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23-letter words containing a, l, i, u

  • 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
  • dionysius of alexandria — ("the Great") a.d. c190–265, patriarch of Alexandria 247?–265?.
  • 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).
  • dual sensory impairment — the condition of being affected by sight and hearing loss
  • duplication of the cube — the insoluble problem of constructing a cube having twice the volume of a given cube, using only a ruler and compass.
  • 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
  • equivalent focal length — the ratio of the size of an image of a small distant object near the optical axis to the angular distance of the object in radians
  • extravehicular activity — the act or an instance of floating and manoeuvring in space, outside but attached by a lifeline to a spacecraft
  • ferric ammonium oxalate — a green, crystalline, water-soluble, synthetically produced powder, (NH 4) 3 Fe(C 2 O 4) 3 ⋅3H 2 O, used chiefly in the manufacture of blueprint paper.
  • fetal tissue transplant — a surgical procedure in which tissue from an aborted fetus is grafted into a patient to replace or improve defective tissue, especially to treat Parkinson's disease or other neurological disorders.
  • fifth marquis lansdowne — Henry Charles Keith, 5th Marquis of Lansdowne, Lansdowne, 5th Marquis of.
  • fish in troubled waters — any of various cold-blooded, aquatic vertebrates, having gills, commonly fins, and typically an elongated body covered with scales.
  • frictional unemployment — those people who are in the process of moving from one job to another and who therefore appear in the unemployment statistics collected at any given time
  • 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 graph language — (language)   (FGL) The machine language for the AMPS (Applicative Multi-Processing System) proposed by Robert Keller, Gary Lindstrom and Suhas Patil at the University of Utah.
  • 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.
  • fundamental interaction — any of the four basic interactions that occur in nature: the gravitational, electromagnetic, strong, and weak interactions
  • give (or get) a tumble — to give (or get) some favorable or affectionate notice, attention, etc.
  • guest relations manager — A guest relations manager at a hotel is responsible for the relationships that the hotel has with its guests and the way in which it treats them.
  • guillain-barre syndrome — an uncommon, usually self-limited form of polyneuritis, occurring after a viral illness or immunization and manifested by loss of muscle strength, loss of or altered sensation and sometimes paralysis.
  • hang out your/a shingle — If you hang out your shingle or hang out a shingle, you start your own business.
  • heterogeneous catalysis — Heterogeneous catalysis is catalysis in which the catalyst does not take part in the reaction that it increases.
  • horsehair-blight fungus — a fungal parasite, Marasmius equicrinis, that causes a disease of certain tropical plants, especially tea.
  • human leukocyte antigen — HLA.
  • hunter-killer satellite — a satellite designed to seek out and destroy a nearby enemy satellite by exploding itself into a cloud of high-speed metal fragments.
  • hunter-killer submarine — a submarine designed and equipped to pursue and destroy enemy craft
  • immunological tolerance — the absence of antibody production in response to the presence of antigens, usually as a result of previous exposure to the antigens
  • implementation language — (language)   (IMP) An extension of B with floating-point operations, developed by W. Davidsen at General Electric in 1970 for the GE 600. It was also cross-compiled to VAX and Intel 8080.
  • 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
  • initial public offering — An initial public offering is the first offering of stock when a company goes public.
  • 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 rate of return — an interest rate giving a net present value of zero when applied to the expected cash flow of a project. Its value, compared to the cost of the capital involved, is used to determine the project's viability
  • 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.
  • internet public library — (IPL) A project at the University of Michigan School of Information and Library Studies to provide an on-line, 24 hour public library, chaired by an assemblage of librarians and information industry professionals. The library aims to provide library services to a target audience estimated to number 1/4 of the entire American population by the end of the century. The Internet Public Library is scheduled to go on-line in March 1995. Among the first services will be on-line reference; youth services; user education; and professional services for librarians. Mailing list: [email protected]
  • islamic fundamentalists — Muslims who believe in, advocate or support a conservative adherence to literal or traditional interpretations of the Qu'ran and the Sunnah
  • juan rodriguez cabrillo — Juan Rodríguez [rod-ree-ges] /rɒdˈri gɛs/ (Show IPA), (Joao Rodrigues Cabrilho) 1499?–1543, Spanish explorer, born in Portugal: discovered California.
  • juvenile-onset diabetes — diabetes (def 3).
  • l'apres-midi d'un faune — L'Après-midi d'un Faune.
  • laughlin air force base — U.S. Air Force installation in SW Texas, SE of Del Rio.
  • lesser antillean iguana — a large tropical American arboreal herbivorous lizard (iguana delicatissima) native to the Lesser Antilles
  • letter-quality printing — high-quality output in printed form from a printer linked to a word processor
  • lieutenant junior grade — a commissioned officer ranking above an ensign and below a lieutenant.
  • 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.
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