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20-letter words containing i, b, r, a

  • clear air turbulence — turbulent air, not associated with a storm, that affects the flight of aircraft
  • clear-air turbulence — atmospheric turbulence, sometimes severe, occurring in air devoid of clouds or other visible indicators that turbulence might be present. Abbreviation: CAT.
  • computability theory — (mathematics)   The area of theoretical computer science concerning what problems can be solved by any computer. A function is computable if an algorithm can be implemented which will give the correct output for any valid input. Since computer programs are countable but real numbers are not, it follows that there must exist real numbers that cannot be calculated by any program. Unfortunately, by definition, there isn't an easy way of describing any of them! In fact, there are many tasks (not just calculating real numbers) that computers cannot perform. The most well-known is the halting problem, the busy beaver problem is less famous but just as fascinating.
  • conservative baptist — a member of a Protestant denomination (Conservative Baptist Association of America) organized in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, in 1948.
  • curry favour with sb — If one person tries to curry favour with another, they do things in order to try to gain their support or co-operation.
  • cytosine arabinoside — cytarabine.
  • database transaction — (database)   A set of related changes applied to a database. The term typically implies that either all of the changes should be applied or, in the event of an error, none of them, i.e. the transaction should be atomic. Atomicity is one of the ACID properties a transaction can have, another is isolation - preventing interference between processes trying to access the database cocurrently. This is usually achieved by some form of locking - where one process takes exclusive control of a database table or row for the duration of the transaction, preventing other processes from accessing the locked data. The canonical example of a transaction is transferring money between two bank accounts by subtracting it from one and adding it to the other. Some relational database management systems require the user to explicitly start a transaction and then either commit it (if all the individual steps are successful) or roll it back (if there are any errors).
  • debt-to-equity ratio — A company's debt-to-equity ratio is a measure of leverage that is calculated by dividing total liabilities by shareholders' equity.
  • demographic timebomb — a predicted shortage of school-leavers and consequently of available workers, caused by an earlier drop in the birth rate, resulting in an older workforce
  • diabetic retinopathy — a disorder of the blood vessels of the retina occurring as a complication of poorly controlled diabetes mellitus and often leading to blindness.
  • diamondback terrapin — any edible North American terrapin of the genus Malaclemys, esp M. terrapin, occurring in brackish and tidal waters and having diamond-shaped markings on the shell: family Emydidae
  • disability insurance — insurance providing income to a policyholder who is disabled and cannot work.
  • distributed database — A collection of several different databases that looks like a single database to the user. An example is the Internet Domain Name System (DNS).
  • distributed practice — learning with reasonably long intervals between separate occasions of learning
  • distribution channel — trade: retailer
  • distributive lattice — (theory)   A lattice for which the least upper bound (lub) and greatest lower bound (glb) operators distribute over one another so that a lub (b glb c) == (a lub c) glb (a lub b) and vice versa. ("lub" and "glb" are written in LateX as \sqcup and \sqcap).
  • district of columbia — a federal area in the E United States, on the Potomac, coextensive with the federal capital, Washington. 69 sq. mi. (179 sq. km). Abbreviation: DC (for use with zip code), D.C.
  • double fertilization — the fertilization process characteristic of flowering plants, in which one sperm cell of a pollen grain fertilizes an egg cell while a second fuses with two polar nuclei to produce a triploid body that gives rise to the endosperm.
  • double-trailer truck — tandem trailer (def 1).
  • drive a hard bargain — be tough negotiator
  • duck-billed dinosaur — hadrosaur.
  • dynamic link library — Dynamically Linked Library
  • electoral boundaries — the way that a country or area is divided for the purposes of voting in an election
  • elizabeth of hungary — Saint. 1207–31, Hungarian princess who devoted herself to charity and asceticism. Feast day: Nov 17 and 19
  • embryo vitrification — a method of in vitro fertilization in which the embryo is exposed to a vitreous solution and frozen before being thawed and implanted into the uterus
  • employer's liability — an employer's legal responsibility to pay damages to an employee who has been injured or who has contracted an illness because of the work he or she does
  • endorsement in blank — an endorsement on a bill of exchange, cheque, etc, naming no payee and thus making the endorsed sum payable to the bearer
  • enterprise javabeans — (specification, business, programming)   (EJB) A server-side component architecture for writing reusable business logic and portable enterprise applications. EJB is the basis of Sun's Java 2 Platform, Enterprise Edition (J2EE). Enterprise JavaBean components are written entirely in Java and run on any EJB compliant server. They are operating system, platform, and middleware independent, preventing vendor lock-in. EJB servers provide system-level services (the "plumbing") such as transactions, security, threading, and persistence. The EJB architecture is inherently transactional, distributed, multi-tier, scalable, secure, and wire protocol neutral - any protocol can be used: IIOP, JRMP, HTTP, DCOM etc. EJB 1.1 requires RMI for communication with components. EJB 2.0 is expected to require support for RMI/IIOP. EJB applications can serve assorted clients: browsers, Java, ActiveX, CORBA etc. EJB can be used to wrap legacy systems. EJB 1.1 was released in December 1999. EJB 2.0 is in development. Sun claims broad industry adoption. 30 vendors are shipping server products implementing EJB. Supporting vendors include IBM, Fujitsu, Sybase, Borland, Oracle, and Symantec. An alternative is Microsoft's MTS (Microsoft Transaction Server).
