Encyclopædia Britannica Australia -

Encyclopedias since 1768

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Osaka-Kobe metropolitan area ... Ossa

Osaka-Kobe metropolitan area: second largest urban and industrial agglomeration in Japan, located on Osaka Bay in west-central Honshu at the eastern end of the Inland Sea. The cities of Osaka and Kobe are at the centre of what is called by geographers the ...
Osasco: city, southeastern Sao Paulo estado ("state"), Brazil. Located at 2,360 feet (720 m) above sea level, Osasco lies along the Tiete River. It is 12 miles (20 km) northwest of Sao Paulo city, the state capital, and is part of ...
Osawatomie: city, Miami county, eastern Kansas, U.S. It lies along the Marais des Cygnes River at the mouth of Pottawatomie Creek; its name combines elements of the words Osage and Pottawatomie. Settled in 1854 with support of the New England Emigrant ...
Osborn, Henry Fairfield: American paleontologist and museum administrator who greatly influenced the art of museum display and the education of paleontologists in the United States and Great Britain.
Osborne, Dorothy, Lady Temple: English gentlewoman best known for the letters she wrote to her future husband, William Temple, before their marriage. The letters are simply written in an easy, conversational style and present an interesting picture of the life of a young English ...
Osborne, John: British playwright and film producer whose Look Back in Anger (performed 1956) ushered in a new movement in British drama and made him known as the first of the "Angry Young Men" (q.v.).
Osborne, Thomas Mott: U.S. penologist whose inauguration of self-help programs for prisoners through Mutual Welfare Leagues functioned as a model for the humanitarian programs of later penologists.
Oscan language: one of the Italic languages closely related to Umbrian and Volscian and more distantly related to Latin and Faliscan. Spoken in southern and central Italy, it was probably the native tongue of the Samnite people of the central mountainous region ...
Oscar I: king of Sweden and Norway from 1844 to 1859, son of Charles XIV John, formerly the French marshal Jean-Baptiste Bernadotte.
Oscar II: king of Sweden from 1872 to 1907 and of Norway from 1872 to 1905.
Osceola: city, southern seat (1832) of Mississippi county (the northern seat is Blytheville), northeastern Arkansas, U.S., on the Mississippi River, about 50 miles (80 km) north of Memphis, Tennessee. It was founded in 1830 by William B. Edrington, who bartered the ...
Osceola: American Indian leader during the Second Seminole War, which began in 1835 when the U.S. government attempted to force the Seminole Indians off their traditional lands in Florida and into the Indian territory west of the Mississippi River.
oscillator: any of various electronic devices that produce alternating electric current, commonly employing tuned circuits and amplifying components such as thermionic vacuum tubes. Oscillators used to generate high-frequency currents for carrier waves in radio broadcasting often are stabilized by coupling the ...
Oscillatoria: genus of blue-green algae found commonly in a variety of freshwater environments, including hot springs. This unbranched filamentous alga, occurring singly or in tangled mats, derives its name from its rhythmic oscillating motion, which is thought to result from a ...
oscillograph: instrument for indicating and recording time-varying electrical quantities, such as current and voltage. The two basic forms of the instrument in common use are the electromagnetic oscillograph and the cathode-ray oscillograph; the latter is also known as a cathode-ray oscilloscope ...
oscine: any bird of the suborder Passeres (order Passeriformes), which includes all songbirds. See songbird.
Osco-Umbrian languages: language group proposed by some scholars to be included in the Italic branch of Indo-European languages. The group includes Oscan, Umbrian, and the minor dialects of central Italy-Marsian, Marrucinian, Paelignian, Sabine, Vestinian, and Volscian. Oscan, the language imposed by the ...
Osei Tutu: founder and first ruler of the Asante (Ashanti) empire (in present-day Ghana) who as chief of the small state of Kumasi came to realize (c. 1680-90) that a fusion of the small separate Asante kingdoms was necessary to withstand their ...
Osh: city, southwestern Kyrgyzstan. The city lies at an elevation of 3,300 feet (1,000 m) on the Akbura River where it emerges from the Alay foothills. First mentioned in writings of the 9th century, it was destroyed by the Mongols in ...
Oshawa: city, regional municipality of Durham county, southeastern Ontario, Canada. It lies on the north shore of Lake Ontario, just northeast of Toronto. Founded as Skea's Corners on the military Kingston Road in 1795, it was renamed Oshawa-an Indian word referring ...
Osheroff, Douglas D.: American physicist who, along with David Lee and Robert Richardson, was the corecipient of the 1996 Nobel Prize for Physics for their discovery of superfluidity in the isotope helium-3.
Oshkosh: city, seat (1848) of Winnebago county, east-central Wisconsin, U.S. It lies on the western shore of Lake Winnebago where the Fox River enters, some 80 miles (130 km) northwest of Milwaukee. Potawatomi, Menominee, Ho-Chunk Nation (Winnebago), Fox, and Ojibwa Indians ...
Oshogbo: town and capital, Osun state, southwestern Nigeria. It lies along the Oshun River and on the railroad from Lagos, 182 miles (293 km) to the southwest, and at the intersection of roads from Ilesha, Ede, Ogbomosho, and Ikirun. The town ...
Osiander, Andreas: German theologian who helped introduce the Protestant Reformation to Nurnberg.
Osijek: industrial town and agricultural centre in Croatia, on the Drava River.
Osinniki: city, Kemerovo oblast (province), central Russia. It is situated at the confluence of the Kandalep and Kondoma rivers. The city developed in the 1930s as a mining centre in the Kuznetsk Coal Basin; it supplies coal to the Kuznetsk metallurgical ...
