Encyclopædia Britannica Australia -

Encyclopedias since 1768

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United States Air Force, The ... unniloctium

United States Air Force, The: one of the major components of the United States armed forces, with primary responsibility for air warfare, air defense, and the development of military space research. The Air Force also provides air services in coordination with the other military branches.
United States Amateur Championship: golf tournament conducted annually in the United States from 1895 for male amateur golfers with handicaps of three or less. The field of 150 golfers is determined by 36-hole sectional qualifying rounds. The championship is conducted by the United States ...
United States Army, The: major branch of the United States armed forces charged with the preservation of peace and security and the defense of the nation. The army furnishes most of the ground forces in the U.S. military organization.
United States Children's Bureau: U.S. federal agency established in 1912 to oversee and maintain national standards of child welfare.
United States Coast Guard: military service within the U.S. armed forces that is charged with the enforcement of maritime laws. It consists of approximately 35,000 officers and enlisted personnel, in addition to civilians. It is under the jurisdiction of the Department of Homeland Security; ...
United States Coast Guard Academy: institution of higher learning for the training of commissioned officers for the U.S. Coast Guard, founded by act of Congress in 1876. The academy since 1932 has occupied a 90-acre (36-hectare) site 1.5 miles (2.4 km) north of New London, ...
United States Court of Appeals: any of 13 intermediate appellate courts within the United States federal judicial system, including 12 courts whose jurisdictions are geographically apportioned and the United States Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit, whose jurisdiction is subject-oriented and nationwide.
United States Court of Appeals for the Armed Forces: court created by the Congress of the United States in 1950 as the highest court for military personnel. It hears appeals of cases originally adjudicated in military tribunals, which are presided over by commissioned officers or military judges.
United States Court of Federal Claims: court established by act of Congress of October 1, 1982, to handle cases in which the United States or any of its branches, departments, or agencies is a defendant. The court has jurisdiction over money claims against the United States ...
United States District Court: in the United States, any of the basic trial-level courts of the federal judicial system. The courts, which exercise both criminal and civil jurisdiction, are based in 94 judicial districts throughout the United States. Each state has at least one ...
United States Marine Corps, The: separate military service within the U.S. Department of the Navy, charged with the provision of marine troops for seizure and defense of advanced bases and with conducting operations on land and in the air incident to naval campaigns. It is ...
United States Merchant Marine Academy: institution of higher education that prepares cadets to serve as officers in the United States merchant marine. The U.S. Merchant Marine Corps was established in 1938; the academy, occupying 68 acres (27.5 hectares) at Kings Point on the north shore ...
United States Military Academy: institution of higher education for the training of commissioned officers for the U.S. Army. It was originally founded as a school for the U.S. Corps of Engineers on March 16, 1802, and is one of the oldest service academies in ...
United States National Arboretum: arboretum in Washington, D.C., operated by the U.S. Department of Agriculture, occupying 415 acres (168 hectares) on the west bank of the Anacostia River. Among the more than 7,000 kinds of plants are special collections of camellias, hollies, apple trees, ...
United States Naval Academy: institution of higher education conducted by the U.S. Department of the Navy and located at Annapolis, Md., for the purpose of preparing young men and women to enter the lowest commissioned ranks of the U.S. Navy and Marine Corps.
United States Naval Observatory: in Washington, D.C., an official source, with the U.S. National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST; formerly the National Bureau of Standards), for standard time in the United States. The positional measurement of celestial objects for purposes of timekeeping and ...
United States Navy, The: major branch of the United States armed forces charged with the defense of the nation at sea, the seaborne support of the other U.S. military services, and the maintenance of security on the seas wherever the interests of the United ...
United States Open Championship: one of the world's major golf tournaments, open to both amateur and professional golfers (hence the name). It has been held annually since 1895 under supervision of the United States Golf Association. Since 1898 the competition has been 72 holes ...
United States Open Tennis Championships: international tennis tournament, one of four major annual events in tennis.
United States Steel Corporation: leading U.S. producer of steel and related products, founded in 1901.
United States v. E.C. Knight Company: (1895), legal case in which the U.S. Supreme Court first interpreted the Sherman Antitrust Act of 1890. The case began when the E.C. Knight Company gained control of the American Sugar Refining Company. By 1892 American Sugar enjoyed a virtual ...
United States Women's Amateur Championship: golf tournament conducted annually in the United States for female golfers with handicaps of five or less. A field of 150 players, chosen by sectional qualifying tournaments, plays 36 holes of medal play (fewest strokes), and the 32 lowest scores ...
United States Women's Bureau: U.S. federal agency, established in 1920 and charged with promoting the rights and welfare of working women.
United Steelworkers of America: American union of workers in the steel industry, along with aluminum and other metallurgical workers. The union grew out of an agreement reached in 1936 between the newly formed Committee for Industrial Organization (CIO; later the Congress of Industrial Organizations) ...
United Synagogue of America: central federation of some 835 Conservative Jewish congregations located in the United States and Canada. It was organized in 1913 by Solomon Schechter, a Talmudic scholar and spokesman for the Conservative movement.
