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  • agate (mineral)
    common semiprecious silica mineral, a variety of chalcedony that occurs in bands of varying colour and transparency. Agate is essentially quartz, and its physical properties are in general those of that mineral. See silica mineral (table)....
  • Agate Fossil Beds National Monument (monument, Nebraska, United States)
    natural “depository” of an extinct animal community on the Niobrara River in northwestern Nebraska, U.S., 40 miles (64 km) north of Scottsbluff. The beds were laid down as sedimentary deposits about 20 million years ago (Miocene Epoch) and bear the remains of prehistoric mammals including ...
  • Agate, James (British author)
    English drama critic for the London Sunday Times (1923–47), book reviewer for the Daily Express, novelist, essayist, diarist, and raconteur. He is remembered for his wit and perverse yet lovable personality, the sparkle and fundamental seriousness of his dramatic criticism, and his racy, entertaining diary, called, characteristically, Ego, 9 vol. (1932–47)....
  • Agate, James Evershed (British author)
    English drama critic for the London Sunday Times (1923–47), book reviewer for the Daily Express, novelist, essayist, diarist, and raconteur. He is remembered for his wit and perverse yet lovable personality, the sparkle and fundamental seriousness of his dramatic criticism, and his racy, entertaining diary, called, characteristically, Ego, 9 vol. (1932–47)....
  • agateware (pottery)
    in pottery, 18th-century ware of varicoloured clay, with an overall marbled effect. It was sometimes called solid agate to distinguish it from ware with surface marbling. Agateware was probably introduced about 1730 by Dr. Thomas Wedgwood of Rowley’s Pottery, Burslem, Staffordshire, Eng. The random mingling of coloured clays, such as red and buff, gave a broad veining to domestic and ornam...
  • Agatha Moudio’s Son (novel by Bebey)
    Bebey was also a noted writer, and his first novel, Le Fils d’Agatha Moudio (Agatha Moudio’s Son, 1971), was published in 1967. Critics found the work a carefully constructed masterpiece of burlesque, and it won the Grand Prix Littéraire de l’Afrique Noire. The following year Embarras et Cie: nouvelles ...
  • Agatha, Saint (Sicilian martyr)
    legendary Christian saint and martyr, cited in the martyrology of St. Jerome, the Calendar of Carthage (c. 530), and other works. Palermo and Catania both claim to be her birthplace....
  • Agathias (Byzantine historian and poet)
    Byzantine historian and poet of part of Justinian I’s reign....
  • Agathis (plant genus)
    the genus of the dammar pines, 13 species of pinelike plants of the family Araucariaceae. Agathis species range from the Philippines to Australia and New Zealand. Elsewhere some are grown as ornamental plants in warm areas or in greenhouses. Several species yield hard resins or gums (including kauri copal, Manila copal, and dammar resin) used primarily in making varnishes and other products...
  • Agathis australis (plant)
    (Agathis australis), a resinous timber conifer of the family Araucariaceae, native to the North Island of New Zealand. The tree sometimes reaches 45 metres (150 feet) in height, with a diameter up to 7 m (23 ft)....
  • Agatho, Saint (pope)
    pope from 678 to 681. A cleric well-versed in Latin and Greek, he was elected pope in June 678. He judged that St. Wilfrid, bishop of York, had been unjustly deprived and ordered his restoration, and he received the submission of Exarch Theodore of Ravenna, whose predecessors had aspired to autonomy....
  • Agathocles (tyrant of Syracuse)
    tyrant of Syracuse, in Sicily, from 317 to c. 304 and self-styled king of Sicily after c. 304. A champion of Hellenism, he waged war unsuccessfully against Carthage....
  • Agathodaimon (ancient alchemist)
    Zosimos credits these innovations mainly to Maria (sometimes called “the Jewess”), who invented the apparatus, and to Agathodaimon, probably a pseudonym. Neither is represented (beyond Zosimos’ references) in the Venice–Paris manuscript, but a tract attributed to Agathodaimon, published in 1953, shows him to be preoccupied with the colour sequence and complicating it by...
