u.

German, und. English: `and.' FWIW, in Old English the conjunction was commonly spelled (and probably pronounced) both ``and'' and ``ond.'' See also 7.

u

Unified atomic mass unit. Unified in 1961, as explained at the amu entry. According to CODATA, the value is 1.66054 × 10^-27 kg. Visit, you can tell how much they resent the very existence of non-SI units.

U

Unit. Also EIA Unit. In particular, ``U'' is a standard unit of measure for the heights of computer enclosures and the appropriate unit for specifying the size of units to be mounted in a standard (EIA standard SE-102) equipment rack. A number of letter-designated standard panels are listed at the rack-panel entry.

One U equals 1.75 inches (44.45 mm). That's the distance between mounting-hole clusters on the (vertical) mounting rails. There are three screw-holes in the rail per cluster, and if your unit is only one U tall, you are well-advised to use four screws: top and bottom on each side. As illustrated here, there is a slightly uneven distance between adjacent mounting holes: the upper and lower mounting holes are five eighths of an inch (5/8 in.) center hole (distances given between centers of holes); there is a center-to-center spacing of only one half inch between the top hole of a cluster and the bottom hole of the cluster above it.

Traditionally also, the inside distance between mounting rails is about 450mm (17.72 inches). The idea is to mount them on screws, not squeeze them hard up against the rails, so this distance isn't so critical. They're called 19-inch racks because that's the horizontal center-to-center spacing of the screws, but there's relatively more play in that distance. The holes in the supporting front panel are not exactly circular: they're horizontal slots.

As you may be realizing by now, the ``standard'' electronics rack is not so standard. For deeper, heavier equipment, you buy racks with four vertical rails, so the equipment can be supported at the back. This is pretty handy for some of the heavier equipment, that may be just as deep as it is wide. Worse, the transformer, often the heaviest single piece, is typically with the rest of the power supply, towards the back.

Racks with back support usually have horizontal rails connecting the front and back vertical bars. The cross-section shape of these rails varies; HP alone has both C-type and J-type, and their J-type is not exactly the same as that of Tektronix. Tektronix rack-mount equipment frequently comes in slide drawers, and their nicer stuff folds down to expose the rear panel for easy servicing.

It's the usual story with standards: if one standard is good, then many standards must be very good. And here's a laugh: HP racks have their own serial numbers.

There's also a standard form of the plaint that there are too many standards. The relevant sentence above is supposed to read ``...usual story with standards: so many to choose from.''

U

University. I should probably say something here about the University of Paris and the University of Bologna. These were the two earliest universities in Christian Europe, and furnished the models on which all the other famous old universities of Europe were based. But that's not what I want to write about today, so that general remark will have to do.

Some universities are known by full names of the form ``University of <place>,'' yet have common abbreviations with U representing university in which U is not the initial initial. The only case in which I've attempted to nail down the origin is that of the University of Denver (see DU). Others include

• KU (Kansas)
• MU (Mizzou)
• OU (Oklahoma)

In the US, to a degree, a university is a college that offers post-baccalaureate degrees. According to a more popular definition a university is ``a college with a football team.'' Neither of these definitions holds uniformly.

U

Uracil. A pyrimidine base of RNA that pairs with the purine base Adenine (A).

U

Uranium. Atomic number 92.

Learn more at its entry in WebElements and its entry at Chemicool.

Ú., ú.

Úsase. A very common abbreviation in Spanish dictionaries. In Spanish, active-voice constructions with the reflexive third person object se are a common way to express the idea that English usually conveys by the passive voice. Thus, ``se toma en serio'' means both `he takes himself seriously' and `it is taken seriously.' The pronoun se can precede the verb or occur enclitically, so úsase is equivalent to se usa. (This is a common behavior of dative and accusative pronouns in Spanish.)

Anyway, as a dictionary abbreviation, úsase clearly has the sense `it is used,' where it refers to the term defined, and there are many abbreviations built on it, like ú. t. c. s.: úsase tambié como sustantivo, `also used as a noun.' That usually refers to an adjective. For example, alto means `tall,' but is also used as a noun meaning `tall person, tall one.' In many cases, the gender is obvious from the ending, especially -o/-a forms like alto/alta, `tall male, tall female.' (These are typically derived from Latin adjectives of the first and second declension.) Other adjectives have a common form for both genders. (Without thinking about it too hard, I suppose these are often derived from Latin third-declension adjectives.) For these cases, one can use more explicit abbreviations, such as ú. c. s. f. (úsase como sustantivo femenino, `used as a feminine noun.'

u

YOU in chat. You in chat? Whatcha doin there? That's for airheads!

U

YOU rebus.

.ua

(Domain code for) Ukraine. ``.uk'' (pron. yoo-kay) was taken, I guess; on the other hand ``Uke'' (pron. Yook [i.e. /ju:k/]) is an affectionate gentilicial noun.

u.a.

German, und andere[s]. English: `and others' (et al.).

u.a.

German, unter andere{n|m}. English: `under others'

UA

United Airlines. Also ``UAL.''

UA

United Alternative. A Canadian political party that was founded with the intention of being temporary, as explained at this CA entry.

UA

United Artists. Gee, when I try to access the top-level index page of the unitedartists.com domain, I reach the MGM page. I wonder what that means.

UA

United Association. Hmm -- so distinctive. Oh, here we go: United Association of Journeymen and Apprentices of the Plumbing, Pipefitting, Sprinkler Fitting Industry of the United States and Canada. Founded in 1889.

UA

University of Alaska. It has campuses all over the state of Alaska: UA Anchorage (UAA), UA Fairbanks (UAF), UA Southeast (UAS), and their subsidiary or affiliated campuses and colleges. They show a picture of students jumping to their deaths (or at least probable hypothermia) at UA Southeast, wearing modest swimming attire.

UA

University of Alabama. Located in Alabama. I'd be more specific, but when I clicked on ``site map'' all I got was a bunch of words. See also UA at Birmingham and UA in Huntsville.

UA

University of Arizona. Teams name: Wildcats. (In Tucson; cf. ASU in Tempe.)

UA

User Agent.

UAA

Universidad Adventista de las Antillas. `Antillean [Seventh-day] Adventist University.''

UAA

University of Alaska Anchorage. Also see the UA entry.

UAA

Urban Affairs Association. They could have made their headquarters at the University of Alaska Anchorage and been the UAA at UAA, but they blew it. (Anchorage is Alaska's largest city, with a population of over a quarter million in 2000.) The association is based at UD instead.

``UAA is the successor organization to the Council of University Institutes for Urban Affairs, formed in Boston in 1969 by a group of directors of university urban programs. As urban affairs developed as a professional and academic field, the need for an organization that welcomed urban faculty, professionals, and students as well as urban program directors and deans became increasingly apparent. In recognition of this need, in 1981 the organization's name was changed to the Urban Affairs Association. Today, UAA includes institutional, individual and student members from colleges and universities throughout North America, Europe and Asia. Among its other activities, UAA sponsors the Journal of Urban Affairs.''

UAA

Utilized Agricultural Area (AA). That's what it stands for in some EU publications, at least. For someone else it might stand for unused AA.

