Encyclopædia Britannica Australia -

Encyclopedias since 1768

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Alipore ... Allegheny

Alipore: town, West Bengal state, northeastern India. A southern suburb of Calcutta included within the city municipality, it has major industries, including printing and bookbinding, cement manufacture, oilseed milling, and general engineering works. Alipore is the site of zoological-horticultural gardens and ...
Alipur Duar: city, northeastern West Bengal state, northeastern India, just north of the Kalyani River. Connected by road with Jalpaiguri, the city is an important market centre for rice, tobacco, and jute; an annual agricultural produce and stock fair is held there. ...
Aliquippa: city, Beaver county, western Pennsylvania, U.S. It lies along the Ohio River, just northwest of Pittsburgh. Settled about 1750 as a post for trade with Delaware, Iroquois, and Shawnee Indians, it was first known as Logstown and later renamed for ...
Alisar Huyuk: site of an ancient Anatolian town southeast of Bogazkoy in central Turkey. Thorough and extensive excavations there by the Oriental Institute of the University of Chicago (1927-32) were the first systematic stratigraphic investigations on the Anatolian plateau. In the long ...
Alismatales: the water-plantain order of flowering plants, belonging to the class Liliopsida (monocotyledons; characterized by a single seed leaf). Most species are aquatic and grow submerged or partially exposed to the air in marshes and other freshwater habitats. Many are aquatic ...
Alismatidae: subclass of flowering plants belonging to the class Lilopsida.
Alisol: one of the 30 soil groups in the classification system of the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO). Alisols are highly acidic, poorly drained soils prone to aluminum toxicity and water erosion. Liming and fertilization are essential to their agricultural use-primarily ...
Alitalia-Linee Aeree Italiane: Italian international airline founded in 1946 and, by the late 20th century, serving more than 120 cities in Europe, Africa, Asia, North and South America, and Australia. Headquarters are in Rome.
Alito, Samuel A., Jr.: associate justice of the Supreme Court of the United States from 2006.
aliyah: in Judaism, the honour accorded to a worshiper of being called up to read an assigned passage from the Torah (first five books of the Bible). Because the passage assigned for each sabbath-morning service is subdivided into a minimum of ...
alizarin: a red dye originally obtained from the root of the common madder plant, Rubia tinctorum, in which it occurs combined with the sugars xylose and glucose. The cultivation of madder and the use of its ground root for dyeing by ...
alka: in Baltic religion, an open-air religious site, a natural sanctuary-forest, hill, river-that was sacred and inviolate. Trees could not be cut in such forests, sacred fields could not be plowed, and fishing was not allowed in the holy waters. The ...
Alkalai, Judah ben Solomon Hai: Sephardic rabbi and an early advocate of Jewish colonization of Palestine.
alkali: any of the soluble hydroxides of the alkali metals-i.e., lithium, sodium, potassium, rubidium, and cesium. Alkalies are strong bases that turn litmus paper from red to blue; they react with acids to yield neutral salts; and they are caustic and ...
alkali feldspar: any of several common silicate minerals that often occur as variously coloured, glassy crystals. They are used in the manufacture of glass and ceramics; transparent, highly coloured, or iridescent varieties are sometimes used as gemstones. The alkali feldspars are primarily ...
alkali flat: a playa, or dried-out desert lake, especially one containing high concentrations of precipitated dry, glistening salts. The term is generally limited to flats in the western United States, the most famous being the Bonneville Salt Flats (q.v.) west of Salt ...
alkali metal: any of the six chemical elements that make up Group I of the periodic table-namely, lithium (Li), sodium (Na), potassium (K), rubidium (Rb), cesium (Cs), and francium (Fr). (See .) The alkali metals are so called because they form alkalies ...
alkaline phosphatase: enzyme that is normally present in high concentrations in growing bone and in bile. It is essential for the deposition of minerals in the bones and teeth. Alkaline phosphatase deficiency is a hereditary trait called hypophosphatasia, which results in bone ...
alkaline-earth metal: any of the six chemical elements that comprise Group IIa of the periodic table (see ). The elements are beryllium (Be), magnesium (Mg), calcium (Ca), strontium (Sr), barium (Ba), and radium (Ra).
alkaloid: any of a class of naturally occurring organic nitrogen-containing bases. Alkaloids have diverse and important physiological effects on humans and other animals. Well-known alkaloids include morphine, strychnine, quinine, ephedrine, and nicotine.
alkalosis: abnormally low level of acidity, or high level of alkalinity, in the body fluids, including the blood. Metabolic alkalosis (also called alkalemia) results from either acid loss (which may be caused by severe vomiting or by the use of potent ...
Alkan, Valentin: French pianist-composer, one of the leading virtuosos of the 19th century and one of the most enigmatic figures in 19th-century music.
alkanet: any plant of the 50 or so mostly Mediterranean species of the genus Anchusa and the closely related Pentaglottis sempervirens, bearing blue, purple, or white forget-me-not-like flower clusters on hairy, herbaceous stems. They belong to the family Boraginaceae. True alkanet ...
alkaptonuria: rather rare (one in 200,000 births) inherited disorder of protein metabolism characterized by an inability of the body to metabolize the amino acids tyrosine and phenylalanine. In the normal metabolic pathway of tyrosine, homogentisic acid is converted to maleylacetoacetate in ...
Alkmaar: gemeente (commune), Noord-Holland provincie, northwestern Netherlands. It lies along the North Holland Canal, 6 miles (10 km) east of the North Sea.
