• Auden, W.H. (British poet)

    W. H. Auden was an English-born poet and man of letters who achieved early fame in the 1930s as a hero of the left during the Great Depression. Most of his verse dramas of this period were written in collaboration with Christopher Isherwood. In 1939 Auden settled in the United States, becoming a

  • Auden, Wystan Hugh (British poet)

    W. H. Auden was an English-born poet and man of letters who achieved early fame in the 1930s as a hero of the left during the Great Depression. Most of his verse dramas of this period were written in collaboration with Christopher Isherwood. In 1939 Auden settled in the United States, becoming a

  • Audenarde (Belgium)

    Oudenaarde, municipality, Flanders Region, west-central Belgium. It lies along the Scheldt (Schelde) River south of Ghent. A prosperous tapestry-making centre in the Middle Ages, its industry declined in the 15th century with the success of the Gobelin tapestry weavers (trained in Oudenaarde), many

  • Audhumla (Norse mythology)

    Aurgelmir: A cow, Audumla, nourished him with her milk. Audumla was herself nourished by licking salty, rime-covered stones. She licked the stones into the shape of a man; this was Buri, who became the grandfather of the great god Odin and his brothers. These gods later killed Aurgelmir,…

  • Audi filia (work by St. John of Ávila)

    St. John of Ávila: John’s Audi filia (“Listen, Daughter”), a treatise on Christian perfection addressed to the nun Doña Sancha Carillo, is considered to be a masterwork. His classical spiritual letters were edited by J.M. de Buck (Lettres de direction) in 1927. His complete works (Obras completas del B. Mtro.…

  • Audiard, Jacques (French director and screenwriter)

    Jacques Audiard is a French film director and screenwriter whose crime films have been acclaimed for their scripts and strong lead performances. Audiard is the son of noted screenwriter Michel Audiard, who is best known for his screenplays for crime films, particularly director Henri Verneuil’s

  • Audiberti, Jacques (French playwright)

    Jacques Audiberti was a poet, novelist, and, most importantly, playwright whose extravagance of language and rhythm shows the influence of Symbolism and Surrealism. A former clerk for the justice of the peace in Antibes, Audiberti began his writing career as a journalist, moving to Paris in 1925 to

  • Audience, The (play by Morgan)

    Stephen Daldry: …Mirren in Peter Morgan’s play The Audience, which imagined the private weekly conversations between Queen Elizabeth II and the succession of British prime ministers over six decades. He then oversaw a 2014 revival of David Hare’s Skylight. The critically acclaimed production, which starred Carey Mulligan and Bill Nighy as former…

  • Audience, The (play by García Lorca)

    Federico García Lorca: Later poetry and plays of Federico García Lorca: In Cuba, Lorca wrote El público (“The Audience”), a complex, multifaceted play, expressionist in technique, that brashly explores the nature of homosexual passion. Lorca deemed the work, which remained unproduced until 1978, “a poem to be hissed.” On his return to Spain, he completed a second play aimed at…

  • audiences (communications)

    Television, radio, newspaper, and website viewers and readers are usually referred to as audiences. These are the people who make any media product matter: They are the targeted recipients of most media products, especially advertising. Media products such as newspapers, magazines, television

  • audiencia (Spanish court)

    audiencia, in the kingdoms of late medieval Spain, a court established to administer royal justice; also, one of the most important governmental institutions of Spanish colonial America. In Spain the ordinary judges of audiencias in civil cases were called oidores and, for criminal cases, alcaldes

  • Audiencia of Charcas (government)

    Bolivia: Early period: …foundation in 1559 as the Audiencia of Charcas. The audiencia was first placed under the Viceroyalty of Peru at Lima, but in 1776 it was finally shifted to the new Viceroyalty of the Río de la Plata established at Buenos Aires (now in Argentina). With its academies and universities, Chuquisaca…

  • Audimeter (electronic device)

    A.C. Nielsen: …a small box, called an Audimeter, attached to the set, which recorded when the set was on and what channel was tuned in. These data were relayed to a computer centre, which also collected data from viewing diaries kept by a smaller sampling of households. Based on such information, the…

