SharpBranch: August 2004

Tuesday, August 31, 2004

K.c.m.g.

Knight commander of St. Michael and St. George, member of the second highest rank of a British order of knighthood. See Saint Michael and Saint George, The Most Distinguished Order of.

Monday, August 30, 2004

Mercosur

Spanish acronym of �Common Market of the South (�Mercado Com�n del Sur�)�, Portuguese �Mercado Comum do Sul (Mercosul)� South American regional economic organization. Mercosur grew out of earlier efforts to integrate the economies of Latin America through the Latin American Free Trade Association (1960) and its successor, the Latin American Integration Association (1980). In 1985 Argentina and Brazil signed the Declaration of Igua�u, which created a bilateral commission to promote the integration

Sunday, August 29, 2004

Albany

City, seat (1851) of Linn county, western Oregon, U.S., in the Willamette Valley, at the juncture of the Willamette and Calapooia rivers, 26 miles (42 km) south of Salem. Established in 1848 by Walter and Thomas Monteith and named for the New York state capital, it became a shipping point for wool, grain, and cascara bark (which is used medicinally). The Oregon and California (now Southern Pacific)

Saturday, August 28, 2004

Hyaluronidase

Any of a group of enzymes that catalyze the hydrolysis (chemical decomposition involving the elements of water) of certain complex carbohydrates such as hyaluronic acid and chondroitin sulfates. The enzymes have been found in insects, leeches, snake venom, mammalian tissues (testis being the richest mammalian source), and in bacteria.

Friday, August 27, 2004

Yaj�

A yaj�a is always purposeful, even though the aim may be as general as sustaining the natural order of the universe. Correct performance

Thursday, August 26, 2004

Pencil Drawing

Drawing executed with an instrument composed of graphite enclosed in a wood casing and intended either as a sketch for a more elaborate work in another medium, an exercise in visual expression, or a finished work. The cylindrical graphite pencil, because of its usefulness in easily producing linear gray-black strokes, became the successor of the older, metallic

Tuesday, August 24, 2004

Spanish Socialist Workers' Party

Spanish �Partido Socialista Obrero Espa�ol (PSOE)� socialist party that played an important role in 20th-century Spanish politics. The party was founded in 1879 by the Madrid typographer Pablo Iglesias. He was also the founder in 1888 of the party's affiliated trade union confederation, the Uni�n General de Trabajadores (UGT; General Union of Workers). The party grew slowly at first, partly because the UGT had to compete with the

Monday, August 23, 2004

Earth, Composition of the mantle

The composition of the upper mantle is less easily determined than that of the crust. Samples of mantle rock come mainly from two sources: ophiolites and xenoliths. The latter, in particular, include rocks that have been brought from great depth by explosive eruptions. Most notably, the occurrence of diamonds with some xenoliths requires a source beyond 150 kilometres

Sunday, August 22, 2004

Bulb Rot

Widespread disease that can infect all flower and crop bulbs and is caused by a variety of fungi and a few bacteria. Shoots fail to emerge or leaves are stunted, yellow to reddish or purplish, and they later wilt and die; roots, usually few, are discoloured and decayed. The rot often starts at the bulb base (root plate), progressing upward and outward. Fungal rots are usually

Saturday, August 21, 2004

Quagga

Also called �bonte quagga�, or �Burchell's zebra� African species of zebra (q.v.).

Friday, August 20, 2004

Ambros, August Wilhelm

Ambros studied law, entered the civil service in 1840, and became public prosecutor in Prague in 1850. A keen, well-trained musician and composer of a Czech opera, Bretislaw a Jitka, he also established himself as a brilliant writer on music. His pamphlet �ber

Thursday, August 19, 2004

Jezreel

The Valley of Jezreel

Wednesday, August 18, 2004

Cohen

Also spelled �kohen (Hebrew: �priest�)�, plural �cohanim�, or �cohens� Jewish priest, one who is a descendant of Zadok, founder of the priesthood of Jerusalem when the First Temple was built by Solomon (10th century BC) and through Zadok related to Aaron, the first Jewish priest, who was appointed to that office by his younger brother, Moses. Though laymen such as Gideon, David, and Solomon offered sacrifice as God commanded, the Hebrew priesthood

Tuesday, August 17, 2004

Death Rite, Rites and customs among secular materialists

It is significant, however, that, even where secularist principles are consciously professed, the dead are rarely disposed of without some semblance of ceremony. A deeply rooted feeling prompts most people to treat a dead human body with a respect that is not felt for a dead animal. It is significant that Communists make pilgrimages to the graves of Lenin and Marx;

Monday, August 16, 2004

Toothwort

Any of about 10 species of perennial herbs belonging to the genus Dentaria, of the mustard family (Brassicaceae), native to northern temperate areas. The name toothwort refers to the plant's toothed, or scaly, rootstock. The four-petaled flowers, borne in a terminal cluster, are white, pink, or pale purple. Toothwort, pepperwort, or crinklewort (D.

