city, North Rhine-Westphalia Land (state), northwestern Germany. It lies along the Wupper River, south of Wuppertal, in the heart of the Bergisches Land, a hilly, wooded district ...
literally "rebirth," the period in European civilization immediately following the Middle Ages, conventionally held to have been characterized by a surge of interest in classical learning and values. The Renaissance ...
an ideal that developed in Renaissance Italy from the notion expressed by one of its most accomplished representatives, Leon Battista Alberti (1404-72), that "a man can do all things if ...
one of the pair of large blood vessels that branch off from the abdominal aorta (the abdominal portion of the major artery leading from the heart) and enter into each ...
thin membranous sheath that covers the outer surface of each kidney. The capsule is composed of tough fibres, chiefly collagen and elastin (fibrous proteins), that help to support the kidney ...
a disease arising from malignant epithelial cells in the kidneys. Renal cell carcinoma is responsible for about 85 percent of kidney cancers in adults.
any of the long narrow tubes in the kidney that concentrate and transport urine from the nephrons, the chief functioning units of the kidneys, to larger ducts that connect with ...
filtration unit of vertebrate nephrons, functional units of the kidney. It consists of a knot of capillaries (glomerulus) surrounded by a double-walled capsule (Bowman's capsule) that opens into a tubule. ...
cyst in the kidney. A cyst is an enclosed sac or pouch that usually contains liquid or semisolid material. Several different types of cysts develop in the kidneys. Solitary cysts ...
chronic, probably hereditary disorder characterized by kidney dysfunction, bone-mineral loss and rickets-type deformities, calcifications in abnormal places, and overactivity of the parathyroid glands. Loss of calcium and retention of phosphorus ...
enlarged upper end of the ureter, the tube through which urine flows from the kidney to the urinary bladder. The pelvis, which is shaped somewhat like a funnel that is ...
any of the triangular sections of tissue that constitute the medulla, or inner substance, of the kidney. The pyramids consist mainly of tubules that transport urine from the cortical, or ...
in humans, organ system that includes the kidneys, where urine is produced, and the ureters, bladder, and urethra for the passage, storage, and voiding of urine.
any of the diseases or disorders that affect the human excretory system. They include benign and malignant tumours, infections and inflammations, and obstruction by calculi.
French military engineer, chief builder of the first true dirigible; i.e., an airship that could be steered in any direction irrespective of wind and could return under its own power ...
French writer best known for Poil de carotte (1894; Carrots, 1946), a bitterly ironical account of his own childhood, in which a grim humour conceals acute sensibility. All his life, ...
French poet, author of romances of adventure, whose work rejected the fey atmosphere and serious morality that had distinguished the poetry of his predecessor Chretien de Troyes in favour of ...
hero of an Old French chanson de geste of the same name (also known as Les Quatre Fils Aymon ["The Four Sons of Aymon"]), whose story may contain elements of ...
major French automobile and motor carrier manufacturer. Controlled by the French government, it is the country's largest manufacturer and exporter of motor vehicles. Headquarters are in Boulogne-Billancourt.
town, Schleswig-Holstein Land (state), northern Germany. It lies on the Eider River and the Kiel Canal (there bridged), west of Kiel. An old fortress town on the ...
German tin-glazed earthenware produced between 1764 and 1772 in the town of Rendsburg at a factory founded by Caspar Lorenzen and Christian Friedrich Clar. The few surviving examples of this ...
duke of Bar (from 1434), duke of Anjou (from 1430), and count of Provence and of Piedmont. He was also titular king of Naples from 1435 to 1442 and duke ...
royal burgh (town), Renfrewshire council area and historic county, southwestern Scotland, located in the northwest portion of the Glasgow metropolitan area near the right bank of the River Clyde. In ...
council area and historic county, west-central Scotland, stretching along the south bank of the River Clyde in the north and along the shore of the Firth of Clyde in the ...
genre of Japanese linked-verse poetry in which two or more poets supplied alternating sections of a poem. The renga form began as the composition of a single ...
language of the North Bahnaric subbranch of Bahnaric, a branch of the Mon-Khmer family (itself a part of the Austroasiatic languages. Rengao is spoken by some 15,000 individuals in south-central ...
