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anthropological linguistics
study of the relationship between language and culture; it usually refers to work on languages that have no written records. In the United States a close relationship between anthropology and linguistics developed as a result of research by anthropologists into the American Indian cultures and languages. Early students in this field discovered what they felt ...
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Anthropology (work by Kroeber)
...of California at Berkeley. In the course of his professional life, Kroeber produced a steady stream of more than 500 articles, monographs, and books. His most influential work is considered to be Anthropology (1923; rev. ed. 1948), one of the first general teaching texts on the subject....
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anthropology
“the science of humanity,” which studies human beings in aspects ranging from the biology and evolutionary history of Homo sapiens to the features of society and culture that decisively distinguish humans from other animal species. Because of the diverse subject matter it encompasses, anthropology has become, especially since the middle of the 20th century, a collectio...
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Anthropology, an Introduction to the Study of Man and Civilization (work by Tylor)
His last book, Anthropology, an Introduction to the Study of Man and Civilization (1881), is an excellent summary of what was, late in the 19th century, known and thought in that field. Like all Tylor’s work, it conveys a vast quantity of information in a lucid and energetic style....
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anthropology of religion
The anthropology of religion is the comparative study of religions in their cultural, social, historical, and material contexts....
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anthropometry (physical anthropology)
the systematic collection and correlation of measurements of the human body. Now one of the principal techniques of physical anthropology, the discipline originated in the 19th century, when early studies of human biological and cultural evolution stimulated an interest in the systematic description of populations both living and extinct. In the latter part of the 19th century,...
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anthropomorphic mask (religion)
The morphological elements of the mask are with few exceptions derived from natural forms. Masks with human features are classified as anthropomorphic and those with animal characteristics as theriomorphic. In some instances, the mask form is a replication of natural features or closely follows the lineaments of reality, and in other instances it is an abstraction. Masks usually represent......
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anthropomorphic polytheism (religion)
...emotions. At a higher stage of nature religions is therianthropic polytheism, in which the deities are normally of mixed animal and human composition. The highest stage of nature religion is anthropomorphic polytheism, in which the deities appear in human form but have superhuman powers. These religions have some ethical elements, but their mythology portrays the deities as indulging in......
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anthropomorphism (religion)
the interpretation of nonhuman things or events in terms of human characteristics, as when one senses malice in a computer or hears human voices in the wind. Derived from the Greek anthropos (“human”) and morphe (“form”), the term was first used to refer to the attribution of human physical or m...
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anthroponomastics (linguistics)
...names, are discerned on the one hand, and names of places, or place-names, on the other. In the most precise terminology, a set of personal names is called anthroponymy and their study is called anthroponomastics. A set of place-names is called toponymy, and their study is called toponomastics. In a looser usage, however, the term onomastics is used for personal names and their study, and......
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anthroponymy (linguistics)
...names of persons, or personal names, are discerned on the one hand, and names of places, or place-names, on the other. In the most precise terminology, a set of personal names is called anthroponymy and their study is called anthroponomastics. A set of place-names is called toponymy, and their study is called toponomastics. In a looser usage, however, the term onomastics is used for......
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anthropophagy (human behaviour)
eating of human flesh by humans. The term is derived from the Spanish name (Caríbales, or Caníbales) for the Carib, a West Indies tribe well known for their practice of cannibalism. A widespread custom going back into early human history, cannibalism has been found among peoples on most continents....
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Anthroposophical Society (philosophical group)
...perception independent of the senses, he called the result of his research “anthroposophy,” centring on “knowledge produced by the higher self in man.” In 1912 he founded the Anthroposophical Society....
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anthroposophy (philosophy)
philosophy based on the premise that the human intellect has the ability to contact spiritual worlds. It was formulated by Rudolf Steiner, an Austrian philosopher, scientist, and artist, who postulated the existence of a spiritual world comprehensible to pure thought but fully accessible only to the faculties of knowledge latent in all humans. He regarded human beings as having...
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Anthrosol (FAO soil group)
one of the 30 soil groups in the classification system of the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO). Anthrosols are defined as any soils that have been modified profoundly by human activities, including burial, partial removal, cutting and filling, waste disposal, manuring, and irrigated agriculture. These soils vary widely in their biological, chemical, and physical propertie...