  • Agathon (Greek poet)
    Athenian tragic poet whose first victory at the festival of the Great Dionysia, in which plays were presented and judged, was gained in 416 bc. The event is made, by Plato, the occasion for his dialogue Symposium, and the banquet, which is the setting of the dialogue, is placed in Agathon’s house. Aristotle, in the Poetics, a...
  • Agathos Daimon (Greek religion)
    ...poet Hesiod called her the daughter of the Titan Oceanus and his consort Tethys; other writers attributed her fatherhood to Zeus, the supreme god. She was also associated with the more beneficent Agathos Daimon, a good spirit, protective of individuals and families, and with Nemesis, who, as an abstraction, represented punishment of overprosperous man and so was believed to act as a......
  • Agathosma (plant genus)
    ...Asia and throughout the tropics. Melicope (about 150 species, including the former genus Pelea) occurs from Indo-Malaysia through Australia and New Zealand to the Pacific Islands. Agathosma (135 species) is endemic to South Africa. Boronia (about 100 species) is one of the largest endemic Australian genera. Haplophyllum (about 70 species) occurs from the......
  • Agau (people)
    an ancient people that settled in the northern and central Ethiopian Plateau; they are associated with the development of agriculture and animal husbandry in the area. The term Agau also refers to any of several contemporaneous groups that are either culturally similar or linked by a Cushitic language base. The Jewish Falasha (or “Black Jews”) are believed to have ...
  • Agavaceae (plant family)
    the agave family of the flowering plant order Liliales, consisting of about 22 genera and at least 720 species of short-stemmed, often woody plants distributed throughout tropical, subtropical, and temperate areas of the world. Members of the family have narrow, lance-shaped, sometimes fleshy or toothed leaves that are clustered at the base of each plant. Most species have large flower clusters c...
  • Agave (plant genus)
    Plants of the genus Agave are important primarily for the fibres obtained from their leaves. Sisal hemp, from A. sisalana, is the most valuable hard fibre. Henequen fibre is obtained from A. fourcroyoides and cantala, or Manila-Maguey fibre, from A. cantala. Some species of Agave contain a sap......
  • Agave americana (plant)
    member of the agave family of flowering plants. See Agavaceae....
  • Agave cantala (plant)
    (Agave cantala), plant of the family agave (Agavaceae) and its fibre, belonging to the leaf-fibre group, obtained from plant leaves. The plant has been cultivated in the Philippines since 1783 and was growing in Indonesia and India by the early 1800s. It is known as maguey in the Philippines, and in commercial trade the Philippine fibre is known as Manila, or Cebu, mague...
  • agave family (plant family)
    the agave family of the flowering plant order Liliales, consisting of about 22 genera and at least 720 species of short-stemmed, often woody plants distributed throughout tropical, subtropical, and temperate areas of the world. Members of the family have narrow, lance-shaped, sometimes fleshy or toothed leaves that are clustered at the base of each plant. Most species have large flower clusters c...
  • Agave fourcroydes (plant)
    (Agave fourcroydes), plant of the family agave (Agavaceae) and its fibre, third in importance among the leaf fibre group. Varieties of A. fourcroydes include ixtli, longifolia, minima, and rigida. The henequen plant is native to Mexico, where it has been a source of textile fibre since pre-Columbian times. It was introduced to Cuba...
  • Agave lurida (plant)
    fibre obtained from the leaf of the plant Agave lurida, a member of the Agavaceae family and native to Mexico. It is shorter and stiffer than henequen, with physical properties similar to the hard leaf fibre cantala, and is used for rope and cordage....
  • Agave sisalana (plant species)
    (species Agave sisalana), plant of the agave family (Agavaceae) and its fibre, the most important of the leaf fibre group. The plant is native to Central America, where its fibre has been used since pre-Columbian times. Commercial interest in sisal was stimulated by the development of the machine grain binder in the 1880s, which brought a demand for low-cost twine, and p...
