Health Savings Accounts A health savings account (HSA) is an investment vehicle from which individuals can withdraw funds to pay qualified medical expenses as defined by the Internal Revenue Code. Accumulated funds can be used to pay curren...

Risk Management Risk management is a systematic process of identifying and assessing company risks and taking actions to protect a company against them. Some risk managers define risk as the possibility that a future occurrence may cause ha...

The Italian theologian and Jesuit St. Robert Bellarmine (1542-1621) was a cardinal, an adviser to popes, and a strong defender of the Roman Catholic position in the controversies stemming from the Protestant Reformation. Robert Bellarmine ...

Verifiability Principle The most distinctive doctrine of the logical positivists was that for any sentence to be cognitively meaningful it must express a statement that is either analytic or empirically verifiable. It was allowed that sente...

Any of various kinds of reflective thought engaged in by those identified as being Jews. In the Middle Ages, this meant any methodical and disciplined thought pursued by Jews, whether on specifically Judaic themes or not; in modern times, ...

Parliamentary Systems Democracies usually incorporate a structure that divides governmental power. Some states e, Christian. Annual Editions: Comparative Politics. Guilford, CT: McGraw-Hill/Dushkin, 2003. The World Book Multimedia Encyclope...

Perinatal Period The period from 28 weeks after conception through one week after birth. The perinatal period spans the last stage of pregnancy and the first days following birth. Approximately coinciding with the last trimester of pregnanc...

Peter Alekseevich Kropotkin (1842-1921), Russian prince, was both a scientist and an anarchist. He combined biological and historical fact to derive a theory of "mutual aid" to support his belief in the superiority of an anarchist society....

Trisomy Chromosomal abnormalities that cause birth defects including Down syndrome. Chromosomes in the human body generally come in pairs. Most people have 23 pairs of chromosomes, for a total of 46. When an extra chromosome is present in o...

Antisocial personality disorder (ASP) is particularly germane to alcohol and drug abuse because it co-occurs in a large proportion of those who abuse alcohol or drugs, and it confounds the diagnosis of, influences the course of, and is an ...

Inventory Management Inventory management, or inventory control, is an attempt to balance inventory needs and requirements with the need to minimize costs resulting from obtaining and holding inventory. There are several schools of thought ...

Ellen Gates Starr Born March 19, 1859 (Laona, Illinois) Died February 10, 1940 (Suffern, New York) Labor activist Teacher Ellen Gates Starr did not achieve the same kind of fame enjoyed by her close colleague, Jane Addams (1860 University o...

The Jewish scholar Saadia ben Joseph al-Fayumi (882-942) ranks as the most important medieval Jewish scholar of literature and history. Little is known of the early life of Saadia ben Joseph except that he was born in Egypt, lived for some...

The English theologian and moral philosopher William Paley (1743-1805) wrote works in defense of theism and Christianity that achieved great popularity in the 19th century. He is acknowledged as one of the founders of the utilitarian tradi...

Adjustment Disorders Category of mental disorder featuring significant emotional or behavioral symptoms in response to an identifiable event that precipitated significant psychological or social stress. Adjustment disorders are maladpative ...

Metropolitan Achievement Tests Achievement tests that assess general language skills, arithmetic skills, and reading comprehension. The Metropolitan Achievement Tests feature a battery of group-administered achievement tests that assess gen...

Vaclav Havel has played a major role in the cultural and political life of Czechoslovakia—and, after the breakup of that country in 1993, of the Czech Republic—throughout the second half of the twentieth century. During the Sta...

The Stanford-Binet Intelligence Scale is a standardized test that assesses intelligence and cognitive abilities. Intelligence is "a concept intended to explain why some people perform better than others on cognitive tasks. Intelligence is ...

division of an institution of higher learning that conducts educational activities for persons (usually adults) who are generally not full-time students. These activities are sometimes called extramural studies, continuing education, highe...

Protagoras of Abdera Protagoras of Abdera in Thrace, most famous of the Sophists, was born not later than 490 BCE and probably died soon after 421 BCE. According to Plato, he was the first to declare himself a professional Sophist. He went ...

Sleep Disorders Problems involving disruption in sleep pattern or inability to sleep. Sleep is a period of decreased activity and muscle relaxation, characterized by patterns of deep sleep (where brain waves are slower, called non-rapid eye...

Paraconsistent Logics The driving thought of paraconsistency is that there are situations in which information, or legal, scientific, or philosophical principles (and so on) are inconsistent, but in which people want to draw conclusions in ...

Railroads: the First Big Business An increase in railroad construction between 1860 and 1900 changed the United States, helping make it the industrial nation it is today. As the chief system of transportation of goods and people, railroads ...

Civil Liberties in Emergencies One of the most controversial topics in political theory and analysis is the relationship between the individual and the state. There are a number of rival theories offering different accounts for the justific...

Leadership Theories and Studies Leadership can be defined as a process by which one individual influences others toward the attainment of group or organizational goals. Three points about the definition of leadership should be emphasized. F...