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23-letter words containing r, u

  • citizens' advice bureau — an independent charity where the public can obtain free, confidential information and advice on an extensive range of civil, consumer, and legal matters
  • citrus greening disease — Plant Pathology. a bacterial disease of citrus trees, transmitted by insects of the Psyllidae family.
  • civil aeronautics board — the former federal agency (1938–85) that regulated airline fares and assigned routes. Abbreviation: CAB, C.A.B.
  • columbus air force base — U.S. Air Force installation in NE Mississippi, NW of Columbus.
  • communication breakdown — a lack of communication; a failure to exchange information
  • communication interface — an electronic circuit, usually designed to a specific standard, that enables one machine to telecommunicate with another machine
  • communications software — (communications, software)   Application programs, operating system components, and probably firmware, forming part of a communication system. These different software components might be classified according to the functions within the Open Systems Interconnect model which they provide. Typical applications include a web browser, Mail User Agent, chat and telnet.
  • communist international — Third International.
  • communist-international — an international organization (1919–43), founded in Moscow, uniting Communist groups of various countries and advocating the attainment of their ends by violent revolution. Also called Comintern, Communist International. Compare international (def 6).
  • community health centre — a medical centre that serves a particular area
  • community-service order — (in Britain) a court order requiring an offender over seventeen years old to do unpaid socially beneficial work under supervision instead of going to prison
  • comparative linguistics — the study of the correspondences between languages that have a common origin.
  • composite colour signal — a colour television signal in which luminance and two chrominance components are encoded into a single signal
  • computer-aided learning — Computer-Aided Instruction
  • computer-based training — Computer-Aided Instruction
  • computerized tomography — a radiological technique that produces images of cross sections through a patient's body using low levels of radiation
  • concertgebouw orchestra — an Amsterdam orchestra, established in 1888, that has been independent of the Concertgebouw hall since World War II
  • concrete data structure — (theory)   (CDS) A model of programming language terms developed in the context of constructing fully abstract semantics for sequential languages. A CDS is a 4-tuple (C,V,E,|-) where C is a cell, V is a value, E is an event and |- is an "enabling relation". An event is a cell and a value. A cell C is "enabled" by a set of events S if S |- C. A state is a set of events which are consistent in that the values they give for any cell are all equal. Every cell in a state is enabled.
  • conditioned suppression — the reduction in the frequency of a learned response, e.g. pressing a bar for water, that occurs when a stimulus previously associated with pain is present
  • conjunctive normal form — (logic)   (CNF) A logical formula consisting of a conjunction of disjunctions of terms where no disjunction contains a conjunction. Such a formula might also be described as a product of sums. E.g. the CNF of (A and B) or C is (A or C) and (B or C). Contrast Disjunctive Normal Form.
  • conservative evaluation — (programming)   Under this parallel evaluation strategy, no evaluation is started unless it is known to be needed. The opposite of conservative evaluation is speculative evaluation.
  • constitutional monarchy — a monarchy governed according to a constitution that limits and defines the powers of the sovereign
  • constructive cost model — (programming)   (COCOMO) A method for estimating the cost of a software package, proposed by Dr Barry Boehm. The Basic COCOMO Model estimates the effort required to develop software in three modes of development (Organic Mode, Semidetached Mode, or Embedded Mode) using only DSIs as an input. The Basic model is good for quick estimates. The Intermediate Model extends the Basic Model with an Effort Adjustment Factor (EAF) and different coefficients for the effort equation. The user supplies settings for cost drivers that determine the effort and duration of the software projects. It also allows DSI values and cost drivers to be chosen for individual components instead of for the system as a whole. The Detailed COCOMO Model uses effort multipliers for each phase of the project and provides a three-level product hierarchy and has some other capabilities such as a procedure for adjusting the phase distribution of the development schedule.
  • consultant psychiatrist — a psychiatrist who has attained the rank of consultant
  • contributory negligence — failure by an injured person to have taken proper precautions to prevent an accident
  • corporate restructuring — a change in the business strategy of an organization resulting in diversification, closing parts of the business, etc, to increase its long-term profitability
  • correlative conjunction — either member of a matched pair of words, of which the second is a coordinating conjunction, as either … or, neither … nor, both … and, or not only … but.
