The K meson, or by its more preferred name, the kaon, is one of the family of mesons ( a class of particles heavier than leptons but lighter than baryons). The k meson has zero spin, a nonzero strangeness quantum number, and a mass of appr...

The Kapitan Cina (Chinese captains) were Chinese individuals appointed by local native chiefs and colonial authorities in Asia to mediate with the heterogeneous migrant Chinese populace in their provinces and colonies. The honorific title ...

Kaposi's sarcoma (KS; pronounced kuh-PO-seez sar-KO-muh) is a very rare form of cancer (see cancer entry). The word "sarcom" refers to any form of cancer that affects muscle, bone, liver, kidneys, lungs, spleen, bladd...

KARAITES. The Karaites (Heb., Qaraʾim; Arab., Qarāʾīyūn) are a Jewish sect that recognizes the Hebrew Bible as the sole source of divinely inspired legislation, and denies the authority of the postbiblica...

(2002 est. pop. 1.6 million). Karakalpakstan, officially the Republic of Karakalpakstan (Qoraqalpokiston Respiblikasy in Karakalpak, Karakalpakia in Russian), is an autonomous republic within the Republic of Uzbekistan in central Asia. It ...

The Karakoram Highway, known to the Chinese as the Friendship Highway, is an engineering masterpiece. It is a stretch of highway that was built in the north of Pakistan, where some of the mountains extend to altitudes of seven to eight tho...

Karakul sheep, also known as Russian, Astrakhan, or Bukhara sheep, are mediumsized, fat-tailed, and one of the earliest domesticated sheep breeds of Central or West Asian origin. They are raised mainly for the lustrous black, curly pelt of...

From its humble beginnings in a small town restaurant in Kobe, Japan, Karaoke has grown and is now recognised and enjoyed on a global scale. Considered by many as Japan's most insidious export since Godzilla, karaoke blossomed into a glob...

KARBALA, a city located sixty-five miles southwest of Baghdad, constitutes the pivot of devotion for more than a hundred million Shīʿī Muslims. Although the estimated population of this palm-grove-laden city is approxi...

Kareev, Nikolai Ivanovich(1850 stvo Leningradskogo universiteta, 1988....

Since its establishment in February 1947, the Karen National Union (KNU) has been the leading opposition voice among the Karen people in Myanmar (Burma). Saw Ba U Gyi and the KNU's founders were largely pro-British intellectuals who...

1942- American transoceanic sailor born in Snohomish, Washington. In 1996 Thorndike sailed from San Diego, California, to attempt a solo ocean voyage around the world on her 36-foot (11 m) sloop, Amelia. Two years later, in August 1998, sh...

The Swiss Protestant theologian Karl Barth (1886-1968), a giant in the history of Christian thought, initiated what became the dominant movement in Protestant theology up to the present day. Karl Barth was born on May 10, 1886, in Basel, t...

Krause, Karl Christian Friedrich(1781–1832) Karl Christian Friedrich Krause, a German pantheistic philosopher, was born at Eisenberg in Thuringia. He studied at Jena, where he came under the influence of Johann Gottlieb Fichte and F...

The Estonian anatomist and embryologist Karl Ernst von Baer (1792-1876) was the first to describe the mammalian ovum. He also developed the germ-layer theory, which became the basis for modern embryology. Karl Ernst von Baer was born in Pi...

1772-1850 German physician and botanist Karl Gaertner was instrumental in unraveling the mystery surrounding plant reproduction. He established that plants are sexually reproducing organisms through his experimentation and careful observat...

Karl Jansky was not an astronomer, but a radio engineer who inadvertently made an important contribution to astronomical science. He was born in Oklahoma in 1905 and studied at the University of Wisconsin. He took a job with Bell Telephone...

The German-Austrian Socialist Karl Johann Kautsky (1854-1938) was the major theoretician of German Social Democracy before World War I and one of the principal figures in the history of the international Socialist movement. Born in Prague,...

The American neuropsychologist Karl Spencer Lashley (1890-1958) demonstrated relationships between animal behavior and the size and location of brain injuries, summarizing his findings in terms of the concepts of equipotentiality and mass ...

The Hungarian-born sociologist and educator Karl Mannheim (1893-1947) explored the role of the intellectual in political and social reconstruction. He also wrote on the sociology of knowledge. Karl Mannheim was born on March 27, 1893, in B...

Karl Pearson is considered the founder of the science of statistics. In developing ways to analyze and represent scientific observations, he laid the groundwork for the development of the field of statistics in the twentieth century. Pears...

Karl Polanyi (1886-1964) was a Hungarian economic historian. His view of laissez-faire capitalism as a fleeting episode in history and of a new world economy as having evolved from it led to better understanding of nonmarket economies. Bor...

The German theologian Karl Rahner (1904-1984) was a major influence on 20th-century Roman Catholic thought. His work is characterized by the attempt to reinterpret traditional Roman Catholic theology in the light of modern philosophical th...

1873-1916 German astronomer who predicted the existence of black holes (1916). Schwarzschild showed that a star undergoing gravitational collapse that shrinks below a certain radius—the Schwarzschild radius—develops a gravita...

1817-1895 French zoologist who helped pioneer the use of photography in scientific publication. Vogt's photographic image of the Berlin Archaeopteryx macrura originally appeared in the Revue Scientifique in 1879. Archaeopteryx at th...