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Kajita, Takaaki

(Encyclopedia)Kajita, Takaaki 1959–, Japanese physicist, Ph.D. Univ. of Tokyo, 1986. In 1988 he joined the faculty at the Univ. of Tokyo, where he is now professor and director of the Institute for Cosmic Ray Res...

half-life

(Encyclopedia)half-life, measure of the average lifetime of a radioactive substance (see radioactivity) or an unstable subatomic particle. One half-life is the time required for one half of any given quantity of th...

multimedia

(Encyclopedia)multimedia, in personal computing, software and applications that combine text, high-quality sound, two- and three-dimensional graphics, animation, photo images, and full-motion video. In order to wor...

Wisconsin, University of

(Encyclopedia)Wisconsin, University of, main campus at Madison; land-grant and state supported; coeducational; chartered 1848, opened 1849. Its history was disturbed by storms over the policies of Glenn Frank and o...

conservation laws

(Encyclopedia)conservation laws, in physics, basic laws that together determine which processes can or cannot occur in nature; each law maintains that the total value of the quantity governed by that law, e.g., mas...

endocytosis

(Encyclopedia)endocytosis ĕnˌdōsītōˈsəs [key], in biology, process by which substances are taken into the cell. When the cell membrane comes into contact with a suitable food, a portion of the cell cytoplasm...

Nambu, Yoichiro

(Encyclopedia)Nambu, Yoichiro yoiˈchērō nämˈbo͞o [key], 1921–2015, Japanese-American physicist, b. Tokyo, D.Sc. Univ. of Tokyo, 1952. He studied at the Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton, with Albert E...

Barish, Barry Clark

(Encyclopedia)Barish, Barry Clark, 1936–, American experimental physicist, b. Omaha, Nebr. Ph.D. Univ. of California, Berkeley, 1962. Barish has been a professor (emeritus from 2005) at the California Institute o...

colligative properties

(Encyclopedia)colligative properties, properties of a solution that depend on the number of solute particles present but not on the chemical properties of the solute. Colligative properties of a solution include fr...

Glaser, Donald Arthur

(Encyclopedia)Glaser, Donald Arthur, 1926–2013, American physicist, b. Cleveland, Ph.D. California Institute of Technology, 1950. He was a professor at the Univ. of Michigan from 1950 to 1959, when he joined the ...

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