in meteorology, upward-moving and downward-moving air currents, respectively, that are due to several causes. Local daytime heating of the ground causes surface air to become much warmer than the air ...
park in southeastern Congo (Kinshasa). It was created in 1939 and has an area of 4,529 square miles (11,730 square km). Its northern and western borders touch the Lualaba River ...
town, western Greenland. It is situated on a small island in Baffin Bay, about 100 miles (160 km) north of Nordost Bay. A whaling and sealing base (founded 1771), it ...
English-born Australian popular novelist who wrote more than 30 novels featuring Detective Inspector Napoleon (Boney) Bonaparte, a half-Aboriginal Australian detective.
materials used in the craft of covering, padding, and stuffing seating and bedding. The earliest upholsterers, from early Egyptian times to the beginning of the Renaissance, nailed animal skins or ...
in geology, vertical elevation of the Earth's surface in response to natural causes. Broad, relatively slow and gentle uplift is termed warping, or epeirogeny, in contrast to the more concentrated ...
most populous island of Samoa, in the South Pacific Ocean. It lies across the Apolima Strait from the island of Savai'i to the west. Upolu is about 46 miles (74 ...
fortnightly meetings of the Buddhist monastic assembly, at the times of the full moon and the new moon, to reaffirm the rules of discipline. The uposatha observance, now confined almost ...
working-class Norwegian novelist whose major work is the 10-volume Dansen gjenom skuggeheimen (1911-24; "The Dance Through the World of Shadows"), which deals with the development of the Norwegian industrial working ...
geographic and historical division of Burma (Myanmar), referring to the central and northern portion of the country. The division between Upper and Lower Burma was accentuated during 1852-85, when Lower ...
geographic and cultural division of Egypt, generally consisting of the Nile River valley south of the delta and the 30th parallel N. It thus consists of the entire Nile River ...
city, Wellington local government region, southern North Island, New Zealand. It lies in the Hutt River valley near Wellington. Founded in 1848, it is part of the larger Hutt area ...
cataract on the west slope of the Sierra Nevada in Yosemite National Park, east-central California, U.S. It lies 150 miles (240 km) east of San Francisco. With a drop of ...
town ("parish") in the unitary authority and historic county of Rutland, England, noted for its 16th-century houses and its public (independent secondary) school. It came into being as a market ...
landskap (province), east-central Sweden. It is bounded by the Gulf of Bothnia and the Baltic Sea on the east and by the traditional landskaper (provinces) of Sodermanland, Vastmanland, and Gastrikland ...
lan (county) in east-central Sweden. It lies between Malaren (lake) on the south and the Gulf of Bothnia on the north. It constitutes most of the western part of the ...
city and capital of the lan (county) of Uppsala, east-central Sweden. It lies 40 miles (64 km) north-northwest of Stockholm. Originally known as Ostra Aros, it was founded as a ...
state-sponsored coeducational university at Uppsala, the oldest institution of higher learning in Sweden. It was founded in 1477 but closed in 1510 owing to the religious disputes of the time. ...
musical instrument in which the soundboard and plane of the strings run vertically, perpendicular to the keyboard, thus taking up less floor space than the normal grand piano. Upright pianos ...
in the Druze religion, an elite of initiates who alone know Druze doctrine (hikmah, literally "wisdom"), participate fully in the Druze religious services, and have access to Druze scripture. The ...
important city of ancient southern Mesopotamia (Sumer), situated about 140 miles (225 km) southeast of the site of Babylon and about 10 miles (16 km) west of the present bed ...
town and port, northern Oman. It is situated about 120 miles (190 km) northwest of Muscat on the Al-Batinah coast of the Gulf of Oman. Suhar's origins are prehistoric; it ...
city, Khudzhand oblast (province), Tajikistan, in the northern foothills of the Turkistan Range. One of the most ancient cities of the republic, it may date from the 6th century AD, ...
Egyptian nationalist who led a social-political movement that expressed the discontent of the Egyptian educated classes, army officials, and peasantry with foreign control.
a colourless, crystalline organic compound of the pyrimidine family that occurs as a component of ribonucleic acid (RNA), a molecule involved in the transmission of hereditary characteristics. The RNA molecule ...
a paleoanthropological site in northern Malawi known for the discovery of a jawbone of an ancient human (genus Homo) dating to 2.4 million years ago (mya). It is similar to ...
mountain range forming a rugged spine in west-central Russia and the major part of the traditional physiographic boundary between Europe and Asia. Extending some 1,550 miles (2,500 kilometres) from the ...
river in Russia and Kazakstan. The Ural is 1,509 miles (2,428 km) long and drains an area of 91,500 square miles (237,000 square km). It rises in the Ural Mountains ...