United Technologies Corporation: American multi-industry company with significant business concentrations in aerospace products and services, including jet engines and helicopters. Formed in 1934 as United Aircraft Corporation, it adopted its present name in 1975. Headquarters are in Hartford, Connecticut.
Uniti, Compagnia degli: company of actors performing commedia dell'arte (improvised popular comedy) in Italy in the late 16th and early 17th centuries. This period is acknowledged as the golden age of the genre. The performers were noted for their skills, culture, wit, and ...
unities: in drama, the three principles derived by French classicists from Aristotle's Poetics; they require a play to have a single action represented as occurring in a single place and within the course of a day. These principles were called, respectively, ...
Unity of Science movement: movement within Logical Positivism that held that propositions in science should describe objectively existing, directly observable states of affairs or events and that there should be a unitary set of physical premises from which the regularities of all of reality ...
Unity School of Christianity: religious movement founded in Kansas City, Mo., in 1889 by Charles Fillmore (1854-1948), a real-estate agent, and his wife, Myrtle (1845-1931). Mrs. Fillmore believed that spiritual healing had cured her of tuberculosis. As a result, the Fillmores began studying spiritual ...
universal: in epistemology and logic, a quality or property which each individual member of a class of things must possess if the same general word is to apply to all members of that class. Universals are the qualities of individual things, ...
Universal Copyright Convention: (1952), convention adopted at Geneva by an international conference convened under the auspices of UNESCO, which for several years had been consulting with copyright experts from various countries. The convention came into force in 1955.
Universal Decimal Classification: system of library organization. It is distinguished from the Dewey Decimal Classification (q.v.) by expansions using various symbols in addition to Arabic numerals, resulting in exceedingly long notations. This system grew out of the international subject index of the Institut ...
Universal Declaration of Human Rights: foundational document of international human rights law. It has been referred to as humanity's Magna Carta by Eleanor Roosevelt, who chaired the United Nations (UN) Commission on Human Rights that was responsible for the drafting of the document. After minor ...
Universal Negro Improvement Association: primarily in the United States, organization founded by Marcus Garvey (q.v.), dedicated to racial pride, economic self-sufficiency, and the formation of an independent black nation in Africa. Though Garvey had founded the UNIA in Jamaica in 1914, its main influence ...
Universal Pictures Company: U.S. motion-picture studio that was one of the leading producers of film serials in the 1920s and of popular horror films in the '30s. Carl Laemmle, a film exhibitor turned producer, formed the company in 1912. In its early days ...
Universal Postal Union: specialized agency of the United Nations that aims to organize and improve postal service throughout the world and to ensure international collaboration in this area. Among the principles governing its operation as set forth in the Universal Postal Convention and ...
Universal Time: the mean solar time of the Greenwich meridian (0° longitude). Universal Time replaced the designation Greenwich Mean Time in 1928; it is now used to denote the solar time (q.v.) when an accuracy of about one second suffices. In 1955 ...
Universalism: belief in the salvation of all souls. Although Universalism has appeared at various times in Christian history, most notably in the works of Origen of Alexandria in the 3rd century, as an organized movement it had its beginnings in the ...
universe: the whole cosmic system of matter and energy of which the Earth is a part. See Cosmos.
university: institution of higher education, usually comprising a liberal arts and sciences college and graduate and professional schools and having the authority to confer degrees in various fields of study. A university differs from a college ...
university college: in British and formerly British educational systems, an institution of higher learning that does not have the authority to award its own degrees. Students enrolled at a university college ordinarily receive their degrees from a recognized university-in England, usually the ...
university extension: division of an institution of higher learning that conducts educational activities for persons (usually adults) who are generally not full-time students. These activities are sometimes called extramural studies, continuing education, higher adult education, or university adult education. Since its inception, ...
University of Chicago Laboratory Schools: a pioneer school in the progressive education movement in the United States. The original University Elementary School was founded in Chicago in 1896 by American educator John Dewey as a research and demonstration centre for the Department of Pedagogy at ...
university wits: the notable group of pioneer English dramatists who wrote during the last 15 years of the 16th century and who transformed the native interlude and chronicle play with their plays of quality and diversity.
Unkei: Japanese sculptor of the Late Heian (1086-1185) and early Kamakura (1192-1333) periods, who established a style of Buddhist sculpture that had an immense impact on Japanese art for centuries.
Unkoku Togan: Japanese painter best remembered as a suiboku-ga ("water-ink painting") artist. He worked in the manner of the 15th-century artist Sesshu at a time when the orthodox style of the Kano school dominated painting.
unlawful assembly: gathering of persons for the purpose of committing either a crime involving force or a noncriminal act in a manner likely to terrify the public. The extent to which a government penalizes disorderly assemblies often reflects the political value that ...
unnilennium: 109, an artificially produced element belonging to the transuranium group. It is predicted to have chemical properties resembling those of iridium.
unnilhexium: an artificially produced radioactive element in Group VIb of the periodic table. In June 1974, Georgy N. Flerov of the Joint Institute for Nuclear Research at Dubna, Russia, U.S.S.R., announced that his team of investigators had synthesized and identified element ...
unniloctium: 108, an artificially produced element belonging to the transuranium group. It was synthesized and identified in 1984 by West German researchers at the Institute for Heavy Ion Research (Gesellschaft fur Schwerionenforschung [GSI]) in Darmstadt. On the basis of its position ...