(Japanese: "Japanese Trade Union Confederation"), the largest national labour confederation in Japan. Founded in 1989, it absorbed its predecessors-Sohyo, Domei, Churitsu Roren, and others-and brought together both private- and public-sector ...
enzyme secreted by the kidney (and also, possibly, by the placenta) that breaks down protein and produces a rise in blood pressure. In the blood, renin acts on a fraction ...
gemeente (commune), Gelderland provincie, central Netherlands. Renkum is situated on the Lower Rhine (Neder Rijn) River, immediately west of Arnhem, and comprises the communities of Oosterbeek (the local government centre), ...
town, on the Murray River, southeastern South Australia, 130 miles (209 km) northeast of Adelaide. The site was first settled in 1887 by George and William Chaffey, Canadian-born irrigation engineers ...
daily newspaper published in Beijing as the official organ of the Central Committee of the Chinese Communist Party. The paper was established in 1948, toward the end of China's civil ...
southernmost of the Solomon Islands, in the southwestern Pacific Ocean, 130 miles (209 km) south of Guadalcanal. An atoll 50 miles (80 km) long and 8 miles (13 km) wide, ...
the leading British geographer of his time. Rennell constructed the first nearly accurate map of India and published A Bengal Atlas (1779), a work important for British strategic and administrative ...
Social Democratic statesman, chancellor (1918-20, 1945) and president (1945-50) of Austria, who after World War I advocated the Anschluss (union) between Germany and Austria. He played a major role in ...
city, capital of Ille-et-Vilaine departement, Bretagne region, western France. It is situated at the confluence of the Ille and Vilaine rivers. The town was almost completely destroyed by fire in ...
French tin-glazed earthenware, produced in Rennes, distinguished by the use of manganese purple. Most original products have an extreme rocaille shape decorated with many naturalistic flowers. But the majority of ...
Scottish civil engineer who built or improved canals, docks, harbours, and bridges throughout Britain. Three of his spans were built across the River Thames at London.
protein-digesting enzyme that curdles milk by transforming caseinogen into insoluble casein; it is found only in the fourth stomach of cud-chewing animals, such as cows. Its action extends the period ...
city, seat (1871) of Washoe county, western Nevada, U.S. The city lies on the Truckee River, near the California border and the Sierra Nevada foothills, amid magnificent and varied scenery. ...
French film director, son of the Impressionist painter Pierre-Auguste Renoir. His films, in both silent and later eras, were noted for their realism and strong narrative and include such classics ...
French painter originally associated with the Impressionist movement. His early works were typically Impressionist snapshots of real life, full of sparkling colour and light. By the mid-1880s, however, he had ...
the procedure in quantum field theory by which divergent parts of a calculation, leading to nonsensical infinite results, are absorbed by redefinition into a few measurable quantities, so yielding finite ...
French neocritical idealist philosopher who rejected all necessary connection between universal laws and morality. Never an academic, Renouvier wrote prolifically and with great influence. He accepted Kant's critical philosophy as ...
federation of several reformist church groups that took over the central administration of the Russian Orthodox church in 1922 and for over two decades controlled many religious institutions in the ...
twin English brothers who dominated Wimbledon tennis competition in the 1880s. With their warm personalities and exciting, competitive play, the Renshaws are often credited with transforming tennis into a spectator ...
city, Rensselaer county, eastern New York, U.S. It is situated along the east bank of the Hudson River, opposite Albany. Settled by the Dutch in the 17th century, it was ...
county, eastern New York state, U.S., bounded by the Hudson River to the west and Vermont and Massachusetts to the east. The land rises from the low hills of the ...
private, coeducational institution of higher learning in Troy, New York, U.S. It includes schools of architecture, engineering, humanities and social sciences, management and technology, and science. In addition to undergraduate ...
genus of extinct brachiopods (lamp shells) found as fossils in Lower Devonian marine rocks (387 to 408 million years old). The shell is large and elongated. Its surface markings include ...
in economics, the income derived from the ownership of land and other free gifts of nature. The neoclassical economist Alfred Marshall, and others after him, chose this definition for technical ...
city, King county, western Washington, U.S., on the flats of the Cedar River at its mouth on Lake Washington, 20 miles (32 km) southeast of Seattle. Settled on the site ...
(Jan. 17, 1948), treaty between The Netherlands and the Republic of Indonesia concluded on the U.S. warship Renville, anchored in the harbour of Djakarta (now Jakarta). It was an attempt, ...
any of a group of ribonucleic acid (RNA) viruses constituting the family Reoviridae, a small group of animal and plant viruses. The virions of reoviruses (the name is a shortening ...
in colonial Spanish America, a system by which the crown allowed certain colonists to recruit Indians for forced labour. The repartimiento system, frequently called the mita in Peru and the ...
firearm designed for use with a magazine of cartridges, each of which is fed into the chamber or breech by lever or bolt action or other means. Before the invention ...
system of play production in which a resident acting company keeps a repertory of plays that are always ready for performance, often presenting a different one each night of the ...
in geology, mineral deposit formed by chemical processes that dissolve a rock and deposit a new assemblage of minerals in its place. See metasomatic replacement.
American rock band that combined the intensity of punk with melodic hooks and heartfelt lyrics, in the process providing an important bridge from the punk movement of the late 1970s ...