UAB

Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona. Gosh, all these Romance languages are so different that they are mutually unintelligible. The above name in Catalan, for example, would be Universidad Autónoma de Barcelona in Castilian.

UAB

University of Alabama at Birmingham.

U.A.C.

Unaltered Augsburg Confession. Cornerstone inscription on many US Lutheran Churches (according to this posting; I never noticed), indicating adherence to the Augsburg Confession in Philip Melanchthon's original form of 1530, rather than in his 1540 rewrite (fudge) that attempted to bridge a major difference with Calvinism (the Reformed Churches) over sacraments. See also some etext of Bente's Historical Introduction to the Lutheran Confessions (1921). In fact, even without this particular weakening, the U.A.C. designation would be necessary, since Melanchthon was an incorrigible amender, freely improving his work with every edition, so that in the 1540 version, the doctrinal article section (Art. I-XXI) was nearly twice as long as in the original. He never seemed to understand that once it had been accepted as a doctrinal statement, it was no longer his property to amend, any more than an approved peace treaty is subject to amendment by the original negotiators.

Come think of it, that seems to be the understanding of treaties in the Middle East: infinitely subject to renegotiation. I think that one way to deal with this would be, when their side proposes post-negotiation changes beneficial to them, our side should offer post-negotiation changes detrimental to them. Otherwise, they'll always see the advantages, and never the costs, of nonadherence to agreements.

UAE

United Arab Emirates. See the .ae entry.

UAE

Unrecoverable Application Error.

UAF

University of Alaska Fairbanks. Also see the UA entry.

UAF

User Authorization File.

UAH

University of Alabama in Huntsville. Durn near Tenn'see.

UAH

Up-Armored HMMWV.

UAHC

Union of American Hebrew Congregations. Umbrella organization for Reform (in British: ``Liberal'') Jewish movement.

UAI

Unprotected Anal Intercourse. This ought to mean hearing from your boss in person.

UAL

United AirLines. Also ``UA.''

UAM

Urban Airshed Model. A watershed, for those who don't know, is not just an important political event, but also the designation of that area drained by a particular river or river system.

U and non-U

Upper-class and other class. Designates linguistic usage posited as the primary distinguishing characteristic of the upper classes of England. The terminology was introduced in a scholarly paper of 1954 by Alan Ross. Immediately, that made about as big of a splash as you would expect for an article about the English published in a Finnish journal of linguistics. However, the next year it was mentioned prominently in an article Nancy Mitford wrote for Encounter magazine, and her article caused a sensation. The following November, Encounter published a condensed version of Ross' original paper, with this Editor's remark:

In the September ENCOUNTER, Miss Nancy Mitford referred to a learned article by Professor Alan S. C. Ross (who occupies the Chair of Linguistics in the University of Birmingham) on "Linguistic Class-Indicators in Present-Day English," published in "Neuphilologische Mitteilungen" (a well-known Finnish philological periodical published by Uusfilologinen Yhdistys). In view of the extraordinary interest that Miss Mitford's essay provoked, we think our readers will be interested in the following extracts from Professor Ross's article. We have been forced to omit some over-technical sections on phonetics, and Professor Ross has been kind enough to revise a few of the other sections so as to make them more easily comprehensible to the lay reader.
    We should like to apologise to our readers and would-be readers for having been unable to fulfil their many requests for copies of the September issue, which was sold out immediately after publication. We have, however, prepared a special reprint of Miss Mitford's essay on "The English Aristocracy," which will be sent to those who write for it, enclosing 2½d. in stamps to cover postage.

There is a little confusion which I would like to clear up regarding the title of the journal in which Ross's original article was published. Nancy Mitford's article (the lead article in the September issue of Encounter, pp. 5-12) cited (on p. 6) A.S.C. Ross's paper as ``Upper Class English Usage,'' in Bulletin de la Société Néo-philologique de Helsinki (contrast the title given by the editors). It's an understandable confusion: when the journal was begun, its title was in German, as given earlier in this entry, and professional linguists continued to know it by that title. By 1954, however, the title page included the French title cited by Mitford. The German title continued to appear at the top of the page, but the French title below it was in a larger font. Today the journal's title (and inside-front-cover submission instructions) appear in German, French, and Spanish. It continues to cause confusion. [Until I pointed it out to our reference librarians, the French and English titles were listed in the ``issuing body field'' and the German name of the society was given in the dative (in the ``imprint'' field) as it appears in a prepositional phrase on the title page. The reference librarian asked if I am a cataloger. I told her what my last German teacher told me his German teacher told him: ``Hey, wanna be a translator? The pay is poor, but the work is tedious!'']

I want you to realize that I've been pretty good about this. Normally I would be obtuse or oblique or obscure and send you to the Neuphilologische Mitteilungen entry, where you'd have to plow through many long and irrelevant paragraphs before you got an explanation of that multiple-title business. So considering what a swell guy I've been, why don't you be nice and follow this link?

Uusfilologinen Yhdistys also publishes Mémoires de la Société Néo-philologique de Helsinki. That's actually a different publication.

Nancy Mitford's article unleashed a flood of creative writing on this subject, published in 1956 in a thin volume edited by her, entitled Noblesse Oblige - An Enquiry into the Identifiable Characteristics of the English Aristocracy.

Another of the famous Mitford sisters, Jessica, moved to and made her writing career in the US. (She married, but kept her maiden name -- at least as a pen name.) In the May 1962 edition of Esquire, she had an article on the South and its civil rights ferment. In 1979, an anthology of her articles was published as Poison Penmanship: The Gentle Art of Muckraking. The article was reprinted there under the restored title ``You-All and Not-You-All: A Southern Potpourri'' (pp. 60-76). (For an excerpt from the article, and for more about Jessica Mitford, see the Lady Bird entry.)

In her comments on the article (pp. 76-78), Jessica Mitford complains about some of the changes made by Esquire editors without consulting her. Among them was that her title, ``derived from my sister Nancy's book about U and Non-U usage, was changed to the meaningless `What They're Thanking Down There,' which does not even catch the cadence of Southern vernacular.'' I think she's being a little hard on the editors, who may have had a less personally-biased estimate of how likely their readers were to recognize the allusion to her sister's work. The substituted title seems meaningful and authentic to me, but in my experience (some of it described at this SLA entry), people often have unexpectedly strong opinions about Southern accents.

UAR

United Arab Republic. Egypt. Name is from a pan-Arabist period early in Nasser's regime, when UAR was supposed to include the country we now call Syria (not that that country had another name, but ``Syria'' once referred to a broader region).

UART

Universal Asynchronous Receiver Transmitter. A serial port adapter for asynchronous serial communications.

No! Thou art; U R.

UAS

UnAvailable Seconds.

UAS

University of Alaska Southeast. Also see the UA entry.

UAV

Unmanned {Airborne|Aerial} Vehicle[s]. Actually, I've seen the ugly expansion ``Uninhabited Aerial Vehicle'' on the DFRC page, but I, ahem, the Stammtisch Beau Fleuve disapproves. The acronym is superfluous in English, since we have the synonym drone. Cf. UGV and ROV.

