0%

23-letter words containing c, l, a, i, r, s

  • 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
  • direct distance dialing — a telephone network service feature enabling customers to direct-dial their long-distance calls.
  • discrimination learning — a learning process in which an organism learns to react differently to different stimuli
  • 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).
  • dissociate oneself from — to deny or repudiate any connection with
  • dollar (cost) averaging — see average (sense 11)
  • ecclesiastical calendar — a calendar based on the lunisolar cycle, used by many Christian churches in determining the dates for the movable feasts.
  • electron spin resonance — a technique for investigating paramagnetic substances by subjecting them to high-frequency radiation in a strong magnetic field. Changes in the spin of unpaired electrons cause radiation to be absorbed at certain frequencies
  • electronic mail address — (messaging)   (Usually "e-mail address") The string used to specify the source or destination of an electronic mail message. E.g. "[email protected]". The RFC 822 standard is probably the most widely used on the Internet. X.400 was once used in Europe and Canada. UUCP-style (bang path) addresses or other kinds of source route became virtually extinct in the 1990s. In the example above, "john" is the local part which is the name of a mailbox on the destination computer. If the sender and recipient use the same computer, or the same LAN, for electronic mail then the local part is usually all that is required. If they use different computers, e.g. they work at different companies or use different Internet service providers, then the "host part", e.g. "sales.acme.com" must be appended after an "@". This usually takes the form of a fully qualified domain name or, within a large organisation, it may be just the hostname part, e.g. "sales". The destination computer named by the host part is usually a server of some kind rather than an individual's workstation or PC. The user's mail is stored on the server and read later via client mail software running on the user's computer. Large organisations, such as universities will often set up a global alias directory which maps a simple user name such as "jsmith" to an address which contains more information such as "[email protected]". This hides the detailed knowledge of where the message will be delivered from the sender, making it much easier to redirect mail if a user leaves or moves to a different department for example.
  • electronic surveillance — use of electronic devices to spy, observe
  • electrostatic discharge — (hardware, testing)   (ESD) One kind of test that hardware usually has to pass to prove it is suitable for sale and use. The hardware must still work after is has been subjected to some level of electrostatic discharge. Some organisations have their own ESD requirements which hardware must meet before it will be considered for purchase. Different countries have different legal regulations about levels of ESD. See also Radio Frequency Interference, Electromagnetic Compatibility.
  • electrostatic generator — any device for producing a high voltage by building up a charge of static electricity
  • 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.
  • encephalitis lethargica — a form of encephalitis, or sleeping sickness, epidemic in the period from 1915 to 1926
  • entrance qualifications — academic requirements
  • experimental psychology — the scientific study of the individual behaviour of man and other animals, esp of perception, learning, memory, motor skills, and thinking
  • extracorporeal dialysis — the filtering of circulating blood through a semipermeable membrane in an apparatus
  • fendalton shopping cart — a four-wheel drive recreational vehicle
  • field effect transistor — a transistor in which the output current is varied by varying the value of an electric field within a region of the device. Abbreviation: FET.
  • field-effect transistor — a transistor in which the output current is varied by varying the value of an electric field within a region of the device. Abbreviation: FET.
  • firing on all cylinders — working or performing at full capability
  • first earl of leicester — Robert, 1st Earl of Leicester, 1532?–88, British statesman and favorite of Queen Elizabeth.
  • 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.
  • fractional distillation — the separation of volatile components of different boiling points in a mixture by the gradual increase of temperature and the separate collection of each component.
  • friedel-crafts reaction — a reaction for the synthesis of hydrocarbons and ketones by the alkylation or acylation of an aromatic compound in the presence of a catalyst, typically anhydrous aluminum chloride.
  • 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.
  • grant-maintained school — a school funded directly by central government
  • 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.
  • heterogeneous catalysis — Heterogeneous catalysis is catalysis in which the catalyst does not take part in the reaction that it increases.
  • hexagonal cross-section — If a kelly has a hexagonal cross-section, it has a surface area with six equal sides, when looked at as if has been sliced through.
  • industrial psychologist — a person who studies human behaviour and cognitive processes in relation to the working environment
  • 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 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.
  • lackland air force base — U.S. Air Force installation in SW central Texas, SW of San Antonio.
  • large-scale integration — LSI.
  • laughlin air force base — U.S. Air Force installation in SW Texas, SE of Del Rio.
  • lawrence livermore labs — Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory
  • 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.
  • 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.
  • magnetic field strength — that part of the magnetic induction that is determined at any point in space by the current density and displacement current at that point independently of the magnetic or other physical properties of the surrounding medium. Symbol: H.
  • micro assembly language — (language)   (MAL) A microprogramming language with high-level syntax, used in the reference below. See also Mic-1, Mac-1.
  • micropachycephalosaurus — A very small pachycephalosaurid, ornithischian dinosaur of the genus Micropachycephalosaurus.
  • multiple-risk insurance — insurance that covers several risks
  • national health service — In Britain, the National Health Service is the state system for providing medical care. It is paid for by taxes.
  • nondisclosure agreement — a legal contract in which one or more parties agree to keep information, as a trade secret, confidential and protected for a specific amount of time. Abbreviation: NDA.
Was this page helpful?
Yes No
Thank you for your feedback! Tell your friends about this page
Tell us why?