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Anthurium (plant genus)
genus of tropical American herbaceous plants, comprising about 825 species in the arum family (Araceae), many of which are popular foliage plants. A few species are widely grown for the florist trade for their showy, long-lasting blossoms, which consist of colourful leathery, shiny spathes surrounding or subtending a central rodlike spadix that bears numerous tiny bisexual flowers....
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Anthurium andraeanum (plant)
Flamingo lily (A. andraeanum), with stems up to 60 cm (2 feet) tall, has a salmon-red, heart-shaped spathe about 5–8 cm (2–3 inches) long; its hybrids produce white, pink, salmon, red, and black-red spathes. Flamingo flower, or pigtail plant (A. scherzeranum), is a shorter plant with a scarlet spathe and a loosely coiled orange-red spadix. Because anthuriums require......
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Anthurium scherzeranum (plant)
...with stems up to 60 cm (2 feet) tall, has a salmon-red, heart-shaped spathe about 5–8 cm (2–3 inches) long; its hybrids produce white, pink, salmon, red, and black-red spathes. Flamingo flower, or pigtail plant (A. scherzeranum), is a shorter plant with a scarlet spathe and a loosely coiled orange-red spadix. Because anthuriums require warm temperatures and high......
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Anthus pratensis (bird)
...as brood parasites, laying their eggs in the nests of other avian species and depending on these hosts to raise their young (seephotograph). The four major host species for cuckoos in Britain are meadow pipits (Anthus pratensis), reed warblers (Acrocephalus scirpaceus; see photograph), pied wagtails (Motacilla alba yarrellii), and dunnocks (Prunella modularis)....
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Anthyllis vulneraria (plant)
perennial herb, of the pea family (Fabaceae), found in meadows, alpine pastures, and dry places of Europe and northern Africa. The low, hairy plant grows to a height of 15–40 cm (6–16 inches) and has narrow leaves 1.4–3.8 cm (0.5–1.5 inches) long and yellow, reddish, or white flowers. It was formerly used as a remedy for kidney disorders but is now frequently cultivated...
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“Anti-dipe: capitalisme et schizophrénie, L’ ” (work by Deleuze and Guattari)
...with the French philosopher Gilles Deleuze (1925–95) to produce a two-volume work of antipsychoanalytic social philosophy, Capitalism and Schizophrenia. In volume 1, Anti-Oedipus (1972), they drew on Lacanian ideas to argue that traditional psychoanalytic conceptions of the structure of personality are used to suppress and control human desire and......
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Anti-Atlas (mountains, North Africa)
mountain range in Morocco running parallel to and southward of the central range of the Atlas Mountains of North Africa. Although it has a mean elevation of 5,000 feet (1,500 metres), some peaks and passes exceed 6,000 feet (1,800 metres). This rugged, arid region, which encloses the Sous lowland and reaches the Atlantic coast at Sidi Ifni, is linked to the ...
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Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty (international treaty)
arms control treaty ratified in 1972 between the United States and the Soviet Union to limit deployment of missile systems that could theoretically be used to destroy incoming intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs) launched by the other superpower. Negotiations to prohibit ballistic missile defenses were first proposed by the United Sta...
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Anti-Booker Prize (Russian literary award)
...its footing in the conditions of a market economy. Nonetheless, private foundations began awarding annual literary prizes, such as the Russian Booker Prize and the Little Booker Prize. The so-called Anti-Booker Prize—its name, a protest against the British origins of the Booker Prize, was selected to emphasize that it was a Russian award for Russian writers—was first presented in....
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Anti-Capitalistic Mentality, The (work by Mises)
Von Mises was a professor at the University of Vienna (1913–38) and at New York University (1945–69). In The Anti-Capitalistic Mentality (1956), an examination of American socialism, he dealt with the opposition of a variety of intellectuals to the free market; in his view, these persons bear an unwarranted resentment toward the necessity of obeying mass demand, which is the.....
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Anti-Comintern Pact
agreement concluded first between Germany and Japan (Nov. 25, 1936) and then between Italy, Germany, and Japan (Nov. 6, 1937), ostensibly directed against the Communist International (Comintern) but, by implication, specifically against the Soviet Union....
