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trade

(Encyclopedia)trade, traffic in goods. Conducted by gift, barter, or sale, trade is one of the most widespread of all social institutions. The theory of commerce as imposed by the national state has varied from...

volcano

(Encyclopedia)volcano, vents or fissures in the earth's crust through which gases, molten rock, or lava, and solid fragments are discharged. Their study is called volcanology. The term volcano is commonly applied b...

Morgan

(Encyclopedia)Morgan, American family of financiers and philanthropists. Junius Spencer Morgan, 1813–90, b. West Springfield, Mass., prospered at investment banking. As a boy he became a dry-goods clerk in Boston...

New Deal

(Encyclopedia)New Deal, in U.S. history, term for the domestic reform program of the administration of Franklin Delano Roosevelt; it was first used by Roosevelt in his speech accepting the Democratic party nominati...

calculator

(Encyclopedia)calculator or calculating machine, device for performing numerical computations; it may be mechanical, electromechanical, or electronic. The electronic computer is also a calculator but performs other...

Antarctica

(Encyclopedia)CE5 Antarctica ăntärkˈtĭkə, –ärˈtĭkə [key], the fifth largest continent, c.5,500,000 sq mi (14,245,000 sq km), asymmetrically centered on the South Pole and almost entirely within the An...

Arab Spring

(Encyclopedia)Arab Spring, in modern North African and Middle Eastern history, antigovernment demonstrations and uprisings that, from late 2010, swept many of the regions' Arab nations. Arising in large part in rea...

Pluto, in astronomy

(Encyclopedia)Pluto, in astronomy, a dwarf planet and the first Kuiper belt, or transneptunian, object (see comet) to be discovered (1930) by astronomers. Pluto has an elliptical orbit usually lying beyond that of ...

ring, in astronomy

(Encyclopedia)ring, in astronomy, relatively thin band of rocks and dust and ice particles that orbit around a planet in the planet's equatorial plane. All four of the giant planets in the solar system—Jupiter, S...

submersible

(Encyclopedia)submersible, small, mobile undersea research vessel capable of functioning in the ocean depths. Development of a great variety of submersibles during the later 1950s and 1960s came about as a result o...

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