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Carpaccio, Vittore

(Encyclopedia)Carpaccio, Vittore vēt-tôˈrā kärpätˈchō [key], c.1450–1522, Venetian painter, influenced by Gentile and Giovanni Bellini. His delightful narrative paintings reflect the pageantry of 15th-cen...

Falun Gong

(Encyclopedia)Falun Gong dä-fä [key], movement promoting physical and spiritual well-being that became widespread China in the 1990s. Founded in 1992 by Li Hongzhi (1951?–), a former Changchun grain clerk, it c...

Garofalo, Il

(Encyclopedia)Garofalo, Il ēl gärôˈfälō [key], 1481–1559, Italian painter of the Ferrarese school, whose real name was Benvenuto Tisi or Tisio. Influenced by Raphael, he painted in a competent though unorig...

mantra

(Encyclopedia)mantra mănˈtrə, mŭn– [key], in Hinduism and Buddhism, mystic words used in ritual and meditation. A mantra is believed to be the sound form of reality, having the power to bring into being the r...

Yogananda

(Encyclopedia)Yogananda (Paramahansa Yogananda) pärämhäNˈsä yōgänänˈdä [key], 1893–1952, Indian mystic. He was born Mukunda Lal Ghosh in Gorakhpur, India, of a Kshatriya (warrior caste) family. Before a...

holistic medicine

(Encyclopedia)holistic medicine, system of health care based on a concept of the “whole” person as one whose body, mind, spirit, and emotions are in balance with the environment. Stressing personal responsibili...

curve

(Encyclopedia)curve, in mathematics, a line no part of which is straight; more generally, it is considered to be any one-dimensional collection of points, thus including the straight line as a special kind of curve...

Volney, Constantin François de Chassebœuf, comte de

(Encyclopedia)Volney, Constantin François de Chassebœuf, comte de kôNstäNtăNˈ fräNswäˈ də shäsböfˈ kôNt də vôlnāˈ [key], 1757–1820, French scholar. He traveled in Egypt and Syria in the 1780s an...

e, in mathematics

(Encyclopedia)e, in mathematics, irrational number occurring widely in mathematics and science, approximately equal to the value 2.71828; it is the base of natural, or Naperian, logarithms. The number e is defined ...

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