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Slump of 1929 (economy)
worldwide economic downturn that began in 1929 and lasted until about 1939. It was the longest and most severe depression ever experienced by the industrialized Western world, sparking fundamental changes in economic institutions, macroeconomic policy, and economic theory. Although it originated in the United States...
slump structure (geology)
...and folds brought about by metamorphism or other such causes. Deformation structures can be grouped into several classes, as follows: (1) founder and load structures, (2) convoluted structures, (3) slump structures, (4) injection structures, such as sandstone dikes or sills, and (5) organic structures....
slump, submarine (geology)
in a submarine canyon or on a continental slope, relatively rapid and sporadic downslope composed of sediment and organic debris that has built up slowly into an unstable or marginally stable mass. The greatest documented distance that an individual s...
Słupsk (Poland)
city, Pomorskie województwo (province), northern Poland. It lies along the Słupia River, 11 miles (18 km) from the Baltic coast. A manufacturing centre producing mainly furniture for export, it is situated on the Gdynia-Szczecin railway line. The Museum of Middle Pomerania is a notable cultural institution....
slurry
watery mixture or suspension of insoluble matter. In the manufacture of portland cement, a mixture of the raw materials with water is called a slurry. Cement may be piped as a slurry in building construction...
slurry fuel (fuel)
...coal and a liquid such as water or oil. The traditional mixture, first patented in England in 1891, consists of 50 percent coal and 50 percent water by weight. So-called heavy coal slurries or slurry fuels consist of 65 to 75 percent coal, with the remainder being water, methanol, or oil. Unlike traditional slurry—which is transported by pipeline to the user, who separates the water......
Slushball Earth hypothesis
in geology and climatology, a counter-premise to the “Snowball Earth” hypothesis. The “Slushball Earth” hypothesis, developed by American geologist Richard Cowen, contends that Earth was not completely frozen over during periods of extreme glaciation in Precambrian times. Rath...
Sluter, Claes (Dutch sculptor)
influential master of early Netherlandish sculpture, who moved beyond the dominant French taste of the time and into highly individual monumental, naturalistic forms. The works of Claus Sluter infuse realism with spirituality and monumental grandeur. His influence was extensive among both painters and sculptors of 15th-century northern Europe....
Sluter, Claus (Dutch sculptor)
influential master of early Netherlandish sculpture, who moved beyond the dominant French taste of the time and into highly individual monumental, naturalistic forms. The works of Claus Sluter infuse realism with spirituality and monumental grandeur. His influence was extensive among both painters and sculptors of 15th-century northern Europe....
Sluter, Klaas (Dutch sculptor)
influential master of early Netherlandish sculpture, who moved beyond the dominant French taste of the time and into highly individual monumental, naturalistic forms. The works of Claus Sluter infuse realism with spirituality and monumental grandeur. His influence was extensive among both painters and sculptors of 15th-century northern Europe....
Slutsk (Belarus)
city, Minsk oblast (region), central Belarus. The city dates from the 12th century and was incorporated in 1795. In the 18th century it was a centre of weaving and other handicrafts, including the working of gold and silver. It now has food, engineering, metalworking, furniture, and linen industries. Pop. (2006 est.)......
Slutskaya, Irina (Russian figure skater)
Russian figure skater who dominated women’s figure skating in the late 1990s and early 2000s. Although her career was briefly interrupted by health problems, Slutskaya went on to become the first woman to win seven European championship titles....
Slutzky, Meir (Israeli military leader, intelligence chief, and politician)
March 17, 1921Tiberias, British PalestineJuly 17, 2009IsraelIsraeli military leader, intelligence chief, and politician who was the only person in Israel’s history to lead the foreign intelligence agency Mossad and military intelligence simultaneously; he was credited with modernizin...
Sluys, Battle of (European history)
...in the Rhineland and Low Countries. But, to succeed, the English needed a prompt and massive victory on French soil, something Philip VI was able to prevent. Despite Edward’s naval triumph off Sluys (1340), which confirmed English control of the seas, his initial advantage was lost as his resources and allies melted away. A truce in September 1340 was extended for several years, during.....
SLV-3 (Indian launch vehicle)
India launched its first satellite in 1980 using the four-stage solid-fueled Satellite Launch Vehicle 3 (SLV-3), which was developed from the U.S. Scout launch vehicle first used in the 1960s. India did not have a prior ballistic missile program, but parts of the SLV-3 were later incorporated into India’s first IRBM, Agni. The four-stage Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle (PSLV) was then develo...
