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county

(Encyclopedia)county [Fr., comté,=domain of a count], division of local government in the United States, Great Britain, and many Commonwealth countries. The county developed in England from the shire, a unit of lo...

Nightingale, Florence

(Encyclopedia)Nightingale, Florence, 1820–1910, English nurse, the founder of modern nursing, b. Florence, Italy. Her life was dedicated to the care of the sick and war wounded and to the promotion of her vision ...

Brenner, Sydney

(Encyclopedia)Brenner, Sydney, 1927–2019, British molecular biologist, Ph.D. Oxford, 1954. He was director of the MRC Laboratory of Molecular Biology in Cambridge, England (1979–86), and director of the MRC Mol...

Mysia

(Encyclopedia)Mysia mĭshˈēə [key], ancient region, NW Asia Minor. It was N of Lydia and its coast faced Lesbos. Mysia was not a political unit, and it passed successively to Lydia, Persia, Macedon, Syria, Perga...

Pozzuoli

(Encyclopedia)Pozzuoli pōt-tswôˈlē [key], Latin Puteoli, city (1991 pop. 75,142), Campania, S Italy, on the Gulf of Pozzuoli, an arm of the Bay of Naples. It is a port and an industrial and tourist center. Manu...

radar

(Encyclopedia)radar, system or technique for detecting the position, movement, and nature of a remote object by means of radio waves reflected from its surface. Although most radar units use microwave frequencies, ...

isopleth

(Encyclopedia)isopleth īˈsəplĕthˌ [key], line drawn on a map through all points of equal value of some measurable quantity. In many meteorologic, oceanographic, or geologic studies some physical or chemical pr...

geologic timescale

(Encyclopedia)CE5 geologic timescale, a chronological scale of earth's history used to measure the relative or absolute age of any part of geologic time. Of the numerous timescales, the most common is based on g...

Elephant Butte Dam

(Encyclopedia)Elephant Butte Dam, main unit of the Rio Grande project of the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation on the Rio Grande, SW N.Mex.; completed 1916. The dam, with its large reservoir, is used for flood control, hy...

Iowa, river, United States

(Encyclopedia)Iowa, river, 329 mi (529 km) long, rising in the lakes of N Iowa and flowing SE to the Mississippi River, SE Iowa; Cedar River (300 mi/483 km long) is its chief tributary. A power dam crosses the gorg...