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diffusivity (physics)
...dc/dx is the rate of change of concentration in the direction x, and the minus sign indicates the flow is from higher to lower concentration. D is called the diffusivity and governs the rate of diffusion....
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DiFiglia, Michael Bennett (American dancer and choreographer)
American dancer, choreographer, and stage musical director....
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difluoromethylornithine (drug)
drug used to treat late-stage African trypanosomiasis (sleeping sickness). Eflornithine is effective only against Trypanosoma brucei gambiense, which causes Gambian (or West African) sleeping sickness. It is not effec...
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DIFX (stock exchange, Dubai, United Arab Emirates)
...trends was an increase in the profusion of world-class banking institutions, together with a great concentration of Arab investment capital and liquidity. On Sept. 26, 2005, trading began on the Dubai International Financial Exchange, the first international stock exchange in the Middle East, which provided a new market for investment capital....
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Dig!!! Lazarus Dig!!! (album by Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds)
...the Birthday Party with caustic, self-deprecating humour. The Bad Seeds returned to the studio after the release of Grinderman’s eponymous debut album (2007), and the result, Dig!!! Lazarus Dig!!! (2008), was critically acclaimed. In 2009 Harvey split with Cave and the Bad Seeds, ending one of the most enduring partnerships in the postpunk era....
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Dig Your Own Hole (album by the Chemical Brothers)
...the blueprint for the duo’s 1995 debut album, Exit Plane Dust, but it also sired an entire genre, big beat. The Chemicals’ 1997 follow-up, Dig Your Own Hole, kept them ahead of a growing legion of imitators by expanding their sonic spectrum, which ranged from the crude adrenal inrush of “Block Rockin’ Beats...
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Digambara (Jainist sect)
one of the two principal sects of the Indian religion Jainism, whose male ascetics shun all property and wear no clothes. In accordance with their practice of nonviolence, the monks also use a peacock-feather duster to clear their path of insects to avoid trampling them. They drink water from a gourd, and they beg for their ...
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digamma (ancient Greek letter)
...which were published after his death. Bentley made a particularly important scholarly contribution through his discovery that a sound (represented in transcriptions of some Greek dialects by the digamma, a letter not used in the modern Greek alphabet) was present in certain Homeric Greek words, though not represented by any letter when......
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Digaru (people)
...century, the Mishmi live along the valleys of the Dibang (where they are known as Midu) and Luhit rivers. Those of the Luhit Valley are divided into two groups, the Miju on the upper Luhit and the Digaru on that river’s lower reaches....
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digastric muscle (anatomy)
...mandibulae, which replaces the hypobranchial muscles as the major jaw-opening muscle. The restructuring of the posterior jaw in mammals leads to the further replacement of this new muscle by the digastric, which is a compound muscle made up of parts of the constrictors of the first and second branchial arches. Thus, it is partly innervated by the mandibular division of the fifth cranial......
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Digby (Nova Scotia, Canada)
town, seat of Digby county, western Nova Scotia, Canada. It is situated at the southern end of Annapolis Basin, an inlet of the Bay of Fundy....
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Digby, George (English statesman)
English Royalist, an impetuous and erratic statesman who had a checkered career as an adviser to kings Charles I (ruled 1625–49) and Charles II (ruled 1660–85)....
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Digby, John (English diplomat)
English diplomat and moderate Royalist, a leading advocate of conciliation and reform during the events leading to the Civil War (1642–51)....
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Digby, Sir Kenelm (English philosopher and diplomat)
English courtier, philosopher, diplomat, and scientist of the reign of Charles I....
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Digenea (flatworm subclass)
...consists of suckerlets arranged in rows; excretory pore single and posterior; endoparasites of vertebrates, mollusks, and crustaceans; about 35 species.Subclass DigeneaOral and ventral suckers generally well-developed; development involves at least 1 intermediate host; usually endoparasites of vertebrates; about 9,000......