In the January 2007 Proceedings of the IEEE there's an invited paper (pp. 92ff) by T. Samad, J. S. Bay, and D. Godbole, entitled ``Network-Centric Systems for Military Operations in Urban Terrain: The Role of UAVs.'' According to the abstract, small UAV's ``that can operate autonomously, in coordinated groups, are being designed to provide surveillance and reconnaissance for fighting wars in urban areas.''

Entire squadrons of drones. Great, now if we could arrange to have robot armies fight unmanned urban guerrilla forces in entirely automated cities away from any population centers, war would finally be the civilized game it was meant to be.

UAW

United Auto Workers. An industrial union.

U.A.w.g.

German, Um Antwort wird gebeten. English equivalent: RSVP.

UB

Ungermann Bass.

UB

University of Baltimore.

UB

University of Bridgeport.

On October 20, 2004, Connecticut's Board of Higher Education gave UB its approval for a bachelor's degree program in martial arts. The program of studies covers ``the theory and practice of martial arts, incorporating study of world religions, international political economy and diplomacy, literature and civilization.'' Today's guest lecturer, David Carradine. Thomas Ward, dean of UB's International College explained that it's ``a liberal art with a specific focus in martial arts.'' It's like music or painting, but with greater impact. Students will be required to take at least 12 credits in Chinese, Japanese, or Korean. A few East Asian schools offer a bachelor's degree in martial arts, but in the US this is apparently a first. (Indiana University does offer a certificate in martial arts.)

UB

University at Buffalo. Founded as a medical school in 1846, it eventually became the University of Buffalo, still a private institution. In 1960, threatened with the possibility that the state might otherwise build a competing university nearby (this kind of ploy is sometimes called a bear hug or protection), it joined the New York State system as SUNYAB -- the State University of New York at Buffalo. Locally, however, another common name for it is ``University at Buffalo,'' the different preposition being the only name change conceded to indicate the change in status. It is supposed by some that this usage reflects pride or resentment arising from UB's earlier independent status. This interpretation would be more convincing, however, if SUNY-Albany were not also referred to as ``University at Albany.''

UBA

Universidad de Buenos Aires.

ubac

A French word often defined as the `northern side of a mountain.' We ought to adopt this cool and useful word in English, but make sure it means [versant] ombrée. Here ombrée is the presumptively more shaded side on average (over the course of a year): the foo side of a mountain in the foo hemisphere, where foo is north or south. Likewise adret, the sun-facing side.

U-Bahn

Untergrundbahn. German, `subway.' For an example, see the rail-transport map at the BE entry for Berlin.

UBBHP

The Unofficial Brady Bunch Home Page.

UBC

Uniform Building Code.

UBC

University of British Columbia. This appears to be located in Vancouver, which is in one of the Canadian provinces.

UBD

UnderBalanced Drilling.

Übersetzung

German: `translation.'

UBF

UB Foundation. UB is the University at Buffalo.

UB Library Hours

I used to want this information in a hurry.

UBM

Under-Bump Metall{ization|urgy}. ``Bump,'' in this context, is a dot of solder (``solder bump'' or ``ball'') that is part of a rectangular array of bumps on the underside of a chip that uses a ball-grid array (BGA) for electrical interconnection.

UBO

UnderBalanced Operations. See underbalanced drilling.

UBO

Université de Bretagne Occidentale.

U-boat

From German U-Boot, short for Unterseeboot, `submarine.' One of the most counterproductive weapons of these last few centuries. At the end of 1916, the Axis powers dominated Europe: the fragile Ottoman and Austro-Hungarian Empires stood, Germany occupied Alsace-Lorraine, the industrial heartland of France to Reims, and most of Belgium in the West, and Poland and Romania in the East. And Russia hadn't even withdrawn from the war yet. All the combatants were exhausted and sick of the man-devouring war, but neither side could budge the other. US President Woodrow Wilson (the Jimmy Carter of his day) who had begun his first term hoping to advance an ambitious domestic reform agenda, had been trying for years to negotiate a peace between the warring sides. If WWI had petered out or somehow ended with a cease-fire in place, the Axis might have hoped to hold its gains, as Germany had in 1871. But Germany resumed unrestricted U-boat warfare, the US joined on the Allied side, and the rest, as they say, is history.

For something not so simple-minded as the above, read Barbara W. Tuchman: The Zimmermann Telegram (revised edition 1966), which is essentially about how the US got into the war. She argues that the revelation of German diplomatic efforts to instigate and abet a joint Japanese/Mexican invasion of the American Southwest was crucial: by galvanizing US opinion against Germany overnight, it brought the US into WWI many months earlier than would otherwise have been the case, and those unknowable months may well have been crucial. One can never know.

The U-Boot was very effective in WWII during a period known as ``the happy time,'' but later in the war, countermeasure developments, particularly radar, turned them into big coffins.

One or more readers have wondered: ``why was this known as `the happy time'? It can't have been very happy for the people in the sunk boats.'' Well, I didn't say it was ``the happy time'' for everyone. It wasn't ``coffins'' for everyone either.

UBR

Unspecified Bit Rate. Designates a type of traffic management control within ATM. Appropriate for applications in which successful task completion is optional.

ABR (q.v.) and UBR are the two ATM ``best-effort'' service types, a sort of steerage class of data transmission, in which the network makes no absolute guarantee of cell delivery. In UBR, there are no guarantees of any sort. To make a railroad analogy, if ABR is second-class service, UBR is riding on top of the cars.

UBS

United Bank of Switzerland.

UBT

Universal Bus Transceiver.

UBW

Ultra-Wide-Band (radar).

UB2

You Be Too. Personals-ad abbreviation in the Austin (TX) Chronicle and elsewhere.

UB40

A reggae group formed in Birmingham, England. The name is said to be taken from a British-government unemployment form. However, UB40 was also a much-loved guitar amp. Katrina and the Waves had some success with ``Going Down To Liverpool (And Do Nothing).'' That had a line that went ``Where you goin' with that yoo be forty in your hand?'' The Bangles covered it later. I'll try to track some more information down on that, but for now I can say that Katrina and the Waves was founded in 1981 and that today I can't find the jewel box for their CD.

BTW, although I didn't see the complete lyrics anywhere on the web, I did see that many sites quote ``We're going down to Liverpool and do nothing, all the days of our lives.'' No. It was a four-part harmony (in the version of Katrina and the Waves), but the lyrics were in the singular. (``I'm goin'... all the days of my life.'') Apparently it caused a stir in Liverpool -- TV interviews with an indignant mayor, all that.

u.c.

Upper Case. ``Capital letters.''

UC

University of California. A still-mighty state university system.

UC

University of Cincinnati.

U.C.

University of Crete. It's situated in the cities of Rethymnon and Heraklion. The Greek name is Panepistêmio Krêtês (accents on the first two etas, represented conventionally by ê in the Roman-character transliteration), abbreviated P.K. (i.e., Pi Kappa).

UC

Unitrode part number prefix.

UCA

Universal Cheerleaders Association.

SPEED-of-light--
SPEED-of-light--
Gooo... WORLD!

Yay everything! Rrrooollll back the nothingness! Excite the vacuum!