  • audio amplifier (electronics)

    amplifier, in electronics, device that responds to a small input signal (voltage, current, or power) and delivers a larger output signal that contains the essential waveform features of the input signal. Amplifiers of various types are widely used in such electronic equipment as radio and

  • audio card (technology)

    sound card, integrated circuit that generates an audio signal and sends it to a computer’s speakers. The sound card can accept an analog sound (as from a microphone or audio tape) and convert it to digital data that can be stored in an audio file, or it can accept digitized audio signals (as from

  • audio disc (recording)

    compact disc (CD), a molded plastic disc containing digital data that is scanned by a laser beam for the reproduction of recorded sound and other information. Since its commercial introduction in 1982, the audio CD has almost completely replaced the phonograph disc (or record) for high-fidelity

  • audio disc

    sound recording: The phonograph disc: A monaural phonograph record makes use of a spiral 90° V-shaped groove impressed into a plastic disc. As the record revolves at 33 1 3 rotations per minute, a tiny “needle,” or stylus, simultaneously moves along the groove and vibrates back and forth parallel to the surface…

  • audio signal processing (electronics)

    motion-picture technology: Sound effects: …of digital technology known as audio signal processing (ASP). The sound waveform is analyzed 44,000 times per second and converted into binary information. The pitch of a sound may be raised or lowered without altering the speed of the tape transport. Thus, engineers can simulate the changes in pitch perceived…

  • audio surveillance (technology)

    electronic eavesdropping, the act of electronically intercepting conversations without the knowledge or consent of at least one of the participants. Historically, the most common form of electronic eavesdropping has been wiretapping, which monitors telephonic and telegraphic communication. It is

  • audiocassette

    sound recording: The audiotape: Audiocassette tape recording also makes use of electromagnetic phenomena to record and reproduce sound waves. The tape consists of a plastic backing coated with a thin layer of tiny particles of magnetic powder, usually ferric oxide (Fe2O3) and to a lesser extent chromium dioxide (CrO2).…

  • audiogram (medicine)

    human ear: Audiometry: …8,000 hertz is called an audiogram. The shape of the audiogram for an individual who is hard of hearing can provide the otologist or audiologist with important information for determining the nature and cause of the hearing defect. (The audiologist is primarily concerned with measuring the degree of hearing impairment;…

  • audiolingual method (education)

    foreign-language instruction: The audiolingual method is also primarily oral, but it assumes that native language habits will interfere with the process of acquiring new language habits whenever the two conflict. It therefore includes concentrated drill in all features of the new language that differ in structure from the…

  • audiology (medicine)

    audiology, the study, assessment, prevention, and treatment of disorders of hearing and balance. Clinical audiology is concerned primarily with the assessment of the function of the human ear, which affects hearing sensitivity and balance. The characterization of specific losses in hearing or

  • audiometer (instrument)

    human ear: Audiometry: The audiometer consists of an oscillator or a signal generator, an amplifier, a device called an attenuator, which controls and specifies the intensity of tones produced, and an earphone or loudspeaker. The intensity range is usually 100 dB in steps of 5 dB. The “zero dB”…

  • audiometry (medicine)

    human ear: Audiometry: With the introduction of the electric audiometer in the 1930s, it became possible to measure an individual’s hearing threshold for a series of pure tones ranging from a lower frequency of 125 hertz to an upper frequency of 8,000 or 10,000 hertz. This span…

  • Audion (electronics)

    Audion, elementary form of radio tube developed in 1906 (patented 1907) by Lee De Forest of the United States. It was the first vacuum tube in which a control grid (in the form of a bent wire) was added between the anode plate and the cathode filament. The control grid enabled De Forest to modulate

  • AudioNet (American company)

    Mark Cuban: …1995 to found AudioNet (later Broadcast.com), which offered various live programming online. Hugely successful, the company went public in 1998, and the following year it was sold to Yahoo! for about $5.7 billion. (Sold at the height of the dot-com bubble, Broadcast.com was later discontinued.)

  • Audioslave (American rock group)

    Rage Against the Machine: …members went on to form Audioslave with former Soundgarden vocalist Chris Cornell. Audioslave produced three successful albums before breaking up.