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Digenis Akritas (Greek epic)
...reworking, whether by the author, as appears to be the case with the three (or perhaps four) versions of the English poem Piers Plowman, or by later revisers, as with the four versions of Digenis Akritas (a Greek epic). The distinction, however, is not always easy to draw. These considerations apply to a wide range of texts from ancient Hebrew through Old Norse to modern Russian,....
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Digenis Akritas (Byzantine epic hero)
Byzantine epic hero celebrated in folk ballads (Akritic ballads) and in an epic relating his parentage, boyhood adventures, manhood, and death. Based on historical events, the epic, a blend of Greek, Byzantine, and Asian motifs, originated in the 10th century and was further developed in t...
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Digenis Akritas Basileios (Byzantine epic hero)
Byzantine epic hero celebrated in folk ballads (Akritic ballads) and in an epic relating his parentage, boyhood adventures, manhood, and death. Based on historical events, the epic, a blend of Greek, Byzantine, and Asian motifs, originated in the 10th century and was further developed in t...
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DiGeorge syndrome (disease)
...treated by periodic injections of large amounts of immunoglobulin G (IgG). The congenital, but not hereditary, T-cell deficiency disease called DiGeorge syndrome arises from a developmental defect occurring in the fetus that results in the defective development of the thymus. Consequently the infant has either no mature ......
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Digest (Roman law digest)
collection of passages from the writings of Roman jurists, arranged in 50 books and subdivided into titles according to the subject matter. In ad 530 the Roman emperor Justinian entrusted its compilation to the jurist Tribonian with instructions to appoint a commission to help him. The Pandects were published in ad 533 and given statutory force (see also ...
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digest (periodical)
Digests and pocket magazines...
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Digesta (Roman law digest)
collection of passages from the writings of Roman jurists, arranged in 50 books and subdivided into titles according to the subject matter. In ad 530 the Roman emperor Justinian entrusted its compilation to the jurist Tribonian with instructions to appoint a commission to help him. The Pandects were published in ad 533 and given statutory force (see also ...
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digestible energy (agriculture)
...protein or amino acids needed for growth or other body functions, either as a percentage of the diet or as the total grams or units required per day. The amounts of energy needed are measured as digestible energy (DE), metabolizable energy (ME), net energy (NE), or total digestible nutrients (TDN). These values differ with species. The gross energy (GE) value of a feed is the amount of heat......
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digestion (biology)
sequence by which food is broken down and chemically converted so that it can be absorbed by the cells of an organism and used to maintain vital bodily functions. This article summarizes the chemical actions of the digestive process. For details on the anatomy and physiology for specific ...
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digestion (chemistry)
Although monazite is very stable chemically, it is susceptible to attack by both strong mineral acids (e.g., sulfuric acid, H2SO4) and alkalies (e.g., sodium hydroxide, NaOH). In the acid treatment, finely ground monazite sand is digested at 155° to 230° C (310° to 445° F) with hi...
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digestive hormone (biochemistry)
In vertebrates, the muscular and secretory activities of the alimentary canal and its associated glands are regulated by nervous and hormonal mechanisms. The hormones comprise a self-contained complex that functions at a relatively primitive level of organization and is distinguished by peculiar features; for example, specialized glandular tissues that secrete the hormones cannot be identified,......
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digestive nerve plexus (physiology)
intricate layers of nervous tissue that control movements in the esophagus, stomach, and intestines. The mechanics of the nervous system’s regulation of digestive functions is not fully known. Two major nerve centres are involved: the myenteric plexus (Auerbach’s plexus) and the ...
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digestive process (biology)
sequence by which food is broken down and chemically converted so that it can be absorbed by the cells of an organism and used to maintain vital bodily functions. This article summarizes the chemical actions of the digestive process. For details on the anatomy and physiology for specific ...
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digestive system (anatomy)
...
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digestive system disease
any of the diseases that affect the human digestive tract. Such disorders may affect the esophagus, stomach, small intestine, large intestine (colon), pancreas, liver, or biliary tract. A prevalent ...
