rounded mineral concretion that is distinct from, and may be separated from, the formation in which it occurs. Nodules commonly are elongate with a knobby irregular surface; they usually are oriented parallel to the bedding.
British statesman and advocate of international disarmament who received the Nobel Prize for Peace in 1959. Fluent in seven languages, he campaigned widely for 40 years for peace through multilateral disarmament.
city, seat (1899) of Santa Cruz county, southern Arizona, U.S. A port of entry on the Mexican border, it adjoins Heroica Nogales in Sonora, Mexico. Divided by International Avenue, the two communities are together known as Ambos Nogales (Spanish: "Both ...
magistrate under King Philip IV the Fair of France, who became one of the most vigorous of the legistes, or expositors, of the royal power, especially in ecclesiastical affairs; in the conflict between Philip and Pope Boniface VIII, he played ...
city, Fukuoka ken (prefecture), Kyushu, Japan, at the confluence of the Onga River and the Hikosan River. Formed as a castle town in 1626, it declined about 100 years later, barely maintaining its importance as a trade and distribution centre ...
city, Moscow oblast (province), western Russia, on the Klyazma River east of Moscow. Originally Yamskaya village, it became the town of Bogorodsk in 1781 and was renamed Noginsk in 1930. It is one of the largest Russian textile centres; cotton ...
megye (county), Hungary, occupying an upland area of 982 square miles (2,544 square km) dominated by the Cserhat Hills, a continuation of the Transdanubian Mountains. A few monadnocks (hills of resistant rock surmounting a peneplain) and isolated volcanic intrusions stand ...
Japanese bacteriologist who first discovered Treponema pallidum, the causative agent of syphilis, in the brains of persons suffering from paresis. He also proved that both Oroya fever and verruga peruana could be produced by Bartonella bacilliformis; they are now known ...
in Sami religion, a shaman who mediated between the people that he served and the supernatural beings and forces that he either confronted or made use of for the benefit of his clients.
in acoustics, any undesired sound, either one that is intrinsically objectionable or one that interferes with other sounds that are being listened to. In electronics and information theory, noise refers to those random, unpredictable, and undesirable signals, or changes in ...
town and episcopal see, Napoli provincia, Campania regione, southern Italy. It lies in the fertile and highly cultivated Campanian plain, just east-northeast of Naples. It originated as a city of the Aurunci, Oscans, Etruscans, and Samnites (ancient Italic peoples) and ...
American painter of the Abstract Expressionist school. He was one of the first to use the technique of staining the canvas with thinned paints and of deploying his colours in concentric rings and parallels, shaped and proportioned in relation to ...
river rising in the Blue Ridge Mountains in western North Carolina, U.S., and flowing northwest into Tennessee, then west to join the French Broad River after a course of 150 miles (241 km). A dam on the Nolichucky just south ...
in Anglo-American law, request by a prosecutor in a criminal action that the prosecution of the case cease, either on some or all of the counts or with respect to some or all of the defendants. It usually is used ...
Japanese novelist who wrote Shinku chitai (1952; Zone of Emptiness), which is considered to be one of the finest war novels produced after World War II.
way of life of peoples who do not live continually in the same place but move cyclically or periodically. It is distinguished from migration, which is noncyclic and involves a total change of habitat. Nomadism does not imply unrestricted and ...
city, western Alaska, U.S. A port on the Bering Sea's Norton Sound, the city is situated on the southern shore of Seward Peninsula. It is some 540 miles (870 km) northwest of Anchorage and 160 miles (260 km) east of ...
administrative division of ancient Egypt. The system of dividing the country into nomes was definitely in force by the time of the Old Kingdom (c. 2575-c. 2130 BC) and persisted with modifications until the Muslim conquest (AD 640). In late ...
in biological classification, system of naming organisms. The species to which the organism belongs is indicated by two words, the genus and species names, which are Latinized words derived from various sources. This system, which is called the Linnaean system ...
in philosophy, position taken in the dispute over universals-words that can be applied to individual things having something in common-that flourished especially in late medieval times. Nominalism denied the real being of universals on the ground that the use of ...
professional baseball player. In 1995 Nomo became the first Japanese citizen to join an American major league team after having played professionally in the Japanese major leagues. (The first player born in Japan to appear on a major league team ...