  • Agaw (people)
    an ancient people that settled in the northern and central Ethiopian Plateau; they are associated with the development of agriculture and animal husbandry in the area. The term Agau also refers to any of several contemporaneous groups that are either culturally similar or linked by a Cushitic language base. The Jewish Falasha (or “Black Jews”) are believed to have ...
  • Agawam (Massachusetts, United States)
    town (township), Essex county, northeastern Massachusetts, U.S. It lies along the Ipswich River (there bridged since 1764), 28 miles (45 km) north-northeast of Boston. Settled in 1633 as Agawam, it was incorporated in 1634 and renamed for Ipswich, England. Lace making, the town’s first industry, was carried out on machines smuggled to the American colon...
  • Agazzari, Agostino (Italian composer)
    Italian composer famous for his treatise, Del sonare sopra ’l basso con tutti li stromenti e dell’uso loro nel conserto (1607; “On Playing Upon the Thoroughbass with All the Instruments and Their Use in an Ensemble”), one of the earliest instruction books for performing from the thoroughbass....
  • Agazzi, Carolina (Italian educator)
    In 1892 in Italy, the Agazzi sisters, Rosa and Carolina, initiated a blending of Aporti’s infant school and Froebel’s kindergarten and produced a prototypical Italian maternal school (scuola materna). In the school the children were induced to become collaborators in the search for the instruments of their own education—seeking realia (objects from real life) as well as...
  • Agazzi, Rosa (Italian educator)
    In 1892 in Italy, the Agazzi sisters, Rosa and Carolina, initiated a blending of Aporti’s infant school and Froebel’s kindergarten and produced a prototypical Italian maternal school (scuola materna). In the school the children were induced to become collaborators in the search for the instruments of their own education—seeking realia (objects from real......
  • Agbale, Timi (Yoruba leader)
    ...(180 km) southwest, and at the intersection of roads from Oshogbo, Ogbomosho, and Ife. Ede is one of the older towns of the Yoruba people. It is traditionally said to have been founded about 1500 by Timi Agbale, a hunter and warlord sent by Alafin (King) Kori of Old Oyo (Katunga), capital of the Oyo empire, to establish a settlement to protect the Oyo caravan route to Benin (127 miles [204 km]....
  • Agbatana (ancient city, Iran)
    ancient city on the site of which stands the modern city of Hamadān, Iran. Ecbatana was the capital of Media and was subsequently the summer residence of the Achaemenian kings and one of the residences of the Parthian kings. According to ancient Greek writers, the city was founded in about 678 bc by the semilegendary Deioces, who was the first king of the M...
  • Agca, Mehmet Ali (Turkish assassin)
    On May 13, 1981, John Paul was shot and nearly killed by a 23-year-old Turkish man, Mehmet Ali Agca. Meanwhile, the Poles’ other spiritual leader, Primate Cardinal Wyszyński, lay dying of cancer. The sudden prospect of losing both men unsettled the Solidarity movement. Although no conspiracy in the assassination attempt was ever proved in court, the widespread suspicion that the Sovi...
  • Agdistis (ancient deity)
    ancient Oriental and Greco-Roman deity, known by a variety of local names; the name Cybele or Cybebe predominates in Greek and Roman literature from about the 5th century bc onward. Her full official Roman name was Mater Deum Magna Idaea (Great Idaean Mother of the Gods)....
  • age (physiology and sociology)
    physiological changes that take place in the human body leading to senescence, the decline of biological functions and of the ability to adapt to metabolic stress. In humans the physiological developments are normally accompanied by psychological and behavioural changes, and other changes, involving social and economic factors, also occur....
  • age (law)
    In order to satisfy the requirement of a voluntary consent to a marriage, a party must have reached an age at which he or she is able to give meaningful consent, and it is also implied that a person may be legally disqualified on mental grounds from having capacity to marry. Marriages of young children, negotiated by their parents, are prohibited in modern societies. Historically, the attitude......
  • age (time measurement)
    By the time the New Testament was written, Jewish apocalyptic writings (symbolic or cryptographic literature portraying God’s dramatic intervention in history and catastrophic dramas at the end of a cosmic epoch) had already produced theories of history that reworked Indo-Iranian notions about the ages of the world, influencing Christian views of time, history, and human destiny. The prophe...