I once had a friend who had attended a small high school, where she was a cheerleader for the school teams. She eventually became a professor of math at one of the Cal-States. Now, in case you are a cheerleader I hope you will take this in the proper spirit, but, um, cheerleading and math professing describe points near opposite ends of the braininess spectrum: Br-negative and Br-positive... respectively. (Though I don't mean to stereotype -- too much. I'm actually somewhat serious about this: I have known a very good as well as a quite mediocre physicist who both played on their college football teams. And the year I taught Emag I had three members of the pep squad in my class -- a cheerleader and a couple of band members. Of course, Notre Dame is probably exceptional.)

The former cheerleader also became a Sandinista symp in graduate school. Again, on a spectrum of conventionality, in the US milieu, I think it's fair to say that cheerleader is Cn+ and Sandinista symp is Cn-. What all this goes to show is that in a small school (200 total in her high school) the various duties fall on a small number of available student personnel. Each student wears multiple school hats, not even counting mortarboards.

Of course, 200 isn't a tiny school. One friend of mine grew up in a nonurban part of South Dakota. His high school basketball team consisted of the boys.

UCA

Universidad Centroamericana. A Jesuit (SJ) institution. Either in Nicaragua (.ni) -- Universidad Centroamericana de Nicaragua, or in El Salvador (.sv) -- Universidad Centroamericana José Simeón Cañas.

UCAID

University Corporation for Advanced Internet Development. Developing Internet2.

UCAID proudly claims that the ``Internet2 project is being led by over 130 research universities....'' This is oxymoronic, and maybe not so oxy.

UCAR

University Corporation for Atmospheric Research.

UCAS

(UK) Universities and Colleges Admissions Service.

UCAV

Unmanned Combat Air Vehicles. Can you say ``drones''? Sure you can!

UCB

University of California at Berkeley. Also called ``Cal.'' Although the name of Bishop Berkeley is pronounced ``Barkley,'' the California town (which has no functioning Republican party but does have two Democratic parties -- last I knew, anyway) and this university use the pronunciation apparent from the spelling.

Back in the thirties, with about 15,000 students, this was still the University of California, what we call UCLA was still called ``the Southern Branch'' and Davis was home of ``the Aggy school''

School teams at Berkeley are called ``the Bruins.'' The state flag of California is basically a picture of a Bear.

UCB

University of Colorado at Boulder. This initialism is used extensively, but CU seems to be more common.

UCC

Uniform Code Council, Inc. A voluntary association of commercial distributors and retailers that coordinates use of UPC. This group assigns the first 6 digits of the U.S. 12 digit code. The individual company assigns the next 5 and the last is a check digit.

UCC

Uniform Commercial Code. The body of statutory law that governs most US business activity today. Developed jointly by the National Conference of Commissioners (NCC) and the American Law Institute (ALI). The model legislation grew out of the need for business law that was substantially uniform across states, and reflected a realization that had been growing since the twenties and thirties that existing legal assumptions (many a part of common law doctrine) were at odds with the modern expectations of business. (A major contributor to this thinking, and one of the best legal writers of the time, was Benjamin Cardozo.)

The first version of the model code was only issued in 1952. The UCC has since been adopted, with some local variations, by all fifty US states, the District of Columbia, and the US Virgin Islands. The state of Louisiana has adopted only articles 1, 3-5, and 7-9 of 11 (but 10 and 11 just have to do with timing of adoption and how the transition is handled; article 2 covers sales and leases, article 6 bulk transfers). Louisiana, because of its Spanish and French colonial history, has a legacy of Roman Law, and is legally exceptional in many respects.

UCC

United Church of Christ.

UCC

Upper Canada College. Canada's most prestigious private high school. (Actually ``a day and boarding school for boys from Senior Kindergarten through Grade 12,'' but apparently better known for the secondary program.)

UCCC

Uniform Consumer Credit Code.

UCCFS

United Council of Cultural Fraternities and Sororities (at UB, at least).

UCCJA

Uniform Child Custody and Jurisdiction Act.

UCCO

Upper Cervical Chiropractic Organization. See the AUCCO entry for the skull-bending details.

UCCU

Utah Community Credit Union.

UCD

University of California (at) Davis. Gotta admit, I haven't heard this acronym used so much as `UC Davis,' so I suppose the Irish can have it. No, not those Irish! These Irish:

UCD

University College Dublin.

UCE

Universidad Central del Ecuador.

UCen

University CENter. The student union at UCSB.

UCF

Universal Conductance Fluctuations. Variations in conductance of mesoscopic systems, order of e²/h. They look like noise, but they are repeatable (between anneals).

UCF

University of Central Florida.

UCI

University of California at Irvine. The city name rhymes and has the same stress pattern as ravine, but I'm sure that's the only connection. UCI is about 50 miles south of LA. That would be about 80.46720 kilometers; it's pretty obvious to me that the metric system is inferior to the universal system of good ol' merkin units.

When I first saw the team name in a cursive script on a UCI baseball jersey, I did a double-take, a triple-take, and an n-tuple-take, where n tended to infinity. I tried to get my eyes to see ``Gators,'' as if Irvine were in a different state of sunshine, but it wouldn't work. Fans in the bleachers held up signs with ``EATER NATION'' written in can't-mistake-it block letters. It turns out that the team mascots and official teams name are Anteaters. (I purposely made the last sentence awkward so as to avoid grammatical-number problems, and also to avoid having to write a second sentence. It didn't work.)

UCITA

Uniform Computer Information Transactions Act.

UCL

Université catholique de Louvain. [English page here.]

UCL

University College London. Everything about the university system in England, if it can be called a system (and especially if it can't) is confusing. However, a document on graduation ceremonies at UCL represents an especially high level of achievement in the disorientation, with just enough information to make you glimpse how really hopelessly confusing it is.

What many people want to know is, why is it called ``University College''? The reasons have to do with the religious-contentious history of the place.

UCL(GLOR)

Université catholique de Louvain: Département d'études grecques, latines et orientales. Dans la Faculté de Philosophie et Lettres.

There's a Francophone mailing list for classics at UCL called AgoraClass, l'AGORA des Classiques.

UCLA

University of California at Los Angeles.

In America this is always pronounced as an initialism. (``You see el-AY.'') ``Oo-klah'' has been heard in France among some whose familiarity with UCLA is based on tee shirts. UCLA is one school in the University of California system, which includes UCB (also ``Cal'') (Berkeley), UCD (Davis), UCI (Irvine), UCR (Riverside), UCSB (Santa Barbara), UCSC (Santa Cruz), UCSD(San Diego), and UCSF (San Francisco). The state of California also has a separate system of State Colleges.

UCMJ

(US) Uniform Code of Military Justice.

UCO

University of Central Oklahoma. What exactly is ``Central''? I figure that OU, in Norman (just south of Oklahoma City) is already pretty central.

UCO is in Edmond, OK?

UConn

The University of Connecticut.

UCP

Unified Command Plan. Business diagram for the military.

UCP

Uniform Customs and Practices.

UCR

Under-Color Removal. In CMYK-based color printing, the replacement of ``equal'' amounts of C, M, and Y (cyan, magenta, and yellow) by K (black).

UCR

Uniform Crime Reports. Annual reports compiled by the FBI.

