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patent

(Encyclopedia)patent, in law, governmental grant of some privilege, property, or authority. Today patent refers to the granting to the inventor of a useful product or process the privilege to exclude others from ma...

hypertension

(Encyclopedia)hypertension or high blood pressure, elevated blood pressure resulting from an increase in the amount of blood pumped by the heart or from increased resistance to the flow of blood through the small a...

International Monetary Fund

(Encyclopedia)International Monetary Fund (IMF), specialized agency of the United Nations, established in 1945. It was planned at the Bretton Woods Conference (1944), and its headquarters are in Washington, D.C. Th...

Hawking, Stephen William

(Encyclopedia)Hawking, Stephen William, 1942–2018, British theoretical physicist, b. Oxford, England, grad. University College, Oxford, 1962, Ph.D. Trinity Hall, Cambridge, 1966. In 1962 Hawking was diagnosed as ...

Stein, Karl, Freiherr vom und zum

(Encyclopedia)Stein, Karl, Freiherr vom und zum kärl frīˈhĕr fəm o͝ont tso͝om shtīn [key], 1757–1831, Prussian statesman and reformer. Rising through the Prussian bureaucracy, he became minister of commer...

steroids

(Encyclopedia)CE5 Two examples of steroids steroids, class of lipids having a particular molecular ring structure called the cyclopentanoperhydro-phenanthrene ring system. Steroids differ from one another in th...

spintronics

(Encyclopedia)spintronics, spin electronics, or magnetoelectronics, science and technology that harnesses the spin state of electrons in addition to the electrical charge state to store data or perform calculation...

Pietism

(Encyclopedia)Pietism pīˈətĭzəm [key], a movement in the Lutheran Church (see Lutheranism), most influential between the latter part of the 17th cent. and the middle of the 18th. It was an effort to stir the c...

blast furnace

(Encyclopedia)CE5 Blast furnace for production of iron blast furnace, structure used chiefly in smelting. The principle involved in this means of extracting metals is that of the reduction of the ores by the ac...

uranium

(Encyclopedia)uranium yo͞orāˈnēəm [key], radioactive metallic chemical element; symbol U; at. no. 92; mass number of most stable isotope 238; m.p. 1,132℃; b.p. 3,818℃; sp. gr. 19.1 at 25℃; valence +3, +4...