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Ismāʿīlīyah Canal, Al- (canal, Egypt)
...of the 6 that had been envisaged; climatic difficulties, a cholera epidemic in 1865, and early labour troubles all slowed down operations. An initial project was the cutting of a small canal (the Al-Ismāʾīlīyah) from the delta along the Wadi Tumelat, with a southern branch (now called the Al-Suways al-Ḥulwah Canal; the two canals combined were formerly called....
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Ismāʿīliyyah (district, Cairo, Egypt)
...of a European-style city to the west of the medieval core. French city-planning methods dominated the design of the districts of Al-Azbakiyyah (with its large park), ʿAbdīn, and Ismāʿīliyyah—all now central zones of contemporary Cairo. By the end of the 19th century these districts were well-developed, but with the beginning of British rule of Egypt in....
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Ismāʿīliyyah, Al- (governorate, Egypt)
muḥāfaẓah (governorate), northeastern Nile delta, Lower Egypt. It is a square-shaped territory with a long, narrow extension northward along the Suez Canal, ending just south of Port Said. Its eastern boundary is the Suez Canal, including Great Bitter Lake (Buḥayra al-Murrah ...
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Ismay of Wormington, Hastings Lionel Ismay, Baron (British soldier)
British soldier who became Prime Minister Winston Churchill’s closest military adviser during World War II and participated in most major policy decisions of the Allied powers....
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Ismene (Greek mythology)
...union of Oedipus and his mother, Jocasta. After her father blinded himself upon discovering that Jocasta was his mother and that, also unwittingly, he had slain his father, Antigone and her sister Ismene served as Oedipus’ guides, following him from Thebes into exile until his death near Athens. Returning to Thebes, they attempted to reconcile their quarreling brothers—Eteocles, w...
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isnād (Islam)
(from Arabic sanad, “support”), in Islam, a list of authorities who have transmitted a report (ḥadīth) of a statement, action, or approbation of Muhammad, one of his Companions (Ṣaḥābah), or of a later authority (tabīʿ); its reliability determines the validity of a ḥadīth. The ...
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ISNSE (school, Argonne, Illinois, United States)
The International School of Nuclear Science and Engineering was established at Argonne National Laboratory in 1955. The school was created to meet the international need for trained scientists and engineers, and its program was conducted jointly by Argonne National Laboratory, North Carolina State College, and Pennsylvania State University. Basic course work was presented at the universities in......
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Isn’t It Romantic (work by Wasserstein)
...to succeed in an environment traditionally dominated by men. Two other early works are Uncommon Women and Others (1975; revised and expanded, 1977) and Isn’t It Romantic (1981), which explore women’s attitudes toward marriage and society’s expectations of women. In The Heidi Chronicles a successful a...
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Isn’t Life Wonderful? (film by Griffith)
...America (1924), which focused on the French and American revolutions, respectively; both lost money. Griffith’s next feature was the independent semidocumentary Isn’t Life Wonderful? (1925), which was shot on location in Germany and is thought to have influenced both the “street” films of the German director G.W. Pabst and the po...
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ISO
specialized international organization founded in Geneva in 1947 and concerned with standardization in all technical and nontechnical fields except electrical and electronic engineering (the responsibility of the International Electrotechnical Commission). Its membership extends to more than 100 countries, and each member is the national body “most representative of standardization in its c...
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ISO (satellite)
European Space Agency (ESA) satellite that observed astronomical sources of infrared radiation from 1995 to 1998....
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ISO number (photography)
The internationally adopted scale is ISO speed, written, for example, 200/24°. The first half of this (200) is arithmetic with the value directly proportional to the sensitivity (and also identical with the still widely used ASA speed). The second half (24°) is logarithmic, increasing by 3° for every doubling of the speed (and matching the DIN speeds still used in parts of......
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ISO/OSI (communications)
Different communication requirements necessitate different network solutions, and these different network protocols can create significant problems of compatibility when networks are interconnected with one another. In order to overcome some of these interconnection problems, the open systems interconnection (OSI) was approved in 1983 as an international standard for communications architecture......