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digestive system, human
the system used in the human body for the process of digestion. The human digestive system consists primarily of the digestive tract, or the series of structures and organs through which food and liquids pass during their processing into forms absorbable into the blood...
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digestive system, invertebrate (anatomy)
any of the systems used by invertebrates for the process of digestion. Included are vacuolar and channel-network systems, as well as more specialized saccular and tubular systems....
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digestive system, vertebrate (anatomy)
...an opening at its anterior end. This is also the case in some lower chordates and echinoderms, which are grouped together with vertebrates as the Deuterostomia, or animals with secondary mouths....
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digestive tract
pathway by which food enters the body and solid wastes are expelled. The alimentary canal includes the mouth, pharynx, esophagus, stomach, small intestine, large intestine, and anus. See digestion....
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digestive vacuole (biology)
...plasma membrane, a layer of stiff, clear ectoplasm just within the plasma membrane, and a central granular endoplasm. The endoplasm contains food vacuoles, a granular nucleus, and a clear contractile vacuole. The amoeba has no mouth or anus; food is taken in and material excreted at any point on the cell surface. During feeding,......
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Digger (English agrarian movement)
any of a group of agrarian communists who flourished in England in 1649–50 and were led by Gerrard Winstanley and William Everard. In April 1649 about 20 poor men assembled at St. George’s Hill, Surrey, and began to cultivate the common land. These Diggers held that the English Civil Wars ha...
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digger bee (insect)
any of a group of bees (order Hymenoptera), particularly the genus Andrena. Many species are medium-sized bees with reddish-golden hair and long, prominent abdomens. Females excavate tunnels in the soil that branch off to individual cells that the female stocks with pollen balls and nectar, on which she lays her eggs. There may be one or two generations per year. The adul...
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digger-shield mole (tunnel machine)
The digger-shield type of machine is essentially a hydraulic-powered digger arm excavating ahead of a shield, whose protection can be extended forward by hydraulically operated poling plates, acting as retractable spiles. In 1967–70 in the 26-foot-diameter Saugus-Castaic Tunnel near Los Angeles, a mole of this type produced daily progress in clayey sandstone averaging 113 feet per day and.....
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Digges, Leonard (British mathematician)
basic surveying instrument of unknown origin but going back to the 16th-century English mathematician Leonard Digges; it is used to measure horizontal and vertical angles. In its modern form it consists of a telescope mounted to swivel both horizontally and vertically. Leveling is accomplished with the aid of a spirit level; crosshairs in the telescope permit accurate alignment with the object......
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digging stick (agriculture)
The antecedent of the plow is the prehistoric digging stick. The earliest plows were doubtless digging sticks fashioned with handles for pulling or pushing. By Roman times, light, wheelless plows with iron shares (blades) were drawn by oxen; these implements could break up the topsoil of the ......
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Digging Up the Past (work by Woolley)
...excavation is merely a matter of shifting away the soil and subsoil with a spade or shovel; the titles of such admirable and widely read books as Leonard Woolley’s Spadework (1953) and Digging Up the Past (1930) and Geoffrey Bibby’s Testimony of the Spade (1956) might appear to give credence to that view. Actually, much of the work of excavation is careful wor...
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digging wheel (engineering)
excavation machine employing a wheel fitted with rim buckets, or with a boom or ladder on which an endless chain of buckets or scrapers revolves. The machine is self-propelled on rubber tires or crawlers (continuous metal treads driven by wheels). As the machine moves forward, it rotates the ladder or wheel so that the buckets dig at their forward edge. They dump onto a conveyor belt or a chute th...
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Diggs, Annie LePorte (American reformer)
Canadian-born American reformer and politician, an organizer and campaigner in the Populist Movement of the late 19th century....
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Diggs, Charles, Jr. (American politician)
American politician whose service (1954-80) as a Democratic representative from Michigan helped pave the way for future African-American lawmakers but ended in disgrace after a conviction in a kickback scheme led to his resignation; in 1969 he helped form the Congressional Black Caucus (b. 1922, Detroit, Mich.--d. Aug. 24, 1998, Washington, D.C.)....
