Encyclopædia Britannica Australia -

Encyclopedias since 1768

0-9

Neamt ... needlefish

Neamt: judet (county), northeastern Romania. The Eastern Carpathian and sub-Carpathian mountains rise above settlement areas situated in the valleys of the county. Neamt is drained to the southeast by the Bistrita and Moldova rivers. Piatra-Neamt (q.v.), one of the oldest settlements ...
Neanderthal: the most recent archaic humans, who emerged between 200,000 and 100,000 years ago and were replaced by early modern humans between 35,000 and 28,000 years ago. Neanderthals inhabited Eurasia from the Atlantic regions of Europe eastward to Central Asia and ...
neap tide: tide of minimal range occurring near the time when the Moon and the Sun are in quadrature. This condition is geometrically defined as the time at which the line from the Earth to the Moon is at right angles to ...
Neapolitan opera: style of Italian opera written chiefly by 18th-century composers working in Naples. See opera seria.
Near East: usually the lands around the eastern shores of the Mediterranean Sea, including northeastern Africa, southwestern Asia, and, occasionally, the Balkan Peninsula. The term Near East was used by the first modern Western geographers to refer to the nearer part of ...
Near Islands: westernmost group of the Aleutian Islands, southwestern Alaska, U.S. The islands lie about 1,500 miles (2,400 km) west of the tip of the Alaska Peninsula. The two largest islands in the group are Attu and Agattu. Eareckson Air Station (formerly ...
Nearchus: officer in the Macedonian army under Alexander the Great who, on Alexander's orders, sailed from the Hydaspes River in western India to the Persian Gulf and up the Euphrates River to Babylon.
neat's-foot oil: pale yellow fatty oil made by boiling the feet (excluding hooves), skin, and shinbones of cattle and used chiefly for dressing and waterproofing leather and as a lubricant. After the slaughterhouse scraps are rendered in water, the oil is skimmed ...
Neath: town, Neath Port Talbot county borough, historic county of Glamorgan (Morgannwg), Wales. About 75 CE the Romans chose the site, on the River Neath (Nedd), for a fort, Nidum, to protect their road from Gloucester to Carmarthen at the lowest ...
Neath Port Talbot: county borough, southern Wales. Encompassing the Swansea Bay coast from the Kenfig Burrows in the south to the eastern outskirts of Swansea in the north, it extends inland across an area of wooded hills that form a sandstone plateau crossed ...
Nebitdag: city and administrative centre of Balkan oblast (province), western Turkmenistan, at the southern foot of the Bolshoy (Great) Balkhan Ridge. Its name means "oil mountain," and it is the headquarters of the Turkmen oil industry. Nebitdag grew ...
Neblina Peak: peak in the Tapirapeco Mountains, Amazonas estado ("state"), northern Brazil, near the Venezuelan border. Reaching 9,889 feet (3,014 m) above sea level, it is the highest point in Brazil. Until Neblina was discovered in 1962, Bandeira Peak was thought to ...
Nebo, Mount: mountain rising 11,877 feet (3,620 metres) in Juab county, north-central Utah, U.S. It is the highest peak in the Wasatch Range. Named after the mountain in Jordan where Moses is believed to have died, Utah's Mount Nebo lies within the ...
Nebraska: constituent state of the United States of America. The Missouri River forms the eastern boundary with Iowa and Missouri and about a fourth of the northern boundary with South Dakota. The southern boundary with Kansas was established when the two ...
Nebraska City: seat of Otoe county, southeastern Nebraska, U.S., on the Missouri River at the Iowa border. It originated around Fort Kearny (1846; moved west to Platte River site in 1848), was incorporated in 1854, and combined in 1857 with the adjacent ...
Nebraska, University of: state university system composed of four coeducational campuses. It is a land-grant university with a comprehensive academic program; it is also a research institution. The main campus at Lincoln, through its eight colleges and its general studies division, offers about ...
Nebraskan Glacial Stage: major division of Pleistocene time and deposits in North America (the Pleistocene Epoch occurred from 1,600,000 to 10,000 years ago). The Nebraskan Glacial Stage is the oldest generally recognized Pleistocene episode of widespread glaciation in North America; the Nebraskan was ...
Nebuchadrezzar I: most famous Babylonian king (reigned c. 1119-c. 1098 BC) of the 2nd dynasty of the Isin.
Nebuchadrezzar II: the second and greatest king of the Chaldean dynasty of Babylonia (reigned c. 605-c. 561 BC). He was known for his military might, the splendour of his capital, Babylon, and his important part in Jewish history.
nebula: any of the various tenous clouds of gas and dust that occur in interstellar space. The term was formerly applied to any object outside the solar system that had a diffuse appearance rather than a pointlike image, as in the ...
nebulium: hypothetical chemical element whose existence was suggested in 1868 by the English astronomer Sir William Huggins as one possible explanation for the presence of unidentified (forbidden) lines (at 3,726, 3,729, 4,959, and 5,007 angstroms wavelength) in the spectra of gaseous ...
NEC Corporation: major Japanese multinational corporation, producer of semiconductors, computers, telecommunications equipment, and related software and services. Headquarters are in Tokyo.
Necati, Isa: the first great lyric poet of Ottoman Turkish literature.
Nechako River: major tributary of the Fraser River, in central British Columbia, Canada. It originates at Kenney Dam and flows eastward for nearly 150 miles (240 km), draining the Nechako Plateau into the Fraser at Prince George, B.C. Stuart River, a 258-mile- ...
Nechayev, Sergey Gennadiyevich: Russian revolutionary known for his organizational scheme for a professional revolutionary party and for his ruthless murder of one of the members of his organization.