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Iso-Hollo, Volmari (Finnish athlete)
Finnish runner, who won two successive gold medals in the Olympic Games (1932, 1936) for the 3,000-metre steeplechase....
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iso-octane (chemical compound)
...catalyst to convert unbranched alkanes to their branched-chain isomers. In one such application, butane is isomerized to 2-methylpropane for use as a starting material in the preparation of 2,2,4-trimethylpentane (isooctane), which is a component of high-octane gasoline....
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isoamyl nitrite (drug)
drug once commonly used in the treatment of angina pectoris, a condition characterized by chest pain precipitated by oxygen deficiency in the heart muscle. Amyl nitrite is one of the oldest vasodilators (i.e., agents that expand blood vessels). The drug is useful in treating cyanide poisoning. Amyl nitrite, a clear, pale yellow liquid with a penetrating odour,...
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isobar (nuclear physics)
in nuclear physics, any member of a group of atomic or nuclear species all of which have the same mass number—that is, the same total number of protons and neutrons. Thus, chlorine-37 and argon-37 are isobars. Chlorine-37 has 17 protons and 20 neutrons in its nucleus, whereas argon-37 has a nucleus comprising 18 protons and 19 neutrons. In beta decay, mother and daughter nuclei are always ...
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isobar (cartography)
line on a weather map of constant barometric pressure drawn on a given reference surface. The isobaric pattern on a constant-height surface is extremely useful in weather forecasting because of the close association between pressure and weather. Regions of low pressure at sea level tend to be areas of bad weather, especially in winter. At higher elevations the wind blows approxi...
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isobaric spin (physics)
property that is characteristic of families of related subatomic particles differing principally in the values of their electric charge. The families of similar particles are known as isospin multiplets: two-particle families are called doublets, three-particle families are called triplets, and so on....
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isobaric surface (physics)
...a homogeneous ocean, which would have a constant potential density, horizontal pressure differences are possible only if the sea surface is tilted. In this case, surfaces of equal pressure, called isobaric surfaces, are tilted in the deeper layers by the same amount as the sea surface. This is referred to as the barotropic field of mass. The unchanged pressure gradient gives rise to a current.....
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isobutane (chemical compound)
...hydrogen has one in neutral molecules). One compound, called n-butane, where the prefix n- represents normal, has its four carbon atoms bonded in a continuous chain. The other, called isobutane, has a branched chain....
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isobutyl alcohol (chemical compound)
any of four organic compounds having the same molecular formula but different structures: normal (n-) butyl alcohol, secondary (sec-) butyl alcohol, isobutyl alcohol, and tertiary (t-) butyl alcohol....
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isobutylene (chemical compound)
...compounds belonging to the series of olefinic hydrocarbons. The chemical formula is C4H8. The isomeric forms are 1-butene, cis-2-butene, trans-2-butene, and isobutylene. All four butenes are gases at room temperature and pressure....
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isobutylene-isoprene rubber (chemical compound)
Butyl rubber is a copolymer of isobutylene and isoprene that was first produced by William Sparks and Robert Thomas at the Standard Oil Company (New Jersey) (now Exxon Corporation) in 1937. Earlier attempts to produce synthetic rubbers had involved the polymerization of dienes such as isoprene and butadiene, but Sparks and Thomas defied convention by using other starting materials. They......
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isocarboxazid (drug)
The monoamine oxidase inhibitors—chiefly isocarboxazid, phenelzine, and tranylcypromine—in general are used only after treatment with tricyclic drugs has proved unsatisfactory, because these drugs’ side effects are unpredictable and their complex interactions are incompletely understood. The MAOs apparently achieve their effect by interfering with the action of monoamine oxida...
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isochron diagram (geology)
...with the critical assumptions stated above. In uranium–lead dating, minerals virtually free of initial lead can be isolated and corrections made for the trivial amounts present. In whole rock isochron methods that make use of the rubidium–strontium or samarium–neodymium decay schemes (see below), a series of rocks or minerals are chosen that can be assumed to have the same ...
