Encyclopædia Britannica Australia -

Encyclopedias since 1768

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Baruta ... Basie, Count

Baruta: city, northwestern Miranda estado ("state"), northern Venezuela, in the central highlands. Formerly a commercial centre in a fertile agricultural area producing coffee, cacao, and sugarcane, the city has become a residential suburb in the Caracas metropolitan area. An expressway links ...
Barwani: city, southwestern Madhya Pradesh state, west-central India. It is situated just south of the Narmada River, about 70 miles (110 km) southwest of Indore. A trade centre for agricultural produce and timber, it is heavily engaged in cotton ginning. Founded ...
Bary, Heinrich Anton de: German botanist whose researches into the roles of fungi and other agents in causing plant diseases earned him distinction as a founder of modern mycology and plant pathology.
Barye, Antoine-Louis: prolific French sculptor, primarily of animals, known as the father of the Animalier school.
Barylambda: extinct genus of unusual and aberrant mammals found as fossils in deposits in North America in the Late Paleocene Epoch (63.6 to 57.8 million years ago). Barylambda was a relatively large animal, 2.5 m (about 8 feet) long, with an ...
baryon: any member of one of two classes of hadrons (particles built from quarks and thus experiencing the strong nuclear force). Baryons are heavy subatomic particles that are made up of three quarks. Both protons and neutrons, as well as other ...
Baryshnikov, Mikhail: Soviet-born American ballet dancer who was the preeminent male classical dancer of the 1970s and '80s. He subsequently became a noted dance director.
baryton: bowed, stringed musical instrument that enjoyed a certain vogue in the 18th century. It was related to the viol family, was about the size of a cello, and had six melody strings and a fretted fingerboard. Up to 40 sympathetically ...
Barzani, Mustafa al-: Kurdish military leader who for 50 years strove to create an independent nation for the millions of Kurds living on the borders of Iran, Iraq, and the Soviet Union.
Barzaz Breiz: collection of folk songs and ballads purported to be survivals from ancient Breton folklore. The collection was made, supposedly from the oral literature of Breton peasants, by Theodore Hersart de La Villemarque and was published in 1839. In the 1870s ...
Barzizza, Gasparino da: early Italian humanist teacher noted for his ability to convey Classical civilization to the Italy of his day.
Barzun, Jacques: French-born American teacher, historian, and author who influenced higher education in the United States by his insistence that undergraduates avoid early specialization and instead be given broad instruction in the humanities.
bas-relief: sculptural relief in which the projection from the surrounding surface is slight (see ). See relief.
basal metabolic rate: index of the general level of activity of an individual's body metabolism, determined by measuring his oxygen intake in the basal state-i.e., during absolute rest, but not sleep, 14 to 18 hours after eating. The higher the amount of oxygen ...
basalt: extrusive igneous (volcanic) rock that is low in silica content, dark in colour, and comparatively rich in iron and magnesium.
basaltes ware: hard black vitreous stoneware, named after the volcanic rock basalt and manufactured by Josiah Wedgwood at Etruria, Staffordshire, Eng., from about 1768. Wedgwood's black basaltes ware was an improvement on the stained earthenware known as "Egyptian black" made by other ...
Basanavicius, Jonas: physician, folklorist, and a leader of the Lithuanian national movement.
basanite: extrusive igneous rock that contains calcium-rich plagioclase feldspar (usually labradorite or bytownite), feldspathoid (usually nepheline or leucite), olivine, and pyroxene (titanaugite). Basanite grades into tephrite, which contains no olivine.
Basasiri, Arslan al-Muzaffar al-: Islamic military leader.
Basava: Hindu religious reformer, teacher, theologian, and administrator of the royal treasury of the Calukya king Bijjala I (reigned 1156-67). Basava is the subject of the Basava-Purana, one of the sacred texts of the Hindu Lingayat sect. According ...
Basavan: an outstanding Mughal painter, renowned as a superb colourist and as a sensitive observer of human nature. His name indicates that he may have been a member of the Ahir, or cowherders' caste, in the region of modern Uttar Pradesh. ...
Bascom, Florence: educator and geological survey scientist who is considered to be the first American woman geologist.
Bascom, William R.: American anthropologist who served as chairman (1956-57) of the anthropology department and acting director of African studies (1953, 1957) at Northwestern University, Evanston, Ill.
base: in chemistry, any substance that in water solution is slippery to the touch, tastes bitter, changes the colour of indicators (e.g., turns red litmus paper blue), reacts with acids to form salts, and promotes certain chemical reactions (base catalysis). Examples ...
base: in mathematics, an arbitrarily chosen whole number greater than 1 in terms of which any number can be expressed as a sum of that base raised to various powers. See numerals and numeral systems.
baseball: game played with a bat, a ball, and gloves between two teams of nine players each on a field with four white bases laid out in a diamond (i.e., a square oriented so that its diagonal line is vertical). Teams ...
baseball: pocket-billiards game, named for the similarity in its scoring system to the American game played with bat and ball, in which players attempt to score runs by pocketing 21 consecutively numbered object balls, the number of runs scored corresponding to ...
Baseball Hall of Fame: museum and honorary society, Cooperstown, New York, U.S. The origins of the hall can be traced to 1935, when plans were first put forward for the 1939 celebration of the supposed centennial of baseball (it was then believed that the ...