  • age (life process)
    progressive physiological changes in an organism that lead to senescence, or a decline of biological functions and of the organism’s ability to adapt to metabolic stress....
  • age composition (demography)
    in population studies, the proportionate numbers of persons in successive age categories in a given population. Age distributions differ among countries mainly because of differences in the levels and trends of fertility. A population with persistently high fertility, for instance, has a large proportion of children and a small proportion of aged persons. A population, such as t...
  • age determination (geochronology)
    Although relative ages can generally be established on a local scale, the events recorded in rocks from different locations can be integrated into a picture of regional or global scale only if their sequence in time is firmly established. The time that has elapsed since certain minerals formed can now be determined because of the presence of a small amount of natural radioactive atoms in their......
  • “Age d’homme, L’ ” (work by Leiris)
    In 1939 Leiris published the autobiographical L’Âge d’homme (Manhood), which attracted much attention and was reissued in 1946. Self-deprecating and punitive, the work catalogs Leiris’ physical and moral flaws; he introduced the 1946 edition with an essay, “De la littérature considérée comme une tauromachie” (1946;...
  • age differentiation
    ...began to diversify, and, though inhumation in pits remained the commonest form, it was elaborated in different ways. The position of the body became stretched rather than contracted, and sex and age were not expressed by body position but were reflected through elements such as grave goods or location within the cemetery....
  • age distribution (demography)
    in population studies, the proportionate numbers of persons in successive age categories in a given population. Age distributions differ among countries mainly because of differences in the levels and trends of fertility. A population with persistently high fertility, for instance, has a large proportion of children and a small proportion of aged persons. A population, such as t...
  • “Age d’or, L’” (film by Buñuel and Dalí)
    His next two films—L’Âge d’or (1930; The Golden Age), a radically anticlerical and antibourgeois film made in France, and Las Hurdes (1932; Land Without Bread), a documentary about a particularly wretched region of Spain—asserted his concern with the freedom to dream and to imagine, his revolutionary attitude toward social problems, hi...
  • age grade (sociology)
    ...from birth or from a determined age, to a named age set that passed through a series of stages, each of which had a distinctive status or social and political role. Each stage is usually known as an age grade....
  • Age of Anxiety, The (work by Auden)
    ...Being (1944); aesthetic in the same volume’s Sea and the Mirror (a quasi-dramatic “commentary” on William Shakespeare’s The Tempest); and social-psychological in The Age of Anxiety (1947), the “baroque eclogue” that won Auden the Pulitzer Prize in 1948. Auden wrote no long poems after that....
  • Age of Assassins (work by Soupault)
    ...pursuit of liberty. Les Moribonds (1934; “The Dying”) is a semiautobiographical description of a youth’s flight from his bourgeois family. Le Temps des assassins (1945; Age of Assassins), a memoir, details Soupault’s six-month imprisonment by the Vichy government in Tunis, Tunisia, where he worked as a journalist and as director of Radio Tunis. A...
  • Age of Bronze, The (work by Rodin)
    ...expression of a vanquished energy aspiring to rebirth. It provoked scandals in the artistic circles of Brussels and again at the Paris Salon, where it was exhibited in 1877 as The Age of Bronze. The realism of the work contrasted so greatly with the statues of Rodin’s contemporaries that he was accused of having formed its mold upon a living person....
  • age of consent (law)
    In order to satisfy the requirement of a voluntary consent to a marriage, a party must have reached an age at which he or she is able to give meaningful consent, and it is also implied that a person may be legally disqualified on mental grounds from having capacity to marry. Marriages of young children, negotiated by their parents, are prohibited in modern societies. Historically, the attitude......
  • Age of Consent Act of 1891 (British-Indian legislation)
    ...British liberal socioreligious reform therefore came to a halt for more than three decades—essentially from the East India Company’s Hindu Widow’s Remarriage Act of 1856 to the crown’s timid Age of Consent Act of 1891, which merely raised the age of statutory rape for “consenting” Indian brides from 10 years to 12....