I remember in 8th-grade US history class with Mr. Rosenblatt, the assistant varsity football coach, how he made sure to make clear that these were crime reports that represented crime statistics in a way that was uniform across jurisdictions with differing laws and in particular different crime definitions, and that it did not refer to crimes committed by people in uniform. As the FBI says,

The Uniform Crime Reporting (UCR) Program was conceived in 1929 by the International Association of Chiefs of Police to meet a need for reliable, uniform crime statistics for the nation. In 1930, the FBI was tasked with collecting, publishing, and archiving those statistics. Today, several annual statistical publications, such as the comprehensive Crime in the United States [CIUS], are produced from data provided by nearly 17,000 law enforcement agencies across the United States.

UCR

University of California at Riverside.

UCR

Unión Cívica Radical. Often translated `Radical Civic Union' or `the Radical Party' (los radicales or el partido radical). The name is traditional, and the conventional meaning of the word radical conveys a sense of the party -- just about as well as the conventional semantic distinction between democratic and republican conveys the difference between the Democratic and Republican parties in the US. The Radical party in Argentina is the most politically conservative of the two (three, counting the PSP) major political parties. The party was founded in opposition to the conservative oligarchy that dominated Argentina up until the 1920's. The radicals represented the interests of the middle class, but further to their left the socialists (PSP) represented the interests of the working class.

If you like, you can think of the word radical now as expressing a concept closer to `fundamentalist' in a political sense. The other major party is the Peronists (PJ).

UCR

Unintentional Comedy Rating. Official scale devised by ESPN Page 2 columnist Bill Simmons as his own contribution to recognizing and sorting out the camp/kitsch/preposterity nexus. (Interestingly, many of the programs mentioned at the degradation entry were mentioned as Hollywood contributions to a new spin-off genre of ``Intentional Unintentional Comedy'' with orchestrated ``UCR moments,'' like posed candid photographs. If Candid Camera stunts were ever funny, I suppose they might figure into this analysis.)

Bill Simmon's UCR list is longer than the list of TV programs I could name, and this is just a sideline to his sports commentary. The man is dedicated!

UCREL

University Centre for Computer Corpus REsearch on Language. At Lancaster University. Vide CLAWS.

UCS

The Union of Concerned Scientists.

UCS

Uniform Communication Standard.

UCSB

University of California at Santa Barbara.

Back when I was in charge of inviting speakers for one of the regular seminars at UB, I had Gary over to talk about whatever it was that he was researching at the time. As we walked through the campus halls, he marveled that there were students studying everywhere. It was true -- in the library, on the grass, on the floors along the walls between classroom doors -- there were a lot of serious students. A beautiful sight. On one of my visits to Santa Barbara (in August 2003, toward the end of Summer Session) I happened to eat at the Denny's on State Street on a number of late evenings/early mornings, and every night the place filled with UCSB students studying. On Saturday night there was a table playing some knowledge-challenge game. I bought a UCSB cap and tee shirt. The UCSB teams' name is Gauchos.

UCSC

University of California at Santa Cruz. Santa Cruz is Spanish for `Holy Cross.'

UCSD

University of California at San Diego.

UCSF

University of California at San Francisco.

U.C.T.

University of Cape Town. It turns out that Cape Town is spelled as two words.

UCU

University and College Union. A labor union formed by the merger of the UK's two university and college employees' unions (AUT and NATFHE) in 2006.

UD

University of Dayton. Despite the name, it's a Catholic school. I was about to write ``but it's a Jesuit school, so it's practically secular,'' until I discovered that it isn't. It's Marianist. The great tragedy of humor: the slaying of a nice joke by an inconvenient fact. Sure, there's some interest in the morphological relationships among Mary, Marian, and Marianist, but it's just crumbs in the humor department. Humor is so hard, I think I may go and become a scientist.

UD

University of Delaware.

UDC

Universal Decimal (subject) Classification. An adaptation of the Dewey decimal system (DDC), created by Paul Otlet and Nobel Prizewinner Henri La Fontaine, and published in French from 1904 to 1907.

Why doesn't everyone just use the LC system? That's flexible enough and convenient for me.

You probably want to know more about Henri La Fontaine, Belgian Nobel Prize Laureate. With a genius behind this effort, you gotta figure this UDC is a brilliant piece of work. From his biography at the Nobel e-Museum I see that his achievements were in the area of peace. I was going to continue this entry in a light, humorous, tongue-in-cheek tone, but frankly, the hypocrisy and inanity of Nobel peace prizes makes me gag. Let's just say that La Fontaine was a politician with fine intentions and no meaningful achievements. In 1901, he asked the Belgian government to demand arbitration between the contending [white] sides of the Boer War. Did he ever condemn the genocide of black Africans wrought by Belgian colonialism? (That was a rhetorical question. A joke.) He was known as a strong proponent of internationalism, in a time when international agreement would have been largely a consensus of monarchs, dictators, and assorted uncrowned scoundrels. The faith that some have had in the procedural-reform road to the bureaucracy of utopia is only a more acute form of the delusion that a law can make any fact [discussed (disgust?) here].

Eight months after he received the Nobel prize, WWI engulfed his country. Before he went into politics, he was a bibliographer.

Nothing here should be taken to suggest that La Fontaine did not earn his laurel. By the terms of Alfred Nobel's will, the peace prize should go to the person who ``shall have done the most or the best work for fraternity between nations, for the abolition or reduction of standing armies and for the holding and promotion of peace congresses.'' After sifting through the rubble of those ors and ands, one doubtless finds that his yeoman conferencing work put him head and shoulders above the fools who make peace by defeating invaders.

Peace is as easy as surrender. Neville Chamberlain deserved the prize as much as anyone.

This started out to be an entry about UDC, didn't it? I can't remember. Let's meet at the UDCC entry later and try again, shall we?

UDC

Universal Digital Channel.

UDC

Up-Down Counter.

UDC

User-Defined Commands.

UDCC

Universal Decimal Classification (UDC) Consortium. Entry under construction, okay? There's some relevant information at the UDC entries, in the 000's in the Dewey system and in the Z's in the LC system.

udder

Proper Buffalonian pronunciation of ``other.''

The SBF Eco expert's grandson, reviewing his observations at the fair (see Grandparents' Day) recalled the balloons (cf. balloon smuggler) he observed at the milk cow exhibit. If you're reading this, you can't be too busy. Why don't you read the au pis entry too?

UdeM

L'Université de Montréal.

UDF

Union pour la Démocratie Française. A center-right party grouping of France. Under the Fifth Republic, many French political parties and party groupings of the right have been created primarily as vehicles to support their leaders, rather than as vehicles to advance specific agendas. The UDF, in particular, was created to support President Valéry Giscard d'Estaing. It was formed in 1978, about half-way through his one term as president, as a coalition of smaller parties -- the venerable Parti radical, the Parti républicain (now DL), and the Centre des démocrates sociaux.

UDI

Unilateral Declaration of Independence.

