any of the cartilaginous fishes of the order Batoidei, related to sharks and placed with them in the class Chondrichthyes (or Selachii). The order includes 300 to 350 species.
any spider of the family Theridiosomatidae (order Araneida), known for their conelike webs. Most ray spiders are less than 3 mm (0.125 inch) in body length and are usually found near streams or in damp areas. The strands of the ...
Belgian novelist, short-story writer, and journalist who is known for his crime fiction and narratives of horror and the fantastic in both French and Flemish (Dutch).
leading 17th-century English naturalist and botanist who contributed significantly to progress in taxonomy. His enduring legacy to botany was the establishment of species as the ultimate unit of taxonomy.
American motion-picture writer and director who showed great promise with such early low-budget films as They Live by Night (1948-49), Knock on Any Door (1949), and Johnny Guitar (1954).
Bengali motion-picture director, writer, and illustrator who brought the Indian cinema to world recognition with Pather Panchali (1955; The Song of the Road) and its two sequels, known as the Apu Trilogy. As a director Ray was noted for his ...
American political leader, who served as speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives for nearly 17 years. In 1912 he was elected to the U.S. House of Representatives and served there continuously for 48 years and 8 months, which, at ...
dispersion of electromagnetic radiation by particles that have a radius less than approximately 110 the wavelength of the radiation. The process has been named in honour of Lord Rayleigh, who in 1871 published a paper describing this phenomenon.
English physical scientist who made fundamental discoveries in the fields of acoustics and optics that are basic to the theory of wave propagation in fluids. He received the Nobel Prize for Physics in 1904 for his successful isolation of argon, ...
count of Toulouse (1093-1105) and marquis of Provence (1066-1105), the first-and one of the most effective-of the western European rulers who joined the First Crusade. He is reckoned as Raymond I of Tripoli, a county in the Latin East which ...
Catalan Dominican friar who compiled the Decretals of Gregory IX, a body of medieval legislation that remained part of church law until the Code of Canon Law was promulgated in 1917.
town, eastern New South Wales, Australia, on the east bank of the Hunter River (near its junction with the Williams), just north of Newcastle. Founded in the 1830s, the town was named after a member of an exploring expedition in ...
count of Toulouse from 1194, who at first tolerated the heretical Cathari in Languedoc, then (1209) joined the Albigensian Crusade against them and afterward fought the crusaders to save his own dominions.
count of Toulouse from 1222, who succeeded his father, Raymond VI, not only in the countship but also in having to face problems raised by the Albigensian Crusade against the heretical Cathari. Under his rule, the de facto independence of ...
U.S. journalist and politician who, as first editor and chief proprietor of The New York Times (from 1851), did much to elevate the style and tone of contemporary newspapers and who was prominent in forming the Republican Party.
disease, occurring primarily in young women, in which spasms in the arteries to the fingers cause the fingertips of both hands to become first pale and then cyanotic-bluish-upon exposure to cold or in response to emotion. Often the fingertips become ...
any man-made textile fibre produced from the plant substance cellulose. Developed in an attempt to produce silk chemically, the fibre was originally known by such terms as artificial silk and wood silk, but in 1924 it was given the coined ...
town, southern Thailand. It lies southeast of Bangkok, on the northeastern coast of the Gulf of Thailand. Rayong is a fishing port and produces tapioca from locally grown cassava. Cassava, fruits, and rubber are the major products of the adjacent ...
Russian art movement founded by Mikhail F. Larionov, representing one of the first steps toward the development of abstract art in Russia. Larionov exhibited one of the first Rayonist works, Glass, in 1912 and wrote the movement's ...
major American industrial corporation with core manufacturing concentrations in corporate and special-mission aircraft, defense systems, and defense and commercial electronics. It is the third largest defense contractor in the United States (after Lockheed Martin and Boeing). Established in 1922, the ...
formerly one of the great cities of Iran. The remains of the ancient city lie on the eastern outskirts of the modern city of Shahr-e-Rey, which itself is located just a few miles southeast of Tehran.
in Islamic ceramics, style of pottery found at Rayy, near Tehran, and dating from the 12th century. Particularly characteristic is a fine minai (a kind of enamel) painting. Fine pottery with bold carving, occasional piercing, and translucent ...
town, northeastern Bulgaria, on the Beli Lom River. It is the largest producer of antibiotics in Bulgaria and also manufactures concrete, porcelain, and glass and is an agricultural centre for grain, vegetables, and timber. Between the 15th and the 19th ...
keen-edged cutting implement for shaving or cutting hair. Prehistoric cave drawings show that clam shells, shark's teeth, and sharpened flints were used as shaving implements, and flints are still in use by certain primitive tribes. Solid gold and copper razors ...
any of the species of marine bivalve mollusks of the family Solenidae. In England the species of the genera Ensis and Solen are called razor shells. The Solenidae are common in intertidal sands and muds, particularly of temperate seas. These ...
(Alca torda), black and white seabird of the North Atlantic, bearing a sharp, heavy, compressed beak. About 40 cm (16 inches) long, it is the largest living member of the auk family, Alcidae (order Charadriiformes), and the nearest kin to ...
major American electronics and broadcasting conglomerate that is a unit of General Electric Company. Among its subsidiaries is the National Broadcasting Company (NBC). Headquarters are in New York City.
powerful explosive, discovered by Georg Friedrich Henning of Germany and patented in 1898 but not used until World War II, when most of the warring powers introduced it. Relatively safe and inexpensive to manufacture, RDX was produced on a large ...
in ancient Egyptian religion, god of the sun and creator god. He was believed to travel across the sky in his solar bark and, during the night, to make his passage in another bark through the underworld, where, in order ...
island in the Bay of Biscay, Charente-Maritime departement, off the west coast of France, opposite La Pallice and La Rochelle. It was for long separated from the mainland by the shallow water of Pertuis Breton, 2 miles (3.2 km) wide ...
American company that at one time operated the nation's largest ground and air express services, transporting parcels, money, and goods, with pickup and delivery.
in electricity, measure of the opposition that a circuit or a part of a circuit presents to electric current insofar as the current is varying or alternating. Steady electric currents flowing along conductors in one direction undergo opposition called electrical ...
the speed, or velocity, at which a chemical reaction proceeds, expressed in terms of the amount of a product formed per unit time or the amount of a reactant used per unit time. Thus, for the reaction of two compounds ...
the amount of heat that must be added or removed during a chemical reaction in order to keep all of the substances present at the same temperature. If the pressure in the vessel containing the reacting system is kept at ...
any of a class of highly coloured organic substances, primarily used for tinting textiles, that attach themselves to their substrates by a chemical reaction that forms a covalent bond between the molecule of dye and that of the fibre. The ...
American journalist, humorist, novelist, and lecturer. Read specialized in the homespun humour of life in Kentucky, Tennessee, and Arkansas; Southern colonels, blacks, and drunken printers are frequently found in his writing.
poet and critic who was the chief British advocate and interpreter of modern art movements from the 1930s to the '60s. His critical scrutiny embraced society, art, and literature from the point of view of a philosophic anarchist.
English author whose novels expose, with passionate indignation, the social injustices of his times. His greatest work, however, The Cloister and the Hearth (1861), a brilliant historical romance, relates the adventures of the father of Erasmus.
U.S.-based monthly magazine, having probably the largest circulation of any periodical in the world. It was first published in 1922 as a digest of condensed articles of topical interest and entertainment value taken from other periodicals. Founded on a low ...