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isochron method (geology)
...with the critical assumptions stated above. In uranium–lead dating, minerals virtually free of initial lead can be isolated and corrections made for the trivial amounts present. In whole rock isochron methods that make use of the rubidium–strontium or samarium–neodymium decay schemes (see below), a series of rocks or minerals are chosen that can be assumed to have the same ...
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isochronous cyclotron
...Another technique is to strengthen the magnetic field near the periphery of the dees and to effect focusing by azimuthal variation of the magnetic field. Accelerators operated in this way are called isochronous, or azimuthally-varying-field (AVF) cyclotrons....
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isochronous orbit (ion)
The key to the operation of a cyclotron is the fact that the orbits of ions in a uniform magnetic field are isochronous; that is, the time taken by a particle of a given mass to make one complete circuit is the same at any speed or energy as long as the speed is much less than that of light. (As the speed of a particle approaches that of light, its mass increases as predicted by the theory of......
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isocitrate (chemical compound)
...[39]. The reaction involves first the removal of the elements of water from citrate to form cis-aconitate, and then the re-addition of water to cis-aconitate in such a way that isocitrate is formed. It is probable that all three reactants—citrate, cis-aconitate, and isocitrate—remain closely associated with aconitase, the enzyme that catalyzes the......
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isocitrate dehydrogenase (enzyme)
hydrogen atoms may also be accepted by NADP+. Thus the enzyme controlling this reaction, isocitrate dehydrogenase, differs in specificity for the coenzymes; various forms occur not only in different organisms but even within the same cell. In [40] NAD(P)+ indicates that either NAD+ or NADP+ can act as a hydrogen acceptor....
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isocitrate lysase (enzyme)
...In this route (Figure 8), the steps of the TCA cycle that lead to the loss of carbon dioxide (see [40], [41], and [42]) are bypassed. Instead of being oxidized to oxalosuccinate, as occurs in [40], isocitrate is split by isocitrate lyase [52] in a reaction similar to that of reactions [4] and [15] of carbohydrate fragmentation. The dotted line in [52] indicates the way in which isocitrate is......
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isoclinal fold (geology)
...fold has an essentially horizontal axial plane (Figure 2). When the two limbs of a fold are essentially parallel to each other and thus approximately parallel to the axial plane, the fold is called isoclinal....
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isocost-isoquant analysis (economics)
...depends on the amount of machinery and other fixed capital available. Since there are only two variable factors, this production function can be portrayed graphically in a figure known as an isoquant diagram (Figure 1). In the graph, goldsmith-hours per month are plotted horizontally and the number of feet of gold wire used per month vertically. Each of the curved lines, called an......
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Isocrates (Greek orator and rhetorician)
ancient Athenian orator, rhetorician, and teacher whose writings are an important historical source on the intellectual and political life of the Athens of his day. The school he founded differed markedly in its aims from the Academy of Plato and numbered among its pupils men of eminence from all over the Greek world....
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isocratic mobile phase (chemistry)
...however, the number of stationary phases is limited, while there is a large number of liquids and combinations of them used for the mobile phase. Mobile phases of constant composition are called isocratic....
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isocyanate (chemical compound)
...importance. It can result in simple acylation to form ureas (amides of carbonic acid), RNHCONHR, but it is usually carried out under conditions that favour the conversion of primary amines to isocyanates: RNH2+ COCl2→ RN=C=O + 2HCl). Isocyanates are themselves acylating agents, of a type that also includes isothiocyanates......
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isocyanide (chemical compound)
any of a class of organic compounds having the molecular structure R−N+ ≡ C, in which R is a combining group derived by removal of a hydrogen atom from an organic compound. The isocyanides are isomers of the nitriles; they were discovered in 1867 but have never achieved any large-scale utility. They are usually prepared from primary amines by treatment w...
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isodrin (chemical compound)
chlorine-containing organic compound used as an insecticide; see aldrin....
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isoelectric focusing (chemistry)
In addition to being separated by size, proteins can also be separated according to their specific charge residues. A particularly useful method based on this principle is isoelectric focusing (IEF). At a given pH of a solution, a specific protein will have equal positive and negative charges and will therefore not migrate in an electric field. This pH value is called the isoelectric point. A......
