(2002 est. province pop. 851,000). The city of Van (estimated 2002 pop. 253,000), the capital of the province of Van, is located in eastern Turkey on the eastern shore of Lake Van; the population is now largely Kurdish. The city, with an a...

fl. 1200s Italian merchants who made the first European attempt to reach Asia by sailing westward. In 1281 or 1291, more than two centuries before the historic first voyage of Christopher Columbus (1451-1506), the Genoese Vivaldi brothers ...

Vanillin Overview Vanillin is a white crystalline solid with a pleasant, sweet aroma, and a characteristic vanilla-like flavor. Chemically, it is the methyl ether of 4-hydroxybenzoic acid, a ring compound that contains the carboxyl (-COOH) ...

Vannevar Bush (1890-1974) was a leader of American science and engineering during and after World War II. He was instrumental in the development of the atomic bomb and the analogue computer, as well as an administrator of government scient...

VANUATU RELIGIONS. Formerly known as the New Hebrides, Vanuatu is a Y-shaped archipelago of mostly volcanic islands located about sixteen hundred kilometers northeast of the Queensland coast of Australia. The physical, linguistic, and cult...

BANARAS. The city of Banaras, also known in India as Vārāṇasī, is one of the most important and ancient of the sacred places of India. Such places are called tīrthas, "crossings" or "...

A variable is something that varies among components of a set or population, such as the height of high school students. Two types of relationships between variables are direct and inverse variation. In general, direct variation suggests t...

In 1696 Isaac Newton left Cambridge University to become Warden of the Mint. When he came home one afternoon, he learned of a problem set by Johann Bernoulli as a challenge to the "great mathematicians of the world." Since Newton and Gottf...

Varicose veins are dilated, tortuous, elongated superficial veins that are usually seen in the legs. Varicose veins, also called varicosities, are seen most often in the legs, although they can be found in other parts of the body. Most oft...

A weekly trade newspaper focusing on theater and film, Variety has been a bible of the entertainment industry since the turn of the century. Founded in 1905 by Sime Silverman, a former vaudeville critic for a New York newspaper, Variety's ...

Varisco, Bernardino(1850–1933) Bernardino Varisco, the Italian metaphysician, was born at Chiari (Brescia). It was only in the later part of his long life that he developed his philosophy, for he began as a teacher of science and his...

VARṆA AND JĀTI. The two separable but intertwined concepts of varṇa and jāti may be regarded as different levels of analysis of the Indian system of social structure called caste. While some scholars regard var&...

Varona Y Pera, Enrique Jos n Panamericana, 1960), Ch. 5....

The Portuguese navigator Vasco da Gama (ca. 1460-1524) was the first to travel by sea from Portugal to India. The term "Da Gama epoch" is used to describe the era of European commercial and imperial expansion launched by his navigational e...

The vascular system is composed of a complex network of tubular vessels allowing blood to circulate around the body. It consists of arteries (carrying oxygenated blood from heart), veins (carrying the deoxygenated blood from the tissues to...

The Lycophyta, Equisetophyta, and Psilophyta are collectively referred to as the fern allies because, like the ferns (Pterophyta), they reproduce by single-celled spores released from sporangia (spore sacs). They do not produce flowers or ...

Vasculitis refers to a varied group of disorders which all share a common underlying problem of inflammation of a blood vessel or blood vessels. The inflammation may affect any size blood vessel, anywhere in the body. It may affect either ...

Vasodilators are medicines that act directly on muscles in blood vessel walls to make blood vessels widen (dilate). Vasodilators are used to treat high blood pressure (hypertension). By widening the arteries, these drugs allow blood to flo...

Vasquez, Gabriel(1549–1604) Gabriel Vasquez, the neo-Scholastic theologian, was born at Villascuela del Haro, Spain, and died at Alcalá. Educated in the Jesuit houses of study in Spain, he taught moral philosophy at Ocañ...

The Holy See (State of the Vatican City) Santa Sede (Stato della Cittá del Vaticano) CAPITAL: Vatican City FLAG: The flag consists of two vertical stripes, yellow at the hoist and white at the fly. On the white field, in yellow, are...

Sebastien Vauban (1633-1707) served as France's foremost military engineer under Louis the XIV. A man of humble birth, Vauban's acumen in planning military fortifications and his direction of sieges against France's enemies helped the regi...

1952- New Zealand-American mathematician who received his Ph.D. in Switzerland in 1979. He taught mathematics at many prestigious universities, including the University of California at Los Angeles, the University of Pennsylvania, and the ...

Vaz Ferreira, Carlos(1872 n a Vaz Ferreira (Montevideo: Barreiro y Ramos, 1961)....

The Vienna Definition Language (VDL) is a language for defining programming languages. Specifically, VDL uses operational semantics to create a formal definition of a language. In operational semantics, programs are modeled using an abstra...

Three of the four fundamental forces play a significant role in the interactions of elementary particles. A common feature that electromagnetism, the strong force, and the weak force share is that the gauge particles that mediate these for...