25-letter words containing n, a, i, l
- to sail close to the wind — If you sail close to the wind, you take a risk by doing or saying something that may get you into trouble.
- total internal reflection — the effect that occurs when light meets the interface between the medium in which it is traveling and a medium of smaller refractive index at an angle of incidence greater than the critical angle, all light being reflected back to the first medium.
- town-and-country planning — a system of government planning used to plan how land should be used, balancing economic development and environmental quality
- track and field athletics — a collection of sporting events that involve running, sprinting, throwing, jumping and walking
- transcendental meditation — a technique, based on ancient Hindu writings, by which one seeks to achieve a relaxed state through regular periods of meditation during which a mantra is repeated. Abbreviation: TM.
- transcendental-philosophy — transcendental character, thought, or language.
- transport layer interface — (networking, programming) (TLI, or "Transport Level Interface") A protocol-independent interface for accessing network facilities, modelled after the ISO transport layer (level 4), that first appeared in Unix SVR3. TLI is defined by SVID as transport mechanism for networking interfaces, in preference to sockets, which are biased toward IP and friends. A disavantage is that a process cannot use read/write directly, but has to use backends using stdin and stdout to communicate with the network connection. TLI is implemented in SVR4 using the STREAMS interface. It adds no new system calls, just a library, libnsl_s.a. The major functions are t_open, t_bind, t_connect, t_listen, t_accept, t_snd, t_rcv, read, write. According to the Solaris t_open man page, XTI (X/OPEN Transport Interface) evolved from TLI, and supports the TLI API for compatibility, with some variations on semantics.
- transport level interface — Transport Layer Interface
- unconditional convergence — the property of a convergent infinite series that remains convergent when the terms are arranged in any order.
- undisputed world champion — a boxer who holds the World Boxing Association, the World Boxing Council, the World Boxing Organization, and the International Boxing Federation world championship titles simultaneously
- unemployment compensation — an allowance of money paid, usually weekly, to an unemployed worker by a state or federal agency or by the worker's labor union or former employer during all or part of the period of unemployment.
- unified modeling language — (language) (UML) A non-proprietary, third generation modelling language. The Unified Modeling Language is an open method used to specify, visualise, construct and document the artifacts of an object-oriented software-intensive system under development. The UML represents a compilation of "best engineering practices" which have proven successful in modelling large, complex systems. UML succeeds the concepts of Booch, OMT and OOSE by fusing them into a single, common and widely usable modelling language. UML aims to be a standard modelling language which can model concurrent and distributed systems. UML is not an industry standard, but is taking shape under the auspices of the Object Management Group (OMG). OMG has called for information on object-oriented methodologies, that might create a rigorous software modelling language. Many industry leaders have responded in earnest to help create the standard. See also: STP, IDE.
- university of east london — (body, education) (UEL) A UK University with six academic Faculties: Design and The Built Environment, East London Business School, Institute Of Health and Rehabilitation, Faculty Of Science, Social Sciences and Technology.
- vatnajökull national park — a national park in Iceland, the largest in Europe; contains the Vatnajökull glacier, Europe's largest by volume, and incorporates two existing national parks. Area: 13 000 sq km (5020 sq miles)
- vertical redundancy check — (storage, communications) (VRC) An error checking method performed on one 8-bit ASCII character, where the 8th bit is used as the parity bit. The resulting parity bit is constructed by XORing the word. The result is a "1" if there is an odd number of 1s, and a "0" if there is an even number of 1s in the word. This method is unreliable because if an odd number of bits are distorted, the check will not detect the error. The Longitudinal Redundancy Check is an improvement.
- vienna development method — (programming, specification) (VDM) A program development method based on formal specification using the Vienna Development Method Specification Language (VDM-SL).
- wallis and futuna islands — a group of islands in the SW Pacific Ocean: overseas territory of France. 106 sq. mi. (274 sq. km).
- war of the grand alliance — the war (1689–97) in which England, the Netherlands, Spain, Sweden, and the Holy Roman Empire in league with Bavaria, Brandenburg, Savoy, and the Palatinate opposed France.
- white sands missile range — a U.S. Army military testing ground for rockets and guided missiles in SW New Mexico, W of Alamogordo.
- world health organization — an agency of the United Nations, established in 1948, concerned with improving the health of the world's people and preventing or controlling communicable diseases on a worldwide basis through various technical projects and programs. Abbreviation: WHO.
- yakut autonomous republic — an autonomous republic in the NE Russian Federation in Asia. 1,198,146 sq. mi. (3,103,200 sq. km). Capital: Yakutsk.
- yellowstone national park — a park in NW Wyoming and adjacent parts of Montana and Idaho: geysers, hot springs, falls, canyon. 3458 sq. mi. (8955 sq. km).