Saturday, July 31, 2004
City, Baden-W�rttemberg Land (state), southwestern Germany. It lies along the middle Oos River in the Black Forest (Schwarzwald). Baden-Baden is one of the world's great spas. Its Roman baths (parts of which survive) were built in the reign of Caracalla (AD 211 - 217) for the garrison of Strasbourg. The town fell into ruins but reappeared in 1112 as the seat (until 1705) of the margravate of Baden. Almost
Friday, July 30, 2004
Metatarsalgia
Disorder in which the weight of the body, when standing, rests on the centre of the anterior arch of the foot (on the heads of the central metatarsal bones) instead of on the inside and outside of the foot. Pain when walking may be severe, callosities develop on the area of stress, and there is a tendency to fracture of the metatarsals. The cause of metatarsalgia may be developmental
Thursday, July 29, 2004
Nachikufan Industry
Industry of the African Late Stone Age practiced by hunting-gathering peoples who occupied the wooded plateaus of south-central Africa some 10,000 - 11,000 years ago. The Nachikufan tool industry is characterized by projectiles with several kinds of microlithic heads, heavy stone scrapers that were probably used for working wood and its by-products, flattish stones with centre-bored
Wednesday, July 28, 2004
Epidote
Any of a group of colorless to green or yellow-green silicate minerals with the general chemical formula A2B3(SiO4)(Si2O7)O(OH), in which A is usually calcium (Ca), though manganese (Mn) or cerium (Ce) is sometimes substituted; and B is generally aluminum (Al), with the main substitution being ferric iron (Fe 3). Structurally the epidote group consists of chains of AlO6 and Al4(OH)2 octahedra
Tuesday, July 27, 2004
Mcpherson Range
Mountain range, eastern spur of the Great Dividing Range, eastern Australia; its crest constitutes the Queensland - New South Wales border from Point Danger to Wallangara (140 miles [225 km]). Occupying a well-dissected and rainforest-covered region, the range rises to its highest point at West Barney Peak, 4,459 feet (1,359 m). In 1770 the British navigator Captain James Cook sighted the range
Monday, July 26, 2004
Lopes, Manuel
Lopes studied at the University of Coimbra in Portugal, then returned to Cape Verde. In 1944 he took up work for Western Telegraph, and in 1951 he was transferred to the Azores. Subsequently, he worked in Portugal,
Sunday, July 25, 2004
Lur�at, Jean
Although his first tapestries were executed and exhibited in 1917, it was not until 1936 that Lur�at turned from being primarily a painter to designing tapestries. In 1939 he and the painters
Saturday, July 24, 2004
Friday, July 23, 2004
Indian Ocean
Body of salt water, covering approximately one-fifth of the total ocean area of the world. It is the smallest, youngest, and physically most complex of the world's three major oceans. It stretches for more than 6,200 miles (10,000 kilometres) between the southern tips of Africa and Australia and, without its marginal seas, has an area of about 28,360,000 square miles (73,440,000 square kilometres). The Indian
Thursday, July 22, 2004
Rainmaking
Any process of increasing the amount of precipitation discharged from a cloud. Primitive methods, such as rain dances or the throwing of pebbles into water, failed to produce rain, but modern techniques of seeding supercooled clouds with frozen carbon dioxide or silver iodide offer some possibility of increasing rainfall amounts substantially.
Wednesday, July 21, 2004
Nordhorn
Town, Lower Saxony Land (state), northwestern Germany, on the Vechte River at the junction of the Almelo-Nordhorn, Ems-Vechte, and S�d-Nord canals, 4 miles (6 km) from the Dutch border. First mentioned about 1000 and chartered in 1379, the city suffered heavily from plague, fire, and war in the 15th and 16th centuries. Part of the Augustinian Frenswegen Abbey (founded 1394) and the 15th-century Protestant
Tuesday, July 20, 2004
Monday, July 19, 2004
Aedesius
Aedesius founded the so-called Pergamum school of philosophy, whose major concerns were theurgy (the magic practiced by some Neoplatonists who believed miracles could be worked by the intervention of divine and beneficent spirits) and
Sunday, July 18, 2004
Ushak Carpet
Floor covering handwoven in the city of Usak (Ushak), Tur. By the 16th century the principal manufacture in Ottoman Turkey of large commercial carpets had been established at Usak, which produced for palace and mosque use and for export. By the 18th and early 19th centuries, this manufacture had come increasingly under European control. The carpets became coarser and rougher,
Saturday, July 17, 2004
Ushak Carpet
Floor covering handwoven in the city of Usak (Ushak), Tur. By the 16th century the principal manufacture in Ottoman Turkey of large commercial carpets had been established at Usak, which produced for palace and mosque use and for export. By the 18th and early 19th centuries, this manufacture had come increasingly under European control. The carpets became coarser and rougher,
Friday, July 16, 2004
Gamma Globulin
Subgroup of the blood proteins called globulins. In humans and many of the other mammals, antibodies, when they are formed, occur in the gamma globulins. Persons who lack gamma globulin or who have an inadequate supply of it - conditions called, respectively, agammaglobulinemia and hypogammaglobulinemia - have frequently recurring infections because of their inability
Thursday, July 15, 2004
Aerospace Industry, Lean manufacturing
Consistent with improving the economics of aerospace vehicles is the transition to a new paradigm for the entire industry, from concept development to operations. This approach involves all processes pertaining to the acquisition, design, development, and manufacturing of a product or system and has been variously called �lean,� �agile,� or �synchronous� manufacturing.
