18-letter words containing r, e, g, o
- electroretinograms — Plural form of electroretinogram.
- emergent evolution — the doctrine that, in the course of evolution, some entirely new properties, such as life and consciousness, appear at certain critical points, usually because of an unpredictable rearrangement of the already existing entities
- endowment mortgage — an arrangement whereby a person takes out a mortgage and pays the capital repayment instalments into a life assurance policy and only the interest to the mortgagee during the term of the policy. The loan is repaid by the policy either when it matures or on the prior death of the policyholder
- energy consumption — amount of energy used
- engelbart, douglas — Douglas Engelbart
- environment agency — an official agency providing information on environmental issues, esp rivers, flooding and pollution
- equinoctial spring — either of the two highest spring tides that occur at the equinoxes
- euclid's algorithm — (algorithm) (Or "Euclidean Algorithm") An algorithm for finding the greatest common divisor (GCD) of two numbers. It relies on the identity gcd(a, b) = gcd(a-b, b) To find the GCD of two numbers by this algorithm, repeatedly replace the larger by subtracting the smaller from it until the two numbers are equal. E.g. 132, 168 -> 132, 36 -> 96, 36 -> 60, 36 -> 24, 36 -> 24, 12 -> 12, 12 so the GCD of 132 and 168 is 12. This algorithm requires only subtraction and comparison operations but can take a number of steps proportional to the difference between the initial numbers (e.g. gcd(1, 1001) will take 1000 steps).
- evolution strategy — (ES) A kind of evolutionary algorithm where individuals (potential solutions) are encoded by a set of real-valued "object variables" (the individual's "genome"). For each object variable an individual also has a "strategy variable" which determines the degree of mutation to be applied to the corresponding object variable. The strategy variables also mutate, allowing the rate of mutation of the object variables to vary. An ES is characterised by the population size, the number of offspring produced in each generation and whether the new population is selected from parents and offspring or only from the offspring. ES were invented in 1963 by Ingo Rechenberg, Hans-Paul Schwefel at the Technical University of Berlin (TUB) while searching for the optimal shapes of bodies in a flow.
- exchange programme — an arrangement in which people from different countries visit each other's country, perhaps to strengthen links between them or to improve foreign language skills
- exercise programme — a programme detailing a range of physical exercises and the amount of time each exercise should be performed, used especially in gymnasiums, where they are typically tailored to individuals' needs
- fall to the ground — (of a plan, theory, etc) to be rendered invalid, esp because of lack of necessary information
- fallot's tetralogy — a congenital heart disease in which there are four defects: pulmonary stenosis, enlarged right ventricle, a ventricular septal defect, and an aorta whose origin lies over the septal defect. In babies suffering this disease the defects can be corrected by surgery
- far eastern region — former name of Khabarovsk.
- farewell-to-spring — a slender, showy plant, Clarkia amoena, of the evening primrose family, native to western North America, having satiny, cup-shaped, lilac-crimson or reddish-pink flowers and roundish fruit.
- farm the long acre — to graze cows on the verge of a road
- fatty degeneration — deterioration of the cells of the body, accompanied by the formation of fat globules within the diseased cells.
- federal government — pertaining to or of the nature of a union of states under a central government distinct from the individual governments of the separate states, as in federal government; federal system.
- floating underflow — underflow
- floating-rate note — a eurobond, often issued as a negotiable bearer bond, that has a floating rate of interest
- flower arrangement — floral display
- fluorodeoxyglucose — (carbohydrate) A fluorine analog of glucose that is used in positron emission tomography.
- for the time being — the system of those sequential relations that any event has to any other, as past, present, or future; indefinite and continuous duration regarded as that in which events succeed one another.
- fore-edge painting — a technique of painting a picture on the fore edge of a book, often in such a manner that only when the pages are slightly fanned the picture is revealed.
- foreign investment — investment from foreign countries
- foreign-trade zone — free port (def 1).
- forethoughtfulness — The condition of being forethoughtful.
- forget-me-not blue — a shade of blue similar to the shade of the flowers of a forget-me-not
- forgive and forget — be reconciled
- forwarding address — address for mail to be sent on
- foundation garment — an undergarment, as a girdle or corset, worn by women to support or give shape to the contours of the body.
- four-legged friend — a four-legged animal, esp a dog
- fracture toughness — The fracture toughness of a material is how likely it is to resist fracture.
- fragile x syndrome — a widespread form of mental retardation caused by a faulty gene on the X chromosome.
- fragile-x syndrome — an inherited condition characterized by learning disability: affected individuals have an X-chromosome that is easily damaged under certain conditions
- fragmentation bomb — a bomb designed to break into many small, high-velocity fragments when detonated.
- frederick douglass — Frederick, 1817–95, U.S. ex-slave, abolitionist, and orator.
- free-range poultry — poultry kept in natural nonintensive conditions
- free-will offering — a voluntary religious contribution made in addition to what may be expected or required.
- fringe-toed lizard — an iguanid lizard, Uma notata, of sandy deserts of the western U.S. and Mexico, having a wedge-shaped snout and toes fringed with long, pointed scales.
- from the ground up — the solid surface of the earth; firm or dry land: to fall to the ground.
- fulminating powder — powder that explodes by percussion.
- funding operations — the conversion of government floating stock or short-term debt into holdings of long-term bonds
- gabriele dannunzio — Gabriele [Italian gah-bree-e-le] /Italian ˌgɑ briˈɛ lɛ/ (Show IPA), (Duca Minimo) 1863–1938, Italian soldier, novelist, and poet.
- gamblers anonymous — an organization that holds group meetings to help people who are addicted to gambling
- garbage collection — (programming) (GC) The process by which dynamically allocated storage is reclaimed during the execution of a program. The term usually refers to automatic periodic storage reclamation by the garbage collector (part of the run-time system), as opposed to explicit code to free specific blocks of memory. Automatic garbage collection is usually triggered during memory allocation when the amount free memory falls below some threshold or after a certain number of allocations. Normal execution is suspended and the garbage collector is run. There are many variations on this basic scheme. Languages like Lisp represent expressions as graphs built from cells which contain pointers and data. These languages use automatic dynamic storage allocation to build expressions. During the evaluation of an expression it is necessary to reclaim space which is used by subexpressions but which is no longer pointed to by anything. This reclaimed memory is returned to the free memory pool for subsequent reallocation. Without garbage collection the program's memory requirements would increase monotonically throughout execution, possibly exceeding system limits on virtual memory size. The three main methods are mark-sweep garbage collection, reference counting and copying garbage collection. See also the AI koan about garbage collection.
- garden loosestrife — any of various plants belonging to the genus Lysimachia, of the primrose family, having clusters of usually yellow flowers, as L. vulgaris (garden loosestrife) or L. quadrifolia (whorled loosestrife)
- gas-cooled reactor — a nuclear reactor using a gas as the coolant. In the Mark I type the coolant is carbon dioxide, the moderator is graphite, and the fuel is uranium cased in magnox
- gastroduodenostomy — See under gastroenterostomy.
- gastroenterologist — the study of the structure, functions, and diseases of digestive organs.