Osiris: one of the most important gods of ancient Egypt. The origin of Osiris is obscure; he was a local god of Busiris, in Lower Egypt, and may have been a personification of chthonic (underworld) fertility, or possibly a deified hero. ...
Oskaloosa: city, seat (1844) of Mahaska county, southeastern Iowa, U.S. It lies between the Des Moines and South Skunk rivers, about 60 miles (100 km) southeast of Des Moines. The region was inhabited by Sauk and Fox peoples when a fort ...
Osler, Sir William, Baronet: Canadian physician and professor of medicine who practiced and taught in Canada, the United States, and Great Britain and whose book The Principles and Practice of Medicine (1892) was a leading textbook. Osler played a key role in transforming the ...
Osler-Rendu-Weber disease: a hereditary disorder causing bleeding from local capillary lesions. The disorder is classed as a type of purpura. In the disease, capillaries (minute blood vessels) in the fingertips and around the oral and nasal cavities are enlarged and have unusually ...
Oslo: capital and largest city of Norway, forming also a separate fylke (county). It lies at the head of Oslo Fjord in the southeastern part of the country. The original site of Oslo was east of the Aker River. The city ...
Oslo Fjord: fjord on the Skagerrak (strait) penetrating the southern coast of Norway for 60 miles (100 km) from about Fredrikstad to Oslo. With an area of 766 square miles (1,984 square km), the fjord occupies a glacier-formed depression, or graben, that ...
Osman Ali: nizam (ruler) of Hyderabad in the period 1911-48 and its constitutional president until 1956. Once one of the richest men in the world, he ruled over a state the size of Italy.
Osman Digna: a leader of the Mahdist revolt that broke out in the Sudan in 1881.
Osman I: ruler of a Turkmen principality in northwestern Anatolia who is regarded as the founder of the Ottoman Turkish state. Both the name of the dynasty and the empire that the dynasty established are derived from the Arabic form ('Uthman) of ...
Osman II: Ottoman sultan who came to the throne as an active and intelligent boy of 14 and who during his short rule (1618-22) understood the need for reform within the empire.
Osman Nuri Pasa: Ottoman pasa and musir (field marshal) who became a national hero for his determined resistance at Plevna (modern Pleven, Bulg.) during the Russo-Turkish War of 1877-78.
Osmanabad: town, administrative headquarters of Osmanabad district, Maharashtra state, western India, north of Sholapur. Part of the ancient Yadava Hindu kingdom, it fell to Bahmani and Bijapur kingdoms in the 14th and 16th centuries and was later incorporated into the territories ...
Osmena, Sergio: Filipino statesman, founder of the Nationalist Party (Partido Nacionalista) and president of the Philippines from 1944 to 1946.
osmium: (Os), chemical element, one of the platinum metals of Group VIII of the periodic table and the densest naturally occurring element. A gray-white metal, osmium is very hard, brittle, and difficult to work, even at high temperatures. Of the platinum ...
osmoregulation: in biology, maintenance by an organism of an internal balance between water and dissolved materials regardless of environmental conditions. In many marine organisms osmosis (the passage of solvent through a semipermeable membrane) occurs without any need for regulatory mechanisms because ...
osmosis: the spontaneous passage or diffusion of water or other solvents through a semipermeable membrane (one that blocks the passage of dissolved substances-i.e., solutes). The process, important in biology, was first thoroughly studied in 1877 by a German plant physiologist, Wilhelm ...
Osmund Of Salisbury, Saint: Norman priest, who was chancellor of England (c. 1072-78) and bishop of Salisbury (1078-99).
Osmunda: fern genus of the family Osmundaceae, with divided fronds and often growing to a height of 1.5 metres (5 feet). The matted fibrous roots of these abundant ferns are called osmunda fibre, osmundine, or orchid peat; they are broken up ...
Osmundaceae: the royal fern family, only family of the fern order Osmundales (suborder Osmundineae in some classification systems). A primitive group consisting of three present-day genera of large ferns (Osmunda, Todea, and Leptopteris), the family contains about 20 species; 5 to ...
Osnabruck: city, Lower Saxony Land (state), northwestern Germany. It lies on the canalized Hase River between the Teutoburg Forest (Teutoburger Wald) and the Wiehen Mountains (Wiehengebirge).
Osorno: capital of Osorno province, Los Lagos region, southern Chile, lying at the junction of the Damas and Rahue rivers, 40 mi (64 km) inland from the Pacific coast. It was founded in 1553 under the name Santa Marina de Gaete. ...
osprey: large, long-winged hawk, about 65 cm (26 inches) long, that lives along seacoasts and larger interior waterways, where it catches fish. It is brown above and white below, with some white on the head.
Osroene: ancient kingdom in northwestern Mesopotamia, located between the Euphrates and Tigris rivers and lying across the modern frontier of Turkey and Syria. Its capital was Edessa (modern Urfa, Tur.). The name of the kingdom appears to have been ultimately derived ...
Oss: gemeente (commune), Noord-Brabant provincie, south-central Netherlands, east-northeast of 's Hertogenbosch and about 3 miles (5 km) south of the Maas (Meuse) River. A food-processing town noted for margarine and meat products, it also manufactures pharmaceuticals (especially insulin and vitamins), electrical ...
Ossa: mountain massif, nomos (department) of Larissa, eastern Thessaly, Greece. It lies on the Gulf of Thermai and is separated on the north from the Olympus massif by the Vale of Tempe (Tembi). Rising from a broad, steep-sided plateau to a ...