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Digha Nikaya (Buddhist literature)
1. Digha Nikaya (“Long Collection”; Sanskrit Dirghagama), 34 long suttas including doctrinal expositions, legends, and moral rules. The first, the Brahmajala Sutta (“Discourse on the Divine Net”), renowned and much quoted, deals with fundamental Buddhist doctrines and with rival philosophies and tells much about everyday life and.....
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Dighenis (Cypriot leader)
Cypriot patriot who helped bring Cyprus independence in 1960. His goal was enosis (union) with Greece, and in this he failed; indeed, he was a fugitive at the time of his death....
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digit (anatomy)
in anatomy, finger or toe of land vertebrates, the skeleton of which consists of small bones called phalanges. The tips of the digits are usually protected by keratinous structures, such as claws, nails, or hoofs, which may also be used for defense or manipulation. Digits are numbered one through five, beginning with the inside digit (thumb) when the palm (paw) is face downward...
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digit (ancient Roman unit of measurement)
...Metrologists have come to differing conclusions concerning its exact length, but the currently accepted modern equivalents are 296 mm, or 11.65 inches. Expressed in terms of these equivalents, the digit (digitus), or 116 foot, was 18.5 mm (0.73 inch); the inch (uncia or ......
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digit (ancient Egyptian unit of measurement)
The royal cubit (524 mm, or 20.62 inches) was subdivided in an extraordinarily complicated way. The basic subunit was the digit, doubtlessly a finger’s breadth, of which there were 28 in the royal cubit. Four digits equaled a palm, five a hand. Twelve digits, or three palms, equaled a small span. Fourteen digits, or one-half a cubit, equaled a large span.......
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digit malformation (physiology)
in human physiology, any of the isolated anomalies of the digits (fingers or toes) in an otherwise normal individual or as one symptom of a more generalized genetic abnormality. In polydactyly, having more than the normal number of digits, the extra digit is smaller than normal and usually at the outside of the hand or foot; it may be removed surgically. Polydactyly sometimes a...
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digital ammeter (measurement instrument)
...measure alternating current with accuracies of from 0.5 to 3 percent, the measured current heats a thermoconverter (thermocouple); the small voltage thus generated is used to power a millivoltmeter. Digital ammeters, with no moving parts, use a circuit such as the dual slope integrator to convert a measured analogue (continuous) current to its digital equivalent. Many digital ammeters have......
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digital audio disc (recording)
a molded plastic disc containing digital data that is scanned by a laser beam for the reproduction of recorded sound and other information. Since its commercial introduction in 1982, the audio CD has almost completely replaced the phonograph disc for high-fidelity recorded music. Coinvented by Philips Elec...
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digital audio player
Apple’s iPod continued to dominate the digital music player market. Although there were many alternative players with much smaller market shares, Microsoft’s Zune was seen as the only competitor trying to add new features at the same rate as Apple. By late 2008 Apple had added to various iPod models a feature that readjusted the picture on an iPod’s screen for vertical or hori...
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digital audio tape (sound recording)
...signals. In the 1980s digital compact disc recordings became available that were played by using a laser beam to optically scan digital information encoded on the disc’s surface. In the late 1980s digital audio tape (DAT) recorders using magnetic tape cassettes became available for audio reproduction and recording. The DAT recorder converts audio signals into digital data on a magnetic t...
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digital camera (photography)
device for making digital recordings of images. Texas Instruments Incorporated patented the first filmless electronic camera in 1972. In 1981 Sony Corporation brought out a commercial electronic model, which used a “mini” computer disk drive to store information captured fr...
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digital certificate (electronic credit card)
Electronic credit card intended for on-line business transactions and authentications on the Internet. Digital certificates are issued by certification authorities (e.g., VeriSign). They typically contain identification information about the holder, in...
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digital chess clock
...and then falls straight down again. Until the introduction of the flag, an arbiter or judge had to determine whether the minute hand had passed 12. No further changes in chess timing were made until digital clocks appeared in the 1980s. Digital clocks tell a player to the second precisely how much time is left, but they have not proved popular with players....