SLV-III (Indian launch vehicle)
India launched its first satellite in 1980 using the four-stage solid-fueled Satellite Launch Vehicle 3 (SLV-3), which was developed from the U.S. Scout launch vehicle first used in the 1960s. India did not have a prior ballistic missile program, but parts of the SLV-3 were later incorporated into India’s first IRBM, Agni. The four-stage Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle (PSLV) was then develo...
Sly (opera by Wolf-Ferrari)
...di Susanna (1909; The Secret of Susanne), presented 18th-century styles orchestrated in the manner of the 20th century. Comic points in these operas are delicately underlined. In Sly (1927; based on the opening scenes of The Taming of the Shrew) and in his only tragic opera, I gioielli della Madonna (1911; The Jewels of the Madonna), he was influenced.....
Sly and the Family Stone (American music group)
American rock and funk band that became widely popular in the late 1960s with a string of anthemlike pop singles, stirring socially relevant albums, and memorable live performances. The members were Sly Stone (original name Sylvester Stewart; b. March 15, 1943Denton, Texas, U.S....
Slyde, Jimmy (American tap dancer)
Oct. 27, 1927Atlanta, Ga.May 16, 2008Hanson, Mass.American tap dancer who was a master of rhythm tap, in which the dancer’s feet become a percussion instrument...
Slye, Leonard Franklin (American actor-singer)
American cowboy actor-singer (b. Nov. 5, 1911/12, Cincinnati, Ohio--d. July 6, 1998, Apple Valley, Calif.), starred in some 90 motion pictures and over 100 episodes of a weekly television show from the late 1930s to the mid-1950s and reigned as king of the cowboys. The quintessential "good guy in a white hat," he subdued villains by shooting the guns from their hands instead of trying to kill them...
slype (architecture)
in architecture, covered passageway in a medieval English cathedral or monastery. The slype may lead from either the transept or the nave of the church proper to either the chapter house (the monks’ assembly room) or the deanery (the residence of the dean). Most frequently it is adjacent to and east of the cloisters,...
Sm (chemical element)
(Sm), chemical element, rare-earth metal of the lanthanoid series of the periodic table. Samarium is silvery white in colour and is relatively stable in air. It was isolated as an impure oxide and spectroscopically identified as a new element (1879) by...
SM fibre (communications technology)
...Graded-index (GI) fibre reduces multimode dispersion by grading the refractive index of the core so that it smoothly tapers between the core centre and the cladding. Another type of fibre, known as single-mode (SM) fibre, eliminates multimode dispersion by reducing the diameter of the core to a point at which it passes only light rays of the zeroth order mode. Typical SM core diameters are 10.....
SMA (telescope array, Mauna Kea, Hawaii, United States)
...de Bure facility in France, and the Japanese Nobeyama Radio Observatory. In 2003 the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, in collaboration with the Academia Sinica of Taiwan, completed the Submillimeter Array (SMA), located near the summit of Mauna Kea, Hawaii, at an elevation of 4,080 metres (13,385 feet). This is an eight-element array of 6-metre (20-foot) dishes designed to work at.....
Smack (American musician)
American musical arranger, bandleader, and pianist who was a leading pioneer in the sound, style, and instrumentation of big band jazz....
Smackout (American radio program)
...and social gatherings before they began touring on the vaudeville circuit in 1922. They first appeared on radio in 1924. In 1931 they met Don Quinn, a radio writer who starred them in his show Smackout, based on a grocer who was always smack out of goods but never out of tall tales. In 1935 the show was purchased by Johnson’s Wax. Fibber McGee and Molly made its radi...
Smackover Formation (geological formation, North America)
...marine sediments include clastics interfingering with carbonates in the Atlantic and Gulf Coast basins. Middle Jurassic strata include evaporites, red beds, carbonates, and shelf-margin reefs. The Smackover Formation of the Gulf Coast sequences is a sedimentary unit typical of the Middle Jurassic....
Småland (province, Sweden)
landskap (province), southern Sweden, extending from the Baltic Sea on the east to the provinces of Halland and Västergötland on the west and from Östergötland on the north to Skåne and Blekinge on the sout...
Smale, Stephen (American mathematician)
American mathematician, who was awarded the Fields Medal in 1966 for his work on topology in higher dimensions....