  • Age of Constantine the Great, The (work by Burckhardt)
    ...sites and art treasures of Europe. His first important work, however, like the last, attested to his deep interest in ancient civilization. In Die Zeit Konstantins des Grossen (1853; The Age of Constantine the Great, 1949) Burckhardt presented a picture of a transitional age, unhealthy and immoral but teeming with religious and cultural activity. While he recognized that the......
  • Age of Empires (computer game franchise)
    computer game franchise designed by Ensemble Studios, an American company founded in 1995 and subsequently acquired by the Microsoft Corporation. The original Age of Empires debuted in 1997 to critical acclaim and helped set the bar for the real-time strategy game genre, combining involved play and technical innovations with historical accuracy. Age of Empires gene...
  • Age of Fishes (geochronology)
    in geologic time, an interval of the Paleozoic Era that follows the Silurian Period and precedes the Carboniferous Period, spanning between about 416 million and 359.2 million years ago. The Devonian Period is sometimes called the “Age of Fishes” because of the diverse, abundant, and, in some cases, bizarre t...
  • Age of Innocence, The (novel by Wharton)
    The Age of Innocence presents a picture of upper-class New York society in the 1870s. In the story, Newland Archer is engaged to May Welland, a beautiful but proper fellow member of elite society, but he falls deeply in love with Ellen Olenska, a former member of their circle who has returned to New York to escape her disastrous marriage to a Polish nobleman. Both lovers prove too......
  • Age of Iron (novel by Coetzee)
    ...Crusoe. Coetzee’s female narrator comes to new conclusions about power and otherness and ultimately concludes that language can enslave as effectively as can chains. In Age of Iron (1990) Coetzee dealt directly with circumstances in contemporary South Africa, but in The Master of Petersburg (1994) he made reference to 19th-ce...
  • Age of Jackson, The (work by Schlesinger)
    ...of War Information and the Office of Strategic Services during World War II, he became a professor of history at Harvard in 1946, teaching there until 1961. In 1946 his Pulitzer Prize-winning The Age of Jackson was published to widespread acclaim. In this book Schlesinger reinterpreted the American era of Jacksonian democracy in terms of its cultural, social, and economic aspects as......
  • Age of Louis XIV, The (work by Voltaire)
    ...familiar only to a few advanced minds in France, such as the astronomer and mathematician Pierre-Louis de Maupertuis. At the same time, he continued to pursue his historical studies. He began Le Siècle de Louis XIV, sketched out a universal history of kings, wars, civilization and manners that became the Essai sur les moeurs, and plunged into biblical exegesis. Mme du......
  • Age of Reason (work by Paine)
    While in prison, the first part of Paine’s Age of Reason was published (1794), and it was followed by Part II after his release (1796). Although Paine made it clear that he believed in a Supreme Being and as a deist opposed only organized religion, the work won him a reputation as an atheist among the orthodox. The publication of his last great pamphlet, “Agrarian Justice...
  • Age of Roosevelt, The (work by Schlesinger)
    ...reinterpreted the American era of Jacksonian democracy in terms of its cultural, social, and economic aspects as well as its strictly political dimensions. Schlesinger’s major historical work was The Age of Roosevelt, whose three separate volumes were entitled The Crisis of the Old Order, 1919–1933 (1957), The Coming of the New Deal (1958), and The P...
  • Age of the Princes (Ethiopian history)
    Meanwhile, population pressures had mounted among the Oromo, a pastoral people who inhabited the upper basin of the Genalē (Jubba) River in what is now southern Ethiopia and northern Kenya. Oromo society was based upon an “age-set” system known as gada, in which all males born into an eight-year generation moved together through all the stages of life. The warrior......
  • age set (sociology)
    a formally organized group consisting of every male (or female) of comparable age. In those societies chiefly identified with the practice, a person belonged, either from birth or from a determined age, to a named age set that passed through a series of stages, each of which had a distinctive status or social and political role. Each stage is usually known as an age grade....