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digital circuit (electronics)
Computers understand only two numbers, 0 and 1, and do all their arithmetic operations in this binary mode. Many electrical and electronic devices have two states: they are either off or on. A light switch is a familiar example, as are vacuum tubes and transistors. Because computers have been a major application for integrated circuits from......
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digital compact cassette recorder
...by means of a microprocessor and converts the data back into analog audio signals that can be used by the amplifier of a conventional stereo sound system. The early 1990s saw the introduction of digital compact cassette (DCC) recorders, which were similar to DAT recorders but could play the older analog tape cassettes in addition to similarly shaped digital cassettes. See also sound......
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digital computer
any of a class of devices capable of solving problems by processing information in discrete form. It operates on data, including magnitudes, letters, and symbols, that are expressed in binary form—i.e., using only the two digits 0 and 1. By counting, comparing, and manipulating these digits or their combinations accord...
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Digital Consumer Electronics Boom (consumer electronics)
The proliferation of consumer electronics gadgets continued in 2006 as it became routine to encounter people speaking on cellular phones, listening to digital music on headphones, or snapping countless pictures with digital cameras. One survey, by Opinion Research Corp., showed that among American adults 76% owned a computer, 67...
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digital differential analyzer (instrument)
...with components that take up less space. The inherent lack of precision has been rectified in some cases by use of digital counting devices, giving rise to a subclass of these machines known as digital differential analyzers....
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digital disc (sound recording)
...boasted, among other things, a wider dynamic range had begun to revolutionize the market for quality recordings: the music was taped “digitally,” via pulse-code modulation. Pioneered by the Denon label in Japan, it was most enthusiastically adopted by Cleveland-based Telarc Records in the late 1970s. Another small company,......
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Digital Equipment Corporation (American company)
American manufacturer that created a new line of low-cost computers, known as minicomputers, especially for use in laboratories and research institutions. Founded in 1957, the company employed more than 120,000 people worldwide at its peak in 1990 and earned more than $14 billion in revenue. It was bought by Compaq Computer Corporation in 1998....
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Digital Fortress (novel by Brown)
...written an e-mail in which he joked about killing the president. The incident sparked Brown’s interest in covert intelligence agencies, which formed the basis of his first novel, Digital Fortress (1998). Centred on clandestine organizations and code breaking, the novel became a model for Brown’s later works. In his next novel, Angels ...
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digital information
...digital signals and to manipulate it automatically at exceedingly high speeds. Information is stored in binary devices, which are the basic components of digital technology. Because these devices exist only in one of two states, information is represented in them either as the absence or the presence of energy (electric pulse). The two states of......
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digital library
Broadly defined, a digital library is any collection of texts, sounds, or images stored in a digital format. The Digital Library Federation, a group of research libraries actively working on digitization projects, defined them more strictly as “organizations that provide the resources, including the specialized staff, to select, structure, offer intellectual access to, interpret,......
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digital light processor
...new HDTV units marketed during the year were a Sharp 165-cm (65-in) LCD TV, a Panasonic 262-cm (103-in) plasma-screen TV, and a Samsung 142-cm (56-in) rear-projection TV with a technology called digital light processing. This technology was based on a semiconductor chip that held an array of a large number of movable microscopic mirrors....
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digital manipulation (photography)
Following football hero O.J. Simpson’s arrest in June 1994 for the murder of his ex-wife and one of her friends, Newsweek and Time magazines ran the same police mug shot of Simpson on their covers. Newsweek’s version was a straight reproduction with normal tonality. Time electronically manipulated the photo to darken it and achieve a brooding, menacing qua...
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digital metronome (musical instrument)
instrument for marking musical tempo, erroneously ascribed to the German Johann Nepomuk Maelzel (1772–1838) but actually invented by a Dutch competitor, Dietrich Nikolaus Winkel (c. 1776–1826). It consists of a pendulum swung on a pivot and actuated by a hand-wound clockwork whose escapement (a motion-controlling device) makes a ticking sound as the wheel passes a pallet. Bel...
