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22-letter words containing u, g, a

  • evolutionary algorithm — (EA) An algorithm which incorporates aspects of natural selection or survival of the fittest. An evolutionary algorithm maintains a population of structures (usually randomly generated initially), that evolves according to rules of selection, recombination, mutation and survival, referred to as genetic operators. A shared "environment" determines the fitness or performance of each individual in the population. The fittest individuals are more likely to be selected for reproduction (retention or duplication), while recombination and mutation modify those individuals, yielding potentially superior ones. EAs are one kind of evolutionary computation and differ from genetic algorithms. A GA generates each individual from some encoded form known as a "chromosome" and it is these which are combined or mutated to breed new individuals. EAs are useful for optimisation when other techniques such as gradient descent or direct, analytical discovery are not possible. Combinatoric and real-valued function optimisation in which the optimisation surface or fitness landscape is "rugged", possessing many locally optimal solutions, are well suited for evolutionary algorithms.
  • extension language kit — (language)   (Elk) A Scheme interpreter by Oliver Laumann <[email protected]> and Carsten Bormann <[email protected]> of the Technical University of Berlin. Elk was designed to be used as a general extension language. New types and primitive procedures can easily be added. It has first-class environments, dynamic-wind, fluid-let, macros, autoloading and a dump. It provides interfaces to Xlib, Xt and various widget sets; dynamic loading of extensions and object files; almost all artificial limitations removed; generational/incremental garbage collector; Unix system call extensions; Records (structures) and bit strings. Version: 2.2 is mostly R3RS compatible and runs on Unix, Ultrix, VAX, Sun-3, Sun-4, 68000, i386, MIPS, IBM PC RT, RS/6000, HP700, SGI, Sony, MS-DOS (gcc+DJGPP or go32).
  • financial underwriting — Financial underwriting is the process of assessing whether the proposed sum insured and product are reasonable when considering the possible financial loss to the client.
  • for a laugh/for laughs — If you do something for a laugh or for laughs, you do it as a joke or for fun.
  • front of house manager — A front of house manager is responsible for the reception and reservations at a hotel.
  • full english breakfast — morning meal of eggs, bacon, etc.
  • functional programming — (programming)   (FP) A program in a functional language consists of a set of (possibly recursive) function definitions and an expression whose value is output as the program's result. Functional languages are one kind of declarative language. They are mostly based on the typed lambda-calculus with constants. There are no side-effects to expression evaluation so an expression, e.g. a function applied to certain arguments, will always evaluate to the same value (if its evaluation terminates). Furthermore, an expression can always be replaced by its value without changing the overall result (referential transparency). The order of evaluation of subexpressions is determined by the language's evaluation strategy. In a strict (call-by-value) language this will specify that arguments are evaluated before applying a function whereas in a non-strict (call-by-name) language arguments are passed unevaluated. Programs written in a functional language are generally compact and elegant, but have tended, until recently, to run slowly and require a lot of memory. Examples of purely functional languages are Clean, FP, Haskell, Hope, Joy, LML, Miranda, and SML. Many other languages such as Lisp have a subset which is purely functional but also contain non-functional constructs. See also lazy evaluation, reduction.
  • general public licence — (spelling)   It's spelled "General Public License". (In the UK, "licence" is a noun and "license" is a verb (like "advice"/"advise") but in the US both are spelled "license").
  • general public license — (legal)   (GPL, note US spelling) The licence applied to most software from the Free Software Foundation and the GNU project and other authors who choose to use it. The licences for most software are designed to prevent users from sharing or changing it. By contrast, the GNU General Public License is intended to guarantee the freedom to share and change free software - to make sure the software is free for all its users. The GPL is designed to make sure that anyone can distribute copies of free software (and charge for this service if they wish); that they receive source code or can get it if they want; that they can change the software or use pieces of it in new free programs; and that they know they can do these things. The GPL forbids anyone to deny others these rights or to ask them to surrender the rights. These restrictions translate to certain responsibilities for those who distribute copies of the software or modify it. See also General Public Virus.
  • genitourinary medicine — the branch of medical science concerned with the study and treatment of diseases of the genital and urinary organs, esp sexually transmitted diseases
  • glucose tolerance test — a diagnostic procedure in which a measured amount of glucose is ingested and blood samples are taken periodically as a means of detecting diabetes mellitus.
  • go through one's paces — to show one's abilities, skills, etc.
  • gran turismo omologato — (of an automobile) certified as conforming to the specifications, as fuel capacity and engine displacement, for a class of standard automobiles (Gran Turismo) qualified to engage in various types of competitions. Abbreviation: GTO.
  • grand duchy of muscovy — Muscovy (def 1).
  • graphical display unit — an output device incorporating a cathode ray tube on which both line drawings and text can be displayed. It is usually used in conjunction with a light pen to input or reposition data
  • great australian bight — a wide bay in S Australia.
  • green around the gills — the respiratory organ of aquatic animals, as fish, that breathe oxygen dissolved in water.
  • gross national product — the total monetary value of all final goods and services produced in a country during one year. Abbreviation: GNP.
  • guanosine triphosphate — GTP.
  • guest services manager — A guest services manager at a hotel is responsible for the services and facilities that the hotel provides for its guests.