On November 11, of all days, in 1965, Southern Rhodesian Prime Minister Ian Smith made a UDI. The uni- here referred to the fact that the British, who were granting independence to all their African colonies in those years, were not invited to participate in determining the form of government Rhodesia would have after independence. I think this had something to do with race. Yes, I'm pretty sure of it, I don't think I'll even bother to look it up, just like I didn't bother to look up the approximate stuff I put in the .zw entry for Zimbabwe. There is a little bit of the antecedent history of Rhodesia at the NIBMAR entry.

Mr. Smith was a great advocate of democracy for the white population. In 1980, a British team negotiated an end to the civil war over majority rule, a bilateral declaration was issued, and Rhodesia became Zimbabwe. Ian Smith even had a (white minority party) seat in the national legislature. As I passed by this entry in 2005 and 2006, I observed that Zimbabwe has really been racking up the bad decades. As of 2008, the intensity of misery and misgovernment had cranked up a notch or two.

While it was in force, newspapers often referred to the UDI as Smith's ``declaration of UDI.'' They say that time wounds all heels, but I'm not sure. It's clear, though, that time can heal an acronym AAP pleonasm.

In Spanish, the letter wye (y) used as consonant and the double-el (ll) have the same sound almost everywhere Spanish is spoken, but that same sound is different in different places. In most of Mexico and Spain, the sound is a glide that you might write as a consonantal wye in English, or /j/ in the IPA. In Puerto Rico it's more like the jay sound in English, and in Argentina it's the zh sound, identical with the sound of j in French, or of the ess in standard English pronunciations of elision. The ess in Asia or Rhodesia is similarly pronounced either as zh or zee. In Spanish, the word rodilla means `knee.'

The year 1980 was an important moment in US history, a post-WWII nadir, and Rhodesia was part of that moment. More on that later; I may actually look something up. When I was a kid in elementary school, it was hard to suspect, let alone understand, that the US that emerged triumphant from WWII only twenty years before had been back on its heels in 1942, truly fearful of Japanese attack, and thinking but not uttering the word defeat.

The UDI attempted to achieve something similar to the American Declaration of Independence of 1776, and is more and less loosely patterned on that earlier document. One of the closer similarities is the inclusion of a catalog of grievances (shorter than, but similar in some content to, that of the American declaration) and a claim that the declarers have made a good-faith effort to avoid the rupture. Probably the closest resonance is in the opening:

Whereas in the course of human affairs history has shown that it may become necessary for a people to resolve the political affiliations which have connected them with another people and to assume amongst other nations the separate and equal status to which they are entitled:

And whereas in such event a respect for the opinions of mankind requires them to declare to other nations the causes which impel them to assume full responsibility for their own affairs:

Now therefore, we, the Government of Rhodesia, do hereby declare:

For comparison, here is the opening of the 1776 declaration:

When in the Course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.

To most Americans, I imagine, Ian Smith's imitation looks like ugly travesty, and not just for aesthetic reasons. It can stir the melancholy thought that authors of the two declarations shared a straitened view of whom God or some unnamed authority had entitled to benefit from separate and equal status.

UDI

Unión Democrática Independiente. One of the two political parties on the right in Chile. The other (more toward the center) is Renovación Nacional (RN).

In 1989 the UDI and RN formed an electoral coalition which has lasted to this day, but which has gone through five names:

• Democracia y Progreso (1989-1992)
• Participación y Progreso (1992-1993)
• Unión por el Progreso (1993-1996)
• Unión por Chile (1996-2000)
• Alianza por Chile (2000-)

A small comment is in order about the word por that occurs in the last three coalition names. The Spanish prepositions para and por can both often be translated by the English word `for' (and the German für, for that matter). The preposition para means `for' in the sense of `for the purpose of.' (Hence ¿para qué? means `what for?') The preposition por means `for' in the sense of `in favor of' (or `for the purposes of,' so to speak). That's why por is the word in Unión por Chile, for example. (This would be translated -- the expression is awkward in English -- as `Union for Chile'; `United for Chile' would be more natural, if less literal. For a similar construction in French, see RPR. For an expression using French pour in the Spanish para sense, see UDPS or the UDR's below, or SUPRAS.) Of course, both prepositions have other meanings. For example, the instruction para la derecha means `to the right' (the semantic overlap is imprecise, and each language has related expressions that carve up the neighborhood of related meanings a bit differently). The instruction por la derecha means (approximately, of course) `via, or by, the right side, going along the right.' (There's a little more on por at its own entry.)

UDL

Unique Data Log (filetype).

UDLC

Universal Digital Loop Carrier. Superseded by IDLC.

UDMA

Ultra DMA.

UDMH

Unsymmetrical DiMethylHydrazine. Also expanded UnsymDiMethylHydrazine, and more plainly described as 1,1-dimethylhydrazine. By any name, a liquid rocket fuel. It's a hypergolic, which in layman's terms means that it's really just an explosive set off a little at a time.

It's also called asymmetric dimethylhydrazine. In English, of course, unsymmetric is a rare alternative to asymetric. However, a lot of the early research on hypergolics was done in Germany. As it happens, however, asymmetrisch is standard German, and unsymmetrisch is just as selten auf Deutsch wie auf Englisch, which just explodes my first theory of how the UDMH name came about.

UDON

Unit Director Of Nursing (DON).

UDP

Uridine DiPhosphate.

UDP

Usenet Death Penalty. Ostracism of a site notorious for spam. Imposed with five business days of opportunity to curtail abuse. Any site can choose to receive postings from UDP'd sites anyway -- i.e., ignore (selectively or completely) the UDP cancels.

UDP

User Datagram Protocol.

UDPS

L'Union pour la democratie et le progres social. `Union for Democracy and Social Progress.' An opposition political party in Congo/Kinshasa.

UDR

Union des démocrates pour la République. French for `Union of Democrats for the Republic.' The UDP was founded in October 1958 as l'Union pour la nouvelle République (`the Union for the New Republic'). The New republic was the Fifth Republic. In 1962 it merged with the leftist-Gaullist Union démocratique du travail `Democratic Union of Labor to become the Union for the French Republic-Democratic Union of Labor (you can guess the French). For elections in 1967 this party label was discarded in favor of Union démocratique pour la Ve République (`Union of Democrats for the V^th Republic'), or UD-Ve République for short. For the 1968 elections the name became Union pour la défense de la République (`Union for the Defense of the Republic'), changed in 1971 to the one which the head term of this entry (UDR) abbreviates. None of these name changes caused any confusion or really mattered, because it was always just the Gaullist party, q.v.

UDR

Union pour la défense de la République. French for `Union for the Defense of the Republic.' The Gaullist party's name, 1968-71. See preceding entry.

U dub

Yoo Double-yoo. University of Washington (UW). Cf. dubya.

UD-Ve République

Union démocratique pour la Ve République French for `Union of Democrats for the V^th Republic.' The 1967 name of the Gaullist party. See UDR.

U.E.

Umberto Eco. Cf. E.U.

UE

Undergraduate Education. Visit UB's Office of the Vice Provost for Undergraduate Education. View an Undergraduate catalog.

UE

Unión Europea. Spanish for `European Union.'

UE

L'Union européenne. French for `European Union.'

UE

United Educators. ``Education's Own Insurance Company.''