Small, Adam (South African poet)
...poet who emerged in the 1940s, veered from tightly structured, rather impersonal verse to freer forms expressive of human vulnerability. Of the poets writing in the vernacular of the Cape Coloureds, Adam Small was the most talented....
Small, Albion W. (American sociologist)
sociologist who won recognition in the United States for sociology as an academic discipline with professional standards. In 1892 he became the first professor of sociology in the United States, at the University of Chicago, where he organized the firs...
Small, Albion Woodbury (American sociologist)
sociologist who won recognition in the United States for sociology as an academic discipline with professional standards. In 1892 he became the first professor of sociology in the United States, at the University of Chicago, where he organized the firs...
Small and Medium Entrepreneurs Union (European organization)
Following his resignation, Santer returned to the European Parliament, where he served as a member until 2004. From 2003 to 2005 he was also the president of the SME Union (Small and Medium Entrepreneurs Union), a network of probusiness conservative political organizations overseen by the European People’s Party. After stepping down from that post, he maintained the title of honorary presid...
small arm (military technology)
any handheld firearm....
small arms protective inserts (body armour)
...The IBA consists of an “outer tactical vest” made from layered Kevlar, which provides protection against shell fragments and most handgun bullets as large as 9 mm, and two ceramic “small arms protective inserts,” or SAPI plates, which can be inserted into the vest to provide additional protection. Altogether the full system weighs some 16 pounds (7.25 kg), but it pro...
Small Back Room, The (work by Balchin)
In The Small Back Room (1943), his best-known novel, Balchin describes the conversation, behaviour, and intrigues for position and power of the “backroom boys” with whom he worked during the war. Almost as successful is Mine Own Executioner (1945), a study of a psychiatrist unable to cure his own neuroses and of the tensions created in his marriage by his......
small beer (alcoholic beverage)
...single batch of brown malt in a top-fermentation process. The first and strongest extract gave the best-quality beer, called strong beer, and a third extract yielded the poorest-quality beer, called small beer. In the 18th century, London brewers departed from this practice and produced porter. Made from a mixture of malt extracts, porter was a strong, dark-coloured, highly hopped beer consumed...
small body (astronomy)
any natural solar system object other than the Sun and the major planets and dwarf planets and their satellites (moons). The small bodies populate the solar system in vast numbers and include the rocky asteroids,...
Small Catechism (work by Nowell)
Nowell’s “Small Catechism,” inserted before the order of confirmation in the Prayer Book of 1549 and supplemented in 1604, remains the official Anglican catechism. He was also the author of a “Larger Catechism” and a “Middle Catechism,” designed for school use, both printed in 1570....
Small Catechism (work by Luther)
Perhaps the most influential book produced by any Reformer was Martin Luther’s Small Catechism (1529), which added discussions of baptism and the Eucharist to the usual three subjects. Luther’s Large Catechism (1529) was intended for use by the clergy....
Small Ceremonies (novel by Shields)
...persistent theme in Shields’s fiction and poetry. She depicts the careful, contented lives of the middle class, expertly evoking their feelings and concerns. Her first two novels, Small Ceremonies (1976) and The Box Garden (1977), are interconnected, concerning the choices made by two sisters. In Happenstance (198...
small cubit (ancient Egyptian unit of measurement)
...small span. Fourteen digits, or one-half a cubit, equaled a large span. Sixteen digits, or four palms, made one t’ser. Twenty-four digits, or six palms, were a small cubit....
Small Dark Spot (feature, Neptune)
The high winds and relatively large amount of escaping internal heat may be responsible for the turbulence observed in Neptune’s visible atmosphere by Voyager 2. Two large dark ovals were clearly visible in Voyager images of Neptune’s southern hemisphere. The largest, called the Great Dark Spot because of its similarity in latitude and shape to Jupiter’s Great Red Spot, is com...
Small Faces, the (British rock group)
...Beck and future Rolling Stone Ron Wood in the Jeff Beck Group. Stewart’s collaboration with Beck ended in 1969 when, after two albums, he was persuaded by Wood (who had been fired by Beck) to join the Faces. Formerly the Small Faces, the band—also comprising Ronnie Lane, Ian McLagan, and Kenny Jones—played bluesy rock that appealed to Stewart’s long-standing interest...
small fruit fly (insect)
any member of a genus in the small fruit fly family, Drosophilidae (order Diptera). Drosophila species number about 1,500. Some species, particularly D. melanogaster, are used extensively in laboratory and field experiments on genetics and evolution because they are easy to raise and have a short life cycle (le...