  • corridor of uncertainty — an area of a wicket just outside a batsman's off stump, so located that the batsman will have difficulty in deciding whether or not to play a ball bowled into it
  • court of first instance — a court in which legal proceedings are begun or first heard
  • creative writing course — a course in which people are taught creative writing skills
  • criminal justice system — the combination of courts and legal processes that deal with crime
  • criminal records bureau — (in England and Wales) a service offering employers and voluntary organizations access to police, health, and education records
  • critique of pure reason — a philosophical work (1781) by Immanuel Kant.
  • cruncha cruncha cruncha — (jargon)   /kruhn'ch* kruhn'ch* kruhn'ch*/ An encouragement sometimes muttered to a machine bogged down in a serious grovel. Also describes a notional sound made by grovelling hardware. See grind (sense 3).
  • current-cost accounting — a method of accounting that values assets at their current replacement cost rather than their original cost
  • cut sb's umbilical cord — If you say that one person, organization, or country has cut its umbilical cord with another, you mean that they have done something that makes them more independent.
  • cyclic redundancy check — (algorithm)   (CRC or "cyclic redundancy code") A number derived from, and stored or transmitted with, a block of data in order to detect corruption. By recalculating the CRC and comparing it to the value originally transmitted, the receiver can detect some types of transmission errors. A CRC is more complicated than a checksum. It is calculated using division either using shifts and exclusive ORs or table lookup (modulo 256 or 65536). The CRC is "redundant" in that it adds no information. A single corrupted bit in the data will result in a one bit change in the calculated CRC but multiple corrupted bits may cancel each other out. CRCs treat blocks of input bits as coefficient-sets for polynomials. E.g., binary 10100000 implies the polynomial: 1*x^7 + 0*x^6 + 1*x^5 + 0*x^4 + 0*x^3 + 0*x^2 + 0*x^1 + 0*x^0. This is the "message polynomial". A second polynomial, with constant coefficients, is called the "generator polynomial". This is divided into the message polynomial, giving a quotient and remainder. The coefficients of the remainder form the bits of the final CRC. So, an order-33 generator polynomial is necessary to generate a 32-bit CRC. The exact bit-set used for the generator polynomial will naturally affect the CRC that is computed. Most CRC implementations seem to operate 8 bits at a time by building a table of 256 entries, representing all 256 possible 8-bit byte combinations, and determining the effect that each byte will have. CRCs are then computed using an input byte to select a 16- or 32-bit value from the table. This value is then used to update the CRC.
  • cylinder vacuum cleaner — a type of vacuum cleaner in which dirt, dust, etc, is sucked into a hard cylinder rather than a bag
  • d'entrecasteaux islands — a group of volcanic islands in the Pacific, off the SE coast of New Guinea: part of Papua New Guinea. Pop: 49 167 (1990 est). Area: 3141 sq km (1213 sq miles)
  • dark-field illumination — illumination of the field of a microscope from the side so that the specimen is viewed against a dark background
  • data terminal equipment — (communications, hardware)   (DTE) A device which acts as the source and/or destination of data and which controls the communication channel. DTE includes terminals, computers, protocol converters, and multiplexors. DTE is usually connected via an EIA-232 serial line to Data Communication Equipment (DCE), typically a modem. It is necessary to distinguish these two types of device because their connectors must be wired differently if a "straight-through" cable (pin 1 to pin 1, pin 2 to pin 2 etc.) is to be used. DTE should have a male connector and should transmit on pin three and receive on pin two. It is a curious fact that many modems are actually "DTE" according to the original standard.
  • database query language — (database)   A language in which users of a database can (interactively) formulate requests and generate reports. The best known is SQL.
  • decision support system — a system in which one or more computers and computer programs assist in decision-making by providing information
  • department of education — the department of the U.S. federal government that administers federal programs dealing with education: created in 1979, largely by transfer from part of the former Department of Health, Education, and Welfare. Abbreviation: ED.
  • descriptive linguistics — the study of the description of the internal phonological, grammatical, and semantic structures of languages at given points in time without reference to their histories or to one another
  • deterministic automaton — (theory)   A finite-state automaton in which the overall course of the computation is completely determined by the program, the starting state, and the initial inputs. The class of problems solvable by such automata is the class P (see polynomial-time algorithm).
  • dichlorodiethyl sulfide — mustard gas.
  • dichlorodifluoromethane — a colourless nonflammable gas easily liquefied by pressure: used as a propellant in aerosols and fire extinguishers and as a refrigerant. Formula: CCl2F2
  • dictionary of computing — Free On-line Dictionary of Computing
  • 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.
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