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R Monocerotis ... radiation measurement

R Monocerotis: (catalog number NGC 2261), stellar infrared source and nebula in the constellation Monoceros (Greek: Unicorn). The star, one of the class of dwarf stars called T Tauri variables, is immersed ...
R.E.M.: American rock group, the quintessential band of the 1980s. The members were Michael Stipe (b. January 4, 1960, Decatur, Georgia, U.S., ), Peter Buck (b. December 6, 1956, Berkeley, ...
R.J. Reynolds Tobacco Holdings: American manufacturer of tobacco products. The origins of the R.J. Reynolds Tobacco Company date to the post-Civil War era, when Richard Joshua Reynolds (1850-1918) began trading in tobacco, first in ...
Ra: either of two papyrus boats with which the Norwegian scientist-explorer Thor Heyerdahl crossed the Atlantic in 1969-70 to demonstrate the possibility of cultural contact between early peoples of Africa and ...
Ra's al-Khaymah: constituent emirate of the United Arab Emirates (formerly Trucial States, or Trucial Oman). It consists of two irregularly shaped tracts on the Oman Promontory, oriented north-south. The northern section shares ...
Ra's Nasrani: small inlet and cape on the southeastern coast of the Sinai Peninsula. Located in Janub Sina' muhafazah (governorate), Egypt, Ra's Nasrani was occupied by the Israelis from 1967 to 1982. ...
Ra-Shalom: asteroid whose orbit is the smallest of any such object so far discovered; it takes only 278 days to circle the Sun. Ra-Shalom was detected in 1978 by Eleanor Helin, ...
Raabe, Wilhelm: German writer best known for realistic novels of middle-class life.
Raaff, Anton: German operatic tenor, one of the foremost of his day.
Rab: island in the Adriatic Sea forming the northernmost part of Dalmatia in Croatia. With an area of 35 sq mi (91 sq km), it reaches a maximum altitude of 1,339 ...
rabab: Arab fiddle, the earliest known bowed instrument and the parent of the medieval European rebec. It was first mentioned in the 10th century and was prominent in medieval and later ...
Rabanus Maurus: archbishop, Benedictine abbot, theologian, and scholar whose work so contributed to the development of German language and literature that he received the title Praeceptor Germaniae ("Teacher of Germany").
Rabassa, Gregory: American translator who was largely responsible for bringing the fiction of contemporary Latin America to the English-speaking public. Of his more than 30 translations from the Spanish and the Portuguese, ...
Rabat: town, west-central Malta, adjoining Mdina, west of Valletta. In Roman times the site of Mdina and Rabat was occupied by Melita, the island's capital. The modern names date from the ...
Rabat: national capital and one of Morocco's four imperial cities, on the Atlantic coast at the mouth of the Bou Regreg River, opposite the town of Sale.
rabato: wide, often lace-edged collar wired to stand up at the back of the head, worn by both men and women in the 16th and early 17th centuries. An example may ...
Rabaul: chief town of the island of New Britain, Papua New Guinea, in the southwestern Pacific. It is situated on Simpson Harbour, part of Blanche Bay, on the Gazelle Peninsula.
Rabaut, Paul: Protestant minister and Reformer who succeeded Antoine Court (1696-1760) as the leader of the Huguenots (French Protestants).
rabbi: (Hebrew: "my teacher," or "my master"), in Judaism, a person qualified by academic studies of the Hebrew Bible and the Talmud to act as spiritual leader and religious teacher of ...
Rabbinic Judaism: the normative form of Judaism that developed after the fall of the Temple of Jerusalem (AD 70). Originating in the work of the Pharisaic rabbis, it was based on the ...
Rabbinical Assembly, The: organization of Conservative rabbis in the United States, Canada, Latin America, Europe, and Israel. It was founded in 1900 as the Alumni Association of the Jewish Theological Seminary and was ...
Rabbinical Council of America: organization of Orthodox rabbis, almost all of whom have received their rabbinical training in the United States. The council's chief aims have been to promote the study and practice of ...
rabbit: any of 28 species of long-eared mammals belonging to the family Leporidae, excluding hares (genus Lepus). Frequently the terms rabbit and hare are used interchangeably, a practice ...
rabbit hair: animal fibre obtained from the Angora rabbit and the various species of the common rabbit. Rabbits have coats consisting of both long, protective guard hairs and a fine insulating undercoat. ...