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Digital Millennium Copyright Act (United States [1998])
...presented by technological advances. In most instances those adjustments have involved strengthening the entitlements of copyright owners. In 1998, for example, the United States passed the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, which expanded owners’ control over digital forms of their creations and penalized persons who sought to evade technological shields (such as encryption) for......
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digital modulation
In order to transmit computer data and other digitized information over a communications channel, an analog carrier wave can be modulated to reflect the binary nature of the digital baseband signal. The parameters of the carrier that can be modified are the amplitude, the frequency, and the phase....
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digital music player
Apple’s iPod continued to dominate the digital music player market. Although there were many alternative players with much smaller market shares, Microsoft’s Zune was seen as the only competitor trying to add new features at the same rate as Apple. By late 2008 Apple had added to various iPod models a feature that readjusted the picture on an iPod’s screen for vertical or hori...
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digital projector
By the early 21st century, digital projections had become the standard mode of projection in the theatre. The early generations of digital projectors, which first appeared in the 1980s, were not sufficiently bright for stage use. But technological advancements made after the turn of the century resulted in projectors bright enough for just about every theatrical use. The advantages of digital......
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digital publishing
Some industry analysts see media convergence as marking the twilight of the “old media” of print and broadcasting and the rise of “new media” associated with digital publishing. Among the major changes associated with digital publishing is the growth of a “flatter” publishing structure that allows one-to-one and many-to-many distributions of content. This....
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digital recording
method of preserving sound in which audio signals are transformed into a series of pulses that correspond to patterns of binary digits (i.e., 0’s and 1’s) and are recorded as such on the surface of a magnetic tape or ...
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digital rectal exam (medical procedure)
Diagnoses of colon and rectal cancers are made by means of several techniques. During a digital rectal exam, the physician inserts a gloved finger into the rectum and feels its surface for abnormalities. A fecal test may also be used to detect the presence of blood in the stool. In order to examine the rectum more carefully, a physician may use a narrow, flexible tube called a sigmoidoscope to......
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digital rights management (copyright protection)
protection of copyrighted works by various means to control or prevent digital copies from being shared over computer networks or telecommunications networks....
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digital seismograph station
By the 1980s a further upgrading of permanent seismographic stations began with the installation of digital equipment by a number of organizations. Among the global networks of digital seismographic stations now in operation are the Seismic Research Observatories in boreholes 100 metres (330 feet) deep and modified high-gain, long-period surface observatories. The Global Digital Seismographic......
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digital signal modulation
In order to transmit computer data and other digitized information over a communications channel, an analog carrier wave can be modulated to reflect the binary nature of the digital baseband signal. The parameters of the carrier that can be modified are the amplitude, the frequency, and the phase....
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digital signal processor (computer science)
...recording of sound is important because speech is the most frequently used natural carrier of communicable information. Direct capture of sound into personal computers is accomplished by means of a digital signal processor (DSP) chip, a special-purpose device built into the computer to perform array-processing operations. Conversion of analog audio signals to ......
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digital sound recording
method of preserving sound in which audio signals are transformed into a series of pulses that correspond to patterns of binary digits (i.e., 0’s and 1’s) and are recorded as such on the surface of a magnetic tape or ...
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digital subscriber line (networking technology)
networking technology that provides broadband (high-speed) Internet connections over conventional telephone lines....
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digital subtraction angiography (medicine)
...over the wire and into the artery. The wire is removed, and contrast medium is injected through the catheter. Both the arteries and the structures they supply with blood can then be visualized. ...
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digital synthesizer (musical instrument)
Digital synthesizers, the music workstation, and MIDI...
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digital tablet (input device)
Digital tablets and touch pads are similar in purpose and functionality. In both cases, input is taken from a flat pad that contains electrical sensors that detect the presence of either a special tablet pen or a user’s finger, respectively....