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isoelectric point (chemistry)
...focusing (IEF). At a given pH of a solution, a specific protein will have equal positive and negative charges and will therefore not migrate in an electric field. This pH value is called the isoelectric point. A slab gel (or column) can be filled with a complex mixture of buffers (known as ampholytes) that, under the influence of an applied field, migrate to the position of their......
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Isoetales (plant order)
...the sole living genus is Selaginella, with nearly 800 species, widely distributed around the world; Selaginellites is an extinct genus.Order Isoetales (quillworts)Living and extinct plants with secondary growth; heterosporous, with endosporic gametophytes; Isoetites is an exti...
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Isoetes (plant)
any of about 150 species of plants in the family Isoetaceae, order Isoetales. Quillworts are spore-bearing lycophytes with grassy, spikelike leaves and are native mostly to swampy, cooler parts of North America and Eurasia. The spirally arranged, quill-like leaves are divided into vertical rows of cavities that are connected to one central conducting strand. The leaves rise from...
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Isoetes histrix (plant)
...are aquatic. Their stiff, dark green, recurved, spiky leaves grow around a stumpy corm. Italian quillwort (I. malinverniana) has longer, spiraling leaves that float on the water surface. Sand quillwort (I. histrix), an inconspicuous terrestrial European species, has very narrow 5–7-cm (2–3-inch) long leaves that curl back to the ground from a fat, white, tufted......
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Isoetes lacustris (plant)
The common quillworts of Eurasia (I. lacustris) and the very similar North American species (I. macrospora) are aquatic. Their stiff, dark green, recurved, spiky leaves grow around a stumpy corm. Italian quillwort (I. malinverniana) has longer, spiraling leaves that float on the water surface. Sand quillwort......
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Isoetes macrospora (plant)
The common quillworts of Eurasia (I. lacustris) and the very similar North American species (I. macrospora) are aquatic. Their stiff, dark green, recurved, spiky leaves grow around a stumpy corm. Italian quillwort (I. malinverniana) has longer, spiraling leaves that float on the water surface. Sand quillwort (I. histrix), an inconspicuous terrestrial European......
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Isoetes malinverniana (plant)
...quillworts of Eurasia (I. lacustris) and the very similar North American species (I. macrospora) are aquatic. Their stiff, dark green, recurved, spiky leaves grow around a stumpy corm. Italian quillwort (I. malinverniana) has longer, spiraling leaves that float on the water surface. Sand quillwort (I. histrix), an inconspicuous terrestrial European species, has very....
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Isoetites (extinct plant genus)
...Isoetales (quillworts)Living and extinct plants with secondary growth; heterosporous, with endosporic gametophytes; Isoetites is an extinct genus; a specialized group of species from the high Andes Mountains is sometimes segregated as a distinct genus, Stylites; for many years the species of......
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isoflavone (biological pigment)
...LDL and total blood cholesterol levels, as well as other vascular effects associated with reduced CHD risk. Tofu, tempeh, miso, soy flour, soy milk, and soy nuts are among the soy foods that contain isoflavones, estrogen-like compounds that are thought to be responsible for these beneficial cardiovascular effects....
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isogamy (biology)
...organism (i.e., haploid). During fertilization, male and female gametes fuse, producing a diploid (i.e., containing paired chromosomes) zygote. Gametes may be identical in form (isogamy), as in the black mold (Rhizopus), or there may be more than one morphological type (heterogamy), as with many green algae of the genus Chlamydomonas. Gametes of animals, some......
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isogloss (linguistics)
...between neighbouring local dialects are usually small, but, in travelling farther in the same direction, differences accumulate. Every dialectal feature has its own boundary line, called an isogloss (or sometimes heterogloss). Isoglosses of various linguistic phenomena rarely coincide completely, and by crossing and interweaving they constitute intricate patterns on dialect maps.......
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isograd (geology)
Reactions that introduce new minerals in rocks of a specific bulk composition are referred to as mineral appearance isograds. Isograds can be mapped in the field as lines across which the metamorphic mineral assemblage changes. Caution must be exercised to note the approximate bulk composition of the rocks throughout the map area, however, because the same mineral can develop at quite different......
