Digital Glossary

Paper craft is the collection of art forms employing paper or card as the primary artistic medium for the creation of three-dimensional objects. It is the most widely used material in arts and crafts. It lends itself to a wide range of techniques, as it can for instance be folded, cut, glued, molded, stitched, or layered.

Stands for 'Portable Document Format.' PDF is a multi-platform file format developed by Adobe Systems. A PDF file captures document text, fonts, images, and even formatting of documents from a variety of applications. You can e-mail a PDF document to your friend and it will look the same way on his screen as it looks on yours, even if he has a Mac and you have a PC. Since PDFs contain color-accurate information, they should also print the same way they look on your screen.

Perpendicular recording (or perpendicular magnetic recording, PMR), also known as conventional magnetic recording (CMR), is a technology for data recording on magnetic media, particularly hard disks. It was first proven advantageous in 1976 by Shun-ichi Iwasaki, then professor of the Tohoku University in Japan, and first commercially implemented in 2005. The first industry-standard demonstration showing unprecedented advantage of PMR over longitudinal magnetic recording (LMR) at nanoscale dimensions was made in 1998 at IBM Almaden Research Center in collaboration with researchers of Data Storage Systems Center (DSSC) – a National Science Foundation (NSF) Engineering Research Center (ERCs) at Carnegie Mellon University (CMU).

To read something carefully: to read or examine something, usually in a careful and thorough way or taking time to do it.

Plug and Play, sometimes, abbreviated PnP, is a catchy phrase used to describe devices that work with a computer system as soon as they are connected. The user does not have to manually install drivers for the device or even tell the computer that a new device has been added. Instead the computer automatically recognizes the device, loads new drivers for the hardware if needed, and begins to work with the newly connected device.

PNG, which can be pronounced 'ping' or 'P-N-G,' is a compressed raster graphic format. It is commonly used on the Web and is also a popular choice for application graphics. Unlike the JPEG and GIF formats, the PNG format supports an alpha channel, or the 'RGBA' color space. The alpha channel is added to the three standard color channels (red, green, and blue, or RGB) and provides 256 levels of transparency.

A podcast is a digital medium that consists of an episodic series of audio, video, digital radio, PDF, or ePub files subscribed to and downloaded through web syndication or streamed on-line to a computer or mobile device.

Undergraduate education is the post-secondary education previous to the postgraduate education. It includes all the academic programs up to the level of a bachelor's degree. For example, in the United States an entry level university student is known as an undergraduate, while students of higher degrees are known as graduates.

Postgraduate education (or graduate education in North America) involves learning and studying for degrees, professional or academic certificates, or other qualifications for which a first or Bachelor's degree generally is required, and it is normally considered to be part of higher education. In North America, this level is generally referred to as graduate school.

The Presidential Medal of Freedom is an award bestowed by the president of the United States to recognize people who have made 'an especially meritorious contribution to the security or national interests of the United States, world peace, cultural or other significant public or private endeavors'. The Presidential Medal of Freedom and the Congressional Gold Medal are the highest civilian awards of the United States. The award is not limited to U.S. citizens and, while it is a civilian award, it can also be awarded to military personnel and worn on the uniform. It was established in 1963 by President John F. Kennedy, superseding the Medal of Freedom that was established by President Harry S. Truman in 1945 to honor civilian service during World War II.

A processor, or 'microprocessor,' is a small chip that resides in computers and other electronic devices. Its basic job is to receive input and provide the appropriate output. While this may seem like a simple task, modern processors can handle trillions of calculations per second.

Professional certification, trade certification, or professional designation, often called simply certification or qualification, is a designation earned by a person to assure qualification to perform a job or task.

The Progressive Party was a third party in the United States formed in 1912 by former President Theodore Roosevelt after he lost the presidential nomination of the Republican Party to his former protégé and conservative rival, incumbent President William Howard Taft. The new party was known for taking advanced positions on progressive and populist reforms and attracting leading national reformers. After the party's defeat in the 1912 presidential election, it went into rapid decline in elections until 1918, disappearing by 1920. The Progressive Party was popularly nicknamed the 'Bull Moose Party' since Roosevelt often said that he felt 'strong as a bull moose' both before and after an assassination attempt on the campaign trail.

Project 21 is an African-American public policy group. The organization refers to itself as 'the National Leadership Network of Black Conservatives.' and started out as a blog to reclaim liberal African Americans at the grassroots level.According to its website, Project 21 is 'an initiative of the National Center for Public Policy Research to promote the views of African-Americans whose entrepreneurial spirit, dedication to family and commitment to individual responsibility has not traditionally been echoed by the nation's civil rights establishment.'

Project 21's New Visions Commentaries have been distributed to more than 300 black newspapers across the United States and have usually been featured as guest columns or editorials.

Stacy Washington is co-chair of Project 21's National Advisory Board.

The Pulitzer Prize jury has the option of awarding special citations and awards where they consider necessary. Since 1918, forty-four such special citations and awards have been given. The awards are sixteen journalism awards, twelve letters awards, fourteen music awards, and five service awards. Prizes for the award vary. The Pulitzer Foundation has stated that the Special Citations given to George Gershwin, Thelonious Monk, John Coltrane and Duke Ellington were in response to criticism for the failure of the Foundation to cite the four.