Encyclopædia Britannica Australia -

Encyclopedias since 1768

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Hazaribag ... heartwood

Hazaribag: city, south-central Bihar state, northeastern India, on the Hazaribag plateau. The city is a major road junction and agricultural trade centre. It houses the offices of the Damodar Valley Corporation, a hospital, and several colleges affiliated with Ranchi University. Hazaribag ...
Hazaribag Wildlife Sanctuary: national park, north-central Jharkhand state, northeastern India. The sanctuary is situated on a hilly plateau at an average elevation of 2,000 feet (600 metres), about 55 miles (90 km) north of Ranchi, the state capital. Established in 1955, it covers ...
Hazeltine, Alan: American electrical engineer and physicist who invented the neutrodyne circuit, which made radio commercially possible.
Hazleton: city, Luzerne county, east-central Pennsylvania, U.S. It lies on Spring Mountain of the Buck Mountain Plateau, at an elevation of 1,624 feet (495 metres), 24 miles (39 km) south of Wilkes-Barre. Originally a lumbering settlement, it became a prosperous mining ...
Hazlitt, William: English writer best known for his humanistic essays. Lacking conscious artistry or literary pretention, his writing is noted for the brilliant intellect it reveals.
Hazzard, Shirley: Australian-born American writer whose novels and short stories are acclaimed for both their literary refinement and their emotional complexity.
HD: abbreviation of Henry Draper Catalogue (q.v.), a listing of stars.
he: type of ancient Chinese bronze vessel that was used to heat liquids and to serve wine.
head flattening: intentional or unintentional artificial deformation of the human skull. Some Indians of the Pacific Northwest Coast of North America produced head flattening by binding an infant's head to a cradleboard; only the heads of free men, not slaves, were deformed. ...
Head, Bessie Emery: African writer who described the contradictions and shortcomings of pre- and postcolonial African society in morally didactic novels and stories.
Head, Edith: American motion-picture costume designer.
headache: pain in various parts of the head. Headaches affect nearly everyone at some time in their life, recurrent headaches approximately 10 percent of persons. Headaches vary widely in their intensity and in the seriousness of the underlying conditions that cause ...
header: machine for harvesting grain, developed in the United States, Canada, and Australia; along with the binder, it was standard equipment for harvesting wheat in the United States and Canada until early in the 20th century, when the grain combine was ...
headhunting: practice of removing and preserving human heads. Headhunting arises in some cultures from a belief in the existence of a more or less material soul matter on which all life depends. In the case of human beings, this soul matter ...
headless line: in prosody, a line of verse that is lacking the normal first syllable. An iambic line with only one syllable in the first foot is a headless line, as in the third line of the following stanza of A.E. Housman's ...
headphone: small loudspeaker (earphone) held over the ear by a band or wire worn on the head. Headphones are commonly employed in situations in which levels of surrounding noise are high, as in an airplane cockpit, or where a user such ...
headstander: any of several fishes of the families Chilodontidae and Anostomidae (order Characiformes). All species are small, reaching a maximum length of 20 cm (8 inches), and are confined to freshwater habitats in South America. The name headstander comes from their ...
Healesville: town, Victoria, Australia. It is situated in the Dandenong Ranges and on the Maroondah Highway northeast of Melbourne. Founded (1860) on the fertile flats of the Acheron River, a tributary of the Yarra, it was named after Sir Richard Heales, ...
Healey, Denis Winston, Baron Healey of Riddlesden: British economist and statesman, writer, and chancellor of the Exchequer from 1974 to 1979.
healing cult: religious group or movement that places major, or even exclusive, emphasis on the treatment or prevention by nonmedical means of physical or spiritual ailments, which are often seen as manifestations of evil. Such cults generally fall into one of three ...
health: in human beings, the extent of an individual's continuing physical, emotional, mental, and social ability to cope with his environment.
health insurance: system for the advance financing of medical expenses by means of contributions or taxes paid into a common fund to pay for all or part of health services specified in an insurance policy or law. The key elements in health ...
health maintenance organization: organization, either public or private, that provides comprehensive medical care to a group of voluntary subscribers, on the basis of a prepaid contract. HMOs bring together in a single organization a broad range of health services and deliver those services ...
Healy, George: American academic painter of highly realistic portraits.
Healy, James Augustine: first African American Roman Catholic bishop in the United States and an advocate for children and Native Americans.
Healy, T.M.: leader in the campaigns for Irish Home Rule and for agrarian reform, and the first governor-general of the Irish Free State.