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Anti-Corn Law League (British political organization)
As the economic skies darkened after 1836 and prophets such as Carlyle anticipated cataclysmic upheaval, the two most disgruntled groups in society were the industrial workers and their employers. Each group developed new forms of organization, and each turned from local to national extra-parliamentary action. The two most important organizations were the Chartists and the Anti-Corn Law League.......
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“Anti-Dühring” (work by Engels)
...that were collected under the title Herr Eugen Dührings Umwälzung der Wissenschaft, which appeared in 1878 (Herr Eugen Dühring’s Revolution in Science [Anti-Dühring]), and an unfinished work, Dialektik und Natur (1927; Dialectics of Nature), which he had begun around 1875–76. The importance of these writings t...
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anti-electron (subatomic particle)
positively charged subatomic particle having the same mass and magnitude of charge as the electron and constituting the antiparticle of a negative electron. The first of the antiparticles to be detected, positrons were discovered by Carl David Anderson in cloud-chamber studies of the composition of cosmic rays...
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Anti-Fascist Council for the National Liberation of Yugoslavia (Yugoslavian organization)
umbrella organization established during World War II by the Communist Party of Yugoslavia to coordinate the military campaigns of Josip Broz Tito’s Partisans and the administrative activities of local “liberation committees.”...
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Anti-Fascist People’s Freedom League (political organization, Myanmar)
...established in 1942, Than Tun served as minister of land and agriculture. In 1943, however, he became a leader of the underground resistance movement. After the war he was general secretary of the Anti-Fascist People’s Freedom League (AFPFL)....
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Anti-Federalists (United States history)
in early U.S. history, a loose political coalition of popular politicians such as Patrick Henry who unsuccessfully opposed the strong central government envisioned in the U.S. Constitution of 1787 and whose agitations led to the addition of a Bill of Rights. The first in the long line of states’-rights advocates, they feared the authority of a single national government, ...
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anti-ferromagnetism (physics)
type of magnetism in solids such as manganese oxide (MnO) in which adjacent ions that behave as tiny magnets (in this case manganese ions, Mn2+) spontaneously align themselves at relatively low temperatures into opposite, or antiparallel, arrangements throughout the material so that it exhibits almost no gross external magnetism. In anti...
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anti-globalism (economics)
Anti-globalism activists contend that American television shows have corrosive effects on local cultures by highlighting Western notions of beauty, individualism, and sexuality. Although many of the titles exported are considered second-tier shows in the United States, there is no dispute that these programs are part of the daily fare for viewers around the world. Television access is......
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anti-Hellenistic period (Iranian history)
A new and important period in Parthian history, often called “anti-Hellenistic,” embraces a century and a half, from ad 12 to 162. It is characterized by an expansion of the native Parthian culture and an opposition to all things foreign. The weakness of the reigning dynasty opened wide avenues to the nobility to involve themselves in the official existence of the state...
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anti-inflammatory agent (medicine)
Several chemically unrelated series of complex organic acids have the ability to relieve mild to moderate pain through actions that reduce inflammation at its source. Acetylsalicylic acid, or aspirin, is the most widely used mild analgesic, although more potent antipyretic (fever-reducing) analgesics, such as acetaminophen and nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drugs (NSAIDs), are available. Like......
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anti-intellectualism
In contrast to Tertullian’s anti-intellectual attitude, a positive approach to intellectual activities has also made itself heard from the beginning of the Christian church; it was perhaps best expressed in the 11th century by Anselm of Canterbury in the formula fides quaerens intellectum (“faith seeking understanding”). But well before An...
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Anti-Intellectualism in American Life (work by Hofstadter)
...The Age of Reform (1955; 1956 Pulitzer Prize), The Paranoid Style in American Politics (1965), The Idea of a Party System (1969), and American Violence (1970). His Anti-Intellectualism in American Life (1963), which won the 1964 Pulitzer Prize, presented his controversial thesis that the egalitarian, populist sentiments of Jacksonian democracy, themes that......
