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Ness, Eliot

(Encyclopedia)Ness, Eliot, 1903–57, American law enforcement officer, b. Chicago, grad. Univ. of Chicago (1925), famous as the leader of the “Untouchables,” the Justice Dept. squad who fought the gangster Al ...

assembly line

(Encyclopedia)assembly line, manufacturing technique in which a product is carried by some form of mechanized conveyor among stations at which the various operations necessary to its assembly are performed. It is u...

Maryland, University System of

(Encyclopedia)Maryland, University System of, state-supported system of higher education in Maryland, est. 1988 as the University of Maryland System, renamed 1997. It includes all but two of the publicly supported ...

Bolton, Herbert Eugene

(Encyclopedia)Bolton, Herbert Eugene, 1870–1953, American historian and teacher, b. Wilton, Monroe co., Wis. He taught history at the Univ. of Texas (1901–9), Stanford (1909–11), and the Univ. of California (...

surface chemistry

(Encyclopedia)surface chemistry, study of chemical reactions in which the reactants are first adsorbed onto a surface medium (see adsorption) that then acts as a catalyst for the reaction; after the reaction the pr...

bellflower, in botany

(Encyclopedia)bellflower or bluebell, name commonly used as a comprehensive term for members of the Campanulaceae, a family of chiefly herbaceous annuals or perennials of wide distribution, characteristically found...

Unterwalden

(Encyclopedia)Unterwalden o͝onˈtərväldən [key], canton, central Switzerland, one of the Four Forest Cantons. A mountainous, forested, and chiefly pastoral region, Unterwalden is divided into the half cantons o...

scale, in cartography

(Encyclopedia)scale, in cartography, the ratio of the distance between two points on a map to the real distance between the two corresponding points portrayed. The scale may be expressed in three ways: numerically,...

species

(Encyclopedia)species, in biology, a category of classification, the original and still the basic unit in the demarcation of plant and animal types. The species marks the boundary between populations of organisms r...

pyridine

(Encyclopedia)pyridine ăzˈēn [key], C5H5N, colorless, flammable, toxic liquid with a putrid odor. It melts at −42℃ and boils at 115.5℃. Chemically, it is a heterocyclic aromatic tertiary amine (see under a...