hypothetical language grouping that includes all the languages of the Uralic and Altaic language families. Most of the evidence for including the Uralic and Altaic languages in one language family ...
a 3,500-kilometre- (2,175-mile-) long elongate mountain system that extends from the Aral Sea to the islands of Novaya Zemlya. It is 500 km wide in the south but only 100-150 ...
family of more than 20 related languages, all descended from a Proto-Uralic language that existed 7,000 to 10,000 years ago. At its earliest stages, Uralic most probably included the ancestors ...
in Greek religion, one of the nine Muses, patron of astronomy. In some accounts she was the mother of Linus the musician (in other versions, his mother is the Muse ...
observatory established in 1576 by the Danish astronomer Tycho Brahe. It was the last of the primitive observatories in that it antedated the invention of the telescope (c. 1608); and ...
a major ore mineral of uranium, uranium dioxide (UO2). Uraninite usually forms black, gray, or brown crystals that are moderately hard and generally opaque. A variety of uraninite ore that ...
municipal corporation, centre of the Beaverlodge Lake mining region in extreme northwestern Saskatchewan, Canada. It lies near the north shore of Lake Athabasca. The discovery in the early 1950s and ...
method of age determination that makes use of the radioactive decay of uranium-238 to uranium-234; the method can be used for dating of sediments from either a marine or a ...
method of establishing the time of origin of a rock by means of the amount of common lead it contains; common lead is any lead from a rock or mineral ...
seventh planet in order of distance from the Sun. Its low density (1.285 grams per cubic centimetre) and large size (radius four times that of the Earth) place it among ...
in Greek mythology, the personification of heaven. According to Hesiod's Theogony, Gaea (Earth), emerging from primeval Chaos, produced Uranus, the Mountains, and the Sea. From Gaea's subsequent union with Uranus ...
ancient language spoken in northeastern Anatolia and used as the official language of Urartu in the 9th-6th century BC. Non-Indo-European in origin, it is thought to be descended from the ...
ancient country of southwest Asia centred in the mountainous region southeast of the Black Sea and southwest of the Caspian Sea. Today the region is divided among Armenia, eastern Turkey, ...
city, northwestern Chiba ken (prefecture), east-central Honshu, Japan. Lying on a flat plain along Tokyo Bay, it is separated from the city of Tokyo to the west ...
musical genre of the 1980s and '90s defined by recordings by rhythm-and-blues or soul artists with broad crossover appeal. Urban contemporary began as an American radio format designed to appeal ...
pope from 222 to 230. Succeeding that of St. Calixtus I, his pontificate occurred within the reign of the Roman emperor Severus Alexander, a time of peace for the church. ...
head of the Roman Catholic church (1088-99) who developed ecclesiastical reforms begun by Pope Gregory VII, launched the Crusade movement, and strengthened the papacy as a political entity.
the programs pursued in most industrialized countries in an attempt to achieve certain social and economic objectives, in particular to shape and improve the urban environment in which increasing proportions ...
comprehensive scheme to redress a complex of urban problems, including unsanitary, deficient, or obsolete housing; inadequate transportation, sanitation, and other services and facilities; haphazard land use; traffic congestion; and the ...
in anthropology and archaeology, the process by which small, kin-based, nonliterate agricultural villages are transformed into large, socially complex, civilized urban centres. The term urban revolution was introduced by V. ...
city, Champaign county, west-central Ohio, U.S., in a stock-raising and farming area, 40 miles (64 km) northeast of Dayton. Laid out in 1805 by Colonel William Ward of Virginia, it ...
city, seat (1833) of Champaign county, east-central Illinois, U.S. Urbana is contiguous with Champaign (west), about 135 miles (220 km) southwest of Chicago. The two cities are often called Champaign-Urbana. ...
town, Pesaro e Urbino provincia, Marche (The Marches) regione, central Italy. Founded by the Umbrians, an ancient people of Italy, it was subsequently occupied by the Etruscans, Celts, and Gauls, ...
Italian tin-glazed earthenware made in the city of Urbino, which from around 1520 dominated the market. Early wares, mostly dishes, are decorated with narrative scenes that typically cover the entire ...
Indo-Aryan language originating in the region between the Ganges and Jamuna rivers near Delhi, now the official language of Pakistan. Numbering some 48,980,000 speakers in the late 20th century, Urdu ...
writings in the Urdu language of the Muslims of Pakistan and northern India. It is written in the Perso-Arabic script, and, with a few major exceptions, the literature is the ...
the diamide of carbonic acid. Its formula is H2NCONH2. Urea has important uses as a fertilizer and feed supplement, as well as a starting material for the manufacture of plastics ...