Basedow, Johann Bernhard: influential German educational reformer who advocated the use of realistic teaching methods and the introduction of nature study, physical education, and manual training into the schools. He also called for an end to physical punishment and to rote memorization in ...
Basel: capital of the half canton of Basel-Stadt (with which it is virtually coextensive), northern Switzerland. It lies along the Rhine River, at the mouths of the Birs and Wiese rivers, where the French, German, and Swiss borders meet, at the ...
Basel Zoological Garden: privately owned zoological garden in Basel, Switz., noted for its outstanding work in the breeding of the Indian rhinoceros and the pygmy hippopotamus. The zoo was founded in 1874 for the purpose of exhibiting local wildlife. (It opened with about ...
Basel, Confession of: moderate Protestant Reformation statement of Reformed doctrine composed of 12 articles. It was first drafted by John Oecolampadius, the Reformer of Basel, and was compiled in fuller form in 1532 by his successor at Basel, Oswald Myconius. In 1534 it ...
Basel, Council of: a general council of the Roman Catholic church held in Basel, Switz. It was called by Pope Martin V a few weeks before his death in 1431 and then confirmed by Pope Eugenius IV. Meeting at a time when the ...
Basel-Landschaft: Halbkanton ("demicanton"), northern Switzerland, traversed by the Jura Mountains and drained by the Ergolz and Birs rivers. It was formed in 1833 by the division of Basel canton into two half cantons, or demicantons, and its early history is linked ...
Basel-Stadt: Halbkanton ("demicanton"), northern Switzerland, consisting of the city of Basel (q.v.) and two small villages north of the Rhine. Occupying an area of 14 square miles (37 square km), it was formed in 1833 by the division of Basel canton ...
baselevel: in hydrology and geomorphology, limit below which a stream cannot erode. Upon entering a still body of water, a stream's velocity is checked and thus it loses its eroding power; hence, the approximate level of the surface of the still ...
Basellaceae: the Madeira-vine family of flowering plants in the order Caryophyllales, with 4 genera and 15 to 25 species of herbaceous perennial vines, distributed primarily in the New World tropics. Members of the family have fleshy, untoothed leaves, tuberous rootstocks, and ...
basenji: ancient breed of hound dog native to central Africa, where it is used to point and retrieve and to drive quarry into a net. It is also known as the barkless dog, but it does produce a variety of sounds ...
BASF Aktiengesellschaft: (German: BASF Limited-liability Company), German chemical and plastics manufacturing company originally founded in 1865 and today operating in some 30 countries. The BASF Group produces oil and natural gas, chemicals, fertilizers, plastics, synthetic fibres, dyes and pigments, potash and salt, ...
Bashan: country frequently cited in the Old Testament and later important in the Roman Empire; it is located in what is now Syria. Bashan was the northernmost of the three ancient divisions of eastern Palestine, and in the Old Testament it ...
bashi-bazouk: ("corrupted head," or "leaderless"), mercenary soldier belonging to the skirmishing or irregular troops of the Ottoman Empire, notorious for their indiscipline, plundering, and brutality. Originally describing the homeless beggars who reached Istanbul from the provinces of the Ottoman Empire, the ...
Bashir Shihab II: Lebanese prince who established hegemony over Lebanon in the first half of the 19th century and ruled it under Ottoman and, later, Egyptian suzerainty from 1788 to 1840.
Bashkir: member of a Turkic people, numbering more than 1,070,000 in the late 20th century, settled in the eastern part of European Russia, between the Volga River and the Ural Mountains, and beyond the Urals. Their main territory is Bashkortostan, where ...
Bashkirtseff, Marie: Russian emigre best known for her sensitive and girlishly candid autobiography in French, Journal de Marie Bashkirtseff, avec un portrait, 2 vol. (1887; Journal of Marie Bashkirtseff).
Bashkortostan: republic in Russia, extending from the western slopes of the southern Ural Mountains in the east to the rolling hills of the Bugulma-Belebey Upland in the west.
Basho: considered the greatest of the Japanese haiku poets, who greatly enriched the 17-syllable haiku form, embuing it with the spirit of Zen Buddhism and making it an accepted medium of artistic expression.
Basic English: simplified form of English developed between 1926 and 1930 by the British writer and linguist Charles Kay Ogden. Intended for use as an international second language, it enjoyed some popularity for more than a decade, but subsequently the language was ...
basic oxygen process: a steelmaking method in which pure oxygen is blown into a bath of molten blast-furnace iron and scrap. The oxygen initiates a series of intensively exothermic (heat-releasing) reactions, including the oxidation of such impurities as carbon, silicon, phosphorus, and manganese.
basidiocarp: in fungi, a large sporophore, or fruiting body, in which sexually produced spores are formed on the surface of club-shaped structures (basidia). Basidiocarps are found among the members of the class Basidiomycetes (q.v.), with the exception of the rust and ...
Basidiomycetes: a large and diverse class of fungi (division Mycota) including jelly and shelf, or bracket, fungi; mushrooms, puffballs, and stinkhorns; and the rusts and smuts. The club-shaped spore-bearing organ (basidium) usually produces four sexual spores (basidiospores). Basidia are borne on ...
Basie, Count: American jazz musician noted for his spare, economical piano style and for his leadership of influential and widely heralded big bands.