Heaney, Seamus: Irish poet whose work is notable for its evocation of events in Irish history and its allusions to Irish myth. He received the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1995.
Heard and McDonald Islands: subantarctic island groups, together forming an external territory of Australia and lying in the southern Indian Ocean, 2,500 miles (4,000 km) southwest of Perth. Volcanic in origin, Heard Island is 27 miles (43 km) long by 13 miles (21 km) ...
hearing: in biology, physiological process of perceiving sound. See ear; mechanoreception; perception; sound reception.
hearing: in law, a trial. More specifically, a hearing is the formal examination of a cause, civil or criminal, before a judge according to the laws of a particular jurisdiction. In common usage a hearing also refers to any formal proceeding ...
hearing aid: device that increases the loudness of sounds in the ear of the wearer. The earliest aid was the ear trumpet, characterized by a large mouth at one end for collecting the sound energy from a large area and a gradually ...
Hearn, Lafcadio: writer, translator, and teacher who introduced the culture and literature of Japan to the West.
Hearne, Samuel: English seaman, fur trader, and explorer, the first European to make an overland trip to the Arctic Ocean. He was the first to show the trend of the Arctic shore.
Hearne, Thomas: English historian and antiquarian whose editions of English medieval chronicles were important sources for subsequent historians.
hearsay: in Anglo-American law, testimony that consists of what the witness has heard others say. United States and English courts may refuse to admit testimony that depends for its value upon the truthfulness and accuracy of one who is neither under ...
Hearst, Patricia: an heiress of the William Randolph Hearst newspaper empire who was kidnapped in 1974 by leftist radicals called the Symbionese Liberation Army, whom under duress she joined in robbery and extortion.
Hearst, William Randolph: American newspaper publisher who built up the nation's largest newspaper chain and whose methods profoundly influenced American journalism.
heart: organ that serves as a pump to circulate the blood. It may be a straight tube, as in spiders and annelid worms, or a somewhat more elaborate structure with one or more receiving chambers (atria) and a main pumping chamber ...
heart attack: a sudden cardiac seizure that causes myocardial infarction (q.v.).
heart block: lack of synchronization in the contractions of the upper and the lower chambers of the heart-the atria and the ventricles. The lack of synchronization may range from a slight delay in the ventricular contractions to total heart block, a complete ...
heart failure: inability of either or both sides of the heart to pump sufficient blood to meet the needs of the body. The term is to be distinguished from heart attack, which generally refers to myocardial infarction, or death of a section ...
heart malformation: any deformity of the heart that develops within the first two months of fetal life. Such deformities have little effect before birth because, in the fetus, cellular respiration (via the mother's bloodstream) is accomplished through the placenta. After birth, some ...
Heart River: river, Billings county, southwestern North Dakota, U.S. It rises in the badlands and flows about 200 miles (320 km) generally eastward past Dickinson to join the Missouri River south of Mandan, opposite Bismarck. The Dickinson Dam, impounding Edward Arthur Patterson ...
heart rot: widespread disease of trees, root crops, and celery. Most trees are susceptible to heart-rotting fungi that produce a discoloured, lightweight, soft, spongy, stringy, crumbly, or powdery heart decay. Conks or mushrooms often appear at wounds or the trunk base. A ...
Heart Sutra: ("Sutra on the Heart of the Prajnaparamita"), extremely brief distillation of the essence of Prajnaparamita (q.v.; "Perfection of Wisdom") writings, much reproduced and recited throughout Asia. True to its title, this little text goes to the heart of the doctrine ...
heart transplant: medical procedure involving the removal of a diseased heart from a patient with heart muscles damaged beyond surgical repair and its replacement with a sound heart, usually from a person who has just died. Because of the immense complexity of ...
heart urchin: any echinoid marine invertebrate of the order Spatangoidea (phylum Echinodermata), in which the body is usually oval or heart-shaped. The test (internal skeleton) is rather fragile with four porous spaces, or petaloids. The body is covered with fine, usually short ...
heart-lung machine: a type of artificial heart (q.v.).
heartland: landlocked region of central Eurasia whose control was posited by Sir Halford J. Mackinder in the early 20th century as the key to world domination in an era of declining importance for traditionally invincible sea power. Mackinder observed that the ...
hearts: card game that was developed in the United States about 1880. The object is to avoid winning tricks with hearts in them. Three to six can play, using a 52-card deck. If three play, a black 2 is taken from ...
heartwood: dead, central wood of trees. Its cells usually contain tannins or other substances that make it dark in colour and sometimes aromatic. Heartwood is mechanically strong, resistant to decay, and less easily penetrated by wood-preservative chemicals than other types of ...