Rabbula: reforming bishop of Edessa and theologian who was a leading figure in the Christian church in Syria. He advocated the orthodox Alexandrian (Egypt) position in the 5th-century controversy with the ...
Rabe, David: American playwright whose experiences as a draftee assigned to a hospital-support unit in Vietnam were the basis for several acclaimed dramas. His work is known for its use of grotesque ...
Rabearivelo, Jean-Joseph: Malagasy writer, one of the most important of African poets writing in French, considered to be the father of modern literature in his native land.
Rabelais, Francois: French writer and priest who for his contemporaries was an eminent physician and humanist and for posterity is the author of the comic masterpiece Gargantua and Pantagruel. The four novels ...
Rabemananjara, Jacques: Malagasy politician, playwright, and poet.
Rabi, Isidor Isaac: American physicist who was awarded the Nobel Prize for Physics in 1944 for his invention (in 1937) of the atomic and molecular beam magnetic resonance method of observing atomic spectra.
Rabida Island: one of the Galapagos Islands, in the eastern Pacific Ocean, about 600 miles (965 km) west of Ecuador. The island has an area of about 1 square mile (3 square ...
rabies: acute, ordinarily fatal, viral disease of the central nervous system that is usually spread among domestic dogs and wild carnivorous animals by a bite. All warm-blooded animals, including humans, are ...
Rabih az-Zubayr: Muslim military leader who established a military hegemony in the districts immediately east of Lake Chad.
Rabin, Yitzhak: Israeli statesman and soldier who, as prime minister of Israel (1974-77, 1992-95), led his country toward peace with its Palestinian and Arab neighbours. He was chief of staff of Israel's ...
Rabulist riots: (1838), in Swedish history, wave of popular demonstrations in Stockholm that led to a loosening of Swedish government press censorship and furthered the fortunes of parliamentary government.
Raby, Al: African American civil rights activist, cochair of the Chicago Freedom Movement in the 1960s and campaign manager for Harold Washington, who became Chicago's first black mayor in 1983.
Racan, Honorat de Bueil, Seigneur de: French poet, one of the earliest members (1635) of the French Academy.
raccoon: any of seven species of nocturnal mammals characterized by bushy, ringed tails. The most common and well-known is the North American raccoon (Procyon lotor), which ranges from northern Canada and ...
raccoon dog: (Nyctereutes procyonoides), member of the dog family (Canidae) native to eastern Asia and introduced into Europe. Some authorities place it in the raccoon family, Procyonidae. It resembles the raccoon in ...
race: the idea that the human species is divided into distinct groups on the basis of inherited physical and behavioral differences. Genetic studies in the late 20th century denied the existence ...
race, milieu, and moment: according to the French critic Hippolyte Taine, the three principal motives or conditioning factors behind any work of art. Taine sought to establish a scientific approach to literature through the ...
racemate: a mixture of equal quantities of two enantiomorphs, or substances that have dissymmetric molecular structures that are mirror images of one another. Each enantiomorph rotates the plane of polarization of ...
racer: any of several large, swift snakes belonging to the family Colubridae. Blue racers are central and western North American subspecies of Coluber constrictor; they are plain bluish, greenish blue, gray, ...
racerunner: any of about 50 species of lizards that constitute the genus Cnemidophorus of the family Teiidae. They are the only genus of the family occurring in the United States, where ...
Rach Gia: port city, northern Ca Mau Peninsula, southern Vietnam. It lies at the head of Rach Gia Bay on the Gulf of Thailand, at the north bank of the Cai Lon ...
Rachel, Mademoiselle: original name Elisa Felix French classical tragedienne who dominated the Comedie-Francaise for 17 years.
Rachidia, Er-: town, east-central Morocco. It is situated on the Saharan side of the Atlas Mountains near the frontier with Algeria. The town, which was occupied by the French from 1916 until ...
Rachmaninoff, Sergey: composer who was the last great figure of the tradition of Russian Romanticism and a leading piano virtuoso of his time. He is especially known for his piano concerti and ...
Raciborz: city, southwestern Slaskie wojewodztwo (province), south-central Poland, on the upper Oder River.
Racine: city, seat (1836) of Racine county, southeastern Wisconsin, U.S. It lies along Lake Michigan at the mouth of the Root River, about 25 miles (40 km) south of Milwaukee. Miami ...
