state of India. It is located in the northeastern part of the country and has an area of 30,285 square miles (78,438 square kilometres). It is bounded to the north ...
eastern Indo-Aryan (Indic) language that is the official language of Assam state of India. The only indigenous Indo-Aryan language of the Assam valley, Assamese has been affected in vocabulary, phonetics, ...
in Middle Eastern and Asian history, any member of the Nizari Isma'ilites, a religiopolitical Islamic sect dating from the 11th to the 13th century and known, in its early years, ...
any of about 4,000 species of insects making up the family Reduviidae (order Heteroptera). Assassin bugs are characterized by a thin, necklike structure connecting the narrow head to the body. ...
barrier island off the Atlantic coast of southeastern Maryland and eastern Virginia, U.S. Established as a national seashore in 1965, it is 37 miles (60 km) long, occupies 62 square ...
(foaled 1943), American racehorse (Thoroughbred), winner of the Triple Crown-the Kentucky Derby, the Preakness Stakes, and the Belmont Stakes-in 1946. A chestnut colt sired by Bold Venture (winner of the ...
related but distinct crimes, battery being the unlawful application of physical force to another and assault being an attempt to commit battery or an act that causes another reasonably to ...
military firearm that is chambered for ammunition of reduced size or propellant charge and that has the capacity to switch between semiautomatic and fully automatic fire. Because they are light ...
in chemical analysis, process of determining proportions of metal, particularly precious metal, in ores and metallurgical products. The most important technique, still used today, grew largely out of the experiments ...
extinct human known from a skeleton found in 1927 near the French military post of Asselar, French Sudan (now Mali), by M.V. Besnard and Theodore Monod. Asselar man is believed ...
in art, work produced by the incorporation of everyday objects into the composition. Although each non-art object, such as a piece of rope or newspaper, acquires aesthetic or symbolic meanings ...
(French: "step put together"), in classical ballet, a movement in which a dancer's feet or legs are brought together in the air and the dancer lands on both feet. It ...
Pentecostal denomination of the Protestant church, generally considered the largest such denomination in the United States. It was formed by a union of several small Pentecostal groups at Hot Springs, ...
deliberative council, usually legislative or juridical in purpose and power. The name has been given to various ancient and modern bodies, both political and ecclesiastical. It has been applied to ...
gemeente (municipality) and capital, Drenthe provincie (province), northeastern Netherlands, at the northeastern end of the Drentsche Hoofd (also called Smilder) Canal. Founded in 1257 around a small convent, it was ...
Welsh monk, chiefly remembered as the friend, teacher, counsellor, and biographer of Alfred the Great. Born in Wales, he became a monk at St. David's Abbey, Pembrokeshire. In 886, eager ...
Dutch jurist, cowinner (with Alfred Fried) of the Nobel Prize for Peace in 1911 for his role in the formation of the Permanent Court of Arbitration at the first Hague ...
process of setting a value on real or personal property, usually for the purpose of taxation. In most countries central government agencies do the assessing, but in some it is ...
in law, a person called upon by the courts to give legal advice and assistance and in many instances to act as surrogate. The term is also used in the ...
paper bill issued in France as currency from 1789 to 1796, during the French Revolution. A financial expedient on the part of the Revolutionary government, the increasing issuance of the ...
a lawyer or lawyers appointed by the state to provide representation for indigent persons. Assigned counsel generally are private lawyers designated by the courts to handle particular cases; in some ...
the process whereby individuals or groups of differing ethnic heritage are absorbed into the dominant culture of a society. Usually they are immigrants or hitherto isolated minorities who, through contact ...
region of western Canada, named for the Assiniboin Indians and the Assiniboine River, demarcated as a district in three different forms during the 19th and early 20th centuries.
American Plains Indian people belonging to the Siouan linguistic stock who split from the Yanktonai Dakota before the 17th century and lived during their greatest prominence in the area west ...
river in southern Saskatchewan and Manitoba, Canada, a major tributary of the Red River. From its source in eastern Saskatchewan, it flows southeastward into Manitoba and thence eastward through a ...
city, in the highlands of west central Sao Paulo state, Brazil, at 1,847 ft (563 m) above sea level. It was given town status in 1915 and was made the ...
town, Perugia province, Umbria region, central Italy. The town lies 12 miles (19 km) east of Perugia and is famous as the birthplace of St. Francis, the founder of the ...
in English and American colonial history, a general search warrant issued by superior provincial courts to assist the British government in enforcing trade and navigation laws. Such warrants authorized customhouse ...
in law, a session, or sitting, of a court of justice. It originally signified the method of trial by jury. During the Middle Ages the term was applied to certain ...
(AP), cooperative news agency (wire service), the oldest and largest of those in the United States and long the largest and one of the preeminent news agencies in the world. ...
group of U.S. universities that administers the operation of two federally funded research facilities, one in nuclear physics and the other in radio astronomy. The member institutions are Columbia, Cornell, ...
general psychological principle linked with the phenomena of recollection or memory. The principle originally stated that the act of remembering or recalling any past experience would also bring to the ...
lawn game in which players use wooden mallets to hit balls through a series of wire hoops, or wickets, with a central peg as the ultimate goal. It is played ...