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isograft (surgery)
...of the body and transplanted to another site in the same individual is called an autograft. Autografts cannot be rejected. Similarly, grafts between identical twins or highly inbred animals—isografts—are accepted by the recipients indefinitely. Grafts from a donor to a recipient of the same species—allografts or homografts—are usually rejected unless special efforts....
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isohemagglutinin (chemical compound)
Isohemagglutinins, substances that agglutinate the red blood cells of others of the same species, are also found in humans. Thus, there are four main blood groups, which differ with respect to two antigens, A and B, in the red blood cells and two isohemagglutinins, anti-A and anti-B, in the serum. Thus, in humans, type O has neither antigen but both agglutinins, type A has A antigen and anti-B......
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Isoko (people)
people of the northwestern part of the Niger Delta in Nigeria, speaking a language of the Kwa branch of the Niger-Congo family. The term Sobo is used by ethnographers as a cover term for both the Isoko and their neighbours the Urhobo, but the two groups remain distinct from one another....
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Isola Asinara (island, Italy)
island lying in the Mediterranean Sea off the northwest coast of Sardinia. It has an area of 20 square miles (52 square km) and rises to 1,335 feet (407 m). The island was home to one of Italy’s top-security prisons until it was closed in 1997. Asinara is now a marine and wildlife preserve and is accessible only through organized tours....
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Isola Capraia (island, Italy)
(from capra, “wild goat”), island of the Arcipelago Toscano, in the Tyrrhenian Sea, between the Italian mainland and the north point of Corsica. Capraia, mountainous and volcanic, rising to 1,467 feet (447 metres), produces wine and is a centre of anchovy fishing. About one-third of its area has been occupied since 1872 by an agricultural penal colony. The village and port of ...
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Isola del Giglio (island, Italy)
mountainous, volcanic islet of the Tuscan Archipelago, in the Tyrrhenian Sea, opposite Mount Argentario, on the west coast of Italy. The island rises to 1,634 feet (498 m) and has an area of 8 square miles (21 square km). Wine is produced, and there is considerable offshore fishing. The village of Giglio Castello, surrounded by medieval walls, and the bathing resort of Campese a...
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“isola di Arturo, L’ ” (novel by Morante)
...of Liars), recounts the complex history of a southern Italian family through the memory and imagination of a young woman. Morante’s next novel, L’isola di Arturo (1957; Arturo’s Island), examines a boy’s growth from childhood dreams to the painful disillusions of adulthood. This novel, for which she won the Strega Prize, is nota...
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Isola di Lampedusa (island, Italy)
largest island (area 8 square miles [21 square km]) of the Isole (islands) Pelagie (which include Linosa and Lampione islets), in the Mediterranean Sea between Malta and Tunis, 105 miles (170 km) southwest of Licata, Sicily. Administratively the group is part of Agrigento province, Sicily, Italy. Lampedusa’s greatest length is about 7 miles (11 km), its greatest width abo...
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Isola di Montecristo (island, Italy)
member of the Arcipelago Toscano, in the Tyrrhenian Sea, between the Italian mainland and Corsica, south of the island of Elba. Part of Livorno province, the islet is mountainous, rising to 2,116 ft (645 m), with an area of 6 sq mi (16 sq km). It is a hunting preserve owned by the state and contains the ruins of a 13th-century monastery that was abandoned in 1553 after having been destroyed by pir...
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Isola di Pantelleria (island, Italy)
Italian island in the Mediterranean Sea between Sicily and Tunisia. Of volcanic origin, it rises to 2,743 feet (836 m) at the extinct crater of Magna Grande. The last eruption (underwater to the west of the island) took place in 1891, but hot mineral springs and fumaroles testify to continued volcanic activity. The island is fertile but lacks fresh water....
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Isola di Sant’Antioco (island, Italy)
volcanic island in the Mediterranean Sea, situated just off the southwestern coast of Sardinia, Italy. It is composed for the most part of rocky and uneven terrain and rises to 889 feet (271 metres). The island is connected by rail with the Sardinian mainland, 1 mile (2 km) east....