``United Educators is a licensed insurance company owned and governed by approximately 1,000 member colleges, universities, independent schools, and related organizations throughout the United States. Our members range from small, private schools to multi-campus state universities.''

UEFA

Union Européenne de Football Association.

UEJF

Union des étudiants juifs de France. `Union of Jewish Students of France.'

UEL, U.E.L.

United Empire Loyalist. A British loyalist from the former British colonies of North America (recently reorganized as the independent United States), who resettled in what remained of British North America. (Most resettled in Nova Scotia or Canada.) See UELA.

UEL

Upper Explosive Limit. The concentration above which a substances is not considered an explosion hazard.

UELA

United Empire Loyalists' Association. An organization that is exactly identical to the Daughters of the American Revolution (DAR), except that it's co-ed, based in Canada, and has a different take on the American Revolution.

UEVH

Union of European Veterinary Practitioners. One of the four ``vibrant sections'' of the FVE which was founded in 1975. The UEVH actually antedates the FVE: ``At a meeting of public health veterinarians held in Paris during October 1966, the decision was taken to create an European organisation called the 'Association européenne des directeurs d'abattoirs publics'. The first General Assembly of this new veterinary organisation was held on the 1st July 1967 in Geneva.
During 1976, the Association changed its statutes in order to become eligible for membership of the Federation of Veterinarians of Europe and adopted its current name.''

UEVP

Union of European Veterinary Practitioners. One of the four ``vibrant sections'' of the FVE.

UEW

Universal Eclectic Wicca. A branch (or, as religion physicists would say, an eigensect) of Wicca. The way the US auto industry is going these days, they might outnumber working UAW members.

UEZ

Urban Enterprise Zone.

UF

University of Florida.

UFAW

The Universities Federation for Animal Welfare. The organization was originally mostly concerned with the humane treatment of lab animals, but has expanded into zoo and farm animals, wildlife management, and pets.

The University of London Animal Welfare Society (ULAWS) was founded in 1926 by Maj. Charles W. Hume. In 1938, UFAW was created to expand membership, with ULAWS (no longer referred to by the original name or initialism) becoming UFAW's first branch.

UFC

Ultimate Fighting Championship. ``Ultimate fighting'' is actually pretty tame stuff. Out on the frontier, back when the western frontier was Kentucky, gouging and biting were a regular part of fighting, and not some Mike Tyson one-off. ``No holds barred'' was progress.

UFC

Uniform Fire Code.

UFE

Undergraduate Faculty Enhancement. A program of the Division of Undergraduate Education of the NSF, ``enabling faculty members who teach undergraduate students to gain experience with recent advances and new experimental techniques in their fields and learn new ways to incorporate these into undergraduate instruction.'' Dang, and I thought ``Undergraduate Faculty Enhancement' was free face-lifts, boob jobs, and `male enhancement' (as appropriate, of course) for professors teaching those large survey courses. Oh well, maybe under the new (Obama) dispensation.

UFE

United Faculty of Eastern. ``For a Strong and Vibrant University in Eastern Washington.'' UFE is part of the United Faculty of Washington State.

UFE

United for a Fair Economy. For related (similar and dissimilar) organizations, see the WTO entry.

UFH

UnFractionated Heparin. A blood anticoagulant. Heparin binds reversibly to antithrombin (AT III), functioning as a sort of homogeneous catalyst to increase the rate at which antithrombin inactivates most activated clotting factors, particularly thrombin (big surprise there) and factor Xa. Thrombin inactivation in turn reduces fibrin clot formation and thrombin-induced activation of platelets and factors V and VIII. UFH, administered subcutaneously, is used to prevent complications in major surgery and, also prophylactically, to certain inpatients at risk. It is also an initial treatment, by continuous IV, of some thromboembolic disorders.

The term UFH is used because the low-molecular-weight fractions (LMWH) also have medical application. LMWH's generally perform the same function as UFH, but have longer half-lives (which may be an advantage or not) and have different patterns of side-effects and drug interactions than UFH [e.g. lower rates of immune-mediated heparin-induced thrombocytopenia (HIT)].

UFL

University of FLorida. The question that immediately occurs is: ¿what has UFL got to do with MESFET's? This confusion probably explains why the University of Florida more frequently uses the initialism UF.

UFL

Unbuffered FET Logic. A D-MESFET-based logic family.

UFMCC

Universal Fellowship of Metropolitan Community Churches. Serves gay men and lesbians. The National Council of Churches (NCC) can't decide whether to even accord the UFMCC observer status.

UFO

Unidentified Flying Object. Some friends of mine made some UFO's from plastic garbage bags. They overcame the earth's gravitational field, to some extent, by functioning as hot air balloons. The air-heating elements were candles, installed on crosses of slats that held the bags open at the bottom. The candles gave the bags a glow that some would describe as `eerie,' and the wind carried them at speeds that one could reasonably compute to be extraordinary, if not for the fact that they were only at treetop level. The police received a number of alarmed reports, and my friends had to knock it off. I was not involved. Alas. Don't try this at home, particularly if your home is in a wooded, flammable area. Visit your friends and do it at their home.

FUFOR awards small cash prizes for UFO research (see news note).

The movie The Abyss includes the following dialogue:

Lindsay Brigman: There is something down there. Something not us.
Catfish De Vries: You could be more specific.
Lindsay Brigman: Not us. Not human, get it? Something non-human but intelligent ... A non-terrestrial intelligence.
Alan "Hippy" Carnes: A non-terrestrial intelligence? NTIs. Oh man, that's better than UFOs. Oh, but that works too, huh? "Underwater Flying Objects".

Must have been octopi or porpoises.

UFOV

Useful Field Of View.

UFP

United Federation of Planets. The `Federation' in Star Trek. A sharp website for the Federation, UFP Galaxy, is maintained by the International Star Trek Association.

UFR

Unique Factorization Ring.

UFS

Unruptured Follicle Syndrome.

UFT

Unified Field Theory.

UFT

United Federation of Teachers. Founded in 1960, local 2 of the AFT.

With more than 140,000 members, the UFT is the sole bargaining agent for most of the non-supervisory educators who work in the New York City public schools. It represents approximately 74,000 teachers and 17,000 classroom paraprofessionals, along with school secretaries, attendance teachers, guidance counselors, psychologists, social workers, education evaluators, nurses, laboratory technicians, adult education teachers and 32,000 retired members.

The UFT also represents teachers and other employees of some private educational institutions. The allied Federation of Nurses/UFT represents some 2,500 registered nurses of the New York City Visiting Nurse Service and several private New York City hospitals and health care institutions.

.ug

(Domain code for) Uganda. The MyUganda site (formerly with the title ``Uganda -- Pearl of Africa'') is (still) boosterish.

UG

UnderGraduate. Someone enrolled in a program that will, under favorable conditions, lead to a Bachelor's degree.

UG

Universidad de Guanajuato, Mexico.

UG

User Group. A productive suffix on OS-, HLL-, and App-name acronyms.

UGA

University of GeorgiA.

Uga! Uga! Uga shaka... I can't fight this feelin' ...