Small Gaps Between Primes (paper by Goldston and Yildirim)
The next big breakthrough occurred in 2003, when American mathematician Daniel Goldston and Turkish mathematician Cem Yildirim published a paper, Small Gaps Between Primes, that established the existence of an infinite number of prime pairs within a small difference (16, with certain other assumptions). Although their proof was flawed, they corrected it with Hungarian......
small hail (meteorology)
The second is small hail (ice grains or pellets), which are transparent or translucent pellets of ice that are spherical, spheroidal, conical, or irregular in shape, with diameters of a few millimetres. They may consist of frozen raindrops, of largely melted and refrozen snowflakes, or of snow pellets encased in a thin layer of solid ice....
Small House at Allington, The (novel by Trollope)
novel by Anthony Trollope, published serially in The Cornhill Magazine from September 1862 to April 1864 and in two volumes in 1864, the fifth of his six Barsetshire novels....
small intestine (anatomy)
a long, narrow, folded or coiled tube extending from the stomach to the large intestine; it is the region where most digestion and absorption of food takes place. It is about 6.7 to 7.6 metres (22 to 25 feet) long, highly convoluted, and contained in the central and lower abdominal cavity. ...
Small Is Beautiful (work by Schumacher)
...country. Moreover, he questioned the presumed necessity of ever-increasing growth, urging instead the development of a non-capital-intensive, non-energy-intensive society. In his book Small Is Beautiful (1973), he argued that capitalism brought higher living standards at the cost of deteriorating culture. His belief that natural resources should be conserved led him to......
small letter (calligraphy)
in calligraphy, lowercase letters in most alphabets, in contrast to majuscule (uppercase or capital) letters. Minuscule letters cannot be fully contained between two real or imaginary parallel lines, since they have ascending stems (...
Small Magellanic Cloud (astronomy)
...gaseous envelope and lie about 22° apart in the sky near the south celestial pole. One of them, the Large Magellanic Cloud (LMC), is a luminous patch about 5° in diameter, and the other, the Small Magellanic Cloud (SMC), measures less than 2° across. The Magellanic Clouds are visible to the unaided eye in the Southern Hemisphere, but they cannot be observed from the norther...
Small, Millie (American singer)
...to play “Hey Joe” on the guitar. And new musical genres are often best sold to radio and record companies in a simplified comic form, as were ska, disco, and hip-hop, respectively, with Millie Small’s “My Boy Lollipop” (1964), Rick Dees’s “Disco Duck” (1976), and the Sugarhill Gang’s “Rapper’s Delight” (1979). I...
Small Missions for Advanced Research and Technology-1 (European Space Agency lunar probe)
first lunar probe of the European Space Agency. SMART-1 was launched on Sept. 27, 2003. The 367-kg (809-pound) probe had a xenon-ion engine that generated only 7 grams (0.2 ounce) of thrust, but it was sufficient to nudge SMART-1 from its first stop (the first Lagrangian point between Earth and the ...
small nuclear ribonucleoprotein particle (biochemistry)
...the exons is called RNA splicing. Each intron is removed in a separate series of reactions by a complicated piece of enzymatic machinery called a spliceosome. This machinery consists of a number of small nuclear ribonucleoprotein particles (snRNPs) that contain small nuclear RNAs (snRNAs)....
small nuclear RNA (biochemistry)
Many other small RNA molecules with specialized functions are present in cells. For example, small nuclear RNAs (snRNAs) are involved in RNA splicing (see below), and other small RNAs that form part of the enzymes telomerase or ribonuclease P are part of ribonucleoprotein particles. The RNA component of telomerase contains a short sequence that serves as a template for the addition of small...
small numbers, law of
The weak law of large numbers and the central limit theorem give information about the distribution of the proportion of successes in a large number of independent trials when the probability of success on each trial is p. In the mathematical formulation of these results, it is assumed that p is an arbitrary, but fixed, number in the interval (0, 1) and......
Small Passion (woodcut by Dürer)
Between 1507 and 1513 Dürer completed a “Passion” series in copperplate engravings, and between 1509 and 1511 he produced the Small Passion in woodcuts. Both of these works are characterized by their tendency toward spaciousness and serenity. During 1513 and 1514 Dürer created the greatest of his copperplate engravings: the “Knight, Death and......