  • audiovisual aids

    audiovisual education, use of supplementary teaching aids, such as recordings, transcripts, and tapes; motion pictures and videotapes; radio and television; and computers, to improve learning. Audiovisual education has developed rapidly since the 1920s by drawing on new technologies of

  • audiovisual education

    audiovisual education, use of supplementary teaching aids, such as recordings, transcripts, and tapes; motion pictures and videotapes; radio and television; and computers, to improve learning. Audiovisual education has developed rapidly since the 1920s by drawing on new technologies of

  • audism

    audism, belief that the ability to hear makes one superior to those with hearing loss. Those who support this perspective are known as audists, and they may be hearing or deaf. The term audism was coined in 1975 in an unpublished article written by American communication and language researcher Tom

  • Audit Bureau of Circulation (advertising organization)

    history of publishing: Magazine advertising economics: …initiatives in 1914 created the Audit Bureau of Circulation. Though resented at first by publishers, it was eventually seen as a guarantee of their claims. Interest in circulation led publishers into market research. The first organization for this purpose was set up by the Curtis Publishing Company in 1911; but…

  • auditing (accounting)

    auditing, examination of the records and reports of an enterprise by specialists other than those responsible for their preparation. Public auditing by independent, impartial accountants has acquired professional status and become increasingly common with the rise of large business units and the

  • auditing (Scientology)

    engram: …developed what he called “auditing,” a one-on-one counseling process in which a counselor, or auditor, facilitates individuals’ handling of their engrams. A key aspect of this process is the use of an instrument called an E-meter. According to Scientology teachings, the E-meter measures the strength of a small electrical…

  • Audition (autobiography by Walters)

    Barbara Walters: Personal life: In her autobiography, Audition (2008), so named because she felt she had to prove herself over and over again, Walters reflected on both her public life and her private life. She was especially candid about her struggles to balance her career with motherhood. The documentary Barbara Walters: Tell…

  • audition (sense)

    hearing, in biology, physiological process of perceiving sound. See ear; mechanoreception; perception; sound

  • Auditorium (building, Caracas, Venezuela)

    Carlos Raúl Villanueva: …the Olympic Stadium (1951); the Auditorium (Aula Magna) and covered plaza (Plaza Cubierta), both 1952–53; and the School of Architecture (1957). The Auditorium was particularly notable for its ceiling, from which are suspended floating panels of various sizes and colours, designed by the sculptor Alexander Calder in association with the…

  • auditorium (architecture)

    auditorium, the part of a public building where an audience sits, as distinct from the stage, the area on which the performance or other object of the audience’s attention is presented. In a large theatre an auditorium includes a number of floor levels frequently designed as stalls, private boxes,

  • Auditorium Building and Theatre (building, Chicago, Illinois, United States)

    Chicago: Cultural institutions: Several blocks farther north, the Auditorium Theatre (1889) is the site of touring plays, popular concerts, and visiting orchestras and is the home of the Joffrey Ballet, which moved from New York City to Chicago in 1995. A few more blocks north is Symphony Center (formerly Orchestra Hall), home of…

  • Auditors, Court of (European government)

    European Union: The Maastricht Treaty: The treaty formally incorporated the Court of Auditors, which was created in the 1970s to monitor revenue and expenditures, into the EC.

  • auditory agnosia (pathology)

    agnosia: Types of agnosia: Auditory agnosias range from the inability to comprehend spoken words (verbal auditory agnosia) to the inability to recognize nonlinguistic sounds and noises (nonverbal auditory agnosia) or music (amusia). In young children, acquired verbal auditory agnosia, which is a symptom of Landau-Kleffner syndrome, may lead to…

  • auditory canal, external (anatomy)

    external auditory canal, passageway that leads from the outside of the head to the tympanic membrane, or eardrum membrane, of each ear. The structure of the external auditory canal is the same in all mammals. In appearance it is a slightly curved tube that extends inward from the floor of the

  • auditory cortex (anatomy)

    human nervous system: Hearing: The auditory cortex provides the temporal and spatial frames of reference for the auditory data that it receives. In other words, it is sensitive to aspects of sound more complex than frequency. For instance, there are neurons that react only when a sound starts or stops.…

  • auditory meatus, external (anatomy)

    external auditory canal, passageway that leads from the outside of the head to the tympanic membrane, or eardrum membrane, of each ear. The structure of the external auditory canal is the same in all mammals. In appearance it is a slightly curved tube that extends inward from the floor of the