``The University of Georgia, a land-grant and sea-grant university with state-wide commitments and responsibilities, is the state's flagship institution of higher education. [It certainly seems appropriate for a sea-grant university to be a flagship, but does that make up for the handicap of being 200 miles from the sea?] It is also the state's oldest, most comprehensive and most diversified institution of higher education. Its motto, `to teach, to serve and to inquire into the nature of things,' [that probably sounds a lot more exalted in the original Latin] reflects the university's integral and unique [etc.].''

UGA is located in Athens, about 50 miles east of Atlanta. It was incorporated by the state's general assembly in 1785. (About that A in UGA: It's true that UGA is located at Athens. But then, Ohio University is also located in Athens -- coincidence, of course -- and it's not called OUA. Not even UOA.)

UGAMP

Universities' Global Atmospheric Modelling Programme.

UGIB

Upper GastroIntestinal Bleeding.

UGIM

University Government Industry Micro/nano. As in UGIM Symposium, UGIM Proceedings, etc. A biennial symposium sponsored by the IEEE.

UGL

Undergraduate Library (the Oscar O. Silverman Library) at UB.

UGLI

Universal Gate for Logic Implementation.

Ugli fruit

An ugly citrus fruit. Never tried it.

ugly bruises

They're not bruises? They're tattoos! Art! Well, then, I guess they must not be ugly either. But please wear long sleeves anyway.

UGM

Underwater-to-Ground Missile.

UGT

Unión General de Trabajadores. Spain's `General Union of Workers.' Allied, since its founding congress at Barcelona in 1888, with the Socialist Party (PSOE).

UGV

Unmanned Ground Vehicle. Cf. UAV and ROV.

UG2BK

Texting shorthand for `YOU Got TO BE Kidding,' which means `you've got to be kidding' in my generation's English, and was probably expressed as `you must be joking' early in the nineteenth century.

UH

University of Hawai'i. I just noticed that the possessive form of Hawai'i is Hawai'i's; add double contractions like shouldn't've, and it looks like English is following the path that French took, before it switched to hyphens.

UH

University of Houston.

UHAC

United Hellenic American Congress.

UHD

University of Houston, Downtown.

UHF

Ultra High Frequency (300 MHz to 3 GHz).

UHF

Unrestricted Hartree-Fock. A sham, a fraud, and a deception! We're all going to hold a protest rally in front of the Legislature of Physics tomorrow. This is the kind of nomenclature that the nomenklatura calls ``somewhat misleading'' when it deigns to address the crisis.

In fact, truly unrestricted Hartree Fock minimizes the Ritz energy functional in the space of Slater determinants of single-particle states. This honest HF suffers from a disease called the symmetry dilemma -- that is, the HF operator does not generally commute with angular momentum operators (spin and orbital) even when the true Hamiltonian operator does. The UHF procedure solves part of this problem -- the spin noncommutation -- by restricting the orbitals in the Slater determinant to be s_z eigenstates (i.e., they are simple products of a Pauli spinor with a function of position). With a fixed number of orbitals are assigned spin up, and the remainder spin down, the UHF wavefunction is an eigenstate of the z component of total spin, S_z.

For more revelations, see RHF.

uhh...

Shwa vocalization used during ``filled pause.'' In many Spanish-speaking countries [possibly in all; certainly in Argentina (.ar), as well as a few others where I've noticed it], one uses the word este meaning `this,' with the final vowel being extended to fill space after most of the word has been pronounced. In Korean, one can use ku ro myun which means something like `if it were this.' [The extension of an en (``n'') to fill a pause is yet another indication of the vowel character of final en.] In Chinese, one can also fill pauses with this, which is pronounced tsü4. (The fourth tone is reflected in the initial pronunciation of the word; the vowel is extended at a constant pitch.) In Japanese, one does a similar thing with ``ano,'' which means that. In Spanish, ano means anus.

Many languages, including Korean and Chinese, use an extended shwa as English does.

Filled Pause Web Links is a good page on this stuff.

UHON

University HONors. ``University honors'' is used to designate an honors program and its students. One place I know this acronym is used is USD. The term ``university honors'' doesn't normally refer to graduation honors (cum laude, magna cum laude, summa cum laud).

UHMW

Ultra-High Molecular Weight. Long-chain polymers.

UHMWP

Ultra-High Molecular Weight Polyethylene.

UHP

Upper Half-Plane.

UHV

Ultra High Vacuum.

UHWHI

Until Hell Won't Have It. Until there is a substantial excess.

UI

Unemployment Insurance. (Canadian usage.)

UI

University of Idaho. Pronounced like a pair of personal pronouns.

UI

University of Indiana? You mean Indiana University.

UI

University of Iowa. Hawkeyes.

UI

Unix International.

UI

Unnumbered Information.

UI

User Interface. See CUI and GUI.

UIB, UiB

Universitetet i Bergen. (University of Bergen in Norway.)

UIBK

Universität Innsbruck. `Leopold-Franzens-University of Innsbruck.' A school that was twice elevated from a secondary school to a university. In 1562 the Jesuits established a secondary school in Innsbruck, and in 1669 it was made a university by Leopold I (king of Hungary and Bohemia, and Holy Roman Emperor from 1658 to his death in 1705). At some point it was was reduced to a lyceum (i.e., again a secondary school), but in 1826 it was re-established as the University of Innsbruck by Emperor Franz I of Austria. (The same person was Holy Roman Emperor Francis II from 1792 until August 6, 1806, when the Empire ceased to be regarded as existing.)

UIC

University of Illinois at Chicago. (Used to be called Univ. of Illinois at Chicago Circle.)

UIC

User ID Code.

UICC

Union Internationale Contre le Cancer in Switzerland. [`International Union Against Cancer.']

UICHR

University of Iowa Center for Human Rights.

uid, u.i.d.

Uniformly Independently Distributed (random variable). Most random number generators, and especially those that come bundled with compilers, attempt to generate u.i.d. distributions. Other (nonuniform or correlated) distributions one usually generates in user code by transformations of single or multiple u.i.d. variables, or as a last resort by a rejection method. In principle, this u.i.d. can also be written as i.u.d., but there's this namespace intrusion problem.

UID

User ID.

UIG

Utilities Industry Group.

UIL

User Interface Language.

UIP

User Interface Panel.

UIPAC

Sorry, that's IUPAC.

UISG

Utilities Industry Standards Group.

UIU

Upper Iowa University. A private college established in 1857, because it makes a really cool palindromic abbreviation, or perhaps for some less excellent reason. You don't have to actually find the place (somewhere in ``America's heartland,'' yet in the scenic Volga River Valley -- it sounds kinda outatheway either way), because they offer an MBA in two years or less with no residency required.

UIUC

University of Illinois at Urbana/Champaign. Pet name ``U of I in Champagne-Banana.''

Oh wait -- a correction has come in:

That's SHAMPOO-Banana!

Sorry about that.

In fact, a lot of shampoos have a fragrance between apple and banana, because the ester amyl acetate, which is a major component of the odor of ripe apples and bananas, has good cleaning properties. When I used to make MWPC's, one of the cleaning stages used amyl acetate. (The wires had to be very clean and smooth so they wouldn't have false signals due to spontaneous dielectric breakdown.)

Next section: UJA (top) to UQU (bottom)

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