Small Place, A (essay by Kincaid)
...John (1984) and Lucy (1990) were novels but were autobiographical in nature, as were most of Kincaid’s subsequent works, with an emphasis on mother-daughter relationships. A Small Place (1988), a three-part essay, continued her depiction of Antigua and her rage at its despoliation. Kincaid’s treatment of the themes of family relationships, pe...
Small Rain, The (work by L’Engle)
...attended boarding schools in Europe and the United States and graduated with honours from Smith College (B.A., 1941). She pursued a career in the theatre before publishing her first book, The Small Rain (1945), a novel about an aspiring pianist who chooses her art over personal relationships. After writing her first children’s book, And Both Were Young (1949), she began a.....
small rice rat (rodent)
Several related genera are also sometimes referred to as rice rats, including arboreal rice rats (Oecomys), dark rice rats (Melanomys), small rice rats (Microryzomys), and pygmy rice rats (Oligoryzomys), among others. All belong to the subfamily Sigmodontinae of the......
small scabious (plant)
...with deeply cut basal leaves and feathery stem leaves, produces fragrant, 5-centimetre (2-inch) flower heads in white, rose, crimson, blue, or deep mahogany purple. It is about 1 m (3 feet) tall. Small scabious (S. columbaria), from Eurasia and Africa, reaches 60 cm. It is a perennial, with toothed, elongate, oval basal leaves and cut stem leaves. The light-blue flowers are 3.5 cm......
Small Scale Experimental Machine (computer)
...A working model was completed late in 1947, and by June 1948 they had incorporated it in a small electronic computer that they built to prove the device’s effectiveness. The computer was called the Small Scale Experimental Machine (SSEM) or just “Baby.” It was the world’s first working stored-program computer, and the Williams tube became one of the two standard meth...
small span (ancient Egyptian unit of measurement)
...way. The basic subunit was the digit, doubtlessly a finger’s breadth, of which there were 28 in the royal cubit. Four digits equaled a palm, five a hand. Twelve digits, or three palms, equaled a small span. Fourteen digits, or one-half a cubit, equaled a large span. Sixteen digits, or four palms, made one t’ser. Twenty-four digits, or six palm...
small state plan (United States history)
...role in the opposition of the small states to representation according to population in the federal legislature. As an alternative to the Virginia (or large-state) Plan, Paterson submitted the New Jersey (or small-state) Plan, also called the Paterson Plan, which advocated an equal vote for all states. The issue was finally resolved with the compromise embodied in the bicameral......
small strain (mechanics)
...typically applied to them, that these conditions are realized in practice. Linearized expressions for strain in terms of [∂u/∂X], appropriate to this situation, are called small strain or infinitesimal strain. Expressions for strain will also be given that are valid for rotations and fractional length changes of arbitrary magnitude; such expressions are called finite...
Small Temple (archaeological site, Egypt)
site of two temples built by the Egyptian king Ramses II (reigned 1279–13 bce), now located in Aswān muḥāfaẓah (governorate), southern Egypt. In ancient times the area was at the southern frontier of pharaonic Egypt, facing Nubia. The four colossal statue...
Small Town Tyrant (work by Heinrich Mann)
...and his later books deal with the greed for wealth, position, and power in William’s Germany. Mann’s merciless portrait of a tyrannical provincial schoolmaster, Professor Unrat (1905; Small Town Tyrant), became widely known through its film version Der blaue Engel (1928; The Blue Angel). His Kaiserreich trilogy—consisting of Die Armen...
Small Trades (portrait collection by Penn)
...light. The resulting images combine simplicity and directness with great formal sophistication. A memorable series of portraits he created in 1950–51, collectively called Small Trades, was of labourers in New York, Paris, and London formally posed in their work clothes and holding the tools of their trade. This project eventually extended to places such as......
Small Waterplane Area Twin Hull (oceanography)
New ship designs that promise even greater stability and ease of use include that of the Small Waterplane Area Twin Hull (SWATH) variety. This design type requires the use of twin submerged, streamlined hulls to support a structure that rides above the water surface. The deck shape is entirely unconstrained by the hull shape, as is the case for conventional surface vessels. Ship motion is......
Small, William (American professor)
...an obsessive student, often spending 15 hours of the day with his books, 3 hours practicing his violin, and the remaining 6 hours eating and sleeping. The two chief influences on his learning were William Small, a Scottish-born teacher of mathematics and science, and George Wythe, the leading legal scholar in Virginia. From them Jefferson learned a keen appreciation of supportive mentors, a......