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Anti-Jacobin, The (British newspaper)
...Quarterly Review (1809–1967), the Edinburgh Review’s Tory rival, founded by the London publisher John Murray and first edited by William Gifford. Gifford had previously edited The Anti-Jacobin (1797–98), with which such figures as the Tory statesman George Canning were associated. In opposition to these, and more political than any of them, was the W...
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Anti-Lebanon Mountains (mountains, Asia)
mountain range that runs northeast-southwest along the Syrian-Lebanese border parallel to the Lebanon Mountains, from which they are separated by the al-Biqāʿ Valley. The range averages 6,500 feet (2,000 m) above sea level, with several peaks exceeding 8,000 feet (2,400 m). As it runs south, the Anti-Lebanon range is interrupted by a broad shoulder (the Zabadani Saddle) of M...
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Anti-Liban (mountains, Asia)
mountain range that runs northeast-southwest along the Syrian-Lebanese border parallel to the Lebanon Mountains, from which they are separated by the al-Biqāʿ Valley. The range averages 6,500 feet (2,000 m) above sea level, with several peaks exceeding 8,000 feet (2,400 m). As it runs south, the Anti-Lebanon range is interrupted by a broad shoulder (the Zabadani Saddle) of M...
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Anti-Machiavel (treatise by Frederick the Great)
...and who might well keep important information from their master if they were allowed to. Personal rule alone could produce the unity and consistency essential to any successful policy. In his Anti-Machiavel, a somewhat conventional discussion of the principles of good government published in 1740 just before his accession, Frederick wrote that there were two sorts of......
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Anti-Masonic Movement (United States history)
in the history of the United States, popular movement based on public indignation at and suspicion of the secret fraternal order known as the Masons, or Freemasons. Opponents of this society seized upon the uproar to create the Anti-Masonic Party. It was the first American third party, the first political party to hold a national nominating convention, and the first to offer the electorate a plat...
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Anti-Masonic Party (political party, United States)
...States, popular movement based on public indignation at and suspicion of the secret fraternal order known as the Masons, or Freemasons. Opponents of this society seized upon the uproar to create the Anti-Masonic Party. It was the first American third party, the first political party to hold a national nominating convention, and the first to offer the electorate a platform of party principles....
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anti-material dualism (religion)
...of history: Arianism continued among the Teutonic tribes until the 7th century and in 18th-century England; “adoptianism” reappeared in Spain and France in the 8th and 9th centuries; antimaterial dualism was revived among the Bulgarian Bogomils in the 10th century and among the Cathars of France and Italy in the 12th. Keen-eyed readers of theological literature can spot......
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anti-monarchic source (Old Testament)
The two major divergences in The First Book of Samuel lie in those passages that critics call the “pro-monarchic” source (1 Samuel 9:1–10:16) and those passages called the “antimonarchic” source (1 Samuel 8 and 10:17–27). In the pro-monarchic account of the rise of Saul, Samuel is an obscure village seer (with distinct evidence of occult practices). The......
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Anti-Nebraska Democratic Party (political party, United States, 1854-present)
in the United States, one of the two major political parties, the other being the Democratic Party. The Republican Party traditionally has supported laissez-faire capitalism, low taxes, and conservative social policies. The party acquired the acronym GOP, widely understood as “Grand Old Party,” in the 1870s. The party’s ...
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Anti-neutralità (work by Marinetti)
...illustrated and elaborated on his theory. He also applied Futurism to drama in such plays as the French Le Roi bombance (performed 1909; “The Feasting King”) and the Italian Anti-neutralità (1912; “Anti-Neutrality”) and summed up his dramatic theory in a prose work, Teatro sintetico futurista (1916; “Synthetic Futurist......
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Anti-Oedipus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia, The (work by Deleuze and Guattari)
...with the French philosopher Gilles Deleuze (1925–95) to produce a two-volume work of antipsychoanalytic social philosophy, Capitalism and Schizophrenia. In volume 1, Anti-Oedipus (1972), they drew on Lacanian ideas to argue that traditional psychoanalytic conceptions of the structure of personality are used to suppress and control human desire and......
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anti-oncogene (pathology)
any of a class of genes that are normally involved in regulating cell growth but that may become cancer-causing when damaged. Tumour suppressor genes encode for proteins that are involved in inhibiting the proliferation of cells, which is crucial to normal cell development and differentiation. Because of this ability, tumour suppressor genes can also act to stem the uncontrolled growth of ...
