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bandwidth
: a measure of frequency range, typically measured in hertz.
Bandwidth is a central concept in many fields, including information
theory, radio communications, signal processing, and spectroscopy;
there is no single universal definition of bandwidth, as it is
vaguely understood to be a measure of how wide a function is in the
frequency domain. Bandwidth is related to channel capacity for
information transmission and often the two can be confused. In
particular, in common usage 'bandwidth' also refers to data
transmission rates when communicating over certain media or devices. |
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computing
& web
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bandwidth
: the rate at which the current connection supports the transmission
and reception of data. |
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economics
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banknote
: a note issued by a bank undertaking to pay the bearer the face
value of the note on demand. Banknotes in England had their origin
in the receipts issued by London goldsmiths in the seventeenth
century for gold deposited with them for safe-keeping; the hole
practice of banking had its origin in the activities of these
goldsmiths, who began lending money and whose deposit receipts came
to be used as money; later the goldsmiths issued banknotes, and so
did the banks that developed later still. |
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money
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economics
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bankruptcy
: a declaration by a court of law that an individual or company is
insolvent, that is, cannot meet its debts on due dates. A bankruptcy
petition may be filed either by the debtor or by his creditors
requesting a receiving order; an inquiry into the debtor's affairs
is then conducted. |
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debt
insolvency
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economics
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barter
: acquiring goods or services by means of exchange for other
goods or services, rather than for money; for example, corporations
specializing in barter deals offer to buy surplus products in
exchange for TV advertising time, specified by the barter
corporation. |
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metrology
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basic
(measurement) unit : a unit of measurement of a basic
physical
quantity, i.e. a measurement unit for which a standard (an object or a
procedure) has been established. Each system of measurement units has
certain
number of units (called "basic units") defined by standards, while the
rest of units (called 'derived
units') is derived from the basic units.
NOTE: Basic measurement
units are called "fundamental" in some textbooks and manuals. This is
unfortunate
because there is nothing fundamental in the choice of these units, it
is
a matter of convenience. |
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derived
units
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batch : a
group of similar items produced, processed or gathered together and
treated as a single unit; example: a set of computer files that are
compressed simultaneously to speed up data entry. |
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batch
file : a text file in DOS and Windows with a series of
commands intended to be executed by the command interpreter;
analogous to a shell script in Unix-like operating systems. When the
batch file is run, the shell program (usually command.com or cmd.exe)
reads the file and executes its commands. |
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baud
: a measure of the signaling rate : the number of changes to the
transmission media per second, i.e. the number of signals per
second. Note: baud and bps (bits per second) are not
identical as each signal transmitted can carry one or more bits (as
many as 256 in 256-QAM modulation); for example, a 2400 bps modem
actually transmits at 600 baud, where each quadrature amplitude
modulation event (i.e. signal) carries four bits of data. |
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geography
: physical
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bay
: a body of water (a part of a lake or ocean) surrounded by land on
three sides; bays are generally smaller and less deeply indented
than gulfs. |
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gulf
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acronym
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BC
: Before Christ : the conventional designation used in
the Julian and Gregorian calendars to refer to a year before the
beginning of the year count that starts with the supposed year of
the birth of Jesus; e.g., 586 BC. |
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acronym
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BCE
: before the Common Era : the calendar year designation
introduced as a replacement for BC (before Christ) to circumvent
religious implications; e.g., 586 BCE instead of 586 BC. However,
BCE/CE system has not been used widely enough so as to have become
commonly understood. |
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geography
: physical
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beach
or strand : a geological formation consisting of loose
rock particles such as sand, shingle, cobble, or even shell along
the shoreline of a body of water. |
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Beaufort,
Francis (1774–1857) : Rear-Admiral, Sir Francis
Beaufort, Knight Commander of the Bath, entered the Royal Navy at
the age of 13 and was a midshipman aboard the Aquilon.