Sunday, August 15, 2004

Ahmose Ii

In 570, after Apries' unsuccessful campaign against Cyrene, in modern Libya, the Egyptian

Saturday, August 14, 2004

Ancillon, Johann Peter Friedrich

Educated in Geneva, Ancillon acquired a chair in history at the Berlin Military Academy in 1792. After the publication of Tableau des r�volutions

Friday, August 13, 2004

Bekhterev, Vladimir

Bekhterev received a doctorate from the Medical-Surgical Academy of St. Petersburg in 1881 and then studied abroad for four years. He returned to Russia in 1885 to become professor

Thursday, August 12, 2004

Iriga

City, southeastern Luzon, Philippines. It is located in the central part of Bicol Peninsula, about 20 miles (30 km) southeast of Naga. Iriga is named for the extinct volcano (3,976 feet [1,212 m]) in whose shadow it stands. The land surrounding Mount Iriga is extremely rough and suitable mainly for abaca (Manila hemp) plantations. Agriculture is the main economic activity in the area. Inc. city,

Wednesday, August 11, 2004

Constructivism

Russian �Konstruktivizm� Russian artistic and architectural movement that was first influenced by Cubism and Futurism and is generally considered to have been initiated in 1913 with the �painting reliefs� - abstract geometric constructions - of Vladimir Tatlin. The expatriate Russian sculptors Antoine Pevsner and Naum Gabo joined Tatlin and his followers in Moscow, and upon publication

Tuesday, August 10, 2004

Beira

Port city, central Mozambique. Beira is situated on the Mozambique Channel (Indian Ocean) at the mouths of the P�ngo� and B�zi rivers. It was founded in 1891 as the headquarters of the Companhia de Mo�ambique (�Mozambique Company�) on the site of an old Muslim settlement. The city's administration passed from the trading company to the Portuguese government in 1942 and then to independent

Monday, August 09, 2004

Computers, Whirlwind

New hardware continued to be invented, though. In the United States, Jay Forrester of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and Jan Aleksander Rajchman of the Radio Corporation of America came up with a new kind of memory based on magnetic cores that was fast enough to enable MIT to build the first real-time computer, Whirlwind. A real-time computer is one that

Sunday, August 08, 2004

Hippocrates

Trustworthy information about Hippocrates' life is scanty. His younger contemporary Plato referred to him twice. In the Protagoras Plato called Hippocrates �the Asclepiad of Cos� who taught students for fees and implied that Hippocrates was as well known as a physician as Polyclitus and Phidias were as sculptors. It is now widely accepted that an �Asclepiad� was

Saturday, August 07, 2004

France, History Of, The restoration of the empire

When by the end of the 8th century Charles was master of a great part of the West, he reestablished the empire in his own name. He was crowned emperor in Rome (Christmas Day, 800), by Pope Leo III. Charlemagne's powers in Rome and in relation to the Papal States, which were incorporated, with some degree of autonomy, into the Frankish empire, were clarified. Although his new title did

Friday, August 06, 2004

Harsch, Joseph Close

American newspaper and broadcast journalist who, during his 60-year career with The Christian Science Monitor, was noted for his presence at many of the period's most historic events and for his vivid reporting of those events; Great Britain's Queen Elizabeth II made him an honorary C.B.E. in 1965 (b. May 25, 1905, Toledo, Ohio--d. June 3, 1998, Jamestown, R.I.).

Thursday, August 05, 2004

Telephone And Telephone System, Early telegraph facsimile

Facsimile transmission over wires traces its origins to Alexander Bain, a Scottish mechanic. In 1843, less than seven years after the invention of the telegraph by Samuel F.B. Morse, Bain received a British patent for �improvements in producing and regulating electric currents and improvements in timepieces and in electric printing and signal telegraphs.� Bain's fax

Wednesday, August 04, 2004

Alabama State University

Public, coeducational institution of higher learning in Montgomery, Alabama, U.S. It is a historically black school, and its enrollment is predominantly African American. Alabama State offers bachelor's and master's degree programs in the schools of Music and Graduate Studies and colleges of Business Administration, Education, and Arts and Sciences. An educational

Monday, August 02, 2004

Abasiyanik, Sait Faik

Abasiyan

Sunday, August 01, 2004

Vedic Religion

The only extant Vedic materials are the texts known as the Vedas, which were written down over a period of about 10 centuries, from about the 15th to the 5th century BC, this being the period when Vedism was a living force. The Vedic corpus is written in an archaic Sanskrit. The most important texts are also the oldest ones. They are the four collections (Samhita) that we call the Veda,

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