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22-letter words containing c, i, u

  • klebs-loffler bacillus — a bacterium, Corynebacterium diphtheriae, which causes diphtheria.
  • label switching router — (networking)   (LSR) A device that typically resides somewhere in the middle of a network and is capable of forwarding datagrams by label switching. In many cases, especially early versions of MPLS networks, a LSR will typically be a modified ATM switch that forwards datagrams based upon a label in the VPI/VCI field.
  • landscape architecture — the art of arranging or modifying the features of a landscape, an urban area, etc., for aesthetic or practical reasons.
  • large magellanic cloud — a satellite galaxy of our own Milky Way galaxy, appearing as a hazy cloud in the southern constellations Dorado and Mensa.
  • law of excluded middle — the principle that any proposition must be either true or false.
  • letter of introduction — a letter given by one person to another, as an introduction to a third party
  • linear induction motor — an electric motor in which a movable part moves in a straight line, with power being supplied by a varying magnetic field set up by a fixed part of the system, as a metal rail on the ground.
  • liquid crystal display — (hardware)   (LCD) An electro-optical device used to display digits, characters or images, commonly used in digital watches, calculators, and portable computers. The heart of the liquid crystal display is a piece of liquid crystal material placed between a pair of transparent electrodes. The liquid crystal changes the phase of the light passing through it and this phase change can be controlled by the voltage applied between the electrodes. If such a unit is placed between a pair of plane polariser plates then light can pass through it only if the correct voltage is applied. Liquid crystal displays are formed by integrating a number of such cells, or more usually, by using a single liquid crystal plate and a pattern of electrodes. The simplest kind of liquid crystal displays, those used in digital watches and calculators, contain a common electrode plane covering one side and a pattern of electrodes on the other. These electrodes can be individually controlled to produce the appropriate display. Computer displays, however, require far too many pixels (typically between 50,000 and several millions) to make this scheme, in particular its wiring, feasible. The electrodes are therefore replaced by a number of row electrodes on one side and column electrodes on the other. By applying voltage to one row and several columns the pixels at the intersections are set. The pixels being set one row after the other, in passive matrix displays the number of rows is limited by the ratio of the setting and fading times. In the setup described above (known as "twisted nematic") the number of rows is limited to about 20. Using an alternative "supertwisted nematic" setup VGA quality displays (480 rows) can be easily built. As of 1995 most notebook computers used this technique. Fading can be slowed by putting an active element, such as a transistor, on the top of each pixel. This "remembers" the setting of that pixel. These active matrix displays are of much better quality (as good as CRTs) but are much more expensive than the passive matrix displays. LCDs are slimmer, lighter and consume less power than the previous dominant display type, the cathode ray tube, hence their importance for portable computers.
  • lord justice of appeal — an ordinary judge of the Court of Appeal
  • lowest common multiple — the smallest number that is a common multiple of a given set of numbers.
  • lunar excursion module — lunar module. Abbreviation: LEM.
  • make common cause with — join forces
  • manner of articulation — the degree of obstruction or the type of channel imposed upon the passage of air at a given place of articulation, as denoted by such categories as stop, fricative, nasal, and semivowel.
  • manufacturing industry — the industry of manufacturing goods from raw materials
  • mathematical induction — induction (def 5).
  • mcculloch-pitts neuron — (artificial intelligence)   The basic building block of artificial neural networks. It receives one or more inputs and produces one or more identical outputs, each of which is a simple non-linear function of the sum of the inputs to the neuron. The non-linear function is typically a threshhold or step function which is usually smoothed (i.e. a sigmoid) to facilitate learning.
  • middle-distance runner — someone who runs races of a length between the sprints and the distance events, esp the 800 metres and the 1500 metres
  • miscarriage of justice — law: wrongful judgement
  • miscellaneous expenses — small expenses of various kinds
  • molecular distillation — a vacuum distillation in which the molecules of the distillate reach the condenser before colliding with one another.
  • mozilla public license — Open source license
  • much ado about nothing — a comedy (1598?) by Shakespeare.
  • multiplicative inverse — reciprocal (def 9).
  • national semiconductor — (company)   A semiconductor manufacturer, responsible for the SC/MP, National Semiconductor 16000 and National Semiconductor 32000 series of microprocessors.
  • natural classification — classification of organisms according to relationships based on descent from a common ancestor
  • negative hallucination — an apparent abnormal inability to perceive an object
  • nickel-cadmium battery — a storage battery, with an alkaline electrolyte, having nickel oxide as the positive element and cadmium as the negative.
  • nominal semidestructor — (abuse)   Slang for "National Semiconductor", found among other places in the 4.3BSD networking sources. During the late 1970s to mid-1980s this company marketed a series of microprocessors including the National Semiconductor 16000 and National Semiconductor 32000. At one point early in the great microprocessor race, the specs on these chips made them look like serious competition for the rising Intel 80x86 and Motorola 680x0 series. Unfortunately, the actual parts were notoriously flaky and never implemented the full instruction set promised in their literature, apparently because the company couldn't get any of the mask steppings to work as designed. They eventually sank without trace, joining the Zilog Z8000 and a few even more obscure also-rans in the graveyard of forgotten microprocessors.
