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engineering

(Encyclopedia)engineering, profession devoted to designing, constructing, and operating the structures, machines, and other devices of industry and everyday life. Until the Industrial Revolution there were only t...

personality

(Encyclopedia)personality, in psychology, the patterns of behavior, thought, and emotion unique to an individual, and the ways they interact to help or hinder the adjustment of a person to other people and situatio...

logic circuit

(Encyclopedia)logic circuit, electric circuit whose output depends upon the input in a way that can be expressed as a function in symbolic logic; it has one or more binary inputs (capable of assuming either of two ...

hagfish

(Encyclopedia)hagfish, primitive, jawless marine fish of the family Myxinidae, of worldwide distribution in cold and temperate waters. Its rudimentary skeleton, of cartilage rather than bone, has a braincase, but n...

Fraser, river, Canada

(Encyclopedia)Fraser, chief river of British Columbia, Canada, c.850 mi (1,370 km) long. It rises in the Rocky Mts., at Yellowhead Pass, near the British Columbia–Alta. line and flows northwest through the Rocky ...

Goodyear, Charles

(Encyclopedia)Goodyear, Charles, 1800–1860, American inventor, b. New Haven, Conn., originator of vulcanized rubber. He failed in his earlier business ventures and was in jail for debt when he began his experimen...

Hughes, Langston

(Encyclopedia)Hughes, Langston (James Langston Hughes), 1902–67, American poet and central figure of the Harlem Renaissance, b. Joplin, Mo., grad. Lincoln Univ., 1929. He worked at a variety of jobs and lived in ...

electric and magnetic units

(Encyclopedia)electric and magnetic units, units used to express the magnitudes of various quantities in electricity and magnetism. Three systems of such units, all based on the metric system, are commonly used. On...

compulsive gambling

(Encyclopedia)compulsive gambling or pathological gambling, a psychological disorder characterized by a persistent inability to resist the impulse to gamble. The disorder is progressive and typically results in dif...

Child, Julia

(Encyclopedia)Child, Julia, 1912–2004, American cooking teacher, author, and television personality, b. Pasadena, Calif., as Julia Carolyn McWilliams. In the early 1940s both she and her husband-to-be, Paul Child...