In 1992, Mae C. Jemison (born 1956) became the first African American woman to travel in space. Mae C. Jemison had received two undergraduate degrees and a medical degree, had served two years as a Peace Corps medical officer in West Afric...

fl. 1200s Venetian merchant and trader who made several extended trips into central Asia to the court of Kublai Khan. He made the first trip, 1253-1269, with his brother Niccoló; the second, 1271-1295, with Niccoló and Niccol...

a printed collection of texts (essays, articles, stories, poems), often illustrated, that is produced at regular intervals (excluding newspapers). A brief treatment of magazines follows. For full treatment, &see; publishing: Magazine publi...

Joining the Los Angeles Lakers of the National Basketball Association in 1979, Earvin "Magic" Johnson, Jr. (born 1959) became one of basketball's most popular stars. In November 1991, Magic Johnson stunned the sportsworld with his announce...

square matrix often divided into cells, filled with numbers or letters in particular arrangements that were once thought to have special, magical properties. Originally used as religious symbols, they later became protective charms or tool...

A magma chamber is a reservoir of molten rock that is the source of lava in a volcanic eruption. Magma chambers are typically located a few kilometers below the surface. A magma chamber is created by a mantle plume, or upwelling of heat fr...

Magnesium Chloride Overview Magnesium chloride (mag-NEE-zee-um KLOR-ide) is a white crystalline solid that is strongly deliquescent. It absorbs moisture from the air to become the hydrated form, magnesium chloride hexahydrate (MgCl2·...

Magnesium Oxide Overview Magnesium oxide (mag-NEE-see-um OK-side) is available commercially in several forms, depending on the way it is prepared and the use for which it is intended. Most forms can be classified as either "light�...

Magnesium Sulfate Overview Magnesium sulfate (mag-NEE-zee-um SUL-fate) occurs as the anhydrous salt and in a number of hydrated forms, including MgSO4·H2O, MgSO4·4H2O, MgSO4·5H2O, MgSO4·6H2O, and MgSO4·7H2...

Sometime before the fourth century B.C. the Chinese noticed that certain minerals, properly prepared, always pointed to the south. The mineral was magnetite, commonly called lodestone, and it was made into what the Chinese called a ...

Region around a magnet, electric current, or changing electric field in which magnetic forces are observable. The field around a permanent magnet or wire carrying a steady direct current is stationary, while that around an alternating curr...

Fusion is a nuclear process in which two atoms are combined to create a different atom (and some by-products). Magnetic confinement fusion uses a magnetic field to compress and heat gases into the plasma state so that fusion can take place...

Any current circulating in a planar loop produces a magnetic moment whose magnitude is equal to the product of the current and the area of the loop. When any charged particle is rotating, it behaves like a current loop with a magnetic mome...

Computer production of images from magnetic resonance. The structural and biochemical information it provides is helpful in the diagnosis of abnormalities without the possibly harmful effects of X rays or gamma rays. It is invaluable in de...

A magnetic stripe card is a card (e.g., a credit card) that contains a stripe of magnetically-encoded data. These cards are paired with readers and writers, and are used in a wide variety of applications for storing information. Most iden...

Phenomenon associated with magnetic fields, the effects of such fields, and the motion of electric charges. Some types of magnetism are diamagnetism, paramagnetism, ferromagnetism, and ferrimagnetism. Magnetic fields exert forces on moving...

instrument for measuring the strength and sometimes the direction of magnetic fields, including those on or near the Earth and in space. Magnetometers are also used to calibrate electromagnets and permanent magnets and to determine the mag...

"They were seven—and they fought like seven hundred!" screamed the posters for this 1960 western film, which spawned a number of sequels and helped launch the careers of Steve McQueen, James Coburn, and Charles Bronson...

(2002 est. pop. 4.7 million). Magwe (Magway) Division, located in the central dry zone of Myanmar (Burma), has an area of 44,820 square kilometers. The town of Magwe, 530 kilometers from the national capital of Yangon (Rangoon), is its cap...

The term mahalla is used by Uzbeks. It originated in Arabic and translates as encampment, neighborhood, or community. The term guzar is often used in place of mahalla among the Tajiks living in Uzbekistan; the term avlod is used by Tajiks ...

State (pop., 2001: 96,878,627), west-central India. It lies on the Arabian Sea and is bordered by the states of Gujarat, Madhya Pradesh, Chhattisgarh, Andhra Pradesh, Karnataka, and Goa and the union territory of Dadra and Nagar Haveli; it...

Despite a controversial career in politics, Datuk Seri Mahathir bin Mohamad (born 1925) became prime minister of Malaysia in 1981 and then won four consecutive elections. He is listed as the 41st oldest office-holders among the worldwide l...

Vardhamana Mahavira (599 BC-527 BC), called the Jina, was an Indian ascetic philosopher and the principal founder of Jainism--one of the major religions of the Indian subcontinent. Vardhamana Mahavira was born in northern India during the ...

One of the two major Sanskrit epics of India, valued for its literary merit and its religious inspiration. It tells of the struggle for supremacy between two groups of cousins, the Kauravas and the Pandavas. Many myths and legends are wove...

Mahlon Hoagland is best known for discovering, in the 1950s, that ribonucleic acid ( RNA) molecules in the cytoplasm retrieve specific amino acids and take them to the ribosomes for assembly into proteins. Hoagland was born in Boston, the ...