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20-letter words containing u, r, a, l, i

  • carbocyclic compound — any of a group of organic chemical compounds in which all the atoms composing the ring are carbon atoms, as benzene or cyclopropane.
  • carl friedrich gauss — (person)   A German mathematician (1777 - 1855), one of all time greatest. Gauss discovered the method of least squares and Gaussian elimination. Gauss was something of a child prodigy; the most commonly told story relates that when he was 10 his teacher, wanting a rest, told his class to add up all the numbers from 1 to 100. Gauss did it in seconds, having noticed that 1+...+100 = 100+...+1 = (101+...+101)/2. He did important work in almost every area of mathematics. Such eclecticism is probably impossible today, since further progress in most areas of mathematics requires much hard background study. Some idea of the range of his work can be obtained by noting the many mathematical terms with "Gauss" in their names. E.g. Gaussian elimination (linear algebra); Gaussian primes (number theory); Gaussian distribution (statistics); Gauss [unit] (electromagnetism); Gaussian curvature (differential geometry); Gaussian quadrature (numerical analysis); Gauss-Bonnet formula (differential geometry); Gauss's identity (hypergeometric functions); Gauss sums (number theory). His favourite area of mathematics was number theory. He conjectured the Prime Number Theorem, pioneered the theory of quadratic forms, proved the quadratic reciprocity theorem, and much more. He was "the first mathematician to use complex numbers in a really confident and scientific way" (Hardy & Wright, chapter 12). He nearly went into architecture rather than mathematics; what decided him on mathematics was his proof, at age 18, of the startling theorem that a regular N-sided polygon can be constructed with ruler and compasses if and only if N is a power of 2 times a product of distinct Fermat primes.
  • catastrophic failure — Catastrophic failure is sudden and complete failure which cannot be put right.
  • cavalleria rusticana — an opera (1890) by Pietro Mascagni.
  • cellular respiration — the oxidation of organic compounds that occurs within cells, producing energy for cellular processes.
  • cellulose triacetate — a triacetic ester of cellulose characterized by its resistance to most solvents, used chiefly in the manufacture of textile fibers.
  • centrifugal spinning — the spinning of rayon filaments in a centrifugal box.
  • channel service unit — (communications)   (CSU) A type of interface used to connect a terminal or computer to a digital medium in the same way that a modem is used for connection to an analogue medium. A CSU is provided by the communication carrier to customers who wish to use their own equipment to retime and regenerate the incoming signals. The customer must supply all of the transmit logic, receive logic and timing recovery in order to use the CSU, whereas a digital service unit DSU performs these functions.
  • checkbook journalism — the practice of paying for a news story or an interview, or for exclusive broadcasting or publishing rights.
  • chemolithoautotrophs — Plural form of chemolithoautotroph.
  • chemotherapeutically — By means of chemotherapy.
  • child support agency — the British government agency concerned with the welfare of children
  • child-abuse register — (in Britain) a list of children deemed to be at risk of abuse or injury from their parents or guardians, compiled and held by a local authority, area health authority, or NSPCC Special Unit
  • 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.
  • compensation culture — a culture in which people are very ready to go to law over even relatively minor incidents in the hope of gaining compensation
  • complaints procedure — a prescribed method of lodging a complaint to an institution
  • 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.
  • council-manager plan — (in the US) a system of local government with an elected legislative council and an appointed administrative manager
  • counter-inflationary — designed to reduce inflation
  • counterproliferation — Action intended to prevent an increase or spread in the possession of nuclear weapons.
  • counterrevolutionary — Counterrevolutionary activities are activities intended to reverse the effects of a previous revolution.
  • critical temperature — the temperature of a substance in its critical state. A gas can only be liquefied by pressure alone at temperatures below its critical temperature
  • crude oil evaluation — Crude oil evaluation is the process of assessing the chemical and physical properties of crude oil, against particular standards.
  • cycloidal propulsion — propulsion of a vessel by propellers of controllable pitch that steer as well as propel.
  • de la madrid hurtado — Miguel [mee-gel] /miˈgɛl/ (Show IPA), 1934–2012, Mexican political leader: president 1982–88.
  • declarative language — (language)   Any relational language or functional language. These kinds of programming language describe relationships between variables in terms of functions or inference rules, and the language executor (interpreter or compiler) applies some fixed algorithm to these relations to produce a result. Declarative languages contrast with imperative languages which specify explicit manipulation of the computer's internal state; or procedural languages which specify an explicit sequence of steps to follow. The most common examples of declarative languages are logic programming languages such as Prolog and functional languages like Haskell. See also production system.
  • developing-out paper — a sensitized printing paper requiring development in order to bring out the image. Abbreviation: D.O.P.
  • dictionary catalogue — a catalogue of the authors, titles, and subjects of books in one alphabetical sequence
  • differential housing — the casing that houses the differential of a motor vehicle
  • digital service unit — data service unit
  • dirac delta function — delta function.
  • disability insurance — insurance providing income to a policyholder who is disabled and cannot work.
  • displacement current — the rate of change, at any point in space, of electric displacement with time.
  • 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.
  • diverticular disease — any disease of the colon involving the presence of diverticula
  • 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).
  • drunk and disorderly — If someone is charged with being drunk and disorderly, they are charged with being drunk and behaving in a noisy, offensive, or violent way in public.
  • duck-billed dinosaur — hadrosaur.
  • early sunday morning — a painting (1930) by Edward Hopper.
  • ecclesiastical court — a church court in ecclesiastical matters, presided over by members of the clergy and usually having no compulsory jurisdiction.
  • ecumenical patriarch — the patriarch of Constantinople, regarded as the highest dignitary of the Greek Orthodox Church.
  • eleanor of aquitaine — ?1122–1204, queen of France (1137–52) by her marriage to Louis VII and queen of England (1154–89) by her marriage to Henry II; mother of the English kings Richard I and John
  • electoral boundaries — the way that a country or area is divided for the purposes of voting in an election
  • electromagnetic pump — a device for pumping liquid metals by placing a pipe between the poles of an electromagnet and passing a current through the liquid metal
  • electromagnetic unit — any unit that belongs to a system of electrical cgs units in which the magnetic constant is given the value of unity and is taken as a pure number
  • electronic signature — electronic proof of a person's identity
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