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Isola d’Ischia (island, Italy)
island at the northwest entrance to the Bay of Naples, opposite Capo (cape) Miseno, Campania region, southern Italy, just west-southwest of Naples. Oblong in shape, with a circumference of 21 mi (34 km) and an area of 18 sq mi (47 sq km), the island consists almost entirely of volcanic rock and rises to 2,585 ft (788 m) at Monte Epomeo, an extinct volcano. The date of the first ...
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Isola Maddalena (Italy)
island. It lies in the Tyrrhenian Sea (of the Mediterranean) off the northeast coast of Sardinia. It has an area of 8 square miles (20 square km) and is the principal island of the Maddalena Archipelago, which includes the islands of Maddalena, Caprera, Santo Stefano, Spargi, Budelli, Santa Maria, and Razzoli. Its port, La Maddalena, is the administrative cent...
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Isola Pianosa (island, Italy)
island of the Toscany Archipelago, in the Tyrrhenian Sea, part of Tuscany regione (region), Italy. Situated 8 miles (13 km) southwest of the island of Elba, Pianosa has an area of 4 square miles (10 square km). It is, as its name (Italian piano, “flat”) indicates, low-lying, with its highest point reachin...
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Isola Salina (island, Italy)
second largest of the Eolie Islands (Lipari Islands), in the Tyrrhenian Sea (of the Mediterranean) off northeastern Sicily. It has an area of 10 square miles (26 square km)....
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Isola Stromboli (island, Italy)
northeasternmost of the Eolie (Lipari) Islands, in the Tyrrhenian Sea (of the Mediterranean), off northeastern Sicily. It has an area of 5 square miles (12 square km). Of volcanic formation, the island is still active, and fluid lava flows continuously from its crater to the sea, although the last serious eruption was in 1921. Dates, olives, and fruits are grown, and tourism is important to the ec...
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Isola Vulcano (island, Italy)
southernmost of the Eolie Islands, in the Tyrrhenian Sea (of the Mediterranean), off northeastern Sicily. It is administered as part of northern Sicily, southern Italy. Vulcano has an area of 8 square miles (21 square km). Although the last major eruptions were in 1888–90, fumaroles of sulfurous vapour testify to continuous volcanic activity, and its Gran Cratere is still active. See als...
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isolate (linguistics)
...assigned to a specific group. A few of these languages are currently thought to be unrelated to any of the established genetic groupings and are listed individually in the table; these solitary languages are called isolates....
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isolate (genetics)
...is calculated from the average F values of its members. High values of F are found in small populations whose members marry one another over many generations. Such groups are called isolates. Thus, the Samaritans, who have remained a small but distinctive group since the 8th century bc, are considerably inbred, and in the United States some religious groups also live...
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isolated pawn (chess)
...pawn weaknesses are disadvantageous in direct proportion to their exploitability, which tends to increase as pieces are exchanged. A pawn with no friendly pawns on adjoining files is called an isolated pawn; isolated pawns may confer middlegame compensation through control of important squares (if located in the centre) or by giving rooks adjoining open files along which to attack. A pawn......
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isolated singularity (mathematics)
...the function cannot be expressed as an infinite series in powers of z) although, at points arbitrarily close to the singularity, the function may be analytic, in which case it is called an isolated singularity. In general, because a function behaves in an anomalous manner at singular points, singularities must be treated separately when analyzing the function, or mathematical model, in.....
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Isolated State, The (work by Thünen)
Johann Heinrich von Thünen, a Prussian landowner, introduced an early theory of agricultural location in Der isolierte Staat (1826) (The Isolated State). The Thünen model suggests that accessibility to the market (town) can create a complete system of agricultural land use. His model envisaged a single market surrounded by farmland, both situated on a plain of complete....
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isolated thunderstorm (meteorology)
Isolated thunderstorms tend to occur where there are light winds that do not change dramatically with height and where there is abundant moisture at low and middle levels of the atmosphere—that is, from near the surface of the ground up to around 10,000 metres (33,000 feet) in altitude. These storms are sometimes called air-mass or local thunderstorms. They are mostly vertical in......