  • gulf of saint lawrence — a deep arm of the Atlantic off the E coast of Canada between Newfoundland and the mainland coasts of Quebec, New Brunswick, and Nova Scotia
  • gum bichromate process — a contact printing method in which the image is formed on a coating of sensitized gum containing a suitable colored pigment and potassium or ammonium dichromate.
  • hague peace conference — a meeting held at The Hague, Netherlands, in 1899, that established The Hague Permanent Court of Arbitration.
  • hang out one's shingle — a thin piece of wood, slate, metal, asbestos, or the like, usually oblong, laid in overlapping rows to cover the roofs and walls of buildings.
  • hermann-mauguin symbol — a notation for indicating a particular point group.
  • highway contract route — a route for carrying mail over the highway between designated points, given on contract to a private carrier and often requiring, in rural areas, delivery to home mailboxes. Abbreviation: HCR.
  • historical linguistics — the study of changes in a language or group of languages over a period of time.
  • industrial archaeology — the study of past industrial machines, works, etc
  • industrial engineering — engineering applied to the planning, design, and control of industrial operations.
  • investigative new drug — a regulatory classification assigned by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration to an unproven drug, allowing its use in approved studies with human patients. Abbreviation: IND.
  • judge advocate general — the chief legal officer of an army, navy, or air force.
  • keep a person guessing — to let a person remain in a state of uncertainty
  • kill yourself laughing — If you say that you killed yourself laughing, you are emphasizing that you laughed a lot because you thought something was extremely funny.
  • label switching router — (networking)   (LSR) A device that typically resides somewhere in the middle of a network and is capable of forwarding datagrams by label switching. In many cases, especially early versions of MPLS networks, a LSR will typically be a modified ATM switch that forwards datagrams based upon a label in the VPI/VCI field.
  • lady's not for burning — a verse play (1948) by Christopher Fry.
  • land of the rising sun — Japan.
  • large magellanic cloud — a satellite galaxy of our own Milky Way galaxy, appearing as a hazy cloud in the southern constellations Dorado and Mensa.
  • league of women voters — a nonpartisan organization that works toward improving the political process: created in 1920 to inform women on public issues. Abbreviation: LWV.
  • make a big deal out of — to attach extreme importance to; make a big fuss about
  • management consultancy — a company of professionals who are employed to help an organization improve efficiency and performance
  • manufacturing industry — the industry of manufacturing goods from raw materials
  • martin luther king day — the third Monday in January, a legal holiday in some states of the U.S., commemorating the birthday (Jan. 15) of Martin Luther King, Jr.
  • memory management unit — (hardware, memory management)   (MMU, "Paged Memory Management Unit", PMMU) A hardware device or circuit that supports virtual memory and paging by translating virtual addresses into physical addresses. The virtual address space (the range of addresses used by the processor) is divided into pages, whose size is 2^N, usually a few kilobytes. The bottom N bits of the address (the offset within a page) are left unchanged. The upper address bits are the (virtual) page number. The MMU contains a page table which is indexed (possibly associatively) by the page number. Each page table entry (PTE) gives the physical page number corresponding to the virtual one. This is combined with the page offset to give the complete physical address. A PTE may also include information about whether the page has been written to, when it was last used (for a least recently used replacement algorithm), what kind of processes (user mode, supervisor mode) may read and write it, and whether it should be cached. It is possible that no physical memory (RAM) has been allocated to a given virtual page, in which case the MMU will signal a "page fault" to the CPU. The operating system will then try to find a spare page of RAM and set up a new PTE to map it to the requested virtual address. If no RAM is free it may be necessary to choose an existing page, using some replacement algorithm, and save it to disk (this is known as "paging"). There may also be a shortage of PTEs, in which case the OS will have to free one for the new mapping. In a multitasking system all processes compete for the use of memory and of the MMU. Some memory management architectures allow each process to have its own area or configuration of the page table, with a mechanism to switch between different mappings on a process switch. This means that all processes can have the same virtual address space rather than require load-time relocation. An MMU also solves the problem of fragmentation of memory. After blocks of memory have been allocated and freed, the free memory may become fragmented (discontinuous) so that the largest contiguous block of free memory may be much smaller than the total amount. With virtual memory, a contiguous range of virtual addresses can be mapped to several non-contiguous blocks of physical memory. In early designs memory management was performed by a separate integrated circuit such as the MC 68851 used with the Motorola 68020 CPU in the Macintosh II or the Z8015 used with the Zilog Z80 family of processors. Later CPUs such as the Motorola 68030 and the ZILOG Z280 have MMUs on the same IC as the CPU.
  • miguel primo de rivera — Diego [dye-gaw] /ˈdyɛ gɔ/ (Show IPA), 1886–1957, Mexican painter.
  • miscarriage of justice — law: wrongful judgement
  • missing persons bureau — the part of the Police Force dealing with tracing missing people
  • mpeg-2.5 audio layer 3 — (compression, standard, algorithm, file format)   A non-standard extention of MPEG-2 audio layer 3 by FhG for lowest sampling rates (8-12 kHz) targeting bit rates from 16-32 kbps (possibly 8-160 kbps).
  • much ado about nothing — a comedy (1598?) by Shakespeare.
  • native language system — (NLS) A set of interfaces specified by X/Open for developing applications to run in different natural language environments.
  • negative hallucination — an apparent abnormal inability to perceive an object
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