Necho I: governor of Sais, a city of the Egyptian Nile delta, under the Assyrians and ancestor of the 26th dynasty; he survived the frequent changes of political fortune in Lower Egypt between 670 and 660.
Necho II: king of Egypt (reigned 610-595 BC), and a member of the 26th dynasty, who unsuccessfully attempted to aid Assyria against the Neo-Babylonians and later sponsored an expedition that circumnavigated Africa.
Nechung oracle: oracle-priest of Tibet who, until the conquest of Tibet in 1959 by the People's Republic of China, was consulted on all important occasions. The priest chosen to be the Nechung oracle was the chief medium of Pe-har, a popular folk ...
neck: in land vertebrates, the portion of the body joining the head to the shoulders and chest. Some important structures contained in or passing through the neck include the seven cervical vertebrae and enclosed spinal cord, the jugular veins and carotid ...
Neckam, Alexander: English schoolman and scientist, who was a theology instructor at Oxford, and, from 1213, was Augustinian abbot at Cirencester, Gloucestershire.
Neckar River: river, a right-bank tributary of the Rhine in southwestern Germany; it is 228 miles (367 km) long, rising in the Black Forest (Schwarzwald) near Schwenningen am Neckar, near the headwaters of the Danube River. The Neckar flows north and northeast, ...
Necker de Saussure, Albertine-Adrienne: Swiss woman of letters and author of a long-influential study on the education of women.
Necker, Jacques: Swiss banker and director general of finance (1771-81, 1788-89, 1789-90) under Louis XVI of France. He was overpraised in his lifetime for his somewhat dubious skill with public finances and unduly deprecated by historians for his alleged vacillation and lack ...
Necker, Suzanne: Swiss wife of the French finance minister under Louis XVI, Jacques Necker; mother of Madame de Stael; and mistress of a brilliant Parisian salon. At first she was engaged to the English historian Edward Gibbon, but his father broke off ...
necromancy: communication with the dead, usually in order to obtain insight into the future or to accomplish some otherwise impossible task. Such activity was current in ancient times among the Assyrians, Babylonians, Egyptians, Greeks, Romans, and Etruscans; in medieval Europe it ...
necropolis: (from Greek nekropolis, "city of the dead"), in archaeology, an extensive and elaborate burial place of an ancient city. In the Mediterranean world, they were customarily outside the city proper and often consisted of a number of cemeteries used at ...
necrosis: death of a circumscribed area of plant or animal tissue as a result of an outside agent; natural death of tissue is called necrobiosis. Necrosis may follow a wide variety of injuries, both physical (cuts, burns, bruises) and biological (effects ...
necrotizing fasciitis: rapidly spreading infection of the underlying skin and fat layers caused by a variety of pathogenic bacteria, principally Streptococcus pyogenes, also known as the group A streptococcus. Popularly known as the flesh-eating disease, necrotizing fasciitis is an ...
Nectanebo I: first king (reigned 380-362 BC) of the 30th dynasty of Egypt; he successfully opposed an attempt by the Persians to reimpose their rule on Egypt (373).
Nectanebo II: third and last king (reigned 360-343 BC) of the 30th dynasty of Egypt; he was the last of the native Egyptian kings.
nectar: sweet, viscous secretion from the nectaries, or glands, in plant blossoms, stems, and leaves. It attracts fruit-eating bats, hummingbirds, and insects, who aid in effecting pollination by transferring from plant to plant the pollen that clings to their bodies. Nectar ...
nectarine: (Prunus persica variety nectarina), smooth-skinned peach of the family Rosaceae, known for more than 2,000 years and grown throughout the warmer temperate regions of both the Northern and Southern hemispheres. In tree shape and leaf characteristics the peach and nectarine ...
Nectariniidae: songbird family, order Passeriformes, consisting of the sunbirds and spider hunters, about 116 species of small, brilliantly coloured birds widespread throughout the warmer forests of Africa and Asia.
Nederburgh, Sebastian Cornelius: conservative Dutch statesman who was chiefly responsible for the Charter of 1801, or Nederburgh's Charter, which established Dutch colonial policy after the government's takeover of the Dutch East India Company.
Nedim, Ahmed: one of the greatest lyric poets of Ottoman Turkish literature.
Needham, John Turberville: English naturalist and Roman Catholic divine, first clergyman of his faith to become a member of the Royal Society of London (1768).
Needham, Joseph: English biochemist, embryologist, and historian of science who wrote and edited the landmark history Science and Civilisation in China, a comprehensive study of Chinese scientific development.
Needham, Marchamont: British journalist and publisher of the Mercurius Britanicus, an anti-Royalist commentary on news and politics and a forerunner of the modern newspaper.
needle: basic implement used in sewing or embroidering and, in variant forms, for knitting and crocheting. The sewing needle is small, slender, rodlike, with a sharply pointed end to facilitate passing through fabric and with the opposite end slotted to carry ...
needle lace: with bobbin lace, one of the two main kinds of lace. In needle lace the design is drawn on a piece of parchment or thick paper, cloth-backed. An outlining thread stitched onto this serves as a supporting framework, and the ...
needlefish: any of the long, slim, primarily marine fishes of the family Belonidae (order Atheriniformes), found throughout temperate and tropical waters. Needlefish are adept jumpers, carnivorous in habit, and distinguished by long, slender jaws equipped with sharp teeth. They are silvery ...