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22-letter words containing a, e, r, i

  • diethylbarbituric acid — barbital
  • digital control system — (systems)   (DCS) A digital computer used for real-time control of a dynamic system, usually in an industrial environment, possibly as part of a Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition (SCADA) system. A DCS samples feedback from the system under control and modifies the control signals in an attempt to achieve some desired behaviour. Analysis of such digital-analogue feedback systems can involve mathematical methods such as difference equations, Laplace transforms, z transfer functions, state space models and state transition matrices.
  • digital radio mondiale — (communications)   (DRM) A form of monaural digital broadcast using carrier frequencies below 30 MHz. DRM uses MPEG-4 AAC Main Profile and SBR at data rates of 16-25 kbps.
  • digital versatile disc — (storage)   (DVD, formerly "Digital Video Disc") An optical storage medium with improved capacity and bandwidth compared with the Compact Disc. DVD, like CD, was initally marketed for entertainment and later for computer users. [When was it first available?] A DVD can hold a full-length film with up to 133 minutes of high quality video, in MPEG-2 format, and audio. The first DVD drives for computers were read-only drives ("DVD-ROM"). These can store 4.7 GBytes - over seven times the storage capacity of CD-ROM. DVD-ROM drives read existing CD-ROMs and music CDs and are compatible with installed sound and video boards. Additionally, the DVD-ROM drive can read DVD films and modern computers can decode them in software in real-time. The DVD video standard was announced in November 1995. Matshusita did much of the early development but Philips made the first DVD player, which appeared in Japan in November 1996. In May 2004, Sony released the first dual-layer drive, which increased the disc capacity to 8.5 GB. Double-sided, dual-layer discs will eventually increase the capacity to 17 GB. Write-once DVD-R ("recordable") drives record a 3.9GB DVD-R disc that can be read on a DVD-ROM drive. Pioneer released the first DVD-R drive on 1997-09-29. By March 1997, Hitachi had released a rewritable DVD-RAM drive (by false analogy with random-access memory). DVD-RAM drives read and write to a 2.6 GB DVD-RAM disc, read and write-once to a 3.9GB DVD-R disc, and read a 4.7 GB or 8.5 GB DVD-ROM. Later, DVD-RAM discs could be read on DVD-R and DVD-ROM drives.
  • digital video recorder — See DVR.
  • dihydroxyphenylalanine — dopa.
  • dilation and curettage — a surgical method for the removal of diseased tissue or an early embryo from the lining of the uterus by means of scraping.
  • directed acyclic graph — (DAG) A directed graph containing no cycles. This means that if there is a route from node A to node B then there is no way back.
  • directional derivative — the limit, as a function of several variables moving along a given line from one specified point to another on the line, of the difference in the functional values at the two points divided by the distance between the points.
  • directional microphone — a microphone that has a greater sensitivity to sounds coming from a particular area in front of it: used to eliminate unwanted sounds.
  • director of admissions — a member of a university staff who is in overall charge of admissions to the university and its courses
  • directory system agent — (DSA) The software that provides the X.500 Directory Service for a portion of the directory information base. Generally, each DSA is responsible for the directory information for a single organisation or organisational unit.
  • disciplinary committee — a committee charged with examining alleged breaches of discipline within an organization, profession, etc and adjudicating on them
  • dishonorable discharge — the discharge of a person from military service for an offense more serious than one for which a bad-conduct discharge is given.
  • disposable soma theory — the theory that ageing is caused by the body having increasingly fewer resources to allocate towards repairing wear and damage to tissues
  • distributed generation — A distributed generation system involves a person or company generating some of their power requirements in different ways, such as locally, or using renewable energy, in order to avoid taking it all from the grid.
  • distributive education — a special program of vocational education at the high-school level in which a student is employed part-time, receiving on-the-job training, and also attends classes, most of which pertain directly to the student's vocational field.
  • dog's dinner/breakfast — You describe something as a dog's breakfast or dog's dinner in order to express your disapproval of it, for example because it is very untidy, badly organized, or badly done.
  • dominant seventh chord — a chord consisting of the dominant and the major third, perfect fifth, and minor seventh above it. Its most natural resolution is to a chord on the tonic
  • don't misunderstand me — You can say don't misunderstand me when you want to correct a wrong impression that you think someone may have got about what you are saying.
  • dread high bit disease — (character)   A condition endemic to PRIME (also known as "PR1ME") minicomputers that results in all the characters having their high bit (0x80, see meta bit) ON rather than OFF. This complicates transporting files to other systems and talking to true 8-bit devices. Folklore had it that PRIME adopted the convention in order to save 25 cents per serial line per machine; PRIME old-timers, on the other hand, claim they inherited the disease from Honeywell via customer NASA's compatibility requirements and struggled heroically to cure it. Whoever was responsible, this probably qualifies as one of the most cretinous design tradeoffs ever made. A few other machines have exhibited similar brain damage.