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anti-Parkinson drug
Parkinson disease, or paralysis agitans, is a severe progressive degenerative disease of the nerves characterized by tremor of the hands that disappears when movement is initiated. Later in the course of the disease the muscles become rigid, and the initiation and termination of movements become so difficult as to be incapacitating. In the final stages the patient is unable to maintain an erect......
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Anti-Revolutionary Party (Dutch history)
...Sumatra, Colijn later served there as a civil administrator, organizing government services and rubber plantations. He entered the Dutch Parliament in 1909 as a member for the orthodox Calvinist Anti-Revolutionary Party and became war minister (1911–13). After serving as director (1914–22) of the company that later became the Royal Dutch Petroleum Company (Shell), he succeeded......
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Anti-Saloon League (American political organization)
the leading organization lobbying for prohibition in the United States in the early 20th century. It was founded as a state society in Ohio in 1893, but its influence spread rapidly, and in 1895 it became a national organization. It drew most of its support from Protestant evangelical churches, and it lobbied at all levels of government for legislation to prohibit the manufactu...
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Anti-Scrape (British organization)
...(later called The Lesser Arts), and his first collection of lectures, Hopes and Fears for Art, appeared in 1882. In 1877 he also founded the Society for the Protection of Ancient Buildings in an attempt to combat the drastic methods of restoration then being carried out on the cathedrals and parish churches of Great Britain....
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anti-Semitism
hostility toward or discrimination against Jews as a religious or racial group. The term anti-Semitism was coined in 1879 by the German agitator Wilhelm Marr to designate the anti-Jewish campaigns underway in central Europe at that time. Although this term now has wide currency, it is a misnomer, since it implies a discrimination against all Semites. Arabs and other peoples are also S...
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Anti-Slavery Society (British organization [1787])
...the condemnation of the trade by the other European powers, though at the congress of Aix-la-Chapelle (1818) measures for enforcing international abolition were discussed without effect. When the Anti-Slavery Society was founded (1823), Clarkson was chosen a vice president....
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Anti-Slavery Society (British organization [1823])
...In 1823 he aided in organizing and became a vice president of the Society for the Mitigation and Gradual Abolition of Slavery Throughout the British Dominions—again, more commonly called the Anti-Slavery Society. Turning over to Buxton the parliamentary leadership of the abolition movement, he retired from the House of Commons in 1825. On July 26, 1833, the Slavery Abolition Act was......
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Anti-Social Behaviour Order (British law)
...not stop the Blair administration from pursuing a ‘‘respect’’ agenda, which was designed to restore an at least partly imagined former era of civic virtue and public order. The ill-fated ASBO (Anti-Social Behaviour Order), restricting the movement of offenders, was celebrated by some as an appropriately strong response to troublemaking neighbours and gangs but was co...
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Anti-Socialist Law (Germany [1878])
...which discarded the state-aid provisions of the Gotha Congress and pledged the party to a Marxist program. Bismarck won his battle to repress the socialists in 1878 when the Reichstag adopted the Anti-Socialist Law that, among other things, forbade the publication of socialist literature....
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anti-Stokes lines (physics)
Anti-Stokes lines are found in fluorescence and in Raman spectra when the atoms or molecules of the material are already in an excited state (as when at high temperature). In this case the radiated line energy is the sum of the pre-excitation energy and the energy absorbed from the exciting radiation. Thus, anti-Stokes lines are always of shorter wavelength than that of the light that produces......
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Anti-Submarine Detection Investigation Committee device (military technology)
...the British Isles, from Canada, and from Iceland, the Atlantic space left open to the U-boats was reduced by May 1941 to a width of only 300 miles. Moreover, British surface vessels had the ASDIC (Anti-Submarine Detection Investigation Committee) device to detect submerged U-boats. By the spring of 1941, under the guidance of Admiral Karl Dönitz, the U-boat commanders were changing their...
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Anti-Suffragist, The (American periodical)
American periodical, from 1908 to 1912 the voice of a movement whose proponents opposed giving women the vote because they believed it contrary to nature....
