Encyclopædia Britannica Australia -

Encyclopedias since 1768

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unnilpentium ... uracil

unnilpentium: an artificially produced radioactive transuranium element in Group Vb of the periodic table. The discovery of unnilpentium, like that of unnilquadium (element 104), has been a matter of dispute between Soviet and American scientists. The Soviets may have synthesized a ...
unnilquadium: an artificially produced radioactive transuranium element in Group IVb of the periodic table. Soviet scientists at the Joint Institute for Nuclear Research at Dubna, Russia, U.S.S.R., announced in 1964 the discovery of element 104, which they named kurchatovium, symbol Ku ...
unnilseptium: 107, a synthetic element in Group VIIb of the periodic table. It is thought to be chemically similar to the rare metal rhenium.
Uno Sosuke: politician who served as prime minister of Japan for 68 days (June 2-Aug. 9, 1989).
Unocal Corporation: American petrochemical corporation founded in 1890 with the union of three "wildcatter" companies-the Hardison & Stewart Oil Company, the Sespe Oil Company, and the Torrey Canyon Oil Company. Originally centred in Santa Paula, Calif., it became headquartered in Los Angeles ...
Unruh, Fritz von: dramatist, poet, and novelist, one of the most poetically gifted of the younger German Expressionist writers.
Unser, Bobby; and Unser, Al: brothers, American automobile-racing drivers from a family of drivers, who each won the Indianapolis 500 race (Bobby: 1968, 1975, and 1981; Al: 1970, 1971, 1978, and 1987).
Unter den Linden: avenue in Berlin, Germany, running eastward from the Brandenburg Gate for nearly a mile. The street is named for the linden (lime) trees that formerly grew along the central promenade and now line the sidewalks.
Untermeyer, Louis: American poet, essayist, and editor who is best known for his numerous poetry anthologies.
Unterwalden: former canton, central Switzerland; it occupied the basins of the Sarner Aa (river) and the Engelberger Aa. The former canton is divided (east and west) into two sovereign half cantons-Nidwalden and Obwalden-based on the medieval distinction between the upper and ...
untouchable: in traditional Indian society, any member of a wide range of low-caste Hindu groups and any person outside the caste system. The use of the term and the social disabilities associated with it were declared illegal in the constitutions adopted ...
Unzen, Mount: volcano on central Shimabara Peninsula, western Kyushu, Japan. Mount Unzen is actually a group of composite volcanoes, the highest of which is Mount Fugen, at 4,462 feet (1,360 m). Mount Unzen underwent a major eruption in 1792 that killed as ...
upadana: (Sanskrit and Pali), in the Buddhist chain of dependent origination, the grasping that leads to becoming. See pratitya-samutpada.
upadhi: in Indian philosophy, the concept of adventitious limiting conditions. In logic, upadhi operates as follows: a syllogism requires a ground (hetu) to prove the proposition-e.g., that there is fire on the mountain to prove ...
upamana: the fourth of the five means of knowledge (pramana) in Indian philosophy by which man can have valid cognitions of the world. Upamana describes knowledge imparted by means of analogy. Thus, when the meaning ...
upanayana: Hindu ritual of initiation, restricted to the three upper varnas, or social classes; it marks the male child's entrance upon the life of a student (brahmacarin) and his acceptance as a full member of ...
Upanishad: ("session"), any of the speculative texts that contain elaborations in prose and verse of the Vedas, the most ancient Hindu sacred literature.
upasaka: lay devotee of the Gautama Buddha. The term correctly refers to any Buddhist who is not a member of a monastic order, but its modern usage in Southeast Asia more often connotes the particularly pious person who visits the local ...
upasampada: Buddhist rite of higher ordination, by which a novice becomes a monk, or bhikhu (Pali: bhikkhu; Sanskrit: bhikshu). Ordination is not necessarily permanent and, in some countries, may be repeated in a monk's lifetime.
UPC: a standard machine-readable bar code used to identify products purchased in grocery and other retail stores.
Updike, Daniel Berkeley: American printer and scholar, founder in 1893 of the distinguished Merrymount Press in Boston.
Updike, John: American writer of novels, short stories, and poetry, known for his careful craftsmanship and realistic but subtle depiction of "American, Protestant, small-town, middle-class" life.
updraft and downdraft: in meteorology, upward-moving and downward-moving air currents, respectively, that are due to several causes. Local daytime heating of the ground causes surface air to become much warmer than the air above, and, because warmer air is less dense, it rises ...
upeksa: in Buddhism, the perfect virtue of equanimity. It is one of the four practices known as brahmavihara (q.v.).
Upemba National Park: park in southeastern Congo (Kinshasa). It was created in 1939 and has an area of 4,529 square miles (11,730 square km). Its northern and western borders touch the Lualaba River and the surrounding lakes and marshlands of the Kamolondo plains. ...
Upernavik: town, western Greenland. It is situated on a small island in Baffin Bay, about 100 miles (160 km) north of Nordost Bay. A whaling and sealing base (founded 1771), it has a weather and radio station and a hospital. Graphite ...
Upfield, Arthur William: English-born Australian popular novelist who wrote more than 30 novels featuring Detective Inspector Napoleon (Boney) Bonaparte, a half-Aboriginal Australian detective.
