The diploid human genome is packaged within 46 chromosomes, as two pairs of 23 discrete elements, into all cells other than the haploid gametic egg and sperm cells. During the reproductive process, each parent's gametes contribute 2...

Yashar Kemal (born 1922) was the most successful and most widely known of modern Turkish novelists. His works, which also include short stories and essays, are local in color and infused with the spirit of Turkish folk traditions. They sho...

Yahya A. J. J. JammehPresident (pronounced "YAH-ya JA-may") "Our future and destiny lie squarely in our hands and certainly in agriculture." The Republic of the Gambia is named after the River Gambia which ...

Yaka by Pepetela Pepetela is the word for Kimberly Ball...

River, eastern Asia, between northeastern China and North Korea. Some 491 mi (790 km) long, it rises on the northern border of North Korea, then flows to Korea Bay. It is an important source of hydroelectric power and is navigable by small...

In Indian mythology, the lord of death. The Vedas describe him as the first man who died. The son of the sun god Surya, he presides over the resting place of the dead. In the Vedas, he was a cheerful king of the departed ancestors, but in ...

Aritomo Yamagata (1838-1922) was a Japanese general and a member of the oligarchy which dominated Meiji Japan. He was instrumental in building a modern army, strengthening the power of the civil and military bureaucracy, and checking the d...

(2002 est. pop. 1.5 million). Yamaguchi Prefecture is situated in the west of the Japanese island of Honshu. Occupying an area of 6,108 square kilometers, Yamaguchi is bordered by the Sea of Japan, the Inland Sea, and the Hibiki Sea and by...

Yamato damashii refers to the essential and inexplicable nature of being Japanese that is at the core of beliefs in Japan's uniqueness. The term appears in several contexts, most of them of nationalistic origin, and had its greatest...

(born Jan. 24, 1619, Kyōto, Japan—died Oct. 16, 1682, Kyōto) Japanese exponent of the philosophy of the Chinese Neo-Confucianist Zhu Xi. Early in life he was a Buddhist monk, but he gradually rejected Buddhism in favour o...

(flourished &circa; 1261–75, Qiantang, Zhejiang province, China) Mathematician active in the great flowering of Chinese mathematics during the Southern Song dynasty. His books are among the few contemporary Chinese mathematics works ...

Yang Xiong(53 Bce A.D. 18). Translated and annotated by David R. Knechtges. Tempe: Arizona State University Press, 1982....

city, capital of independent Myanmar (Burma) from 1948 to 2006, when the government officially proclaimed the new city of Naypyidaw the capital of the country. It is located in the southern part of the country on the east (left) bank of th...

River, China. Rising in the Tanggula Mountains in west-central China, it flows southeast before turning northeast and then generally east across south-central and east-central China to the East China Sea near Shanghai. It is known as the J...

Yankee Stadium, one of the oldest stadiums in the United States is a shrine to baseball fans. Some of the game's most dramatic and historic moments have occurred there. But this most hallowed of ballparks, haunted by the ghosts of b...

YANTRA. Geometrical diagrams known as yantras form a very special class of religious symbols in Hinduism. Their forms and functions within the tradition vary according to their uses. The most important ones are those that serve as supports...

YAO AND SHUN were legendary sage-rulers of antiquity in China. According to traditional Chinese historiography, Tang Yao (Yao of the Tang clan or state; personal name, Fang Xun) or Tang Dao ruled from 2356 to 2256 BCE. A ruler of great vir...

d. 897 Arab historian and geographer whose Kitab al-buldan was the first scientific treatment of historical geography produced by the Arab culture of the Middle Ages. At various times al-Ya'qubi lived in Armenia and Khorasan (modern...

As the field of solid waste management becomes more developed and specialized, the categories into which solid waste is sorted and managed become more numerous. Yard waste—often called vegetative waste—includes leaves, gras...

Yasser Arafat (born 1929) was elected chairman of the Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO) in 1969. Though originally an advocate of all-out guerrilla war, from 1974 on he and the PLO sometimes seemed to be seeking a negotiated resolu...

Yasukuni Shrine is a major Shinto shrine in Japan honoring the dead of the Imperial Japanese Army from the Sino-Japanese War (1899) to World War II. Established in 1869 in Kudanshita in Tokyo, the shrine encompasses gardens, a shrine, and ...

Yasunari Kawabata (1899-1972) was a distinguished Japanese novelist who won the Nobel Prize in literature for exemplifying in his writings the Japanese mind. Yasunari Kawabata was born in Osaka on June 11, 1899, into a cultured family, his...

Contagious tropical disease, caused by a variant of the spirochete that causes syphilis. Yaws spreads mainly by discharge from skin sores, not sexual activity. It is common in children, who usually become immune. In the first stage, a skin...

YAZATAS. The term yazata occurs in the Avesta, the collection of sacred books of Zoroastrianism, as an attribute or designation of divine beings. From this term is derived the Middle Persian yazd ("god"; pl., yazdān). ...

Potential problem in computers and computer networks at the beginning of the year 2000. Until the 1990s, most computer programs used only the last two digits to designate the year, the first two digits being fixed at 19. As the year 2000 a...