  • Age, The (Australian newspaper)
    Australian daily newspaper published in Melbourne and widely considered to provide some of the finest news coverage in the country. It has been highly regarded for its dedication to accuracy....
  • age-area hypothesis (anthropology)
    in anthropology, theory holding that the age of culture traits (elements of a culture) may be determined by examining their distribution over a large geographic area. The hypothesis states that widely distributed traits are older than those more narrowly distributed. It is based on the assumption that traits tend to diffuse outward in a circle from a single centre. Traits at the periphery are bel...
  • age-earnings profile
    ...actors will make such investments only if the expected stream of future benefits exceeds the short-term costs associated with acquiring the skills. Such investments therefore affect one’s “age-earnings profile,” the trajectory of earnings over one’s lifetime. Those who leave school early, for example, earn market wages for more years on average than those who take ad...
  • age-related macular degeneration (pathology)
    Although inherited retinal degenerations are relatively uncommon, their unusual affects on the retina and the inexorable advance of this diverse group of diseases have stimulated a considerable amount of research in this area. As a result, a large number of genetically determined degenerations of the retina have been described. These conditions are typified by the category of retinal......
  • age-specific death rate (gerontology)
    The viability (survival ability) of a population is characterized in two actuarial functions: the survivorship curve (A in Figure 1) and the age-specific death rate, or Gompertz function (B in Figure 1). The relation of such factors as aging characteristics, constitutional vigour, physical factors, diet, and exposure to disease-causing organisms to the actuarial functions is complex; there is,......
  • agechi (Japanese history)
    ...supplies could easily be conveyed to nearby Edo if Edo Bay were blockaded by foreign ships. Plans for the defense of the bay also were formulated. Tadakuni also promulgated a land-requisition (agechi) order to bring daimyo and hatamoto domains surrounding Edo and Ōsaka under direct bakufu control: the stated object of this was the defense of Edo, but it also was......
  • aged, the
    in human beings, the final stage of the normal life span. Definitions of old age are not consistent from the standpoints of biology, demography (conditions of mortality and morbidity), employment and retirement, and sociology. For statistical and public administrative purposes, however, old age is frequently defined as 60 or 65 years of age or older....
  • Agee, James (American author)
    American poet, novelist, and writer for and about motion pictures. One of the most influential American film critics in the 1930s and ’40s, he applied rigorous intellectual and aesthetic standards to his reviews, which appeared anonymously in Time and signed in The Nation....
  • Agee, Philip Burnett Franklin (American government official)
    American government official who was stripped of his U.S. citizenship (1979) and marked as an international pariah after publishing Inside the Company: A CIA Diary (1975), which divulged his growing disillusionment with the CIA while serving in the 1960s as an undercover officer for that agency; he also revealed the identities of some 250 CIA operatives working clandestinely, mainly in Lati...
  • Agee, Tommie Lee (American baseball player)
    American baseball player (b. Aug. 9, 1942, Mobile, Ala.—d. Jan. 22, 2001, New York, N.Y.), helped lead the New York Mets to a World Series championship in 1969. Agee was the centre fielder for the so-called Miracle Mets during the team’s surprising run to the title following years of mediocrity; in the first game of the series, he made two crucial catches that some observers ranked a...
  • ageing (life process)
    progressive physiological changes in an organism that lead to senescence, or a decline of biological functions and of the organism’s ability to adapt to metabolic stress....
  • Agekoyo (people)
    Bantu-speaking people who live in the highland area of south-central Kenya, near Mount Kenya. In the late 20th century the Kikuyu numbered more than 4,400,000 and formed the largest ethnic group in Kenya, approximately 20 percent of the total population. Their own name for themselves is Gekoyo, or Agekoyo....
  • Ageladas (Greek sculptor)
    sculptor said to have been the teacher of Myron, Phidias, and Polyclitus. This tradition testifies to his wide fame but is historically doubtful....