  • auditory nerve (anatomy)

    vestibulocochlear nerve, nerve in the human ear, serving the organs of equilibrium and of hearing. It consists of two anatomically and functionally distinct parts: the cochlear nerve, distributed to the hearing organ, and the vestibular nerve, distributed to the organ of equilibrium. The cochlear

  • auditory nerve (anatomy)

    human nervous system: Vestibulocochlear nerve (CN VIII or 8): Auditory receptors of the cochlear division are located in the organ of Corti and follow the spiral shape (about 2.5 turns) of the cochlea. Air movement against the eardrum initiates action of the ossicles of the ear, which, in turn, causes movement of fluid in the spiral cochlea. This…

  • auditory ossicle (anatomy)

    ear bone, any of the three tiny bones in the middle ear of all mammals. These are the malleus, or hammer, the incus, or anvil, and the stapes, or stirrup. Together they form a short chain that crosses the middle ear and transmits vibrations caused by sound waves from the eardrum membrane to the

  • auditory system (anatomy)

    human ear, organ of hearing and equilibrium that detects and analyzes sound by transduction (or the conversion of sound waves into electrochemical impulses) and maintains the sense of balance (equilibrium). The human ear, like that of other mammals, contains sense organs that serve two quite

  • auditory tube (anatomy)

    eustachian tube, hollow structure that extends from the middle ear to the pharynx (throat). The eustachian tube is about 31–38 mm (1.2–1.5 inches) long in humans and lined with mucous membrane. It is directed downward and inward from the tympanic cavity, or middle ear, to the portion of the pharynx

  • Audley of Walden, Baron (lord chancellor of England)

    Thomas Audley, Baron Audley was the lord chancellor of England from 1533 to 1544, who helped King Henry VIII break with the papacy and establish himself as head of the English church. Historians have viewed him as an unprincipled politician completely subservient to Henry’s will. Trained in law,

  • Audley, Thomas (lord chancellor of England)

    Thomas Audley, Baron Audley was the lord chancellor of England from 1533 to 1544, who helped King Henry VIII break with the papacy and establish himself as head of the English church. Historians have viewed him as an unprincipled politician completely subservient to Henry’s will. Trained in law,

  • Audley, Thomas Audley, Baron (lord chancellor of England)

    Thomas Audley, Baron Audley was the lord chancellor of England from 1533 to 1544, who helped King Henry VIII break with the papacy and establish himself as head of the English church. Historians have viewed him as an unprincipled politician completely subservient to Henry’s will. Trained in law,

  • Audoenus (Welsh epigrammatist)

    John Owen was a Welsh epigrammatist whose perfect mastery of the Latin language brought him the name of “the British Martial,” after the ancient Roman poet. Owen was educated at Winchester School and at New College, Oxford. He was a fellow of his college from 1584 to 1591, when he became a

  • Audoin (king of the Lombards)

    Lombard: …royal dynasty was begun by Audoin. At that time, it seems, the Lombards began to adapt their tribal organization and institutions to the imperial military system of the period, in which a hierarchy of dukes, counts, and others commanded warrior bands formed from related families or kin groups. For two…

  • Audran, Claude III (French decorator)

    singerie: …usually attributed to the decorator Claude III Audran, who in 1709 painted a large picture of monkeys seated at table for the Château de Marly. Antoine Watteau experimented with the genre, as did a number of his contemporaries. Reflecting a vogue for Chinese decor, or chinoiserie, singerie executed in the…

  • Audrey (fictional character)

    As You Like It: Forest of Arden sequence: A group of forest inhabitants—William, Audrey, Silvius, and Phoebe—and the courtier Le Beau round out the cast of characters, and an abundance of song complements the play’s amorous theme and idyllic forest setting. The play is considered one of Shakespeare’s “great” or “middle” comedies.