Racine, Jean: French dramatic poet and historiographer renowned for his mastery of French classical tragedy. His reputation rests on the plays he wrote between 1664 and 1677, notably Andromaque (1667), Britannicus (1669), ...
racism: any action, practice, or belief that reflects the racial worldview-the ideology that humans are divided into separate and exclusive biological entities called "races," that there is a causal link between ...
rack and pinion: mechanical device consisting of a bar of rectangular cross section (the rack), having teeth on one side that mesh with teeth on a small gear (the pinion). The pinion may ...
rackets: game played with a ball and a strung racket in an enclosed court, all four walls of which are used in play. Rackets is played with a hard ball in ...
rackett: (from German Rank, "bend"), in music, double-reed wind instrument of the 16th and 17th centuries. It consisted of a short wooden or ivory cylinder bored with six or seven extremely ...
Rackham, Arthur: British artist best known for his illustrations for classic fiction and children's literature.
rada': (Arabic: "to suckle"), in Islam, a legal relationship established between children when they are nursed by the same woman, the result being that they are forbidden to intermarry. Such a ...
radar: electromagnetic sensor used for detecting, locating, tracking, and recognizing objects of various kinds at considerable distances. It operates by transmitting electromagnetic energy toward objects, commonly referred to as targets, and ...
Radbruch, Gustav: German jurist and legal philosopher, one of the foremost exponents of legal relativism and legal positivism. Radbruch served on the faculties of the universities at Konigsberg, Kiel, and Heidelberg. He ...
Radcliffe, Ann: nee Ward the most representative of English Gothic novelists. She stands apart in her ability to infuse scenes of terror and suspense with an aura of romantic sensibility.
Radcliffe-Brown, A R: English social anthropologist of the 20th century who developed a systematic framework of concepts and generalizations relating to the social structures of relatively simple societies.
Raddall, Thomas Head: English-Canadian novelist, who accurately depicted the history, manners, and idiom of Nova Scotians.
Radegunda, Saint: queen of the Merovingian king Chlotar I, who left her husband to become a nun and later founded a monastery at Poitiers. She was one of the first of the ...
Radek, Karl: original name Karl Sobelsohn Communist propagandist and early leader of the Communist International (Comintern), who fell victim to Joseph Stalin's Great Purge of the 1930s.
raden: Japanese decorative technique used for lacquerware and woodenware, in which linings of mother-of-pearl or of abalone shells are cut into designs and either glued onto or inserted into the surface ...
Radescu, Nicolae: Romanian army officer and prime minister of Romania (December 1944-March 1945).
Radetzky, Joseph, Graf: Austrian field marshal and military reformer, whose long record of victorious campaigns made him a national hero.
Radewyns, Florentius: Dutch Roman Catholic theologian, successor to Gerhard Groote as leader of the Brethren of the Common Life, a community of laymen dedicated to the care and education of the poor, ...
Radha: in Hindu mythology, the mistress of the god Krishna during that period of his life when he lived among the cowherds of Vrndavana. Radha was the wife of another gopa ...
Radha Soami Satsang: esoteric religious sect of India that has followers among both Hindus and Sikhs. The sect was founded in 1861 by Siva Dayal Saheb (also called Sivdayal), a Hindu banker of ...
Radhakrishnan, Sarvepalli: scholar and statesman who was president of India from 1962 to 1967. He served as professor of philosophy at Mysore (1918-21) and Calcutta (1921-31; 1937-41) universities and as vice chancellor ...
radial keratotomy: surgical procedure to correct myopia (nearsightedness) by reducing the radius of curvature of the cornea and astigmatism (asymmetrical curvature of the cornea). A series of 4 to 8 equally spaced ...
radiation: flow of atomic and subatomic particles and of waves, such as those that characterize heat rays, light rays, and X rays. All matter is constantly bombarded with radiation of both ...
radiation: either the process by which energy is emitted from a source and propagated through the surrounding medium or the energy involved in this process. Familiar examples of radiant energy include ...
radiation injury: tissue damage or changes caused by exposure to ionizing radiation-namely, gamma rays, X rays, and such high-energy particles as neutrons, electrons, and positrons. Sources of ionizing radiation may be natural ...
radiation measurement: technique for detecting the intensity and characteristics of ionizing radiation, such as alpha, beta, and gamma rays or neutrons, for the purpose of measurement.