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anti-tail (astronomy)
...sunlight. They remain in the plane of the cometary orbit and in the immediate vicinity of the orbit itself, even though they separate steadily from the nucleus. They sometimes become visible as an anti-tail—i.e., as a bright spike extending from the coma sunward in a direction opposite to the tail (Figure 4). This phenomenon occurs as a matter of geometry: it takes place for only a few.....
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anti-tank weapon
any of several guns, missiles, and mines intended for use against tanks. The first response to the introduction of tanks during World War I was a variety of grenades and large-calibre rifles designed to penetrate tanks’ relatively thin armour or disable their tracks. Land mines and ordinary artillery were also used effectively. By the beginning of World War II, a family o...
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Anti-Tribonian (work by Hotman)
Hotman made important contributions to the work of the French school of Romanists who, in opposition to the Italian commentators, sought to restore the texts of classical Roman law. In his Anti-Tribonian (1567) he combined an attack on the compilators employed by Justinian with a plea for codification of French law on the basis of native custom and experience and without borrowing......
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Anti-Trinitarianism (religion)
liberal religious movements that have merged in the United States. In previous centuries they appealed for their views to Scripture interpreted by reason, but most contemporary Unitarians and Universalists base their religious beliefs on reason and experience....
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anti-Utopian novel (literary genre)
...evil and his love of freedom have made Dostoyevsky especially relevant to a century of world war, mass murder, and totalitarianism. At least two modern literary genres, the prison camp novel and the dystopian novel (works such as Yevgeny Zamyatin’s We, Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World, and George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-four), derive f...
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antiacid (medicine)
any substance, such as sodium bicarbonate, magnesium hydroxide, or aluminum hydroxide, used to counteract or neutralize gastric acids and relieve the discomfort caused by gastric acidity. Indigestion, gastritis, and several forms of ulcers are alleviated by the use of antacids....
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antiaircraft gun
artillery piece that is fired from the ground or shipboard in defense against aerial attack. Antiaircraft weapons development began as early as 1910, when the airplane first became an effective weapon. In World War I, field artillery pieces up to about 90 mm (3.5 inches) in calibre were converted to antiaircraft use by mountings that enabled them to fire nearly vertically. Aimi...
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antiandrogen (biochemistry)
Other drugs, called antiandrogens, block the activity of androgens and are often used in combination with other forms of hormone therapy. An antiandrogen called abiraterone inhibits the activity of an enzyme involved in testosterone synthesis in the testes and adrenal glands. In clinical trials, abiraterone has shown promise in treating patients with aggressive end-stage prostate cancer, which......
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antiangiogenic drug (drug)
Since the progression of tumours requires the development of capillaries (a process known as angiogenesis) that supply tumour cells with oxygen and nutrients, interfering with this essential step is a promising therapeutic approach. Antiangiogenic drugs have been shown in animal studies to shrink tumours by destroying the capillaries that surround them and by preventing the production of new......
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antianxiety drug (pharmacology)
Drugs that combat anxiety have been called tranquilizers, an inexact term in that they do not tranquilize as much as reduce anxiety and enable dysfunctional patients to cope more effectively with life’s vicissitudes and lead more rewarding lives. This class of drugs include the barbiturates, benzodiazepines, nonbenzodiazepine-nonbarbiturates, and hypnotics. The barbiturates phenobarbital,.....
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antiarch (paleontology)
any of an order of extinct, mainly freshwater, jawed fishes, class Placodermi, abundant during Middle and Late Devonian times (387 to 360 million years ago). Members of such genera as Bothriolepis and Pterichthys were representative. Antiarchs were small and weak-jawed and had closely set eyes on top of the head. Armour shields covered the front part of the body as...
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Antiarcha (paleontology)
any of an order of extinct, mainly freshwater, jawed fishes, class Placodermi, abundant during Middle and Late Devonian times (387 to 360 million years ago). Members of such genera as Bothriolepis and Pterichthys were representative. Antiarchs were small and weak-jawed and had closely set eyes on top of the head. Armour shields covered the front part of the body as...
