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Puritanism

(Encyclopedia)Puritanism, in the 16th and 17th cent., a movement for reform in the Church of England that had a profound influence on the social, political, ethical, and theological ideas of England and America. ...

child welfare

(Encyclopedia)child welfare, services provided for the care of disadvantaged children. Foundling institutions for orphans and abandoned children were the earliest attempts at child care, usually under religious aus...

data encryption

(Encyclopedia)data encryption, the process of scrambling stored or transmitted information so that it is unintelligible until it is unscrambled by the intended recipient. Historically, data encryption has been used...

administrative law

(Encyclopedia)administrative law, law governing the powers and processes of administrative agencies. The term is sometimes used also of law (i.e., rules, regulations) developed by agencies in the course of their op...

Mongols

(Encyclopedia)Mongols mŏngˈgəlz, –gōlz [key], Asian people, numbering about 6 million and distributed mainly in the Republic of Mongolia, the Inner Mongolian Autonomous Region of China, and Kalmykia and the B...

gene

(Encyclopedia)gene, the structural unit of inheritance in living organisms. A gene is, in essence, a segment of DNA that has a particular purpose, i.e., that codes for (contains the chemical information necessary f...

Human Genome Project

(Encyclopedia)Human Genome Project, international scientific effort to map all of the genes on the 23 pairs of human chromosomes and, to sequence the 3.1 billion DNA base pairs that make up the chromosomes (see nuc...

Charles IV, Holy Roman emperor

(Encyclopedia)Charles IV, 1316–78, Holy Roman emperor (1355–78), German king (1347–78), and king of Bohemia (1346–78). The son of John of Luxemburg, Charles was educated at the French court and fought the E...

United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization

(Encyclopedia)United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization (UNESCO), specialized agency of the United Nations, with headquarters in Paris. Its counterpart in the League of Nations was the Inter...

Stendhal

(Encyclopedia)Stendhal märē äNrēˈ bĕl [key], 1783–1842, French writer, recognized as one of the great French novelists. He grew up in Grenoble hating his father and the Jesuit, Royalist atmosphere in his ho...