Byzantine collection of ecclesiastical legislation (canons) and civil laws (Greek nomoi) related to the Christian church. The nomocanon in its various redactions served as legal text in the Eastern church until the 18th century. In form and content it reflected ...
calculating chart with scales that contain values of three or more mathematical variables, widely used in engineering, industry, and the natural and physical sciences.
in law, the concept of law in ancient Greek philosophy. The problems of political authority and the rights and obligations of citizens were a major concern in the thought of the leading Greek Sophists of the late 5th and early ...
in music, class of traditional melodies used by ancient Greek epic singers, often with lyre accompaniment. The nomos was an important art form for professional soloists, especially in musical competitions. Nomoi were in three, five, or seven movements and originally ...
(Latin: "it is not expedient"), a late 19th- and early 20th-century policy of the Roman Catholic church that prohibited its Italian members from participating in politics. The non expedit dramatically emphasized that Pope Pius IX and his successors refused to ...
literally any geometry that is not the same as Euclidean geometry. Although the term is frequently used to refer only to hyperbolic geometry, common usage includes those few geometries (hyperbolic and spherical) that differ from but are very close to ...
agreement of July 1, 1968, signed by the United Kingdom, the United States, the Soviet Union, and 59 other states, under which the 3 major signatories agreed not to assist states not possessing nuclear explosives in obtaining or producing them. ...
a word coined and used apparently to suit one particular occasion. Nonce words are sometimes used independently by different writers and speakers, but they are not adopted into general use. James Joyce employed many such words in Finnegans Wake (1939). ...
any English Protestant who does not conform to the doctrines or practices of the established Church of England. The word Nonconformist was first used in the penal acts following the Restoration of the monarchy (1660) and the Act of Uniformity ...
(September 1920-February 1922), unsuccessful attempt, organized by Mohandas Gandhi, to induce the British government of India to grant self-government, or swaraj, to India. It arose from the outcry over the massacre at Amritsar in April 1919, when the British killed ...
an approach to the treatment of mental disorders that aims primarily toward fostering personality growth by helping individuals gain insight into and acceptance of their feelings, values, and behaviour. The function of the therapist is to extend consistent, warm, "unconditional ...
Spanish painter who was instrumental in the Catalan artistic revival of the early 20th century; he is considered a pioneer of modern painting in Spain.
story of actual people and actual events told with the dramatic techniques of a novel. The American writer Truman Capote claimed to have invented this genre with his book In Cold Blood (1965). A true story of the brutal murder ...
town, northeastern Thailand. Nong Khai is a Mekong River port and the main Thai port of entry for traffic to and from nearby Vientiane, the capital of Laos. In 1994 the Thai-Lao Friendship Bridge, the first bridge across the lower ...
(1593), in Southeast Asian history, military encounter between the Tai (Thai) kingdom of Ayutthaya and the Toungoo dynasty of Myanmar (Burma) which put an end to the aggression that had been waged intermittently by Myanmar.
voluntary group of individuals or organizations, usually not affiliated with any government, that is formed to provide services or to advocate a public policy. Although some NGOs are for-profit corporations, the vast majority are nonprofit organizations. Some NGOs, particularly those ...
(1765-75), in U.S. colonial history, attempts to force British recognition of political rights through application of economic pressure. In reaction to the Stamp Act (1765) and the Townshend Acts (1767), colonial nonimportation associations were organized by Sons of Liberty and ...
in British history, any of the beneficed clergy of the Church of England and the Episcopal Church in Scotland who refused to take the oaths of allegiance to William III and Mary II after the deposition of James II in ...
a people or culture without a written language. The term nonliterate is distinguished from "illiterate," which indicates a member of a literate society who has not learned to read or write. Although the term is not entirely satisfactory because it ...
substance that does not exhibit such characteristic properties of metals as hardness, mechanical adaptability, or the ability to conduct electricity. This classification is generally applied to the chemical elements carbon, nitrogen, phosphorus, oxygen, sulfur, selenium, fluorine, chlorine, bromine, iodine, and ...