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Antiarchiformes (paleontology)
any of an order of extinct, mainly freshwater, jawed fishes, class Placodermi, abundant during Middle and Late Devonian times (387 to 360 million years ago). Members of such genera as Bothriolepis and Pterichthys were representative. Antiarchs were small and weak-jawed and had closely set eyes on top of the head. Armour shields covered the front part of the body as...
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Antiaris toxicaria (plant)
...without harming the human host. It is used extensively in South America and Panama. Ficus species in Fiji and China are used to treat toothache. The latex of Antiaris toxicaria (upas tree) contains an extremely toxic cardiac glycoside, which has the effect of increasing the force of contraction of the muscles of the heart; in tropical Asia it is a valuable source of poison......
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antiarmour bomb (military technology)
...charge. General-purpose bombs combine the effects of both blast and fragmentation and hence can be used against a wide variety of targets. They are probably the commonest type of bomb used. Armour-piercing bombs have a thick case and a pointed tip and are used to penetrate armoured or hardened targets such as warships and bunkers. Bombs of the aforementioned types generally range in......
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antiarmour weapon
any of several guns, missiles, and mines intended for use against tanks. The first response to the introduction of tanks during World War I was a variety of grenades and large-calibre rifles designed to penetrate tanks’ relatively thin armour or disable their tracks. Land mines and ordinary artillery were also used effectively. By the beginning of World War II, a family o...
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antiasthmatic (drug)
Drugs for treating asthma, such as theophylline and aminophylline, are structurally similar to caffeine. Like caffeine, which is a stimulant, theophylline and aminophylline also stimulate the central nervous system. Therefore, excitement, delirium, rapid breathing, increased heart rate, and seizures occur with an overdose. With excessive stimulation of the heart, palpitations and irregular......
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antiatom (physics)
It has been known for decades that each fundamental particle in nature has its antiparticle. The first antiparticle to be discovered, in 1932, was the positron, identical to the negatively charged electron but having a positive electric charge. The negatively charged antiproton, the antiparticle of the positively charged proton, was first produced in 1955. The existence of a whole set of antiparti...
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antibacterial agent (medicine)
Antibiotics are categorized as narrow-, broad-, or extended-spectrum agents. Narrow-spectrum agents (e.g., penicillin G) affect primarily gram-positive bacteria. Broad-spectrum antibiotics, such as tetracyclines and chloramphenicol, affect both gram-positive and some gram-negative bacteria. An extended-spectrum antibiotic is one that, as a result of chemical modification, affects additional......
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antiballistic missile
...quarter with the development of multiple independently targeted reentry vehicles (MIRVs), by which several warheads, each aimed at a different target, could be carried on one missile, and antiballistic missiles (ABMs), which might allow one side to strike first while shielding itself from retaliation. In the arcane province of strategic theory, therefore, offense (long-range missiles)......
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Antibarbarorum liber (work by Erasmus)
...ordination to the priesthood (April 1492), he was happy to escape the monastery by accepting a post as Latin secretary to the influential Henry of Bergen, bishop of Cambrai. His Antibarbarorum liber, extant from a revision of 1494–95, is a vigorous restatement of patristic arguments for the utility of the pagan classics, with a polemical thrust against the......
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antibaryon (subatomic particle)
...are now known to have corresponding antiparticles. Thus, there are positive and negative muons, positive and negative pi-mesons, and the K-meson and the anti-K-meson, plus a long list of baryons and antibaryons. Most of these newly discovered particles have too short a lifetime to be able to combine with electrons. The exception is the positive muon, which, together with an electron, has been.....
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Antibes (France)
port town, Alpes-Maritimes département, Provence-Alpes-Côte-d’Azur région, southeastern France, on the eastern side of the Garoupe Peninsula across the Baie des Anges (Bay of the Angels) from Nice. Originally Antipolis, a Greek trading post established by Ph...
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antibiosis (biology)
Other antagonists produce substances that inhibit or kill potential pathogens occurring in close proximity. An example of this process, called antibiosis, is provided by marigold (Tagetes species) roots, which release terthienyls, chemicals that are toxic to several species of nematodes and fungi....
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antibiotic (chemical compound)
chemical substance produced by a living organism, generally a microorganism, that is detrimental to other microorganisms....
