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Pima

(Encyclopedia)Pima pēˈmə [key], Native North American tribe of S Arizona. They speak the Pima language of the Uto-Aztecan branch of the Aztec-Tanoan linguistic family (see Native American languages). There are t...

ecology

(Encyclopedia)ecology, study of the relationships of organisms to their physical environment and to one another. The study of an individual organism or a single species is termed autecology; the study of groups of ...

Arabian music

(Encyclopedia)Arabian music, classical musical tradition of the Islamic peoples of Arabia, the Fertile Crescent, and North Africa. Little is known of Arabian music before the Hegira (a.d. 622), but afterward unde...

Arabic literature

(Encyclopedia)Arabic literature, literary works written in the Arabic language. The great body of Arabic literature includes works by Arabic speaking Turks, Persians, Syrians, Egyptians, Indians, Jews, and other Af...

Hejaz

(Encyclopedia)Hejaz or Hedjaz both: hējăzˈ, hĕjäzˈ [key], region, c.150,000 sq mi (388,500 sq km), NW Saudi Arabia, on the Gulf of Aqaba and the Red Sea. Mecca is the chief city. Extending S to Asir, Hejaz is...

Manhattan Project

(Encyclopedia)Manhattan Project, the wartime effort to design and build the first nuclear weapons (atomic bombs). With the discovery of fission in 1939, it became clear to scientists that certain radioactive materi...

Lawrence, T. E.

(Encyclopedia)Lawrence, T. E. (Thomas Edward Lawrence), 1888–1935, British adventurer, soldier, and scholar, known as Lawrence of Arabia. While a student at Oxford he went on a walking tour of Syria and in 1911 j...

Aramaic

(Encyclopedia)Aramaic ârəmāˈĭk [key], language belonging to the West Semitic subdivision of the Semitic subfamily of the Afroasiatic family of languages (see Afroasiatic languages). At some point during the se...

Lancaster, cities, United States

(Encyclopedia)Lancaster. 1 Uninc. city (1990 pop. 97,291), Los Angeles co., S Calif., in Antelope Valley and in the Mojave Desert; laid out 1894. It developed as a trade center for an irrigated farming area and has...

solar energy

(Encyclopedia)solar energy, any form of energy radiated by the sun, including light, radio waves, and X rays, although the term usually refers to the visible light of the sun. Solar energy is needed by green plants...