(AACM), cooperative organization of musicians, including several major figures of free jazz. The musical innovations of the AACM members became important influences on the idiom's development.
a society of explorers, geographers, and philanthropists formed in September 1876 at the instigation of Leopold II, king of the Belgians, to "civilize" Central Africa.
association under whose auspices the Congo region (coextensive with present-day Congo [Kinshasa]) was explored and brought under the ownership of the Belgian king Leopold II and a group of European ...
test used in psychology to study the organization of mental life, with special reference to the cognitive connections that underlie perception and meaning, memory, language, reasoning, and motivation. In the ...
in mathematics, either of two laws relating to number operations of addition and multiplication, stated symbolically: a + (b + c) = (a + b) + c, and a(bc) = ...
in animal behaviour, any learning process in which a new response becomes associated with a particular stimulus. In its broadest sense, the term has been used to describe virtually all ...
in prosody, repetition of stressed vowel sounds within words with different end consonants, as in the phrase "quite like." It is unlike rhyme, in which initial consonants differ but both ...
in human genetics, a statement of the frequency at which individuals mate with persons of similar phenotype or, conversely, with persons of different phenotype (see phenotype). Assortative mating refers to ...
(Latin: "he has undertaken"), in common law, an action to recover damages for breach of contract. Originating in the 14th century as a form of recovery for the negligent performance ...
in Roman Catholic and Eastern Christian theology, doctrine that Mary, the mother of Jesus, was taken (assumed) into heaven, body and soul, following the end of her life on Earth. ...
ancient Greek city of the Troad, located on the coast of what is now northwestern Turkey, with the island of Lesbos lying about 7 miles (11 km) offshore to the ...
kingdom of northern Mesopotamia that became the centre of one of the great empires of the ancient Middle East. It was located in what is now northern Iraq and southeastern ...
American dancer of stage and motion pictures who is best known for a number of highly successful musical comedy films in which he starred with Ginger Rogers. He is regarded ...
eight auspicious symbols frequently represented on Jaina ritual objects. Astamangalas are common to both the Svetambara and Digambara sects and are found on 1st-century-AD votive slabs and in miniature paintings, ...
city, capital of Kazakstan. Astana (meaning "Capital" in Kazak) lies in north-central Kazakstan along the Ishim River at the junction of the Trans-Kazakstan and South Siberian railways.
great goddess of the ancient Middle East and chief deity of Tyre, Sidon, and Elat, important Mediterranean seaports. Hebrew scholars now feel that the goddess Ashtoreth mentioned so often in ...
radioactive chemical element, heaviest member of the halogen elements, or Group VIIa of the periodic table. Astatine, which has no stable isotopes, was first synthetically produced (1940) at the University ...
English earthenware produced by John Astbury and his son Thomas from about 1725; later a term for fine 18th-century Staffordshire earthenware until c. 1760. John Astbury (1688-1743) established a single-kiln ...
English pottery, principally earthenware, with applied decoration, produced from about 1730 to 1745 by two Staffordshire potters, John Astbury and Thomas Whieldon. Instead of the more common stamped relief decoration, ...
(Sanskrit: Eight Seals), group of 16th-century Hindi poets, four of whom were disciples of the Vaishnava leader Vallabha, and four of his son and successor, Vitthala. The greatest of the ...
plant disease once thought to be caused by a virus but now believed to be of mycoplasmal (bacterial) origin. It is found over much of the world wherever air temperatures ...
order of dicotyledonous flowering plants, a division of the subclass Asteridae. Its members are diverse in their habits and habitats, but they tend to be herbaceous plants that grow in ...
in mineralogy, starlike figure exhibited in light reflected or transmitted by some crystals. The stars shown by star sapphires, some phlogopite mica, rose quartz, and garnet are due to minute ...
any of a host of small rocky bodies, about 1,000 km or less in diameter, that orbit the Sun primarily between the orbits of Mars and Jupiter. It is because ...
a condition in which the body lacks or has lost strength either as a whole or in any of its parts. General asthenia occurs in many chronic wasting diseases, such ...
a chronic disorder of the lungs in which inflamed airways are prone to constrict, causing episodes of breathlessness, wheezing, coughing, and chest tightness that range in severity from mild to ...
city, capital of Asti province, Piemonte (Piedmont) region, northwestern Italy. It lies at the confluence of the Tanaro and Borbera rivers, 28 miles (45 km) southeast of Turin. Asti was ...
lack of symmetry in the curvature of the cornea or, much less commonly, of the crystalline lens (the cornea is the transparent wall of the eye in front of the ...
in Indian philosophy, any orthodox school of thought, defined as one that accepts the authority of the Vedas (sacred scriptures of ancient India); the superiority of the Brahmans (the class ...
genus of about 14 species of herbaceous perennials, in the family Saxifragaceae, native to eastern Asia and North America. They are often grown in gardens for their erect, featherlike flower ...
island, westernmost of the Greek Dodecanese islands, Aegean Sea, between Amorgos and Cos (Kos). It comprises two mountain masses linked by a narrow isthmus that provided shelter for the ancient ...
any uniformly ciliated protozoan of the order Astomatida, commonly found in annelid worms and other invertebrates. As the name implies, this parasite has no mouth. Some astomes attach themselves to ...
British physicist who won the Nobel Prize for Chemistry in 1922 for his development of the mass spectrograph, a device that separates atoms or molecular fragments of different mass and ...