On June 19, 1995, Chinese authorities arrested American citizen Harry Wu on charges of spying, an act punishable by death. Wu, a Chinese-born human rights activist, had entered China to investigate human rights abuses in the communist nat...

People have always looked at the stars and wondered if life existed on other planets. Several ancient cultures tell stories in which beings from the stars visit the earth. Not until the mid-twentieth century, however, did the phenomena of a...

Writing Research Papers, a guide for students working with Opposing Viewpoints books, is designed to help college students develop their own thinking and to write and report what they have learned to others. Written to help students think c...

Inflammatory disease of the oil glands of the skin. Acne vulgaris, probably the most frequent chronic skin disorder, results from an interplay of hereditary factors, hormones, and bacteria, beginning in the teen years when overactive sebac...

the act of establishing a person as parent to one who is not in fact or in law his child. Adoption is so widely recognized that it can be characterized as an almost worldwide institution with historical roots traceable to antiquity. In mos...

city, Aichi ken (prefecture), central Honshu, Japan. It lies along the Kiso River, in the northern part of the Owari plain. Kōnan has been a centre of sericulture (silk-production) since the Edo (Tokugawa) period (1603–1867) an...

Any of a class of common organic compounds that contain one or more hydroxyl groups (&singlehorzbond;OH) attached to one or more of the carbon atoms in a hydrocarbon chain. The number of other substituent groups (R) on that carbon atom mak...

Physical violence of all types, from slaps to murder, probably occurs more frequently in the family than in any other setting or group except the armed services or police in time of war or riot. This article summarizes the prevalence rates...

The New Breed...

“As social groups, cliques introduce young people to negative aspects of society, such as conflict and prejudice.” —Debra J. Jordan “Cliques are not an entirely negative aspect of the high school social structure...

a fundamental category of existentialism. According to the 19th-century philosopher Søren Kierkegaard, dread, or angst, is a desire for what one fears and is central to his conception of original sin. For the 20th-century German phi...

PARANORMAL PHENOMENA ARE creatures or occurrences that cannot be explained scientifically. Sightings of unidentified flying objects (UFOs), reports of alien abductions, mental telepathy, ghosts, and miracles all fall into this category. So...

acute, infectious, febrile disease of animals and humans caused by Bacillus anthracis, a bacterium that under certain conditions forms highly resistant spores capable of persisting and retaining their virulence for many years. Although ant...

In 1993 Abdul Momen, director of the human rights organization Women and Children International, traveled to Tungipara, Bangladesh, where more than one thousand children had been reported missing. The children’s mothers told Momen that the ...

a mass of material moving rapidly down a slope. An avalanche is typically triggered when material on a slope breaks loose from its surroundings; this material then quickly collects and carries additional material down the slope. There are ...

Bilingual Education in the United States Aside from Native Americans, there are no indigenous "Americans" to speak of in the United States. The U.S. is therefore a large immigrant nation whose history has grown out of its ability to bring...

any of a number of disease-producing agents—such as bacteria, viruses, rickettsiae, fungi, toxins, or other biological agents—that may be utilized as weapons against humans, animals, or plants. The direct use of infectious agen...

With the human genome already decoded, science is at the height of its ingenuity. Everyday, millions of scientists worldwide are working to find cure for varies illnesses and diseases. Some have changed the course of human evolution throug...

Witches have had a negative image for hundreds of years. Raymond Buckland, a witch himself, describes the popular conception of a witch as an old weather—beaten crone, having her chin and knees meeting for age, walking like a bow, l...

Infectious fever caused by the bacterium Yersinia pestis, carried by the rat flea. It usually spreads to humans only when the flea runs out of rodent hosts. It takes three forms. Bubonic, the mildest, has characteristic swollen lymph nodes...

Uncontrolled multiplication of abnormal cells. Cancerous cells and tissues have abnormal growth rates, shapes, sizes, and functioning. Cancer may progress in stages from a localized tumour (confined to the site of origin) to direct extensi...

In 1984, the first year of his assignment to the Boston diocese, Cardinal Bernard Law approved the transfer of Father John J. Geoghan to St. Julia’s parish in Weston, Massachusetts, despite substantial evidence that Geoghan had sexually abu...

Principal intelligence and counterintelligence agency of the U.S., established in 1947 as a successor to the World War II-era Office of Strategic Services. The law limits its activities to foreign countries; it is prohibited from gathering...

A state, produced by repeated or prolonged drug exposure, in which the presence of drug in the body is required to maintain normal physiological function. This state is recognizable only by the occurrence of a withdrawal reaction when the ...

Treatment of diseases, including cancer, with chemicals. Some cancer drugs interfere with cancer-cell division or enzyme processes. However, they have serious side effects, attacking some healthy cells and reducing resistance to infection....