIS is Integrated Circuit Institute. FhG are known for their research on audio compression, especially MPEG-1 Layer-3 (MP3).
- fully associative cache — (memory management) A type of cache in which data from any address can be stored in any cache location. The whole address must be used as the tag (the value that identifies a block of data in the cache). All tags must be compared simultaneously (associatively) with the requested address and if one matches then its associated data is accessed. This requires an associative memory to hold the tags which makes this form of cache more expensive. It does however solve the problem of contention for cache locations (cache conflict) since a block need only be flushed when the whole cache is full and then the block to flush can be selected in a more efficient way. The alternatives are direct mapped cache or set associative cache.
- function point analysis — (programming) (FPA) A standard metric for the relative size and complexity of a software system, originally developed by Alan Albrecht of IBM in the late 1970s. Functon points (FPs) can be used to estimate the relative size and complexity of software in the early stages of development - analysis and design. The size is determined by identifying the components of the system as seen by the end-user: the inputs, outputs, inquiries, interfaces to other systems, and logical internal files. The components are classified as simple, average, or complex. All of these values are then scored and the total is expressed in Unadjusted FPs (UFPs). Complexity factors described by 14 general systems characteristics, such as reusability, performance, and complexity of processing can be used to weight the UFP. Factors are also weighted on a scale of 0 - not present, 1 - minor influence, to 5 - strong influence. The result of these computations is a number that correlates to system size. Although the FP metric doesn't correspond to any actual physical attribute of a software system (such as lines of code or the number of subroutines) it is useful as a relative measure for comparing projects, measuring productivity, and estimating the amount a development effort and time needed for a project. See also International Function Point Users Group.
- functional requirements — (specification) What a system should be able to do, the functions it should perform. This term is used at both the user requirements analysis and software requirements specifications phases in the software life-cycle. An example of a non-functional requirement is an initialisation sequence incorporated into the software that is specific to a given customer.
- german southwest africa — a former name of Namibia.
- grand duchess charlotte — Grand Duchess (Charlotte Aldegonde Elise Marie Wilhelmine) 1896–1985, sovereign of Luxembourg 1919–64.
- have one's work cut out — to have as much work as one can manage
- have struck/hit paydirt — If you say that someone has struck paydirt or has hit paydirt, you mean that they have achieved sudden success or gained a lot of money very quickly.
- heaviside unit function — the function that is zero for any number less than zero and that is 1 for any number greater than or equal to zero.
- heterogeneous catalysis — Heterogeneous catalysis is catalysis in which the catalyst does not take part in the reaction that it increases.
- hire purchase agreement — an agreement between a seller and a buyer for the buyer to purchase something on hire purchase
- human rights campaigner — a person who campaigns for human rights
- incontestability clause — a clause in a life-insurance or health-insurance policy stating that the insurer cannot contest the policy after a stated period of time.
- industrial psychologist — a person who studies human behaviour and cognitive processes in relation to the working environment
- inland marine insurance — insurance chiefly covering risks to goods and means of transportation involved in the transporting of goods overland or by inland waterways.
- interfascicular cambium — cambium that develops between the vascular bundles.
- internal reconstruction — the hypothetical reconstruction of an earlier stage of a language or of some part of it, as its phonology, by deductions from irregularities in its present structure, as the reconstruction of a stage in English when certain instances of r were related to s in a systematic way by comparing the pair was:were to other pairs, as lose:forlorn.
- islamic fundamentalists — Muslims who believe in, advocate or support a conservative adherence to literal or traditional interpretations of the Qu'ran and the Sunnah
- joint test action group —
- katmai new instructions — Streaming SIMD Extensions
- largemouth (black) bass — a black bass (Micropterus salmoides) found in warm, sluggish waters
- laughlin air force base — U.S. Air Force installation in SW Texas, SE of Del Rio.
- light and shade surface — (in architectural shades and shadows) a surface in a plane tangent to the parallel rays from the theoretical light source, treated as a shade surface.
- locally euclidean space — a topological space in which each point has a neighborhood that is homeomorphic to an open set in a Euclidean space of specified dimension.
- lossy audio compression — (audio, compression) Any audio compression algorithm which does not retain every bit of data but only reproduces a signal that sounds more or less like the original. Examples are MP1, MP2, MP3, AAC.
- lymphoblastic leukaemia — a severe blood disorder in which abnormal leukocytes are identified as immature forms of lymphocytes
- magnetic susceptibility — the coefficient or set of coefficients of the magnetic intensity in any expression giving the components of magnetization as linear combinations of the components of magnetic intensity.
- message digest function — one-way hash function
- micro assembly language — (language) (MAL) A microprogramming language with high-level syntax, used in the reference below. See also Mic-1, Mac-1.
- micropachycephalosaurus — A very small pachycephalosaurid, ornithischian dinosaur of the genus Micropachycephalosaurus.
- modern sequence dancing — a form of dancing in which ballroom dance steps are used as the basis of a wide variety of different dances typically performed in a sequence
- multimedia compact disc — (storage) (MMCD) A CD-ROM standard for storing 4.7 GB of data including video. MMCD is being developed by a large numer of computer manufacturers and is expected to be shipped in late 1996 or early 1997. Initially it will be aimed at the consumer market, then perhaps in CD-ROM format for computers, and maybe later on erasble CD.
- multiple-risk insurance — insurance that covers several risks
- national safety council — a non profit organization that promotes and ensures health and safety standards
- netscape public license — Open source license
- neutrosophic statistics — (statistics) Analysis of events described by neutrosophic probability.
- nigger of the narcissus — a novel (1897) by Joseph Conrad.