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

  • fendalton shopping cart — a four-wheel drive recreational vehicle
  • 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.
  • first strike capability — the ability to use nuclear missiles in an opening attack calculated to destroy the enemy's nuclear weapons
  • floating-point specrate — SPECrate_fp92
  • forest tent caterpillar — any of the larvae of several moths of the genus Malacosoma, which feed on the leaves of orchard and shade trees and live colonially in a tentlike silken web.
  • 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
  • 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.
  • graphical kernel system — (graphics, standard)   (GKS) The widely recognised standard ANSI X3.124 for graphical input/output. GKS is worked on by the ISO/IEC group JTC1/SC24. It provides applications programmers with standard methods of creating, manipulating, and displaying or printing computer graphics on different types of computer graphics output devices. It provides an abstraction to save programmers from dealing with the detailed capabilities and interfaces of specific hardware. GKS defines a basic two-dimensional graphics system with: uniform input and output primitives; a uniform interface to and from a GKS metafile for storing and transferring graphics information. It supports a wide range of graphics output devices including such as printers, plotters, vector graphics devices, storage tubes, refresh displays, raster displays, and microfilm recorders.
  • haleakala national park — a national park on Maui, Hawaii: site of 21-mile (34-km) diameter volcanic crater. 43 sq. mi. (111 sq. km).
  • hate-driven development — (programming, humour)   A play on test-driven development for use when a piece of code is not necessarily broken but you hate the way it is written so much that you feel compelled to rewrite it.
  • health maintenance plan — A health maintenance plan is a health insurance policy that provides preventive care like vaccinations, doctor checkups, and screenings, for a prepaid fee.
  • higher national diploma — a work-related higher education qualification, taking two years full-time.
  • hypobetalipoproteinemia — (pathology) A low level of betalipoprotein (low-density lipoprotein) in the bloodstream.
  • hypothetical imperative — (esp in the moral philosophy of Kant) any conditional rule of action, concerned with means and ends rather than with duty for its own sake
  • 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.
  • indeterminacy principle — uncertainty principle.
  • 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.
  • 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]
  • l'apres-midi d'un faune — L'Après-midi d'un Faune.
  • letter-quality printing — high-quality output in printed form from a printer linked to a word processor
  • lingual protrusion lisp — a speech defect consisting in pronouncing s and z like or nearly like the th- sounds of thin and this, respectively.
  • liquefied petroleum gas — a mixture of various petroleum gases, esp propane and butane, stored as a liquid under pressure and used as an engine fuel
  • 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.
  • maximal free expression — (MFE) A free expression is sub-expression of a lambda abstraction not containing the bound variable. A maximal free expression is a free expression not contained within any other free expression. See full laziness.
  • meaningful relationship — a romantic relationship based upon mutual respect and supportiveness and marked by a sense of commitment and fulfillment.
  • micropachycephalosaurus — A very small pachycephalosaurid, ornithischian dinosaur of the genus Micropachycephalosaurus.
  • mpeg-4 aac main profile — (compression, standard, algorithm)   A successor of MP3 allowing transparent coding at data rates of 70-75% of that of MP3. It is very different from MP3, only used MDCT, no subband coding. It is much more complex that MP3 and MPEG-2 AAC Low Profile.
  • 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
  • multiplicative identity — an identity that when used to multiply a given element in a specified set leaves that element unchanged, as the number 1 for the real-number system.
  • national superannuation — a means-related pension paid to elderly people
  • netscape public license — Open source license
  • north ossetian republic — a constituent republic of S Russia, on the N slopes of the central Caucasus Mountains. Capital: Vladikavkaz. Pop: 709 900 (2002). Area: about 8000 sq km (3088 sq miles)
  • not a hair out of place — If you say that someone has not a hair out of place, you are emphasizing that they are extremely smart and neatly dressed.
  • occupational psychology — the study of human behaviour at work, including ergonomics, selection procedures, and the effects of stress
  • on-line data processing — the storing or processing of data on a computer using the internet
  • parametric polymorphism — Polymorphism was first identified by Christopher Strachey in 1967 and developed by Hindley and Milner. For example we could specify that the argument of the "head" function was a list without specifying a type for the elements of the list. In Haskell we would write: head :: [a] -> a meaning head has type function from "list of a" to "a" where "a" is a type variable). This is known as parametric polymorphism. Polymorphic typing allows strong type checking as well as generic functions. ML in 1976 was the first language with polymorphic typing. See also generic type variable.
  • parasexual reproduction — reproduction by recombination of genes from genetically dissimilar nuclei within binucleate or multinucleate cells, as in filamentous fungi.
  • parkinson's law of data — "Data expands to fill the space available for storage"; buying more memory encourages the use of more memory-intensive techniques. It has been observed over the last 10 years that the memory usage of evolving systems tends to double roughly once every 18 months. Fortunately, memory density available for constant dollars also tends to double about once every 12 months (see Moore's Law); unfortunately, the laws of physics guarantee that the latter cannot continue indefinitely.
  • parliamentary candidate — sb standing for election to government
  • parliamentary democracy — a system of government in which people elect representatives to a parliament to make laws, for example Canada and the UK
  • parliamentary privilege — legal immunity allowing lawmakers to speak freely without being subject to the usual laws of slander
  • parliamentary secretary — government minister's assistant
  • partial differentiation — the process of finding one of the partial derivatives of a function of several variables.
  • particulate inheritance — the inheritance of discrete characters via genes that are independently expressed without the blending of characters from one generation to the next.
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