The Actinopterygii (the plural form of Actinopterygius) comprise the class of the ray-finned fishes. The ray-finned fishes are so called because they possess lepidotrichia or "fin rays", their fins being webs of skin supported by bony or ho...

Republic of Albania Republika é Shqipërisë CAPITAL: Tiranë FLAG: The flag consists of a red background at the center of which is a black double-headed eagle. ANTHEM: Hymni i Flamúrit (Anthem of the Flag) ...

The word Argentina is derived from the Latin word "argentum," which in English means silver. For this reason Argentina is sometimes called "The Land of Silver." The official name of the country is Republic of A...

Amateur astronomy, a subset of astronomy, is a hobby whose participants enjoy studying celestial objects. The amateur astronomer is one who does not depend on the field of astronomy as a primary source of income or support, and does not hav...

An actor, actress or player (see terminology) is a person who acts in a dramatic production and who works in film, television, theatre, or radio in that capacity. The ancient Greek word for an actor, hypokrites, when rendered as a verb mean...

Abortion is when a pregnancy is terminated. This could happen naturally or on purpose. Natural abortions are caused for a variety of reasons, some in which the fetus does not develop normally, or if the mother has an injury or disorder tha...

Although his prolific and extremely successful career evolved from acting on stage to writing, directing, and acting in his own films, Alan Alda will forever be best remembered for his inimitable portrayal of Captain Benjamin Franklin �...

The following terms are used in American football and Canadian football, but see also the glossary of Canadian football....

Botanically, an annual plant is a plant that usually germinates, flowers and dies in one year. True annuals will only live longer than a year if they are prevented from setting seed. Some seedless plants can also be considered annuals even ...

Mouthwash is an oral care product primarily designed to freshen breath and remove food debris. Certain brands are also formulated to aid in the prevention of cavities, decrease buildup of plaque and reduce gum disease. The first references...

SOURCE: "The Science of Social Engineering," in The Yale Review, Vol. XI, No. 2, January, 1922, pp. 431-33. In the following essay, Petrunkevitch praises Korzybski's theory of "time-binding" as discussed in The Manhood of Humanity. Unlike p...

Asparagales is an order of flowering plants. The order must include the family Asparagaceae, but other families included in the order have varied markedly between different classifications. if (window.showTocToggle) { var tocShowText = "sho...

The Apiales are an order of flowering plants. The families given at right are typical of newer classifications, though there is some slight variation, and in particular the Torriceliaceae may be divided. These families are placed within the...

Asteroids are small bodies in space—the numerous leftover planetesimals from which the planets were made nearly 4.6 billion years ago. Most are in the "main belt," which is a doughnut-like volume of space between Mars ...

An affidavit is a formal sworn statement of fact, signed by the declarant (who is called the affiant or deponent) and witnessed (as to the veracity of the affiant's signature) by a taker of oaths, such as a notary public. The name is Mediev...

Asterism may refer to: Asterism (astronomy), a pattern of stars Asterism (gemmology), an optical phenomenon Asterism (typography), a rarely used symbol...

Arabic, al-ʿArabiyya, or lisan al-ʿArab, is the language spoken by 200 million people in twenty-one countries from the Arabian Gulf to the Atlantic. As the liturgical language of Muslims, it is the medium for a billion people...

Alfred Hitchcock (1899-1980), was a film director famous for skillfully wrought suspense thrillers. He was essentially concerned with depicting the tenuous relations between people and objects and rendering the terror inherent in commonpla...

The Altaic languages are a group of languages and language families, widespread in and dominating parts of Central and Northern Asia. The name Altaic alludes to the Altai mountain range in southern Siberia, where nineteenth-century scholar...

In mathematics, the axiom of choice, or AC, is an axiom of set theory. Intuitively speaking, the axiom of choice says that given any collection of bins, each containing at least one object, exactly one object can be selected from each bin, ...

The Aegean Sea is located between the coasts of Greece and Turkey and the islands of Crete and Rhodes. Its covers an area of 210 square kilometers; its maximum depth is 3,543 meters, found to the east of Crete. More than two thousand islan...

The Museum of Work, or Arbetets museum, is a museum located in Norrköping, Sweden. The museum can be found in the 19th century building The Iron in the Motala ström river in central Norrköping. See also: List of museums in Sweden, Cultur...

The human fascination with flight is older than recorded history. An ancient Chinese legend tells of a prince who builds a wind-powered flying chariot, and in the famed Greek myth, Daedalus devises wings of feathers and wax so he and his s...

The Swedish chemist Alfred Bernhard Nobel (1833-1896) invented dynamite and other explosives, but he is best remembered for the Nobel Prizes, which he endowed with the bulk of his personal fortune. Alfred Nobel was born Oct. 21, 1833, in S...

(1997 est. pop. 54 million). Anatolia, also called Anadolu or Asia Minor, is Turkey's Asiatic region, a mountainous peninsula surrounded by the Black Sea on the north and the Mediterranean and Aegean Seas on the south and west. To t...