WINTER SOLSTICE SONGS. In Europe the celebration of the winter solstice, the longest night of the year, is a heritage that goes back to prehistoric times. The classical Greek and Latin authors, as well as the fathers of the church, attest ...

Interval of time required for one-half of the atomic nuclei of a radioactive sample to decay (change spontaneously into other nuclear species by emitting particles and energy), or the time required for the number of disintegrations per sec...

Although the term is of recent origin as used in connection with alcohol or drug treatment, the basic idea of the halfway house is almost two hundred years old. It designates a residential facility that provides a drug-free environment for...

Bad breath, sometimes called halitosis, is an unpleasant odor of the breath. It is likely to be experienced by most adults at least occasionally. Bad breath, either real or imagined, can have a significant impact on a person's social and p...

Hallie Flanagan (1890-1969) was a director, playwright, and educator who headed the Federal Theater Project, America's first national, federally-funded theater organization, from 1935 to 1939. Born in South Dakota on August 27, 1890, and r...

holiday, October 31, now observed largely as a secular celebration. As the eve of All Saints' Day, it is a religious holiday among some Christians. Halloween had its origins in the festival of Samhain among the Celts of ancient Britain and...

in art, radiant circle or disk surrounding the head of a holy person, a representation of spiritual character through the symbolism of light. In Hellenistic and Roman art the sun-god Helios and Roman emperors often appear with a crown of r...

Any of five nonmetallic elements—fluorine, chlorine, bromine, iodine, and astatine—with similar chemical properties. They occur in the second rightmost column of the periodic table as usually arranged. All are highly reactive o...

Halophytes (salt plants) are organisms that require elevated amounts of sodium up to or exceeding seawater strength (approximately 33 parts of sodium per thousand) for optimal growth. In contrast, most crops cease to produce with sodium at...

The halting problem is the prototypical example of an undecidable problem, or a well posed problem that requires a yes or no answer that is impossible to solve. It should be stressed that the class of undecidable problems are impossible to...

(2002 pop. 409,000). Hamadan (once called Ecbatana), an ancient city in western Iran, was the capital of Media; after the Persians overthrew their Median overlords, the city became the Persian royal summer residence. Alexander of Macedon c...

Hamid KarzaiPresident of the Afghan Transitional Authority (pronounced "HA-mehd CAHRZ-eye") "Having experienced the ravages of war for 23 years and having been taken hostage by a group of terrorists, we are once a...

tragedy in five acts by William Shakespeare, written about 1599–1601 and published in a quarto edition in 1603 from an unauthorized text, with reference to an earlier play. The First Folio version was taken from a second quarto of 16...

The Han are the majority people among China's fifty-six state-recognized nationalities, and comprise the people usually known worldwide as the Chinese. They are the most numerous of the world's nationalities, approaching 1.2 ...

(206 &BC;–&AD; 220) Second great Chinese imperial dynasty. In contrast to the preceding Qin dynasty, the Han was a period of cultural flowering. One of the greatest of the early histories, the Shiji by Sima Qian, was composed, and th...

The Han River flows about 514 kilometers through Seoul, capital of the Republic of Korea (South Korea), rising from a spring in Odae Mountain in Kangwon Province and emptying into the Yellow Sea. Several prehistoric human settlements have ...

ḤANᾹBILAH (sg., Ḥanbālī) is the name used to denote the followers of Aḥmad ibn Ḥanbal, just as the names Shāfiʿīyah, Mālikīyah, and Ḥanafīyah...

Hand-foot-mouth disease is an infection of young children in which characteristic fluid-filled blisters appear on the hands, feet, and inside the mouth. Coxsackie viruses belong to a family of viruses called Enteroviruses. These viruses li...

device for shackling the hands, used by police on prisoners under arrest. Until modern times, handcuffs were of two kinds: (1) the figure 8, which confined the hands close together either in front of or behind the body, and (2) rings that...

Handheld Computers Handheld computers Business Week, 6 September 2004....

Handshaking refers to the process by which two devices, typically modems, lay the groundwork to establish communications between them. Hardware handshaking uses voltage levels or pulses on the wires that connect the devices. Software hands...

The Hanford Engineering Works was conceived in June 1942 under the direction of Major General Leslie R. Groves, head of the famous Manhattan Project, to produce plutonium and other materials for use in the development of nuclear weapons....

Hangul is a script used in writing Korean, a language of 72 million speakers. It is, like the Roman alphabet, an alphabetical writing, consisting of 24 basic alphabet letters, 14 for consonants and 10 for vowels. Unlike the Roman alphabet ...

Henry Louis (Hank) Aaron (born 1934) was major league baseball's leading homerun hitter with a career total of 755 upon his retirement in 1976. He broke ground for the participation of African Americans in professional sports. Henry (Hank)...

(born Jan.1, 1911, New York, N.Y., U.S.—died Sept. 4, 1986, Beverly Hills, Calif.) U.S. baseball player. Greenberg began his professional career at first base with the Detroit Tigers in 1933. He twice helped the Tigers win the World ...