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Geography
Geography
Geography is the study of the physical and geopolitical aspects of the surface of Earth. Physical geography describes the different surface and climatic conditions around the world. Political geography is concerned with the division of the world into various levels of government, human ...
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assaying
assaying , in metallurgy, process of determining the specific metallic content of an ore, alloy, or other substance, especially one containing precious metals. It consists, in some cases, of subjecting the substance to complete chemical analysis and, in others, of simply determining the quantity pre...
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scale
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, as a ratio or a fraction, e.g., 1:100,000 or 1/100,000 ; verbally, e.g., "one inch to one mile...
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Ring Lardner
Ring Lardner (Ringgold Wilmer Lardner), 1885-1933, American humorist and short-story writer, b. Niles, Mich. He was a sports reporter in Chicago, St. Louis, and Boston from 1907 to 1919. His first collection of short stories, You Know Me, Al (1916) revealed his talent for the racy sports idiom he...
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Project Mohole
Project Mohole program proposed in 1957 to drill a hole down to the boundary between the crust and the mantle , known as the Mohorovičić discontinuity at about 4 to 43 mi (7 to 70 km) below the earth's surface. Initiated by the American Miscellaneous Society, a loose organization of scie...
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optical activity
optical activity the ability of asymmetric compounds to rotate the orientation of planar polarized light. Such compounds and their mirror images are know as enantiomers, or optical isomers. Although differing in geometric arrangement, enantiomers possess identical chemical and physical properties. ...
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compact disc
compact disc (CD), a small plastic disc used for the storage of digital data. As originally developed for audio systems, the sound signal is sampled at a rate of 44,100 times a second, then each sample is measured and digitally encoded on the 4 3/4 in (12 cm) disc as a series of microscopic pits...
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chorionic villus sampling
chorionic villus sampling (CVS) or chorionic villus biopsy (CVB) , diagnostic procedure in which a sample of chorionic villi from the developing placenta is removed from the uterus of a pregnant woman (see pregnancy ) using a fine needle inserted through the abdomen or a thin plastic catheter...
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statistics
statistics science of collecting and classifying a group of facts according to their relative number and determining certain values that represent characteristics of the group. The most familiar statistical measure is the arithmetic mean , which is an average value for a group of numerical observa...
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dew
dew thin film of water that has condensed on the surface of objects near the ground. Dew forms when radiational cooling of these objects during the nighttime hours also cools the shallow layer of overlying air in contact with them, causing the condensation of some water vapor. This condensation o...
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