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isolating language
a language in which each word form consists typically of a single morpheme. Examples are Classical Chinese (to a far greater extent than the modern Chinese languages) and Vietnamese. An isolating language tends also to be an analytic language, so that the terms isolating and analytic are often used interchangeably in linguistics....
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isolation (preventive medicine)
in medicine, separation of an infected individual (human or animal) from the healthy until that individual is no longer able to transmit the disease. In its strictest sense, the practice of isolation differs from that of quarantine, which is the detention of an individual who may have been exposed to a communicable disease until it is deemed certain that he has escaped infection. See ...
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isolation (chemistry)
in chemistry, separation of a substance into its components and the removal of impurities. There are a large number of important applications in fields such as medicine and manufacturing....
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isolation (theatre)
Almost all productions (the so-called happenings of the 1960s and guerrilla theatre are notable exceptions) endeavour to achieve two basic aims. First, every production seeks to impart a special quality to the theatrical area. Use of a theatrical building may in itself provide a heightened sense of locale. Otherwise, special decoration of familiar locales (town, market square) may transform......
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isolation transformer (technology)
Impedance-matching transformers are used to match the impedance of a source and that of its load, for most efficient transfer of energy. Isolation transformers are usually employed for reasons of safety to isolate a piece of equipment from the source of power....
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isolationism (foreign policy)
The extreme isolationism that gripped the United States in the 1930s reinforced British appeasement and French paralysis. To Americans absorbed with their own distress, Hitler and Mussolini appeared as slightly ridiculous rabble-rousers on movie-house newsreels and certainly no concern of theirs. Moreover, the revisionist theory that the United States had been sucked into war in 1917 through......
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isolationist (politics)
Between World Wars I and II Canada followed an isolationist foreign policy, mainly a consequence of the return to government in 1921 of the Liberal Party, which had come to depend on French Canadian support. French Canadians were overwhelmingly isolationist, and they strengthened the general disposition of Canadians to express their new national feelings by becoming completely autonomous within......
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isolator (scientific instrument)
...The embryos of mammals are normally bacteriologically sterile, and germfree young can be obtained by cesarean operation, under germfree conditions, with transfer of the mature embryo into a sterile isolator. These young must be fed by hand to avoid contamination by the mother. Subsequent reproduction of hand-reared germfree mammals allows routine production of germfree colonies. Germfree rats.....
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Isole Egadi (islands, Italy)
small mountainous group of islets belonging to Italy, in the Mediterranean just off the western coast of Sicily, with a total area of 15 square miles (39 square km). The principal islands are Favignana, the largest (7 square miles [18 square km]), Levanzo, and Marettimo. In the Battle of the Aegates in 241 bc, the Carthaginian fleet was defeated there by the Roman ...
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Isole Eolie (islands, Italy)
volcanic group in the Tyrrhenian Sea (of the Mediterranean) off the north coast of Sicily, Italy. The group, with a total land area of 34 square miles (88 square km), consists of seven major islands and several islets lying in a general “Y” shape. The base of the “Y” is formed by the westernmost island, Alicudi, the northern tip by Stromboli, and the southern tip by Vul...
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Isole Pelagie (island group, Italy)
group of islands in the Mediterranean Sea between Malta and Tunisia, south of Sicily; administratively they form the commune of Lampedusa. The group consists of the islands of Lampedusa and Linosa and the Isolotto (islet) Lampione, standing on the eastern edge of the submarine platform of the east coast of Tunisia....
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isolecithal yolk (embryology)
the nutritive material of an egg, used as food by a developing, embryonic animal. Eggs with relatively little, uniformly distributed yolk are termed isolecithal. This condition occurs in invertebrates and in all but the lowest mammals. Eggs with abundant yolk concentrated in one hemisphere of the egg are termed telolecithal. This occurs in many invertebrates and in all vertebrates lower than......
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isoleucine (chemical compound)
an amino acid present in most common proteins, sometimes comprising 2 to 10 percent by weight. First isolated in 1904 from fibrin, a protein involved in blood-clot formation, isoleucine is one of several so-called essential amino acids for chicks, rats, and other higher animals, including man; i.e., they cannot synthesize it and require dietary sources. In microorganisms and plants, isoleu...