Small World: An Academic Romance (novel by Lodge)
Several of Lodge’s novels satirize academic life and share the same setting and recurring characters; these include Changing Places: A Tale of Two Campuses (1975), Small World: An Academic Romance (1984), and Nice Work (1988). The latter two were short-listed for the Booker Prize. Among his later novels are Paradise News (1991), Therapy (1995), .....
small-angle neutron scattering (physics)
...information by mathematically analyzing the radiation scattered or diffracted by the nanoparticles. The techniques of greatest relevance to nanoscience are small-angle X-ray scattering (SAXS) and small-angle neutron scattering (SANS), along with their surface-specific analogues GISAXS and GISANS, where GI is “grazing incidence,” and X-ray or neutron reflectometry (XR/NR). The......
small-cell carcinoma (pathology)
Small-cell carcinoma (SCLC), also called oat-cell carcinoma, is rarely found in people who have never smoked. It is characterized by cells that are small and round, oval, or shaped like oat grains. SCLC is the most aggressive type of lung cancer; because it tends to spread quickly before symptoms become apparent, the survival rate is very low....
small-eared zorro (mammal)
...(Arctic fox)1 species of the northern polar region.Genus Atelocynus (small-eared zorro)1 species of South America.Genus Cerdocyon (crab-eating......
small-fruited cranberry (plant)
fruit of any of several small creeping or trailing plants of the genus Vaccinium (family Ericaceae), related to the blueberries. The small-fruited, or northern, cranberry (V. oxycoccus) is found in marshy land in northern North America and Asia and in northern and central Europe. Its stems are wiry and creeping; the leaves are evergreen, oval or elliptical, and less than......
small-headed fly (insect)
any member of a family of flies in the insect order Diptera that are named for their swollen abdomen. It is also characterized by an extremely small head and a humped back. Some adults have a slender proboscis (feeding organ) and feed from flowers, whereas others lack a proboscis and probably do not feed in their adult stage. Eggs are laid on leaves and flowers. Upon hatching, the larvae are small...
small-leaf linden (plant)
...shade tree, reaching 40 metres (130 feet) in height, provides wood for beehives, crating, furniture, and excelsior. It is a popular bee tree, linden honey being pale and of distinctive flavour. Small-leaf, or little-leaf, linden (T. cordata), a European tree, is widely planted as a street tree. The hybrid Crimean linden (T. euchlora, a cross between T. cordata and T.......
small-scale industry
Light, or small-scale, industry may be characterized by the nondurability of manufactured products and a smaller capital investment in plants and equipment, and it may involve nonstandard products, such as customized or craft work. The labour force may be either low skilled, as in textile work and clothing manufacture, food processing, and plastics manufacture, or highly skilled, as in......
small-seal style (calligraphy)
in Chinese calligraphy, a standardized and simplified form of the earlier dazhuan script, in which all lines are of even thickness and curves and circles are relatively predominant. Its development during the Qin dynasty (221–206 bc) is traditiona...
small-spotted genet (mammal)
Except for the small-spotted genet (G. genetta), which also occurs in western Asia and southern Europe, they are found only in Africa. Genets live alone or in pairs and are active mainly at night. They frequent forests, grasslands, and brush and are as agile in the trees as on the ground. They prey on small mammals and birds. Litters contain two or three young....
smallage (plant)
(Apium graveolens), wild celery; strongly scented, erect, biennial herb of the carrot family (Apiaceae, or Umbelliferae) widely distributed in moist places within the temperate zones, and grown for use as a flavouring similar to celery. In traditional medicine, smallage roots are used as a carminat...
Smaller Computer System Interface (computing)
Once common standard for connecting peripheral devices (disks, modems, printers, etc.) to small and medium-sized computers. SCSI has given way to faster standards, such as Firewire and USB....
smaller water strider (insect)
(the latter name derives from the fact that the body, widest at the middle or hind legs, tapers to the abdomen, giving the impression of broad shoulders), any of the approximately 300 species of the insect family Veliidae (order Heteroptera). Smaller water striders—which may be brown, black, or silvery in colour...
Smalley, Richard E. (American chemist and physicist)
American chemist and physicist, who shared the 1996 Nobel Prize for Chemistry with Robert F. Curl, Jr., and Sir Harold W. Kroto for their joint discovery of carbon-60 (C60, or buckminsterfullerene) and the fullerenes....
