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 ...

The Amnok River (in Korean, Amnokkgang), known in Chinese as the Yalu River, is the longest river in Korea and is one of two rivers that form the border between North Korea and China. (The name Yalu is supposedly derived from the green col...

YAMA. In the earliest Ṛgvedic hymns, Yama is a benign god who looks after the well-being of the dead, whom he entertains with food and shelter. His abode and its environment are pleasant and comfortable; survivors supplicate him for...

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...

YAMAZAKI ANSAI (1618–1682), Japanese Confucian and Shintō scholar of the early Tokugawa period. The son of a samurai who lost his position in the turbulence of the early Tokugawa period, Ansai was set at a young age on a care...

c. 1238-c. 1298 Chinese Mathematician Though he did not invent the Pascal triangle, Yang Hui did provide an early discussion concerning its use. He also wrote several texts, at least one of which proved influential in East Asian mathematic...

(2002 est. pop. 4 million). Yangon is the capital of the Union of Myanmar (Burma) and of Yangon Division (2002 est. pop. 5.7 million). Located on the Yangon River, some 30 kilometers (21 miles) from its mouth on the Gulf of Martaban, Yango...

Called the Changjiang (Long River) in Chinese, the Chang (Yangtze) at 3,900 miles is the third-longest river in the world and the longest one in Asia. It originates in the Tanggulashan on the border of Tibet and Qinghai Province and then r...

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...

Yaws is a chronic illness that first affects the skin, and later the bones. Yaws tends to strike children, particularly between the ages of two and five. It is common in areas where poverty and overcrowding interfere with good hygiene. It ...

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). ...

The millennium bug refers to the existence in many computer software packages of a six-digit date rather than an eight-digit date. Computers speak the language of mathematics. Every question posed to a computer program is answered either &...