alkylation: in petroleum refining, chemical process in which light, gaseous hydrocarbons are combined to produce high-octane components of gasoline. The light hydrocarbons consist of olefins such as propylene and butylene and isoparaffins such as isobutane. These compounds are fed into a ...
All Nippon Airways Co., Ltd.: the largest domestic air carrier in Japan, and one of the largest in the world. The company was founded in 1952 and is headquartered in Tokyo. Under the Japanese government's strict regulation of civil aviation, All Nippon Airways was basically ...
All Saints' Day: in the Christian church, a day commemorating all the saints of the church, both known and unknown, celebrated on November 1 in the Western churches and on the first Sunday after Pentecost in the Eastern churches. Its origin cannot be ...
All Souls' Day: in the Roman Catholic church, a day for commemoration of all the faithful departed, those baptized Christians who are believed to be in purgatory because they have died with the guilt of lesser sins on their souls. It is celebrated ...
All's Well That Ends Well: comedy in five acts by William Shakespeare, written in 1601-05 and published in the First Folio of 1623 seemingly from a theatrical playbook that still retained certain authorial features or from a literary transcript either of the playbook or of ...
All-America team: honorific title given to outstanding U.S. athletes in a specific sport in a given year competing at the collegiate and secondary school levels. Originally the term referred to a select group of college gridiron football players. Athletes selected to an ...
All-American Girls Professional Baseball League: American sports organization that, between 1943 and its dissolution in 1954, grew from a stopgap wartime entertainment to a professional showcase for women baseball players.
All-England Championships: internationally known lawn tennis championships played annually in London at Wimbledon (q.v.).
all-fours: family of card games dating back to 17th-century England and first mentioned in The Complete Gamester of Charles Cotton in 1674. Like whist, all-fours was at first a popular game with the lower classes, but in the 15th century it ...
All-India Trade Union Congress: India's second largest trade union federation after the Indian National Trade Union Congress. The AITUC was formed by the Indian National Congress (the central organ of the independence movement) in 1920 to represent India at the International Labour Organisation of ...
all-or-none law: a physiological principle that relates response to stimulus in excitable tissues. It was first established for the contraction of heart muscle by the American physiologist Henry P. Bowditch in 1871. Describing the relation of response to stimulus, he stated, "An ...
All-Star Game: in American professional baseball, a game between teams of outstanding players chosen from National and American league teams who oppose each other as league against league. Arch Ward, a Chicago Tribune sports editor, is credited with promoting the first All-Star ...
All-Union Council of Evangelical Christians and Baptists: voluntary association of Baptist churches in Russia that was formed (in the Soviet Union) in 1944 by uniting the Union of Evangelical Christians and the Russian Baptist Union. The Baptists in Russia grew from religious revival movements that began in ...
Allah: (Arabic: "God"), the one and only God in the religion of Islam. Etymologically, the name Allah is probably a contraction of the Arabic al-Ilah, "the God." The name's origin can be traced back to the earliest Semitic writings in which ...
Allahabad: city, southern Uttar Pradesh state, northern India. It is situated at the confluence of the Ganges and Yamuna (Jumna) rivers. Allahabad stands on the site of ancient Prayag, a holy city that was comparable in fame to Varanasi (Benares) and ...
Allais, Maurice: French economist who was awarded the Nobel Prize for Economics in 1988 for his development of principles to guide efficient pricing and resource allocation in large monopolistic enterprises.
Allan, Maud: Canadian-born interpretative dancer and teacher, one of the forerunners of modern dance.
Allan, Sir Hugh: Canadian financier and shipbuilder whose contribution of $300,000 to the Conservative Party campaign in 1872 precipitated the Pacific Scandal that brought down Sir John Macdonald's government.
allantois: an extra-embryonic membrane of reptiles, birds, and mammals arising as a pouch, or sac, from the hindgut. In reptiles and birds it expands greatly between two other membranes, the amnion and chorion, to serve as a temporary respiratory organ while ...
Allbutt, Sir Thomas Clifford: English physician, the inventor of the short clinical thermometer. His investigations also led to the improved treatment of arterial diseases.
allee: feature of the French formal garden that was both a promenade and an extension of the view. It either ended in a terminal feature, such as a garden temple, or extended into apparent infinity at the horizon.
Allee, Warder Clyde: zoologist and ecologist noted for his research on social behaviour, aggregations, and distribution of animals in both aquatic and terrestrial environments.
Allegany: county, southwestern New York state, U.S., bordered to the south by Pennsylvania and comprising a region of moderate relief. The principal waterways are the Genesee River and Rushford and Cuba lakes. Public lands include the Oil Spring Indian Reservation and ...
Allegany: county, western Maryland, U.S. It consists of an irregular neck of land between Pennsylvania to the north and West Virginia to the south (the North Branch Potomac River constituting the border with West Virginia). The county rests on part of ...
Alleghenian orogeny: a mountain-building event that affected the Appalachian Geosyncline in late Paleozoic (Permian) time, from about 300 million to 250 million years ago. The term Appalachian Revolution formerly was applied to this event. The Alleghenian orogeny is most pronounced in the ...
Allegheny: county, southwestern Pennsylvania, U.S., consisting of a hilly region on the Allegheny Plateau bounded to the southeast by the Monongahela and Youghiogheny rivers and to the northeast by the Allegheny River. The Ohio, Allegheny, and Monongahela rivers converge in the ...