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homelessness

(Encyclopedia)homelessness, the condition of not having a permanent place to live, widely perceived as a societal problem only beginning in the 1980s. Figures for the number of homeless people in the United States ...

angelfish

(Encyclopedia)angelfish, common name for certain members of the Pomacanthidae, a family of brightly colored reef-dwelling tropical fishes with compressed bodies and small mouths and teeth. They were formerly classi...

Euler, Leonhard

(Encyclopedia)Euler, Leonhard lāˈônhärt oiˈlər [key], 1707–83, Swiss mathematician. Born and educated at Basel, where he knew the Bernoullis, he went to St. Petersburg (1727) at the invitation of Catherine ...

Shining Path

(Encyclopedia)Shining Path, Span. Sendero Luminoso, Peruvian Communist guerrilla force, officially the Communist party of Peru. Founded in 1970 by Abimael Guzmán...

Ainu

(Encyclopedia)Ainu īˈno͞o [key], aborigines of Japan who may be descended from a Caucasoid people who once lived in N Asia. More powerful invaders from the Asian mainland gradually forced the Ainu to retreat to ...

latent heat

(Encyclopedia)latent heat, heat change associated with a change of state or phase (see states of matter). Latent heat, also called heat of transformation, is the heat given up or absorbed by a unit mass of a substa...

Gay-Lussac, Joseph Louis

(Encyclopedia)Gay-Lussac, Joseph Louis zhôzĕfˈ lwē gā-lüsäkˈ [key], 1778–1850, French chemist and physicist. He was professor in Paris at the Sorbonne, at the Polytechnic School, and at the Jardin des Pla...

gas

(Encyclopedia)gas, in physics, one of the three commonly recognized states of matter, the other two being solid and liquid. A substance in the gaseous state has neither definite shape nor definite volume. Like liqu...

diagnosis

(Encyclopedia)diagnosis, determination of the nature of a disease or ailment. A clinical diagnosis is based on the medical history and physical examination of the patient: it may be confirmed with X-Rays, CAT Scans...

dysprosium

(Encyclopedia)dysprosium dĭsprōˈzēəm [key] [Gr.,=hard to get at], metallic chemical element; symbol Dy; at. no. 66; at. wt. 162.500; m.p. 1,412℃; b.p. 2,562℃; sp. gr. 8.54 at 25℃; valence+3. Dysprosium i...