  • non-constructive proof — (logic)   (Or "existence proof") A proof that something exists that does not provide an example of that thing or a method for finding an example. (A constructive proof does provide such an example or method). For example, for any pair of finite real numbers n < 0 and p > 0 there exists a real number 0 < k < 1 such that f(k) = (1-k)*n + k*p = 0. A non-constructive proof might proceed by observing that as k changes continuously from 0 to 1, f(k) changes continuously from n to p and, since they lie either side of zero, f(k) must pass through zero for some intermediate value of k. This proof does not tell us what that value of k is, only that it exists.
  • non-euclidean geometry — geometry based upon one or more postulates that differ from those of Euclid, especially from the postulate that only one line may be drawn through a given point parallel to a given line.
  • non-restrictive clause — a relative clause that describes or supplements but is not essential in establishing the identity of the antecedent and is usually set off by commas in English. In This year, which has been dry, is bad for crops the clause which has been dry is a nonrestrictive clause.
  • nondestructive testing — any of several methods of detecting flaws in metals without causing damage. The most common techniques involve the use of X-rays, gamma rays, and ultrasonic vibrations
  • nonspecific urethritis — nongonococcal urethritis.
  • nonspecular reflection — the diffuse reflection of sound or light waves
  • normal order reduction — Under this evaluation strategy an expression is evaluated by reducing the leftmost outermost redex first. This method will terminate for any expression for which termination is possible, whereas applicative order reduction may not. This method is equivalent to passing arguments unevaluated because arguments are initially to the right of functions applied to them. See also computational adequacy theorem.
  • north atlantic current — an ocean current flowing NE toward the British Isles, formed by the convergence of the Gulf Stream and the Labrador Current SE of Newfoundland.
  • object-oriented turing — (language)   An extension of Turing and a replacement for Turing Plus by R.C. Holt <[email protected]>, U Toronto, 1991. Object-Oriented Turing supports imperative programming, object-oriented programming and concurrent programming. It has modules, classes, single inheritance, processes, exception handling and optional machine-dependent programming. There is an integrated environment under the X Window System and a demo version. Versions exist for Sun-4, MIPS, RS-6000 and others. E-mail: <[email protected]>.
  • obstruction of justice — a criminal offence that involves attempting to obstruct the process of law
  • occupational therapist — professional who assists with rehabilitation
  • ocean marine insurance — insurance covering risks involving the transporting of persons or goods on the high seas.
  • open network computing — (ONC) Sun's network protocols.
  • open source definition — (standard)   (OSD) Definition of distribution terms for open source software, promoted by the Open Source Initiative.
  • open source initiative — (body)   (OSI) An organisation dedicated to managing and promoting the Open Source Definition for the good of the community.
  • operating instructions — instructions on how to use something (such an electrical appliance, etc)
  • organizational culture — the customs, rituals, and values shared by the members of an organization that have to be accepted by new members
  • ousterhout's dichotomy — (language)   John Ousterhout's division of high-level languages into "system programming languages" and "scripting languages". This distinction underlies the design of his language Tcl. System programming languages (or "applications languages") are strongly typed, allow arbitrarily complex data structures, and programs in them are compiled, and are meant to operate largely independently of other programs. Prototypical system programming languages are C and Modula-2. By contrast, scripting languages (or "glue languages") are weakly typed or untyped, have little or no provision for complex data structures, and programs in them ("scripts") are interpreted. Scripts need to interact either with other programs (often as glue) or with a set of functions provided by the interpreter, as with the file system functions provided in a UNIX shell and with Tcl's GUI functions. Prototypical scripting languages are AppleScript, C Shell, MS-DOS batch files and Tcl. Many believe that this is a highly arbitrary dichotomy, and refer to it as "Ousterhout's fallacy" or "Ousterhout's false dichotomy". While strong-versus-weak typing, data structure complexity, and independent versus stand-alone might be said to be unrelated features, the usual critique of Ousterhout's dichotomy is of its distinction of compilation versus interpretation, since neither semantics nor syntax depend significantly on whether code is compiled into machine-language, interpreted, tokenized, or byte-compiled at the start of each run, or any mixture of these. Many languages fall between being interpreted or compiled (e.g. Lisp, Forth, UCSD Pascal, Perl, and Java). This makes compilation versus interpretation a dubious parameter in a taxonomy of programming languages.
  • out-of-body experience — a vivid feeling of being detached from one's body, usually involving observing it and its environment from nearby
  • outline specifications — preliminary specifications or plans on which later plans are based
  • particular affirmative — a proposition of the form “Some S is P.” Symbol: I.
  • peanut-butter sandwich — a sandwich with a filling of peanut-butter
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