  • Agelaius phoeniceus (bird)
    The best known icterid of this name is the red-winged blackbird (Agelaius phoeniceus), ranging from Canada to the West Indies and Central America. It is 20 cm long, and the male’s black plumage is set off by red shoulder patches. All-black icterids in North America are the rusty blackbird (Euphagus carolinus) and Brewer’s blackbird (E. cyanocephalus). The red-bre...
  • Agelena naevia (spider)
    ...are notable for their funnel-shaped webs; they are a common group with many species that are distributed worldwide. The webs are built in the grass, under boards and rocks, and among debris. Agelena naevia, a common North American species, varies greatly in size and colour. The body of the male may be up to 8 millimetres (about 13 inch) long; the......
  • agelenid (spider)
    any of certain members of the spider family Agelenidae (order Araneida). Agelenids are notable for their funnel-shaped webs; they are a common group with many species that are distributed worldwide. The webs are built in the grass, under boards and rocks, and among debris. Agelena naevia, a common North American species, varies greatly in size and colour. The body of the male may be up to 8...
  • Agelenidae (spider)
    any of certain members of the spider family Agelenidae (order Araneida). Agelenids are notable for their funnel-shaped webs; they are a common group with many species that are distributed worldwide. The webs are built in the grass, under boards and rocks, and among debris. Agelena naevia, a common North American species, varies greatly in size and colour. The body of the male may be up to 8...
  • Agen (France)
    town, capital of Lot-et-Garonne département, Aquitaine région, southwestern France. It lies along the Garonne River at the foot of Ermitage Hill (530 feet [162 metres]), northwest of Toulouse. Mentioned by Julius Caesar as Aginnum, capital of the Nitiobriges people, it wa...
  • Agena (American rocket)
    ...minutes of operation and a sustainer that operates until orbital velocity is attained. Atlas can lift about 5,800 pounds (2,600 kg) to about a 350-mile (560-kilometre) orbit. Coupled with Agena, the combined Atlas–Agena rocket is used for launching lunar and planetary probes, as well as Earth-orbiting satellites, such as Seasat, where the Agena is also the spacecraft.......
  • Agenais (historical region, France)
    former province of France, of which Agen was the centre and to which the modern département of Lot-et-Garonne nearly corresponds....
  • Agence France-Presse (French news agency)
    French cooperative news agency, one of the world’s great wire news services. It is based in Paris, where it was founded under its current name in 1944, but its roots go to the Bureau Havas, which was created in 1832 by Charles-Louis Havas, who translated reports from foreign papers and distributed them to Paris and provincial newspapers. In 1835 the Bureau Havas became th...
  • Agence Havas (French news agency)
    ...Havas, which was created in 1832 by Charles-Louis Havas, who translated reports from foreign papers and distributed them to Paris and provincial newspapers. In 1835 the Bureau Havas became the Agence Havas, the world’s first true news agency. Stressing rapid transmission of the news, Agence Havas established the first telegraph service in France in 1845. Between 1852 and 1919 the agency....
  • Agence Spatiale Européenne (European research organization)
    western European space and space-technology research organization founded in 1975 from the merger of the European Launcher Development Organisation (ELDO) and the European Space Research Organisation (ESRO), both established in 1964. Members include Austria, Belgium, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Ireland, Italy, The Netherlands, Norway, Portugal, Spain, S...
  • agency (law)
    in law, the relationship that exists when one person or party (the principal) engages another (the agent) to act for him—e.g., to do his work, to sell his goods, to manage his business. The law of agency thus governs the legal relationship in which the agent deals with a third party on behalf of the principal. The competent agent is legally capable of acting for this princip...
  • Agency for National Security Planning (government organization, South Korea)
    South Korean military officer and head of the Korean Central Intelligence Agency (KCIA) who, on Oct. 26, 1979, assassinated the South Korean president, Park Chung Hee....
  • agency law (law)
    in law, the relationship that exists when one person or party (the principal) engages another (the agent) to act for him—e.g., to do his work, to sell his goods, to manage his business. The law of agency thus governs the legal relationship in which the agent deals with a third party on behalf of the principal. The competent agent is legally capable of acting for this princip...