Beaufort is said to have had an illustrious career on the seas and
by 1800 had risen to the rank of Commander. In the summer of 1805
Commander Beaufort was appointed to the command of the Woolwich,
a 44 gun man-of-war. It was at this time that he devised his wind
force scale; by 1838 the Beaufort wind force scale was made
mandatory for log entries in all ships of the Royal Navy. Beaufort
last served as Hydrographer to the Admiralty. |
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Sir
Francis Beaufort |
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Beaufort
wind scale : a wind force scale designed by Sir Francis
Beaufort; essentially an association of a set of integers (0 to 12)
with a description of the state and behavior of a
"well-conditioned man-of-war". Admiral Beaufort
descriptions are from a sailing ship point of view (there is no
mention of wind speed), in terms of the ship's characteristics under
sail: Beaufort numbers 0 through 4 describe the wind in terms of its
propelling ability; those for 5 through 9 in terms of ship’s
mission and her sail carrying ability; and those for 10 through 12
in terms of ship’s survival. For example, #7 is "that to
which a well-conditioned man-of-war could just carry in chase, full
and by single-reefed topsails and top-gal. sail" and #10 is
"that with which she could scarcely bear close-reefed
main-topsail and reefed fore-sail".
As
weather forecasting and meteorology was developed, the proliferation
of Beaufort wind speed equivalents (more than 30 by 1900, some
disagreeing by more than 100 percent) set a stage of world
confusion. In 1912 the International Commission for Weather
Telegraphy sought some agreement on velocity equivalents for the
Beaufort scale. A uniform set of equivalents was accepted in 1926
and revised slightly in 1946. By 1955, wind velocities in knots
replaced Beaufort numbers on weather maps. The current state of
affairs is presented in the Handbook table;
please note that wind speed is initially given in knots, and values
in other units are approximative calculations. |
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bel (B)
: dimensionless unit used in electronics, telecommunication and
acoustics to express the ratio of two magnitudes on the common
logarithmic scale; if I1 and I2
are the magnitudes of two same kind signals, then the number of bels,
N, expressing their ration is
N
= lg(I1/I2)
Magnitude Ii
could be any physical quantity characteristic for a particular
signal, e.g. voltage, current or power for an electric signal, and
sound pressure for loudness in acoustics. If a reference magnitude I0
is established for a particular signal, then any signal of the same
kind could be referenced to it by the number of bels.
Signals are compared on
the logarithmic scale to cover the immense range of signal
magnitudes; for instance, human hearing involves sound levels over
fourteen orders of magnitude. In most applications bell appears as
rather large measurement unit and decibel (dB), one tenth of bell,
is commonly used. |
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decibel
(dB) |
adj. |
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belated : coming very
late or too late. |
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botany
& gardening |
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berry : a simple fruit
having a pulpy pericarp in which seeds are embedded, as the grape,
gooseberry, currant or tomato; a fleshy and juicy fruit. |
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Bézier curve : a
parametric curve widely used in computer graphics to model smooth
curves. As the curve is completely contained in the convex hull of
its control points, the points can be graphically displayed and used
to manipulate the curve intuitively. Affine transformations such as
translation, scaling and rotation can be applied on the curve by
applying the respective transform on the control points of the
curve. |
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Latin
abbreviation |
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bibl.