upholstery: materials used in the craft of covering, padding, and stuffing seating and bedding. The earliest upholsterers, from early Egyptian times to the beginning of the Renaissance, nailed animal skins or dressed leather across a rigid framework. They slowly developed the ...
Upjohn, Richard: British-American architect who was the most active exponent in his time of the Gothic Revival style in ecclesiastical architecture.
uplift: in geology, vertical elevation of the Earth's surface in response to natural causes. Broad, relatively slow and gentle uplift is termed warping, or epeirogeny, in contrast to the more concentrated and severe orogeny, the uplift associated with earthquakes and mountain ...
Upolu: most populous island of Samoa, in the South Pacific Ocean. It lies across the Apolima Strait from the island of Savai'i to the west. Upolu is about 46 miles (74 km) long and 16 miles (26 km) across at its ...
uposatha: fortnightly meetings of the Buddhist monastic assembly, at the times of the full moon and the new moon, to reaffirm the rules of discipline. The uposatha observance, now confined almost entirely to the Theravada ("Way of the Elders") tradition of ...
Uppdal, Kristofer Oliver: working-class Norwegian novelist whose major work is the 10-volume Dansen gjenom skuggeheimen (1911-24; "The Dance Through the World of Shadows"), which deals with the development of the Norwegian industrial working class from its peasant origin.
Upper Burma: geographic and historical division of Burma (Myanmar), referring to the central and northern portion of the country. The division between Upper and Lower Burma was accentuated during 1852-85, when Lower Burma (comprising the extreme southern fringes of the country) became ...
Upper Canada: from 1791 to 1841, the region in Canada now known as Ontario. With the Act of Union of 1841, it became known as Canada West (q.v.). See also Ontario.
Upper Egypt: geographic and cultural division of Egypt, generally consisting of the Nile River valley south of the delta and the 30th parallel N. It thus consists of the entire Nile River valley from Cairo south to Lake Nasser (formed by the ...
Upper Hutt: city, Wellington local government region, southern North Island, New Zealand. It lies in the Hutt River valley near Wellington. Founded in 1848, it is part of the larger Hutt area named for Sir William Hutt, an original shareholder in the ...
Upper Yosemite Fall: cataract on the west slope of the Sierra Nevada in Yosemite National Park, east-central California, U.S. It lies 150 miles (240 km) east of San Francisco. With a drop of 1,430 feet (436 m), it is one of the highest ...
Uppingham: town ("parish") in the unitary authority and historic county of Rutland, England, noted for its 16th-century houses and its public (independent secondary) school. It came into being as a market town and is located in what is still a predominantly ...
Uppland: landskap (province), east-central Sweden. It is bounded by the Gulf of Bothnia and the Baltic Sea on the east and by the traditional landskaper (provinces) of Sodermanland, Vastmanland, and Gastrikland on the south, west, and north, respectively. It is composed ...
Uppsala: city and capital of the lan (county) of Uppsala, east-central Sweden. It lies 40 miles (64 km) north-northwest of Stockholm. Originally known as Ostra Aros, it was founded as a trading post at the head of navigation on the Fyris ...
Uppsala: lan (county) in east-central Sweden. It lies between Malaren (lake) on the south and the Gulf of Bothnia on the north. It constitutes most of the western part of the landskap (province) of Uppland. The lan's low, level surface is ...
Uppsala University: state-sponsored coeducational university at Uppsala, the oldest institution of higher learning in Sweden. It was founded in 1477 but closed in 1510 owing to the religious disputes of the time. It was reopened in 1595 with faculties of theology and ...
upright piano: musical instrument in which the soundboard and plane of the strings run vertically, perpendicular to the keyboard, thus taking up less floor space than the normal grand piano. Upright pianos are made in various heights; the shortest are called spinets ...
Upton, Francis Robbins: American mathematician and physicist who, as assistant to Thomas Edison, contributed to the development of the American electric industry.
Uqaylid Dynasty: Muslim Arab dynasty whose various branches ruled Mosul (c. 992-1096) and Takrit (1036-c. 1057), in what is now Iraq.
uqqal: in the Druze religion, an elite of initiates who alone know Druze doctrine (hikmah, literally "wisdom"), participate fully in the Druze religious services, and have access to Druze scripture. The religious system of the Druzes is kept secret from the ...
Ur: important city of ancient southern Mesopotamia (Sumer), situated about 140 miles (225 km) southeast of the site of Babylon and about 10 miles (16 km) west of the present bed of the Euphrates River. In antiquity the river ran much ...
Ura-Tyube: city, Khudzhand oblast (province), Tajikistan, in the northern foothills of the Turkistan Range. One of the most ancient cities of the republic, it may date from the 6th century AD, but it has borne its present name only since the ...
Urabi Pasha: Egyptian nationalist who led a social-political movement that expressed the discontent of the Egyptian educated classes, army officials, and peasantry with foreign control.
uracil: a colourless, crystalline organic compound of the pyrimidine family that occurs as a component of ribonucleic acid (RNA), a molecule involved in the transmission of hereditary characteristics. The RNA molecule consists of a sequence of nucleotides, each containing a five-carbon ...