Yeast artificial chromosomes (YAC) are cloning vectors. Regular cloning vectors have size limits for their DNA inserts. Plasmids can take up to 10 kilobases of DNA. Bacteriophages take 15 kilobases of DNA. Cosmids can take up to 50 kilobas...

1098-1135 Khitan (northern Asian) king whose defeat of a Seljuk Turk leader in Persia probably served as the basis for the Prester John legend. A "barbarian" nation to the north of China, the Khitan had established a dynasty ...

The Yellow Kid by Richard Felton Outcault (1863-1928) is generally held to be the character that gave birth to American comic strips. The Kid, later named Mickey Dugan by Outcault, was a smallish figure dressed in a nightshirt who roamed t...

The Yellow Sea (Huang Hai), the shallow gulf between China and Korea, is 870 kilometers long from the south to the north and 556 kilometers wide from the east to the west and covers an area of 378,600 square kilometers. The northern part c...

The yellow-green algae are photosynthetic species of organisms belonging to the Xanthophyta Phylum, which is one of the phyla pertaining to the Chromista Group in the Protista Kingdom. Xanthophyta encompasses 650 living species so far iden...

Yemen (in Arabic, al-Yaman or al-Jumhuriyah al-Yamaniyah) is situated in the southwestern corner of the Arabian Peninsula. It is bordered by Saudi Arabia to the north, Oman to the east, the Gulf of Aden to the south, and the Red Sea to th...

(2002 pop. 1.3 million). Yerevan is the capital and the largest city of Armenia, as well as its largest cultural, scientific, and industrial center (producing electronics, chemicals, textiles, and food products). The site was fortified as ...

Yerofey Pavlovich Khabarov Born c. 1610, Ustyug, Russia Died c. 1670 During the 1630s, inhabitants of Russia’s eastern frontier heard rumors of a great river that was located in southeastern Siberia. It was said that the people who li...

YE SHES MTSHO RGYAL (YESHE TSOGYAL) (777–873) is a leading female figure and role model for Tibetan Buddhists. She is especially important for the Rnyingma (Nyingma) school of Tibetan Buddhism as a key figure in myth, dreams, iconog...

Evgenii Ivanovich Zamiatin lived in the first two, but participated in all three, periods of twentieth-century Russian literature and was out of step in each. In the pre-Soviet period, known as the Silver Age, he worked as an engineer, wro...

Yi Hwang (1501-1570), Yi-dynasty philosopher, poet, scholar, and educator, was one of the greatest Korean Confucian philosophers, famous for his comprehensive studies of the great Sung Neo-Confucian philosopher Chu Hsi. Yi Hwang, whose lit...

(b. 1948), Korean novelist. Since he made his debut in 1977 with a short story in a Daegu newspaper, Yi Mun-yol (Lee Mun-yol) has published prolifically, producing novels dealing with a wide range of subjects, from experience of military s...

TEKHINES. Tekhines, a Yiddish word from the Hebrew Teḥinnot, "supplications," are Jewish private devotions and paraliturgical prayers in Yiddish written by both women and men but recited primarily by women. As texts in...

SALANTER, YISRAʾEL (1810–1883), born Yisraʾel Lipkin, Lithuanian rabbinic scholar and leader, founder of the Musar movement. Yisraʾel Lipkin, the son of a rabbi and an exceptionally educated woman, showed schola...

YOḤANAN BAR NAPPAḤAʾ (d. 279?), leading Palestinian amora. Yoḥanan's father and mother had both died by the time he was born (B.T., Qid. 31b), and his apparent patronymic refers either to his trade as a s...

YOGĀCĀRA. The Yogācāra school is, with the Mādhyamika, one of the two main traditions of Indian Buddhism. As the name indicates (yogācāra means "one whose practice is yoga"), t...

YOGA. Etymologically, the Sanskrit word yoga derives from the root yuj, meaning "to bind together," "hold fast," or "yoke," which also governs the Latin iungere and iugum, the French joug, and so o...

In eastern Yogyakarta city lies the well-preserved Pakualaman Palace, home of the Pakualaman principality. The four palaces—namely Yogyakarta, Pakualaman, Surakarta, and Mangkunegaran—in the Yogyakarta and Surakarta regions e...

Born February 18, 1933 Tokyo, Japan Artist, writer, and performer Yoko Ono. © . "When I first came out there was a lot of xenophobia [fear of foreigners] and suspici...

Yung-lo (1360-1424) was the third emperor of the Ming dynasty of China, and in his reign the dynasty reached the height of its power owing to his military prowess and civil reforms. A favorite son of Hung-wu, Chu Ti, whose reign title was ...

YORUBA RELIGION. The twelve to fifteen million Yoruba people of southwestern Nigeria, the Republic of Benin (formerly Dahomey), and Togo (topographically the area is defined as that between 6°0–9°5' 2°41&...

Yosemite National Park is a 748,542-acre (303,160-ha) park, located on the western slope of the Sierra Nevadas in northern California. The name Yosemite comes from the name of an Indian tribe, the U-zu-ma-ti, who were massacred in 1851 b...

Yoshio Kodama was the fifth son of an unsuccessful businessman in Nihonmatsu City, Japan. He was sent to Korea to be raised by relatives. In Korea, Kodama's upbringing was filled with isolation and child labor in industry. These experience...

In Nathaniel Hawthorne's short story, Young Goodman Brown, Brown goes on a journey through the forest that drastically changes him. While we never know the real reason why Brown went to the forest, the experience in the forest caused him ...

United States 1952 On 8 April 1952 President Harry Truman ordered Secretary of Commerce Charles Sawyer to seize control of the U.S. steel industry to avert a strike that, Truman believed, would threaten the nation's security during...