  • Audubon Society, National (American organization)

    National Audubon Society, U.S. organization dedicated to conserving and restoring natural ecosystems. Founded in 1905 and named for John James Audubon, the society has 600,000 members and maintains more than 100 wildlife sanctuaries and nature centres throughout the United States. Its high-priority

  • Audubon, Jean-Jacques Fougère (American artist)

    John James Audubon was an ornithologist, artist, and naturalist who became particularly well known for his drawings and paintings of North American birds. Audubon’s name is associated with a number of bird-related organizations, including the National Audubon Society; however, his personal history

  • Audubon, John James (American artist)

    John James Audubon was an ornithologist, artist, and naturalist who became particularly well known for his drawings and paintings of North American birds. Audubon’s name is associated with a number of bird-related organizations, including the National Audubon Society; however, his personal history

  • Audulomi (Indian philosopher)

    Indian philosophy: Variations in views: Audulomi, another pre-Badarayana Vedanta philosopher, is said to have held the view that the finite individual becomes identical with brahman after going through a process of purification. Another interpreter, Kashakritsna, holds that the two are identical—a view that anticipates the later “unqualified monism” of Shankara.…

  • Audumla (Norse mythology)

    Aurgelmir: A cow, Audumla, nourished him with her milk. Audumla was herself nourished by licking salty, rime-covered stones. She licked the stones into the shape of a man; this was Buri, who became the grandfather of the great god Odin and his brothers. These gods later killed Aurgelmir,…

  • Aue, Hartmann von (German poet)

    Hartmann von Aue was a Middle High German poet, one of the masters of the courtly epic. Hartmann’s works suggest that he received a learned education at a monastery school, that he was a ministerialis at a Swabian court, and that he may have taken part in the Third Crusade (1189–92) or the

  • Auel, Jean (American author)

    Jean Auel is an American novelist who was best known for her Earth’s Children series, which centres on Neanderthals and Cro-Magnons in prehistoric Europe. Untinen grew up in Chicago, and right after high-school graduation, she married Ray Auel. She and her husband moved to Oregon, where she had

  • Auenbrugger von Auenbrugg, Leopold (Austrian physician)

    Leopold Auenbrugger von Auenbrugg was a physician who devised the diagnostic technique of percussion (the art of striking a surface part of the body with short, sharp taps to diagnose the condition of the parts beneath the sound). In 1761, after seven years of investigation, he published a

  • Auer, Jane Sydney (American author)

    Jane Bowles was an American author whose small body of highly individualistic work enjoyed an underground reputation even when it was no longer in print. She was raised in the United States and was educated in Switzerland by French governesses. She married the composer-author Paul Bowles in 1938.

  • Auer, Leopold (Hungarian-American musician and teacher)

    Leopold Auer was a Hungarian-American violinist especially renowned as a teacher, who numbered among his pupils such famous performers as Mischa Elman, Jascha Heifetz, Efrem Zimbalist, and Nathan Milstein. Auer studied under the celebrated virtuoso Joseph Joachim. From 1868 he was professor of

  • Auerbach plexus (anatomy)

    digestive nerve plexus: …involved: the myenteric plexus (Auerbach’s plexus) and the submucous plexus (Meissner’s plexus). The myenteric plexus is situated between the circular muscle layer and the longitudinal muscle layer in the lower esophagus, stomach, and intestines. The submucous plexus, as its name implies, is located in the submucosal tissue, which connects…

  • Auerbach, Arnold Jacob (American coach)

    Red Auerbach was an American professional basketball coach whose National Basketball Association (NBA) Boston Celtics won nine NBA championships and 885 games against 455 losses. Auerbach began coaching at St. Alban’s Preparatory School (1940) and Roosevelt High School (1940–43), both in

  • Auerbach, Berthold (German novelist)

    Berthold Auerbach was a German novelist noted chiefly for his tales of village life. Auerbach prepared for the rabbinate, but, estranged from Jewish orthodoxy by the study of the 17th-century Dutch philosopher Benedict de Spinoza, he turned instead to literature. Spinoza’s life formed the basis of

  • Auerbach, Erich (American scholar)

    Erich Auerbach was an educator and scholar of Romance literatures and languages. After gaining a doctorate in philology at the University of Greifswald, Germany, in 1921, Auerbach served as librarian for the Prussian State Library. From 1929 until his dismissal by the Nazi Party in 1936, he was

  • Auerbach, Lisa Anne (American artist)

    Lisa Anne Auerbach is an American artist probably best known for her knitwear, though she works in a number of media, including photography, performance art, and zine production. Auerbach graduated in 1990 from the Rochester (New York) Institute of Technology with a B.F.A. in photography.

