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24-letter words containing c, a, r, p, i

  • open data-link interface — (networking, standard)   (ODI) A Novell-developed network card API that provides media and protocol independence. It allows the sharing of a single card by multiple transport layer protocols and resolves conflicts.
  • open system architecture — (operating system)   (OSA) A competitor to IBM's SNA.
  • optical character reader — the process or technology of reading data in printed form by a device (optical character reader) that scans and identifies characters. Abbreviation: OCR.
  • optical signal processor — optical computing
  • orographic precipitation — precipitation caused by the lifting of moist air over a mountain barrier.
  • parallel cousin marriage — marriage between the children of two brothers or two sisters.
  • parallel virtual machine — (parallel, networking, tool)   (PVM) 1. A software system designed to allow a network of heterogeneous machines to be used as a single distributed parallel processor. PVM was developed by the University of Tennessee, The Oak Ridge National Laboratory and the Emory University. 2. The intermediate language used by the Gambit compiler for Scheme.
  • parochial church council — the ruling body of a parish, composed of the vicar, the churchwardens, and elected laypersons.
  • particulate fluidization — Particulate fluidization is a condition when particles in a fluidized bed are individually suspended.
  • passive balance of trade — a negative balance of trade
  • permeability coefficient — the volume of an incompressible fluid that will flow in unit time through a unit cube of a porous substance across which a unit pressure difference is maintained
  • photomechanical transfer — a method of producing photographic prints or offset printing plates from paper negatives by a chemical transfer process rather than by exposure to light
  • physiological atmosphere — ecosphere.
  • pluck sth out of the air — If you say that someone plucks a figure, name, or date out of the air, you mean that they say it without thinking much about it before they speak.
  • polychlorinated biphenyl — PCB.
  • polymer matrix composite — A polymer matrix composite is a material consisting of a composite made stronger by adding fibers or particles to it.
  • potassium cobaltinitrite — a yellow, crystalline, slightly water-soluble powder, K 3 Co(NO 2) 6 , used as a pigment in oil and watercolor paints, and for coloring surfaces of glass, porcelain, etc.
  • potentiometric titration — titration in which the end point is determined by measuring the voltage of an electric current of given amperage passed through the solution.
  • principal quantum number — the nonnegative, integral quantum number that defines the stationary orbits in the Bohr model of the atom.
  • private health insurance — insurance against the need for medical treatment as a private patient
  • private-key cryptography — (cryptography)   As opposed to public-key cryptography, a cryptographic method in which the same key is used to encrypt and decrypt the message. Private-key algorithms include the obsolescent Data Encryption Standard (DES), triple-DES (3DES), the Advanced Encryption Standard (AES), also known as Rijndael, Blowfish, Twofish RC2, RC4, RC5 and RC6. A problem with private-key cryptography is that the sender and the recipient of the message must agree on a common key via some alternative secure channel.
  • privileged communication — a communication that one cannot legally be compelled to divulge, as that to a lawyer from a client
  • professional association — a body of persons engaged in the same profession, formed usually to control entry into the profession, maintain standards, and represent the profession in discussions with other bodies
  • professional corporation — a corporation formed by one or more licensed practitioners, especially medical or legal, to operate their practices on a corporate plan. Abbreviation: PC, P.C.
  • programmable array logic — (hardware)   (PAL) A family of fuse-programmable logic integrated circuits originally developed by MMI. Registered or combinatorial output functions are modelled in a sum of products form. Each output is a sum (logical or) of a fixed number of products (logical and) of the input signals. This structure is well suited for automatic generation of programming patterns by logic compilers. PAL devices are programmed by blowing the fuses permanently using overvoltage. Today, more complex devices based on the same original architecture are available (CPLD's for Complex PLD's) that incorporate the equivalent of several original PAL chips. PAL chips are, however, still popular due to their high speed.
  • progressive conservative — a member of the Progressive Conservative party of Canada.