Smalley, Richard Erret (American chemist and physicist)
American chemist and physicist, who shared the 1996 Nobel Prize for Chemistry with Robert F. Curl, Jr., and Sir Harold W. Kroto for their joint discovery of carbon-60 (C60, or buckminsterfullerene) and the fullerenes....
Smallholders’ Party (political party, Hungary)
...Entente pressure, Parliament had voted a law dethroning the Habsburgs, but even Hungary’s own antilegitimists never took it as morally binding), excluded it in practice. In return for this, the Smallholders’ Party agreed with the antilegitimists among the Christian nationalists to form a new Party of Unity under Bethlen’s leadership....
smallmouth bass (fish)
...of the sunfish family, Centrarchidae (order Perciformes). Black basses are found in eastern North America. Two of them, the largemouth (see photograph) and smallmouth black basses (M. salmoides and M. dolomieui), have been introduced in other countries and are prized by fishermen as hard-fighting game fishes....
smallmouth black bass (fish)
...of the sunfish family, Centrarchidae (order Perciformes). Black basses are found in eastern North America. Two of them, the largemouth (see photograph) and smallmouth black basses (M. salmoides and M. dolomieui), have been introduced in other countries and are prized by fishermen as hard-fighting game fishes....
smallpox (disease)
acute infectious disease that begins with a high fever, headache, and back pain and then proceeds to an eruption on the skin that leaves the face and limbs covered with cratered pockmarks, or pox. For centuries smallpox was one of the world’s most dreaded plagues, killing as many as 30 percent of i...
Smalls, Robert (American politician)
African American slave who became a naval hero for the Union in the American Civil War and went on to serve as a congressman from South Carolina during Reconstruction....
Smalltalk (computer language)
An important trend in programming languages is support for data encapsulation, or object-oriented code. Data encapsulation is best illustrated by the language Smalltalk, in which all programming is done in terms of so-called objects. An object in Smalltalk or similar object-oriented languages consists of data together with the procedures (program segments) to operate on that data. Encapsulation......
smalltooth sand tiger shark (fish)
The ragged-tooth sharks, O. ferox and O. noronhai, are largely deep-water species and are infrequently encountered....
Smallwood, Joey (Canadian politician)
Canadian politician who vigorously campaigned for Newfoundland’s admission into Canada and who, one day after Newfoundland became the nation’s 10th province (March 31, 1949), became its premier (1949–71)....
Smallwood, Joseph Roberts (Canadian politician)
Canadian politician who vigorously campaigned for Newfoundland’s admission into Canada and who, one day after Newfoundland became the nation’s 10th province (March 31, 1949), became its premier (1949–71)....
smaltite (mineral)
a cobalt-rich, arsenic-poor member of a series of cobalt nickel arsenide minerals (see skutterudite)....
Sman-bla-rgyal-po (Buddhism)
the healing Buddha, widely worshiped in Tibet, China, and Japan. According to popular belief in those countries, some illnesses are effectively cured by merely touching his image or calling out his name. More serious illnesses, however, require the performance of complex ritual acts, as described in the principal scripture of the Bhaiṣajya-guru cult. Bhaiṣajya-guru is associated with...
Smara (Western Sahara)
...coastal zone. Further Spanish penetration was hindered by French claims to Mauritania and by partisans of Sheikh Māʾ al-ʿAynayn, who between 1898 and 1902 constructed the town of Semara at an inland oasis. Cape Juby (Ṭarfāyah) was occupied for Spain by Col. Francisco Bens in 1916, Güera was occupied in 1920, and Semara and the rest of the interior were....
Smaragdolanius leucotis (bird)
The slaty-capped shrike-vireo (Vireolanius leucotis) of northern South America is a heavily built forest bird with an olive green back and a slaty gray head punctuated with yellow. Much more subdued in colouring, the chestnut-sided shrike-vireo (V. melitophrys) is greenish brown above and white below, with a gray head and both black and yellow stripes running through the eye. The......
smart bomb (munition)
type of precision-guided munition. Like a regular bomb, a smart bomb falls to the target solely by the force of gravity, but its fins or wings have control surfaces that move in response to guidance commands, enabling adjustments to be made to the angle of the bomb’s descent or the direction of its fall. The bomb glides, rather than falls, to the target....