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Astoria

(Encyclopedia)Astoria ăstôrˈēə [key]. 1 Commercial, industrial, and residential section of NW Queens borough of New York City, SE N.Y.; settled in the 17th cent. as Hallet's Cove. It was renamed for John Jacob...

secant

(Encyclopedia)secant, in mathematics. 1 In geometry, a secant is a straight line cutting a curve or surface. If it intersects the curve in two different points, as in the secant of a circle, the segment of the seca...

ellipse

(Encyclopedia)CE5 Ellipse ellipse, closed plane curve consisting of all points for which the sum of the distances between a point on the curve and two fixed points (foci) is the same. It is the conic section fo...

Landau, Lev Davidovich

(Encyclopedia)Landau, Lev Davidovich lyĕf dəvēˈdəvĭch ləndouˈ [key], 1908–68, Soviet physicist, b. Baku, Azerbaijan. A child prodigy in mathematics, he entered Baku Univ. at 14; at 21 he received a doctor...

Steno, Nicolaus

(Encyclopedia)Steno, Nicolaus nēls stānˈsən [key], 1638–86, Danish anatomist, geologist, and Roman Catholic prelate. He lived principally in Copenhagen, Paris, and Florence. He investigated the heart, brain, ...

coronet

(Encyclopedia)coronet kôrˌənĕtˈ, kŏrˌə– [key], head attire of a noble of high rank, worn on state occasions. It is inferior to the crown. British peers wear their coronets at the coronation of their sover...

hyperbola

(Encyclopedia)CE5 Hyperbola hyperbola hīpûrˈbələ [key], plane curve consisting of all points such that the difference between the distances from any point on the curve to two fixed points (foci) is the sam...

Charles X, king of Sweden

(Encyclopedia)Charles X, 1622–60, king of Sweden (1654–60), nephew of Gustavus II. The son of John Casimir, count palatine of Zweibrücken, he brought the house of Wittelsbach to the Swedish throne when his cou...

solder

(Encyclopedia)solder sŏdˈər [key], metal alloy used in the molten state as a metallic binder. The type of solder to be used is determined by the metals to be united. Soft solders are commonly composed of lead an...

bezique

(Encyclopedia)bezique bəzēkˈ [key], card game usually played with 128 cards by two players. Bezique developed in France and England in the 1860s and originally required only 64 cards; later there were variations...