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Hong Kong

(Encyclopedia)CE5 Hong Kong hŏng kŏng [key], Mandarin Xianggang, special administrative region of China, formerly a British crown colony (2015 est. pop. 7,246,000), land area 422 sq mi (1,092 sq km), adjacent ...

Hou Hsiao-hsien

(Encyclopedia)Hou Hsiao-hsien, 1947–, Taiwanese film director, b. Guangdong, China. His first feature film, Cute Girl (1980), and subsequent ones were generally saccharine romances until the semibiographical A Ti...

housing

(Encyclopedia)housing, in general, living accommodations available for the inhabitants of a community. Throughout the 19th cent., with the advent of the Industrial Revolution, housing as a problem worsened as urban...

Huntington's disease

(Encyclopedia)Huntington's disease, hereditary, acute disturbance of the central nervous system usually beginning in middle age and characterized by involuntary muscular movements and progressive intellectual deter...

hypersensitivity

(Encyclopedia)hypersensitivity, heightened response in a body tissue to an antigen or foreign substance. The body normally responds to an antigen by producing specific antibodies against it. The antibodies impart i...

infarction

(Encyclopedia)infarction, blockage of blood circulation to a localized area or organ of the body resulting in tissue death. Infarctions commonly occur in the spleen, kidney, lungs, brain, and heart. The acute emerg...

infectious canine hepatitis

(Encyclopedia)infectious canine hepatitis, acute viral disease of canines, especially dogs and foxes. The causative agent, an adenovirus, is not infectious to humans. In foxes the disease is manifested primarily as...

influenza

(Encyclopedia)influenza or flu, acute, highly contagious disease caused by a RNA virus (family Orthomyxoviridae); formerly known as the grippe. There are three types of the virus, designated A, B, and C, but only t...

Irish language

(Encyclopedia)Irish language, also called Irish Gaelic and Erse, member of the Goidelic group of the Celtic subfamily of the Indo-European family of languages (see Celtic languages). The history of Irish as a liter...

Ishiguro, Kazuo

(Encyclopedia)Ishiguro, Kazuo, 1954–, English novelist, b. Nagasaki. His family left Japan in 1960 and immigrated to England, where he attended the universities of Kent (B.A., 1978) and East Anglia (M.A., 1980). ...