  • agency shop (labour)
    ...within an “escape period” must remain members of the union for the duration of the agreement; otherwise, they will be dismissed from their jobs. Even more open than the union shop is an agency shop: although employees are required to pay funds equal to union dues, they are not required to join the union. There are many detailed variations of these union arrangements in the United....
  • agency theory, financial
    in organizational economics, a means of assessing the work being done for a principal (i.e., an employer) by an agent (i.e., an employee). While consistent with the concept of agency traditionally advanced by legal scholars and attorneys, the economic variants of agency theory emphasize the costs and benefits of the principal-agent relationship. While a beneficial agency cost is...
  • Agenda 21 (international agreement)
    ...binding targets for emission reductions, however. The Declaration on Environment and Development, or Rio Declaration, laid down 27 broad, nonbinding principles for environmentally sound development. Agenda 21 outlined global strategies for cleaning up the environment and encouraging environmentally sound development. The Statement of Principles on Forests, aimed at preserving the world’s...
  • agenesis (pathology)
    in human physiology, failure of all or part of an organ to develop during embryonic growth. Many forms of agenesis are consistently lethal, as when the entire brain is absent (anencephaly), but agenesis of one of a paired organ may create little disruption of normal function. Agenesis of the kidney, bladder, testicle, ovary, thyroid, and lung are known. Agenesis of the long bon...
  • Agenois (historical region, France)
    former province of France, of which Agen was the centre and to which the modern département of Lot-et-Garonne nearly corresponds....
  • agent (computer science)
    a computer program that performs various actions continuously and autonomously on behalf of an individual or an organization. For example, an agent may archive various computer files or retrieve electronic messages on a regular schedule. Such simple tasks barely begin to tap the potential uses of agents, however. This is because an intelligent agent can observe the behaviour patterns of its users ...
  • agent (law)
    in law, the relationship that exists when one person or party (the principal) engages another (the agent) to act for him—e.g., to do his work, to sell his goods, to manage his business. The law of agency thus governs the legal relationship in which the agent deals with a third party on behalf of the principal. The competent agent is legally capable of acting for this princip...
  • Agent 007 (fictional character)
    British literary and film character, a peerless spy, notorious womanizer, and masculine icon....
  • agent, intelligence (intelligence)
    Counterintelligence is aimed at protecting and maintaining the secrecy of a country’s intelligence operations. Its purpose is to prevent spies or other agents of a foreign power from penetrating the country’s government, armed services, or intelligence agencies. Counterintelligence also is concerned with protecting advanced technology, deterring terrorism, and combating international...
  • agent middleman (business)
    Unlike merchant wholesalers, agent middlemen do not take legal ownership of the goods they sell; nor do they generally take physical possession of them. The three principal types of agent middlemen are manufacturers’ agents, selling agents, and purchasing agents. Manufacturers’ agents, who represent two or more manufacturers’ complementary lines on a continuous basis, are usua...
  • Agent Orange (defoliant)
    mixture of herbicides that U.S. military forces sprayed in Vietnam from 1962 to 1971 during the Vietnam War for the dual purpose of defoliating forest areas that might conceal Viet Cong and North Vietnamese forces and destroying crops that might feed the enemy. The defoliant, sprayed from low-flying aircraft, consisted of approximately equal amounts of the unp...
  • agent provocateur (espionage)
    ...by the Maximalists of the Socialist Revolutionary Party against policemen and officials, claimed hundreds of lives in 1905–07. The police felt able to combat it only by infiltrating their agents into the revolutionary parties and particularly into the terrorist detachments of these parties. This use of double agents (or agents provocateurs, as they were often known) did much to......
  • Agenzia Nazionale Stampa Associata (Italian news agency)
    ...the Arab News Agency, which provides news for several states in the Middle East. Others are national newspaper cooperatives, such as the Ritzaus Bureau of Denmark, founded in 1866. A few, like the Agenzia Nazionale Stampa Associata of Italy, have expanded coverage abroad in a limited degree to supplement their domestic service but still depend on Reuters and Agence France-Presse for much of......
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