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President's Park

(Encyclopedia)President's Park, c.82 acres (33 hectares), Washington, D.C. A unit of the National Park system, it includes the White House, the official residence of the president of the United States; Lafayette Sq...

capacitance

(Encyclopedia)capacitance, in electricity, capability of a body, system, circuit, or device for storing electric charge. Capacitance is expressed as the ratio of stored charge in coulombs to the impressed potential...

winch

(Encyclopedia)winch, mechanical device for hauling or lifting consisting essentially of a movable drum around which a cable is wound so that rotation of the drum produces a drawing force at the end of the cable. A ...

adenosine monophosphate

(Encyclopedia)adenosine monophosphate (AMP) ədĕnˈəsēn mŏnˌəfŏsˈfāt [key], organic compound composed of an adenine base, the sugar ribose, and one phosphate unit. AMP is one of the possible products of th...

United Arab Republic

(Encyclopedia)United Arab Republic, political union (1958–61) of Egypt and Syria. The capital was Cairo. The two countries were merged (1958) into a single unit comprising the Southern (Egypt) and the Northern (S...

Wrangell–Saint Elias National Park and Preserve

(Encyclopedia)Wrangell–Saint Elias National Park and Preserve, at the convergence of the Chugach, Wrangell, and St. Elias mts., SW Alaska. The park (8,323,618 acres/3,369,856 hectares) contains Mt. Saint Elias (1...

Yamasaki, Minoru

(Encyclopedia)Yamasaki, Minoru mĭnōˈro͞o yämäsäˈkē [key], 1912–86, American architect, b. Seattle. Yamasaki worked for prominent architectural firms in New York City from 1937 until 1949, when he formed ...

Barré-Sinoussi, Françoise

(Encyclopedia)Barré-Sinoussi, Françoise, 1947–, French virologist, Ph.D. Pasteur Institute, Paris, 1974. She has been a professor at the Pasteur Institute since 1974 and was appointed head of its retroviral uni...

Shasta Dam

(Encyclopedia)Shasta Dam, 602 ft (183 m) high and 3,460 ft (1,055 m) long, on the Sacramento River, N Calif.; built 1938–45. One of the largest concrete dams in the world, it is a major unit in the Central Valley...

shell money

(Encyclopedia)shell money, medium of exchange consisting of shells, the most widely distributed type of ancient currency. Shells are particularly useful as money because they may be strung in long strips of proport...