ChiefBell: June 2004

Wednesday, June 30, 2004

Polgar, Zsuzsa

At four years of age,

Tuesday, June 29, 2004

Yalta Conference

It had already been decided that Germany

Monday, June 28, 2004

Gauteng

Province, northeastern South Africa. It consists of the cities of Pretoria, Johannesburg, Germiston, and Vereeniging and their surrounding metropolitan areas in the eastern part of the Witwatersrand region. Gauteng is the smallest South African province. It is bordered by the provinces of Northern on the north, Mpumalanga on the east, Free State on the south, and

Sunday, June 27, 2004

Cramer's Rule

In which det A is the determinant of the matrix A (in which the elements of each row are the coefficients

Saturday, June 26, 2004

Allele

Also called �Allelomorph, � any one of two or more genes that may occur alternatively at a given site (locus) on a chromosome. Alleles may occur in pairs, or there may be multiple alleles affecting the expression (phenotype) of a particular trait. If the paired alleles are the same, the organism is said to be homozygous for that trait; if they are different, the organism is heterozygous. A dominant allele

Friday, June 25, 2004

United Nations

Under an agreement signed on July 3 on Governors Island, N.Y., by Lieut. Gen. Raoul C�dras, the Haitian army commander, and the Rev. Jean-Bertrand Aristide, the president deposed in September 1991, UN personnel were supposed to help the transition to democratic government by separating the police force from the army. On October 11, however, 40 or 50 "toughs" protected by police prevented

Thursday, June 24, 2004

Wilder, Gene

As a youth in Milwaukee, Wilder was a student of the renowned acting instructor Herman Gottlieb, and in 1955 he graduated from the University of Iowa with a degree in theatre. In 1961 he joined the Actors Studio in New York City, where he studied under Lee

Wednesday, June 23, 2004

Forbes, George William

Forbes held a seat in the House of Representatives for thirty-five years as member for Hurunui (1908 - 43). He began his political career as a member of the Liberal Party, and when that party declined he became in 1928 a leader of the newly created United Party.

Tuesday, June 22, 2004

Gr�n, Anastasius

As a member of the estates of Carniola in the Diet at Laibach, Gr�n was a critic of the Austrian government, and after 1848 he represented the district of Laibach briefly at the German national assembly at Frankfurt. Always an outspoken

Monday, June 21, 2004

Macedo, Jos� Agostinho De

Macedo took vows as an Augustinian in 1778. Because of his turbulent character he spent much time in prison and was constantly transferred from one community to another. In 1792 he was unfrocked but obtained a papal brief that gave him the status of a secular priest. He was

Sunday, June 20, 2004

Sangha

The sangha originated in the group of disciples who renounced the worldly life to wander with the Buddha and listen to his teachings. After the Buddha's

Saturday, June 19, 2004

Palawan

Island, the southwesternmost large island of the Philippines. Palawan is long and narrow and trends northeast-southwest between the South China and Sulu seas. It has an area of 4,550 square miles (11,785 square km), a maximum width of 24 miles (39 km), and a mountainous backbone that runs its entire 270-mile (434-kilometre) length, with Mount Mantalingajan (6,840 feet [2,085 m]) in the south as its highest peak. The

Friday, June 18, 2004

Moscow State University

In full� Moscow M.V. Lomonosov State University�, Russian �Moskovsky Gosudarstvenny Universitet Imeni M.V. Lomonosova � state-controlled institution of higher learning at Moscow, the oldest-surviving, largest, and most prestigious university in Russia. It was founded in 1755 by the linguist M.V. Lomonosov and was modeled after German universities, its original faculty being predominantly German. In the second half of the 19th century, Moscow State University became the most important centre

Thursday, June 17, 2004

Animal Worship

Veneration of an animal, usually because of its connection with a particular deity. The term was used by Western religionists in a pejorative manner and by ancient Greek and Roman polemicists against theriomorphic religions - those religions whose gods are represented in animal form. Most examples given for animal worship in primitive religions, however, are

Wednesday, June 16, 2004

Bodawpaya

A son of Alaungpaya (reigned 1752 - 60), the founder of the dynasty, Bodawpaya came to power after deposing and executing his grandnephew Maung Maung. In 1784 Bodawpaya invaded Arakan, the maritime kingdom on the eastern coast of the

Tuesday, June 15, 2004

Animal Interlace

In calligraphy, rich, fanciful decorative motif characteristic of work by the Hiberno-Saxon book artists of the early Middle Ages in the British Isles. Its intertwined, fantastic animal and bird forms are often densely and minutely detailed - an example in the Book of Kells (c. 800) contains 158 interlacements in a space of 0.25 square inch (1.61 square cm). Another work of comparable stylistic