: bibliotheca : library |
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binary : of or involving
two things or parts. In mathematics and computing, the binary (base
2) numeral system is a representation for numbers that uses only
zeroes and ones as digits; for example: 1110 (base 2) = 14 (base
10). |
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acronym |
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BIPM
: International Bureau of Weights and Measures (in French:
Bureau International des Poids et Mesures). |
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computing
& web |
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bit
: the most basic information unit used in computing and information
theory; a single bit is a one or a zero, a true or a false, a
"flag" which is "on" or "off", or in
general, the quantity of information required to distinguish two
mutually exclusive states from each other; it is commonly
abbreviated as b, but not in terms for large
quantities of bits: e.g. kbit (kilobit), Mbit (megabit) and
Gbit (gigabit). |
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computing
& web |
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bitmap
image : see raster
image |
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botany
& gardening |
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blade
(also: lamina) : the
expanded green portion of a leaf, as distinguished from the stalk or
petiole. |
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web |
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blogger
: someone who keeps an online journal (called a 'web log' or 'blog');
devoted bloggers post thoughts and web links several times a day. |
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Blue
Marble : a spectacular true-color image of the
entire Earth by NASA. Put together from data of 18 of the most
advanced Earth-observing satellites ever built, such as Terra
and Aqua, the Blue Marble can be seen in all its glory
at a spatial resolution of 500 meter/pixel in 12 versions, one for
each month of year. Cloud-contaminated or otherwise bad data are
automatically recognized by the Blue Marble computer
technique and removed. |
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body-mass
index : a measure for assessing obesity : weight in
kilograms divided by height in meters squared. An index of 30 or
more is regarded as an indicator of obesity; 25 to 29.9 as
overweight. Guidelines very for men and for women and may be
adjusted for age. |
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botanical name
: see plant,
botanical name |
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acronym |
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BPI
: bribe payers index |
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computing
& web acronym |
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bpp
: bits per pixel : a measure of color depth. |
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computing
& web acronym |
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bps
: bits per second : a measure of data transfer rate. |
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botany
& gardening |
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bract
: a specialized (modified) leaf or leaflike part, usually situated
at the base of a flower or inflorescence (flower cluster). |
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meteorology |
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breezy
: a wind of speed 15 to 25 mph (13 to 22
knots; 24 to 40 km/h); synonym: brisk. |
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brightness
(of color) : the perception elicited by the luminance of a
visual object; relative lightness or darkness of the color, usually
measured as a percentage from 0% (black) to 100% (white); used as a
parameter in the HSB color model. |
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meteorology |
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brisk
: a wind of speed 15 to 25 mph (13 to 22 knots; 24 to 40 km/h); synonym:
breezy. |
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biology |
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bristle
: one of the short, stiff, coarse hairs of certain animals,
especially hogs, used extensively in making brushes. |
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Internet
lingo |
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BTW
: by the way |
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botany
& gardening |
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bulb
: an organ of storage and vegetative reproduction, consisting of a
flattened, short underground stem, bearing fleshy leaves above and
growing adventitious roots below. |
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botany
& gardening |
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bullate : blistered or puckered,
usually applied to foliage. |
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buzzword
(also known as a 'fashion word' or 'vogue word') :
a catchword or slogan popular in politics, management, a profession,
etc. and often lacking precise meaning. Buzzwords are
typically intended to impress one's audience with the pretense of
knowledge and for this reason they are often universal (e.g.,
basically, breakthrough, diversity, framework, holistic, paradigm,
perspective, standpoint, sustainability). They typically make
statements difficult to dispute, on account of their obscuring
meaning. |
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catchword |
games
: tennis |
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bye
: free passage into the second round of a tournament. Players may be
given a bye if a tournament doesn't have enough players (e.g. if
there are only 28 players in a tournament designed for 32, there
will be 4 byes in the first round); byes are awarded to seeded
players |
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computing
& web |
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byte
: a contiguous sequence of a fixed number of bits, the smallest
addressable unit in data processing; commonly used as a unit of
storage and memory measurement in computing, regardless of the data
type; most often abbreviated as B, including larger quantities of
bytes, e.g. MB (megabyte). This is incompatible with SI where B is
the symbol of the unit named bel.
An eight-bit byte or
octet is by far the most common; it can hold 256 possible values (28
= 256), enough to store an unsigned integer ranging from 0 to 255, a
signed integer from -128 to 127, or a character of a seven-bit (such
as ASCII) or eight-bit character encoding. |
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bit
SI
bel
ASCII |
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