employment of children of less than a legally specified age. In Europe, North America, Australia, and New Zealand, children under age 15 rarely work except in commercial agriculture, because of the effective enforcement of laws passed in t...

Country, eastern Asia. Area: 3,696,100 sq mi (9,572,900 sq km). Population (2005 est.): 1,304,369,000. Capital: Beijing. It is the world's most populous country, the Han (ethnic Chinese) forming more than nine-tenths of the population. Lan...

Technology today is growing at an alarming rate. Things that seemed impossible only a few years ago are now a reality, and some far fetched things such as time travel, that are present in today's science fiction movies, might possibly b...

Heterocyclic compound (C17H21NO4), an alkaloid obtained from coca leaves. It has legal uses in medicine and dentistry as a local anesthetic but far more is used illegally, usually as the hydrochloride. When sniffed in small amounts, cocain...

American entertainment today is drastically different from its past. Today eighty percent of Americans participate in some form of videogames. Whether it be a console from Microsoft, Sony, or Nintendo; PCs or cell phones, the fact is clea...

A book like this is published to meet many needs. However, three goals were dominant in the creation of this work: (1) to satisfy the reader’s curiosity about philosophy, religion, and morals; (2) to assist the reader who is developin...

Evolutionism and Creationism have been the subject of debate for many years. When all the facts are looked at, however, it can be seen that the theory of evolution has much stronger supports to back it up than that of Creationism. The mai...

“The number of very tenable explanations for the crime drop [of the 1990s], none of which inherently excludes any of the others, leads to the conclusion that . . . a variety of factors . . . have been important.” —Alfred B...

The 1978 Jonestown Massacre, where 913 of the Reverend Jim Jones' followers were forced to commit suicide, marked the high point in America's condemnation of cults. Spread across newspaper front pages and national magazines f...

“Several of the most contentious and passionate issues in current politics revolve around what can be called ‘cultural’ issues.” —Rhys H. Williams “Culture wars” became a popular catchphrase dur...

In the spring of 1991, a thirty-year-old single mother accused William Kennedy Smith, a nephew of Senator Edward Kennedy and a scion of America’s most famous political family, of raping her. The woman had met the thirty-one-year-old Smith, ...

I come to you not with a heart full of malice and scorn, but with a heart confused, a heart that cannot understand why one man is valued above another. This first man, even though he does not possess the attributes considered by a beholder ...

organic chemical of complex molecular structure that is found in all prokaryotic and eukaryotic cells and in many viruses. DNA codes genetic information for the transmission of inherited traits. A brief treatment of DNA follows. For full t...

"WINNING ISN'T EVERYTHING, it's the only thing." This often repeated comment of a famous National Football League coach, the late Vince Lombardi, captures an attitude held by many fans and athletes: sports is always about winning. This urge...

Children as young as third graders are beginning to experiment with drugs. There are many factors that influence drug use among children and teenagers, but there is not enough being done to prevent it. Drug abuse is defined as "the nonme...

any sudden shaking of the ground caused by the passage of seismic waves through the Earth's rocks. Seismic waves are produced when some form of energy stored in the Earth's crust is suddenly released, usually when masses of rock straining ...

discipline that is concerned with methods of teaching and learning in schools or school-like environments as opposed to various nonformal and informal means of socialization (e.g., rural development projects and education through parent-ch...

any species of plant or animal that is threatened with extinction. In the United States the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service of the Department of the Interior is responsible for conservation and management of fish and wildlife resources and ...

Ladies and Gentleman, Good evening. On behalf of myself and on behalf of the other members of the Office of Finance, I welcome you to this meeting tonight. We are brought together here tonight to discuss the past, present, and future of o...

an occurrence of disease that is temporarily of high prevalence. An epidemic occurring over a wide geographical area (e.g., worldwide) is called a pandemic. The rise and decline in epidemic prevalence of an infectious disease is a probabil...

the discipline concerned with what is morally good and bad, right and wrong. The term is also applied to any system or theory of moral values or principles. How should we live? Shall we aim at happiness or at knowledge, virtue, or the crea...

"THE EXPLOSION OF communal violence is the paramount issue facing the human rights movement today. And containing the abuses committed in the name of ethnic or religious groups will be our foremost challenge for years to come." This is the ...

act or practice of painlessly putting to death persons suffering from painful and incurable disease or incapacitating physical disorder. Because there is no specific provision for it in most legal systems, it is usually regarded as either ...

theory in biology postulating that the various types of plants, animals, and other living things on Earth have their origin in other preexisting types and that the distinguishable differences are due to modifications in successive generati...

Perception that involves awareness of information about something (such as a person or event) not gained through the senses and not deducible from previous experience. Classic forms of ESP include telepathy, clairvoyance, and precognition....