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artificial intelligence

(Encyclopedia)artificial intelligence (AI), the use of computers to model the behavioral aspects of human reasoning and learning. Research in AI is concentrated in some half-dozen areas. In problem solving, one mus...

Triton , in Greek mythology

(Encyclopedia)Triton, in Greek mythology, son of Poseidon. He was a creature of the sea, the upper half of his body being human, the lower fishlike. Later legends speak of many Tritons, sometimes described as ridin...

nix

(Encyclopedia)nix or nixie, in Germanic mythology, water sprite. The nixes could assume various shapes, most frequently as half human and half fish. They could do favors for humans, particularly in teaching them be...

water power

(Encyclopedia)water power, mechanical energy derived from falling or flowing water, e.g., rivers, streams, and the overflow of dams. The wooden water wheel, long utilized for driving machinery in flour mills and fa...

Manitoba, University of

(Encyclopedia)Manitoba, University of, at Winnipeg, Man., Canada; provincially supported, coeducational; chartered 1877. It has faculties of arts and sciences, graduate studies, law, medicine, dentistry, pharmacy, ...

multiculturalism

(Encyclopedia)multiculturalism or cultural pluralism, a term describing the coexistence of many cultures in a locality, without any one culture dominating the region. By making the broadest range of human differenc...

water table

(Encyclopedia)water table, the top zone of soil and rock in which all voids are saturated with water. The level of the water table varies with topography and climate, and depends on the degree to which the groundwa...

Huxley, Thomas Henry

(Encyclopedia)Huxley, Thomas Henry, 1825–95, English biologist and educator, grad. Charing Cross Hospital, 1845. Huxley gave up his own biological research to become an influential scientific publicist and was th...

Davidson, Donald Herbert

(Encyclopedia)Davidson, Donald Herbert, 1917–2003, American philosopher, b. Springfield, Mass., grad. Harvard (B.A., 1939; Ph.D., 1949). A student of W. V. Quine, Davidson emerged as one of the major figures in p...

Ramapithecus

(Encyclopedia)Ramapithecus räməpəthēˈkəs, –pĭthˈə– [key], former name for an extinct group of primates that lived from about 12 to 14 million years ago, for a time regarded as a possible ancestor of Au...