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antibiotic resistance
...week and usually do not require antibiotic therapy. Nonetheless, the widespread use of antibiotics in the poultry and cattle industries has led to the appearance of campylobacter strains that are resistant to many fluoroquinolone- and tetracycline-class antibiotics that have been used to treat human infections....
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antiblue (subatomic property)
...world but rather represents a property of quarks that is the source of the strong force. The colours red, green, and blue are ascribed to quarks, and their opposites, antired, antigreen, and antiblue, are ascribed to antiquarks. According to QCD, all combinations of quarks must contain mixtures of these imaginary colours that cancel out one another, with the resulting particle having no......
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antibody (biochemistry)
a protective protein produced by the immune system in response to the presence of a foreign substance, called an antigen. Antibodies recognize and latch onto antigens in order to remove them from the body. A wide range of substances are regarded by the body as antigens, including disease-causing organisms and toxic materials such as insect venom....
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antibody globulin (protein)
subgroup of the blood proteins called globulins. In humans and many of the other mammals, antibodies, when they are formed, occur in the gamma globulins. Persons who lack gamma globulin or who have an inadequate supply of it—conditions called, respectively, agammaglobulinemia and hypogammaglobulinemia—have frequently recurring infections because of their inability to develop adequat...
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antibody-combining site (biochemistry)
At the tip of each arm of the Y-shaped molecule is an area called the antigen-binding, or antibody-combining, site, which is formed by a portion of the heavy and light chains. Every immunoglobulin molecule has at least two of these sites, which are identical to one another. The antigen-binding site is what allows the antibody to recognize a specific part of the antigen (the epitope, or......
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antibody-mediated food allergy
A true food allergy involves an abnormal immunologic response to an otherwise harmless food component, usually a protein. In the case of antibody-mediated (immediate hypersensitivity) food allergies, within minutes or hours of exposure to the allergen, the body produces specific immunoglobulin E antibodies and releases chemical mediators such as histamine, resulting in gastrointestinal, skin,......
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antibonding orbital
...occupies this orbital is excluded from the internuclear region, and its energy is higher than it would be if it occupied either atomic orbital. The orbital arising in this way is therefore called an antibonding orbital; it is often denoted σ* (and referred to as “sigma star”) or, because it is the second of the two σ orbitals, 2σ....
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Antic Hay (work by Huxley)
...was set by Aldous Huxley’s satirical novel Crome Yellow (1921). Drawing upon Lawrence and Eliot, he concerned himself in his novels of ideas—Antic Hay (1923), Those Barren Leaves (1925), and Point Counter Point (1928)—with the fate of the individual in rootless modernity. His...
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antic masque (entertainment)
...The Masque of Queens (1609). In his masques Jonson was fertile in inventing new motives for the arrival of the strangers. But this was not enough: he also invented the “antimasque,” which preceded the masque proper and which featured grotesques or comics who were primarily actors rather than dancers or musicians....
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antica corsiva (calligraphy)
...Florentine scribe Niccolò Niccoli (d. 1437) combined the rhythm and fluidity of the familiar black-letter current hand with the narrow, inclined strokes of the lettera antica in his antica corsiva, which became the model for italic printing types. As in modern italic fonts, the form of a is distinctive, and f, g, k, and a long thin s are more or less......
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anticancer drug (pharmacology)
Antineoplastic agents are divided into categories based on their mode of action. Since most of the drugs exert their effects in a certain part of the cell cycle (e.g., cell growth phase, cell division phase, resting phase), many treatment regimens require two or more of these agents. One drug may be used to stop the growth of the cancer cells in a certain phase, whereas another agent may work......
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Anticaria (Spain)
city, Málaga provincia (province), in the comunidad autónoma (autonomous community) of Andalusia, southern Spain, northwest of Málaga, at the foot of the Sierra del Torcal. Neolithic dolmens (Menga, Viera, and El Romeral) attest to prehistori...
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anticatalyst (chemistry)
substance that reduces the effectiveness of a catalyst in a chemical reaction. In theory, because catalysts are not consumed in chemical reactions, they can be used repeatedly over an indefinite period of time. In practice, however, poisons, which come from the reacting substances or products of the reaction itself, accumulate on the surface of solid catalysts and cause their effectiveness to dec...
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