  • psychopathic personality — an antisocial personality characterized by the failure to develop any sense of moral responsibility and the capability of performing violent or antisocial acts
  • public international law — Also called public law. the law governing the legal relations between independent states or nations and, increasingly, between these and individuals.
  • public relations officer — a person who is responsible for communications with the public
  • pure functional language — purely functional language
  • pyrotraumatic dermatitis — hot spot.
  • reciprocal translocation — an exchange of segments between two nonhomologous chromosomes.
  • recommended retail price — the selling price of a product officially suggested by a manufacturer to a retailer
  • recursive descent parser — (grammar)   A "top-down" parser built from a set of mutually-recursive procedures or a non-recursive equivalent where each such procedure usually implements one of the productions of the grammar. Thus the structure of the resulting program closely mirrors that of the grammar it recognises.
  • referential transparency — (programming)   An expression E is referentially transparent if any subexpression and its value (the result of evaluating it) can be interchanged without changing the value of E. This is not the case if the value of an expression depends on global state which can change value. The most common example of changing global state is assignment to a global variable. For example, if y is a global variable in: f(x) { return x+y; } g(z) { a = f(1); y = y + z; return a + f(1); } function g has the "side-effect" that it alters the value of y. Since f's result depends on y, the two calls to f(1) will return different results even though the argument is the same. Thus f is not referentially transparent. Changing the order of evaluation of the statements in g will change its result. We could make f above referentially transparent by passing in y as an argument: f(x, y) = x+y Similarly, g would need to take y as an argument and return its new value as part of the result: g(z, y) { a = f(1, y); y' = y+z; return (a + f(1, y'), y'); } Referentially transparent programs are more amenable to formal methods and easier to reason about because the meaning of an expression depends only on the meaning of its subexpressions and not on the order of evaluation or side-effects of other expressions. We can stretch the concept of referential transparency to include input and output if we consider the whole program to be a function from its input to its output. The program as a whole is referentially transparent because it will always produce the same output when given the same input. This is stretching the concept because the program's input may include what the user types, the content of certain files or even the time of day. If we do not consider global state like the contents of files as input, then writing to a file and reading what was written behaves just like assignment to a global variable. However, if we must consider the state of the universe as an input rather than global state then any deterministic system would be referentially transparent! See also extensional equality, observational equivalence.
  • representative democracy — a person or thing that represents another or others.
  • reproductive imagination — the faculty of imagining, or of forming mental images or concepts of what is not actually present to the senses.
  • republic of south africa — Republic of, a country in S Africa; member of the Commonwealth of Nations until 1961. 472,000 sq. mi. (1,222,480 sq. km). Capitals: Pretoria and Cape Town.
  • resale price maintenance — the practice by which a manufacturer establishes a fixed or minimum price for the resale of a brand product by retailers or other distributors
  • responsibility allowance — payment made to somebody who has special responsibilities
  • scalable vector graphics — (graphics, web)   A W3C standard for vector graphics, based on XML.
  • serial interface adaptor — (SIA) The Ethernet driver chip used on a Filtabyte Ethernet card.
  • single european currency — the official currency, also known as the Euro, of some of the members of the European Union
  • single premium insurance — Single premium insurance is insurance where all the premium is paid at once, in one payment.
  • skeleton in the cupboard — a scandalous fact or event in the past that is kept secret
  • socialist workers' party — one of the biggest extreme left wing parties in Britain
  • special development area — an area earmarked for special development by the government
  • stereographic projection — a one-to-one correspondence between the points on a sphere and the extended complex plane where the north pole on the sphere corresponds to the point at infinity of the plane.
  • supportive psychotherapy — a type of psychotherapy that seeks to reduce psychological conflict and strengthen a patient's defenses through the use of various techniques, as reassurance, suggestion, counseling, and reeducation.
  • synchronous graphics ram — Synchronous Graphics Random Access Memory
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