Wednesday, July 14, 2004
Shi'i, Abu 'abd Allah Ash-
Ash-Shi'i appeared among the Kutama, a Berber tribe of North Africa, at the end of the 9th century, proclaiming himself a precursor of the mahdi (messianic deliverer) and urging the people to revolt. He had met the Berbers at an earlier time during a pilgrimage to Mecca. After
Tuesday, July 13, 2004
Tobolsk
City, Tyumen oblast (province), northwestern Russia. It lies at the confluence of the Irtysh and Tobol rivers. Founded in 1587, it was one of the chief centres of early Russian colonization in Siberia because it lay along an important river route to the east, but it declined when bypassed by the Trans-Siberian Railroad in the 1890s. Today it is a river port and station on the Tyumen-Surgut
Monday, July 12, 2004
Tobolsk
City, Tyumen oblast (province), northwestern Russia. It lies at the confluence of the Irtysh and Tobol rivers. Founded in 1587, it was one of the chief centres of early Russian colonization in Siberia because it lay along an important river route to the east, but it declined when bypassed by the Trans-Siberian Railroad in the 1890s. Today it is a river port and station on the Tyumen-Surgut
Sunday, July 11, 2004
Aha Of Shabha
Aha's She'eltot (�Questions,� or �Theses�), published in Venice in 1546, was an attempt to codify and explicate materials contained in the Babylonian Talmud. Written in Aramaic and unique in its organization, the text connects
Saturday, July 10, 2004
Biblical Literature, The chronology of Paul
For the chronology of Paul's ministry, there are also some extra-biblical data: According to Josephus, Herod Agrippa I was made ruler of all Palestine by the emperor Claudius in AD 41 and reigned for three years. His death was thus in AD 44. A famine in Claudius' reign took place when Tiberius Alexander was procurator of Judaea (c. 46 - 48), and Egyptian papyri suggest (by reference to high wheat
Friday, July 09, 2004
Korbut, Olga Valentinovna
At age 11, Korbut entered a Soviet sports school led by Renald Knysh, her future coach. He taught her the difficult backward somersault on the balance beam. Using this maneuver, she first competed in the 1969 U.S.S.R. championships, placing fifth. In the
Thursday, July 08, 2004
Badarian Culture
Although the Badarians apparently continued the agricultural and pastoral practices of the Tasians (see Tasian
Wednesday, July 07, 2004
Diffraction Grating
Component of optical devices consisting of a surface ruled with close, equidistant, and parallel lines for the purpose of resolving light into spectra. A grating is said to be a transmission or reflection grating according to whether it is transparent or mirrored - that is, whether it is ruled on glass or on a thin metal film deposited on a glass blank. Reflection gratings
Tuesday, July 06, 2004
Constance
The daughter of King Roger II of Sicily, Constance married the future emperor Henry VI in 1186 and was crowned with him in Rome in 1191. On the death of her nephew William
Monday, July 05, 2004
Argentina, The conservative regime, 1880 - 1916
The entire country was now dominated by the National Autonomist Party, which had originally supported Avellaneda's candidacy and was now an alliance of the various groups supporting Roca. These included many of the big ranchers, as well as commercial and business interests who were more than happy with Roca's formula of �peace and efficient administration.� Argentina's
Sunday, July 04, 2004
Argentina, The conservative regime, 1880 - 1916
The entire country was now dominated by the National Autonomist Party, which had originally supported Avellaneda's candidacy and was now an alliance of the various groups supporting Roca. These included many of the big ranchers, as well as commercial and business interests who were more than happy with Roca's formula of �peace and efficient administration.� Argentina's
Saturday, July 03, 2004
Scale
The specific selection of different tones in any piece of music generally reveals a pattern of relationships among its pitches that can be expressed as a series of fixed distances (intervals) from one pitch to another within the span of an octave. The interval relationships
Friday, July 02, 2004
Maass, Clara
Maass graduated from the Newark (New Jersey) German Hospital School of Nursing in 1895 and shortly afterward was named head nurse of the school. At the outbreak of the Spanish-American War in April 1898, she volunteered to serve as a contract
Thursday, July 01, 2004
Papaverales
The poppy order of flowering plants, belonging to the class known as Magnoliopsida (dicotyledons; characterized by the presence of two seed leaves). The order is composed of about 600 species in two families, Papaveraceae and Fumariaceae. Its most familiar flowers are the poppy (q.v.) of the Papaveraceae and the bleeding heart (q.v.) of the Fumariaceae. This order mostly is herbaceous