  • environment variable — (programming, operating system)   A variable that is bound in the current environment. When evaluating an expression in some environment, the evaluation of a variable consists of looking up its name in the environment and substituting its value. Most programming languages have some concept of an environment but in Unix shell scripts it has a specific meaning slightly different from other contexts. In shell scripts, environment variables are one kind of shell variable. They differ from local variables and command line arguments in that they are inheritted by a child process. Examples are the PATH variable that tells the shell the file system paths to search to find command executables and the TZ variable which contains the local time zone. The variable called "SHELL" specifies the type of shell being used. These variables are used by commands or shell scripts to discover things about the environment they are operating in. Environment variables can be changed or created by the user or a program. To see a list of environment variables type "setenv" at the csh or tcsh prompt or "set" at the sh, bash, jsh or ksh prompt. In other programming languages, e.g. functional programming languages, the environment is extended with new bindings when a function's parameters are bound to its actual arguments or when new variables are declared. In a block-structured procedural language, the environment usually consists of a linked list of activation records.
  • equilibrium constant — The equilibrium constant is the ratio between the amount of reactants and the amount of product for a particular chemical reaction, used to calculate chemical behavior.
  • every bit as good as — You say that one thing is every bit as good, interesting, or important as another to emphasize that the first thing is just as good, interesting, or important as the second.
  • for sb's delectation — If you do something for someone's delectation, you do it to give them enjoyment or pleasure.
  • forbidden transition — an electronic transition in an atom, molecule, etc, that is not permitted by electric dipole selection rules
  • frederick barbarossa — ("Frederick Barbarossa") 1123?–90, king of Germany 1152–90; king of Italy 1152–90: emperor of the Holy Roman Empire 1152–90.
  • front-to-back engine — an engine in which the crankshaft is arranged front to back along the axis of the vehicle
  • general public virus — (software, legal)   A pejorative name for some versions of the GNU project copyleft or General Public License (GPL), which requires that any tools or application programs incorporating copylefted code must be source-distributed on the same terms as GNU code. Thus it is alleged that the copyleft "infects" software generated with GNU tools, which may in turn infect other software that reuses any of its code.
  • give a wide berth to — to keep clear of; avoid
  • gorno-altai republic — a constituent republic of S Russia: mountainous, rising over 4350 m (14 500 ft) in the Altai Mountains of the south. Capital: Gorno-Altaisk. Pop: 202 900 (2002). Area: 92 600 sq km (35 740 sq miles)
  • grievous bodily harm — law: serious injury
  • hildegard von bingen — Hildegard von (Hildegard of Bingen"Sibyl of the Rhine") 1098–1178, German nun, healer, writer, and composer.
  • hindu-arabic numeral — Arabic numeral.
  • human parvovirus b19 — Pathology. a mild infection, most often seen in children or young adults, caused by a small virus ((the human parvovirus B19)) and marked by a blotchy rash on the cheeks, arms, and legs.
  • hungarian bromegrass — a pasture grass, Bromus inermis, native to Europe, having smooth blades.
  • hyperbolic cotangent — a hyperbolic function that is the ratio of cosh to sinh, being the reciprocal of tanh; coth
  • in bad circumstances — (of a person) in a bad financial situation
  • independent variable — Mathematics. a variable in a functional relation whose value determines the value or values of other variables, as x in the relation y = 3 x 2 . Compare dependent variable (def 1).
  • indian cucumber root — a North American plant, Medeola virginiana, of the lily family, having whorled leaves, nodding, greenish-yellow flowers, and an edible root.
  • information builders — Distributors of LEVEL5 OBJECT. Telephone +1 800 969 INFO.
  • integration by parts — Mathematics. a method of evaluating an integral by use of the formula, ∫udv = uv − ∫vdu.
  • intervening variable — a hypothetical variable postulated to account for the way in which a set of independent variables control a set of dependent variables
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