Monday, June 14, 2004

Mott, Sir Nevill Francis

British physicist (b. Sept. 30, 1905, Leeds, Eng.--d. Aug. 8, 1996, Milton Keynes, Eng.), shared the 1977 Nobel Prize for Physics with Philip Anderson and John Van Vleck for research into the electronic properties of noncrystalline, or amorphous, solids. This work showed that amorphous materials, which are easier and less expensive to manufacture than crystalline substances, could be used in such

Sunday, June 13, 2004

Sickle Cell Anemia

Hereditary disease that destroys red blood cells by causing them to take on a rigid �sickle� shape. The disease is characterized by many of the symptoms of chronic anemia (fatigue, pale skin, and shortness of breath) as well as susceptibility to infection, jaundice and other eye problems, delayed growth, and episodic crises of severe pain in the abdomen, bones, or muscles.

Saturday, June 12, 2004

Art And Architecture, Oceanic, Australia

The Australian continent is liberally dotted with thousands of rock-art sites. They include rock shelters, outcrops of rock, and surface sheets of rock and are decorated with painted, pecked, or engraved figurative and nonfigurative forms in a wealth of styles. These are the main testimonials to the prehistoric art of the Aborigines; the only portable works from

Friday, June 11, 2004

Christian Socialism

Movement of the mid-19th century that attempted to apply the social principles of Christianity to modern industrial life. The term was generally associated with the demands of Christian activists for a social program of political and economic action on behalf of all individuals, impoverished or wealthy, and the term was used in contradistinction to laissez-faire

Thursday, June 10, 2004

Ovington, Mary White

Born three days before the assassination of President Abraham Lincoln, Ovington was reared in an upper-middle-class home by abolitionist

Wednesday, June 09, 2004

Silbermann, Gottfried

Gottfried worked in Strasbourg in the shop of his brother Andreas, also a noted builder, before moving to Freiberg in 1710. There he made spinets, clavichords, and harpsichords and experimented in

Tuesday, June 08, 2004

Raymond Iv

In the early years of his countship, Raymond was a pious

Monday, June 07, 2004

Criminology, Typologies

The typological method involves classifying offenses, criminals, criminal associations, criminal areas, or whatever according to some criteria of relatedness or similarity. Thus there have been attempts to dichotomize criminals as either �normal� or �abnormal,� �habitual� or �professional,� or to form a continuum of criminals from the �insane� at one extreme through

Sunday, June 06, 2004

Tasmania, Soils

Most Tasmanian soils are leached, acidic, poorly drained, high in humus, and low in fertility. Least fertile and most extensive are the soils, especially the moor peats, of the west and northeast. Fertile areas occur extensively in the northwest and locally elsewhere, notably in the northeast. Brown earths occupy the drier areas east of the Central Plateau; black earths,

Saturday, June 05, 2004

Aversion Therapy

Psychotherapy designed to cause a patient to reduce or avoid an undesirable behaviour pattern by conditioning him to associate the behaviour with an undesirable stimulus. The chief stimuli used in the therapy are electrical and chemical. In the electrical therapy, the patient is given a lightly painful shock whenever the undesirable behaviour is aroused; this

Friday, June 04, 2004

Theatre Music

Music as an art of the theatre has its roots in primitive ritual and ceremony and its branches in every modern means of theatrical presentation. Its functions are

Thursday, June 03, 2004

Carlisle

In the Roman period a civilian settlement, Luguvallium (later the town of Carlisle), grew up on the south bank of the Eden, opposite Petriana (later Stanwix), a fortified camp on the line of Hadrian's Wall. The town dominated the surrounding area

Wednesday, June 02, 2004

Karatsu

City, Saga ken (prefecture), Kyushu, Japan, facing Karatsu Bay. Its name is derived from the Japanese terms kara (referring to China) and tsu (�port�), reflecting the city's history as an ancient port trading with China and Korea. The Karatsu coal mines were opened in the early 20th century, and after World War II the western part of the city developed as an industrial district, centring

Tuesday, June 01, 2004

Delaware Aqueduct

Circular tunnel, part of the system that supplies water to New York City from the Delaware River near its source and from other streams in the Catskill Mountains. Running deep in bedrock for its original length of 85 miles (137 km) from Rondout Reservoir in the Catskills to the Hill View Reservoir in southern Westchester county, the aqueduct has been extended to a total distance

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