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“isolierte Staat, Der” (work by Thünen)
Johann Heinrich von Thünen, a Prussian landowner, introduced an early theory of agricultural location in Der isolierte Staat (1826) (The Isolated State). The Thünen model suggests that accessibility to the market (town) can create a complete system of agricultural land use. His model envisaged a single market surrounded by farmland, both situated on a plain of complete....
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Isolobodon portoricensis (extinct rodent)
Hunting by native islanders and early European colonists led to the extermination of hutias on various islands. For example, the Puerto Rican hutia (Isolobodon portoricensis) was probably indigenous to Hispaniola and introduced to Puerto Rico and some of the Virgin Islands, but it is now extinct. Some hutias are not endangered, but others are rare and becoming more so owing to......
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Isolt (legendary figures)
principal characters of a famous medieval love-romance, based on a Celtic legend (itself based on an actual Pictish king). Though the archetypal poem from which all extant forms of the legend are derived has not been preserved, a comparison of the early versions yields an idea of its content....
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isolysergic acid (chemical compound)
...blue to purplish, sometimes white, flowers, 12 cm across, among heart-shaped leaves. It is native to tropical America. This vine bears seeds containing the alkaloids d-lysergic and d-isolysergic acids (similar to LSD), and the seeds are used traditionally among Mexico’s Zapotec Indians for ceremonial and curative purposes. Common morning glory (I. purpurea), an annua...
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isomer (nuclear physics)
in nuclear physics, any of two or more nuclides (species of atomic nuclei) that consist of the same number of protons and the same number of neutrons but differ in energy and manner of radioactive decay, and that exist for a measurable interval of time. The half-life of the more energetic isomer may be as short as about 10-11 second but, in some extreme cases, as long as several years....
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isomer (chemistry)
in nuclear physics, any of two or more nuclides (species of atomic nuclei) that consist of the same number of protons and the same number of neutrons but differ in energy and manner of radioactive decay, and that exist for a measurable interval of time. The half-life of the more energetic isomer may be as short as about 10-11 second but, in some extreme cases, as long as several years....
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isomer shift (physics)
...level. Results are in close agreement with the measured decay time, indicating that the width of recoil-free gamma rays in fact is determined entirely by the lifetime of the decaying state. The isomer shift, the change in the energy of a nuclear gamma ray due to the electrostatic interaction between nuclear and electronic charge, provides a measurement of the change in the nuclear-charge......
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isomerase (enzyme)
any one of a class of enzymes that catalyze reactions involving a structural rearrangement of a molecule. Alanine racemase, for example, catalyzes the conversion of L-alanine into its isomeric (mirror-image) form, D-alanine. An isomerase called mutarotase catalyzes the conversion of α-d-glucose into β-d-glucose. ...
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isomeric transition (physics)
There is a wide range of rates of half-lives for the gamma-emission process. Usually dipole transitions (see below Gamma transition), in which the gamma ray carries off one ℏ unit of angular momentum, are fast, less than nanoseconds (one nanosecond equals 10−9 second). The law of conservation of angular momentum requires that the sum of angular momenta of the radiation......
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isomerism (chemistry)
the existence of molecules that have the same numbers of the same kinds of atoms (and hence the same formula) but differ in chemical and physical properties. The roots of the word isomer are Greek—isos plus meros, or “equal parts.” Stated colloquial...
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isomerization (chemical reaction)
the chemical process by which a compound is transformed into any of its isomeric forms, i.e., forms with the same chemical composition but with different structure or configuration and, hence, generally with different physical and chemical properties. An example is the conversion of butane, a hydrocarbon with four carbon atoms joined in a straight chain, to its branched-...
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isometric contraction (physiology)
When a muscle is to lift a constant load (isotonic conditions) after stimulation starts, the force increases, just as in an isometric contraction, and, when the force is equal to the load, the muscle begins to shorten and lifts the load. When both the activity of the muscle and the force in it begin to decline, the load stretches the muscle back to its initial length. The tension in the muscle......
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