R. K. Narayan (born 1906) is one of the best-known of the Indo-English writers. He created the imaginary town of Malgudi, where realistic characters in a typically Indian setting lived amid unpredictable events. Rasipuram Krishnaswami Nara...

R. M. Hare was the leading British moral philosopher of the last half of the twentieth century. His overarching aim, which he relentlessly pursued, was to demonstrate how rational argumentation about morality is possible. He achieved this ...

American rock group, the quintessential band of the 1980s. The members were Michael Stipe (b. January 4, 1960, Decatur, Georgia, U.S.), Peter Buck (b. December 6, 1956, Berkeley, California), Mike Mills (b. December 17, 1958, Orange, Cali...

RABBAH BAR NAHMANI (d. around 330 CE), a third-generation Babylonian amora, rabbinical colleague of Yosef bar Ḥiyyaʾ and Ḥisdaʾ. Rabbah studied with Hunaʾ and several other Babylonians, including Yehudah ...

TAM, YAʿAQOV BEN MEʾIR (c. 1100–1171), leading Jewish halakhic scholar, known as Rabbenu ("our teacher") Tam from the biblical description of the patriarch Jacob as tam (Gn. 25:27), a word often translate...

The Palestinian rabbi Akiba ben Joseph (ca. 50-ca. 135) was a founder of rabbinic Judaism. He developed a method of Hebrew scriptural interpretation. The early life of Akiba ben Joseph is enshrouded in legends, anecdotes, sayings, and nume...

Principal form of Judaism that developed after the fall of the Second Temple of Jerusalem (&AD; 70). It originated in the teachings of the Pharisees, who emphasized the need for critical interpretation of the Torah. Rabbinic Judaism is cen...

RABBITS. The belief that a rabbit dwells in the moon is widely attested not only in Inner Asia, South Asia, and East Asia but also in North America, Mesoamerica, and southern Africa. Among the Turco-Mongol peoples of Inner Asia, the shaman...

acute, ordinarily fatal, viral disease of the central nervous system that is usually spread among domestic dogs and wild carnivorous animals by a bite. All warm-blooded animals, including humans, are susceptible to rabies infection. The vi...

The study of race and race relations has long been a central concern of sociologists. The assignment of individuals to racial categories profoundly affects the quality and even the length of their lives. These assignments are ostensibly ma...

the idea that the human species is divided into distinct groups on the basis of inherited physical and behavioral differences. Genetic studies in the late 20th century denied the existence of biogenetically distinct races, and scholars now...

Rachel Louise Carson (1907-1964) was an American biologist and writer whose book Silent Spring aroused an apathetic public to the dangers of chemical pesticides. Rachel Carson was born May 27, 1907, in Springdale, Pa. A solitary child, she...

Segregation. When people hear this word, they think back to the 60s and the civil rights movement. Segregation is still very alive today. People believe that segregation died when the civil rights movement was over. However, as many f...

the practice of restricting people to certain circumscribed areas of residence or to separate institutions (e.g., schools, churches) and facilities (parks, playgrounds, restaurants, restrooms) on the basis of race or alleged race. Racial s...

any action, practice, or belief that reflects the racial worldview—the ideology that humans are divided into separate and exclusive biological entities called "races," that there is a causal link between inherited physical traits and...

Radar stands for radio detection and ranging. It is a technology that generates radio waves, reflects them from an object, and detects the reflected waves to determine where the object is located in space. An outgrowth of the tremendous a...

Radial keratotomy (RK) is a surgical procedure in which precisely placed micro incisions are made in a patient's cornea--the clear matter which covers the eyeball--to permanently correct near-sightedness, or myopia. In myopia, the curvatur...

flow of atomic and subatomic particles and of waves, such as those that characterize heat rays, light rays, and X rays. All matter is constantly bombarded with radiation of both types from cosmic and terrestrial sources. This article delin...

Tissue damage caused by exposure to ionizing radiation. Structures with rapid cell turnover (e.g., skin, stomach or intestinal lining, and bone marrow) are most susceptible. High-dose irradiation of the last two causes radiation sickness. ...

Use of radiation sources to treat or relieve diseases, usually cancer (including leukemia). The ionizing radiation primarily used to destroy diseased cells works best on fast-growing cancers. However, radiation can also cause cancer (&see;...

For some African Americans, the end of slavery came with the January 1863 signing of the Emancipation Proclamation, the document that proclaimed most of them free. For others, it came in April 1865 with the end of the Civil War (1861ȁ...

transmission and detection of communication signals consisting of electromagnetic waves that travel through the air in a straight line or by reflection from the ionosphere or from a communications satellite. Basic physical principles El...

Before the advent of television in the late 1940s, radio was the most popular mass medium in America. During radio's "Golden Age" from 1929 through the end of World War II, radio's comedy-variety, soap opera, an...

astronomical instrument consisting of a radio receiver and an antenna system that is used to detect radio-frequency radiation emitted by extraterrestrial sources. Because radio wavelengths are much longer than those of visible light, radio...

After Antoine Becquerel's discovery of radioactivity in 1896, there was much speculation as to the nature of the phenomenon. For one thing, it was unclear whether this was an effect produced only by uranium (and, as later discovered by Pie...