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marines

(Encyclopedia)marines, troops that serve on board ships of war or in conjunction with naval operation. A British marine corps was established in 1664, and the need for skilled riflemen aboard military vessels broug...

Suzhou

(Encyclopedia)Suzhou, Soochow wo͞oˈshēĕnˈ [key], city (1994 pop. 710,900), SE Jiangsu prov., E central China, on the Grand Canal near Tai Lake. Suzhou, famous for its silks since the Sung dynasty, is still a ...

Taipei

(Encyclopedia)Taipei tībāˈ [key], special municipality (2010 pop. 2,655,515), N Taiwan, capital of Taiwan and provisional capital of the Republic of China. It is the administrative, cultural, and industrial cent...

Bataan

(Encyclopedia)Bataan bătănˈ, –tänˈ, bätä-änˈ [key], peninsula and province, W Luzon, the...

trench warfare

(Encyclopedia)trench warfare. Although trenches were used in ancient and medieval warfare, in the American Civil War, and in the Russo-Japanese War (1904–5), they did not become important until World War I. The i...

quince

(Encyclopedia)quince, shrub or small tree of the Asian genera Chaenomeles and Cydonia of the family Rosaceae (rose family). The common quince (Cydonia oblonga) is a spineless tree with edible fruits cultivated from...

Ban, Shigeru

(Encyclopedia)Ban, Shigeru, 1957–, Japanese architect. After graduating (1984) from the Cooper Union School of Architecture, New York City, he established (1985) a practice in Tokyo, later adding offices in Paris...

productivity

(Encyclopedia)productivity, in economics, the output of any aspect of production per unit of input. It is a measure of the output of a worker, machine, or an entire national economy in the creation of goods and ser...

chestnut

(Encyclopedia)chestnut, name for any species of the genus Castanea, deciduous trees of the family Fagaceae (beech or oak family) widely distributed in the Northern Hemisphere. They are characterized by thin-shelled...

Endo, Shusaku

(Encyclopedia)Endo, Shusaku shəsäˈko͝o ĕnˈdō [key], 1923–1996, one of the finest 20th-century Japanese novelists, b. Tokyo. Baptized a Roman Catholic at 11, he is often compared to Graham Greene for his de...