  • drumhead court-martial — a court-martial held, usually on a battlefield, for the summary trial of charges of offenses committed during military operations.
  • earn one's daily bread — to earn one's living
  • earth inductor compass — a compass actuated by induction from the earth's magnetic field.
  • east african community — an association established in 1967 by Kenya, Uganda, and Tanzania to promote closer economic and social ties between member states: dissolved in 1977, but reformed in 1999, and joined in 2007 by Burundi and Rwanda
  • east australia current — the part of the South Equatorial Current flowing S along the E coast of Australia.
  • echegaray y eizaguirre — José (xoˈse). 1832–1916, Spanish dramatist, statesman, and mathematician. His plays include Madman or Saint (1877); Nobel prize for literature 1904
  • ectotrophic mycorrhiza — a type of mycorrhiza, typical of temperate and Boreal trees, in which the fungus forms a layer on the outside of the roots of the plant
  • electrical engineering — Electrical engineering is the designing, constructing, and maintenance of electrical devices.
  • electrolytic capacitor — An electrolytic capacitor is an electrical capacitor with an electrolyte between the two plates.
  • electromagnetic moment — a measure of the magnetic strength of a magnet or current-carrying coil, expressed as the torque produced when the magnet or coil is set with its axis perpendicular to unit magnetic flux density. It is measured in ampere metres squared
  • electronic mail client — mail user agent
  • electrophysiologically — In an electrophysiological way.
  • electrothermal printer — a printer that produces characters by burning the image on specially coated paper
  • emergency road service — a form of motoring insurance that sends assistance to drivers when their vehicles break down on a journey; it is provided either by the national or regional automobile association or by a private insurance company
  • employers' association — a body of employers, usually from the same sector of the economy, associated to further the interests of member companies by conducting negotiations with trade unions, providing advice, making representations to other bodies, etc
  • enchanter's nightshade — any of several onagraceous plants of the genus Circaea, esp C. lutetiana, having small white flowers and bristly fruits
  • end transmission block — (character)   (ETB) The mnemonic for ASCII character 23.
  • endotrophic mycorrhiza — the most widespread and common type of mycorrhiza, in which the fungus lives within the cells of the roots of the plant
  • engineering consultant — a consultant specializing in engineering
  • english cocker spaniel — any of a breed of small spaniel, similar to and the progenitor of the cocker spaniel
  • entertainment expenses — the money paid to employees to cover the cost of meals and other entertainment incurred while doing their job
  • entertainment industry — show business
  • equal rights amendment — a proposed amendment to the US Constitution enshrining equality between the sexes
  • european economic area — a free-trade area created in 1994 by an agreement between the European Free Trade Association (EFTA), excluding Switzerland, and the European Union (EU)
  • evolutionary algorithm — (EA) An algorithm which incorporates aspects of natural selection or survival of the fittest. An evolutionary algorithm maintains a population of structures (usually randomly generated initially), that evolves according to rules of selection, recombination, mutation and survival, referred to as genetic operators. A shared "environment" determines the fitness or performance of each individual in the population. The fittest individuals are more likely to be selected for reproduction (retention or duplication), while recombination and mutation modify those individuals, yielding potentially superior ones. EAs are one kind of evolutionary computation and differ from genetic algorithms. A GA generates each individual from some encoded form known as a "chromosome" and it is these which are combined or mutated to breed new individuals. EAs are useful for optimisation when other techniques such as gradient descent or direct, analytical discovery are not possible. Combinatoric and real-valued function optimisation in which the optimisation surface or fitness landscape is "rugged", possessing many locally optimal solutions, are well suited for evolutionary algorithms.
  • examining the entrails — The process of grovelling through a core dump or hex image in an attempt to discover the bug that brought a program or system down. The reference is to divination from the entrails of a sacrified animal. Compare runes, incantation, black art, desk check.
  • existential quantifier — quantifier
  • experimental condition — one of the distinct states of affairs or values of the independent variable for which the dependent variable is measured in order to carry out statistical tests or calculations
  • extended affix grammar — (language, grammar)   (EAG) A formalism for describing both the context free syntax and the context sensitive syntax of languages. EAGs belong to the family of two-level grammars. They are very closely related to two-level van Wijngaarden grammars. EAG can be used as a specification formalism, specifying in relations rather than functions, or as a relational programming language like PROLOG.
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