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digital television
The International Telecommunications Union announced a pact between more than 100 countries across Europe, Africa, and the Middle East to switch from analog to digital audio and television broadcasting by mid-2015. During the period of transition, digital broadcasting would need to be introduced in ways that would not interfere with existing analog broadcasting....
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digital transmission (technology)
...without damaging loss due to noise and interference. The basic components of a modern digital telecommunications system must be capable of transmitting voice, data, radio, and television signals. Digital transmission is employed in order to achieve high reliability and because the cost of digital switching systems is much lower than the cost of analog systems. In order to use digital......
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Digital Underground (American rap group)
2Pacalypse Now was a radical break from the dance party sound of Digital Underground, and its tone and content were much closer to the works of Public Enemy and West Coast gangsta rappers N.W.A. The lack of a clear single on the album limited its radio appeal, but it sold well, especially after Vice Pres. Dan Quayle criticized the song Soulja’...
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digital versatile disc (technology)
Type of optical disc. The DVD represents the second generation of compact-disc (CD) technology. Like a CD drive, a DVD drive uses a low-power laser to read digitized (binary) data that have been encoded onto the disc in the form of tiny pits. Because it uses a digital format, a DVD can store any kind of da...
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digital video disc (technology)
Type of optical disc. The DVD represents the second generation of compact-disc (CD) technology. Like a CD drive, a DVD drive uses a low-power laser to read digitized (binary) data that have been encoded onto the disc in the form of tiny pits. Because it uses a digital format, a DVD can store any kind of da...
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digital video recorder
...mainstream. “Consumers will have more flexibility over what they watch and when they watch it,” said Phillip Swann, president of TVPredictions.com. Swann pegged growing usage of HDTV, digital video recorders (DVRs) such as TiVo, and on-demand video service as the year’s most important TV trends....
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digital videodisc (technology)
Type of optical disc. The DVD represents the second generation of compact-disc (CD) technology. Like a CD drive, a DVD drive uses a low-power laser to read digitized (binary) data that have been encoded onto the disc in the form of tiny pits. Because it uses a digital format, a DVD can store any kind of da...
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digital videodisc recorder (technology)
...2008 about one-third of American homes had at least one high-definition television set. Many people purchased their first HDTV set for use with DVD players and video-gaming devices. As the decade progressed, however, more and more television programming was being produced in high definition, and more stations were upgrading their facilities...
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digital voltmeter (measurement)
The instruments just described provide readings in analogue form, by moving a pointer that indicates voltage on a scale. Digital voltmeters give readings as numerical displays. They also provide outputs that can be transmitted over distance, can activate printers or typewriters, and can feed into computers. Digital voltmeters generally have a higher order of accuracy than analogue instruments....
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digital word (computing)
...of cycles per second). Another factor that affects performance is the “word” size—the number of bits that are fetched at once from memory and on which CPU instructions operate. Digital words now consist of 32 or 64 bits, though sizes from 8 to 128 bits are seen....
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digital-form information
...digital signals and to manipulate it automatically at exceedingly high speeds. Information is stored in binary devices, which are the basic components of digital technology. Because these devices exist only in one of two states, information is represented in them either as the absence or the presence of energy (electric pulse). The two states of......
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digital-to-analog conversion
Process by which digital signals (which have a binary state) are converted to analog signals (which theoretically have an infinite number of states). For example, a modem converts computer digital data to analog audio-frequency signals that can be transmitted over telephone lines....
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Digitalis (plant)
any of about 20 species of herbaceous plants of the genus Digitalis (family Plantaginaceae), especially D. purpurea, the common, or purple, foxglove, which is cultivated commercially as the source of the heart-stimulating drug digitalis. Foxgloves are native to Europe, the Mediterranean region, and the Canary Islands, and they typically grow to a...
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digitalis (drug)
drug obtained from the dried leaves of the common foxglove (Digitalis purpurea) and used in medicine to strengthen contractions of the heart muscle. Belonging to a group of drugs called cardiac glycosides, digitalis is most commonly used to restore adequate circulation in patients with congestive heart fa...
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