  • Auerbach, Red (American coach)

    Red Auerbach was an American professional basketball coach whose National Basketball Association (NBA) Boston Celtics won nine NBA championships and 885 games against 455 losses. Auerbach began coaching at St. Alban’s Preparatory School (1940) and Roosevelt High School (1940–43), both in

  • Auersperg, Adolf, Prince von, Duke Von Gottschee (prime minister of Austria)

    Adolf, prince von Auersperg was a liberal and anticlerical prime minister of the western half of the Habsburg empire (1871–79). After 14 years’ active duty as an imperial cavalry officer, Auersperg was elected to the Bohemian Landtag (provincial assembly) as a member of the Constitutional Great

  • Auersperg, Anton Alexander, Count von (Austrian poet)

    Anastasius Grün was an Austrian poet and statesman known for his spirited collections of political poetry. As a member of the estates of Carniola in the Diet at Laibach, Grün was a critic of the Austrian government, and after 1848 he represented the district of Laibach briefly at the German

  • Auersperg, Johann Weikhart, Prince von (Austrian statesman)

    Johann Weikhart, prince von Auersperg was an Austrian diplomat and statesman, head of the Aulic Council (Reichshofrat) under the Habsburg emperor Leopold I. After serving briefly as a Habsburg court councillor, Auersperg was sent to The Hague (1641), and later he took part in peace negotiations at

  • Auerstädt, Battle of (European history)

    Battle of Jena, (Oct. 14, 1806), military engagement of the Napoleonic Wars, fought between 122,000 French troops and 114,000 Prussians and Saxons, at Jena and Auerstädt, in Saxony (modern Germany). In the battle, Napoleon smashed the outdated Prussian army inherited from Frederick II the Great,

  • Auerstedt, Louis-Nicolas Davout, Duc d’ (French general)

    Louis-Nicolas Davout, duke of Auerstedt was a French marshal who was one of the most distinguished of Napoleon’s field commanders. Born into the noble family of d’Avout, he was educated at the École Royale Militaire in Paris and entered Louis XVI’s service as a second lieutenant in 1788. Amid the

  • Auez-ulï, Mukhtar (Kazakh writer)

    Kazakhstan: Cultural life: An early Soviet Kazakh writer, Mūhtar Äuezov (Mukhtar Auezov), won recognition for the long novel Abai, based on the life and poetry of Qūnanbayūly, and for his plays, including Eñlık-Kebek.

  • Auezov, Mukhtar (Kazakh writer)

    Kazakhstan: Cultural life: An early Soviet Kazakh writer, Mūhtar Äuezov (Mukhtar Auezov), won recognition for the long novel Abai, based on the life and poetry of Qūnanbayūly, and for his plays, including Eñlık-Kebek.

  • Auf dem See (poem by Goethe)

    Johann Wolfgang von Goethe: Sturm und Drang (1770–76) of Johann Wolfgang von Goethe: …Goethe’s most perfect poems, “Auf dem See” (“On the Lake”), and was followed by a walking tour through the mountains, with Goethe sketching all the time. Up on St. Gotthard Pass he contemplated the road down to Italy but turned away toward Lili and home.

  • Auf den Marmorklippen (work by Jünger)

    Ernst Jünger: …novel Auf den Marmorklippen (1939; On the Marble Cliffs), which, surprisingly, passed the censors and was published in Germany. Jünger served as an army staff officer in Paris during World War II, but by 1943 he had turned decisively against Nazi totalitarianism and its goal of world conquest, a change…

  • Auf Wiederseh’n Sweetheart (song by Storch)

    Vera Lynn: …of her material, issued “Auf Wiederseh’n Sweetheart” in the United States in 1952, she became the first English artist to hit number one on the American record charts; “My Son, My Son” (1954) was among her later hits. After leaving Decca in 1960 for EMI, Lynn continued to tour…

  • Auf Wiedersehen, Franziska! (film by Käutner)

    Helmut Käutner: …for a Russian prince, and Auf Wiedersehen, Franziska! (1941; “Goodbye, Franziska!”), which concerns the marital troubles between a reporter and his neglected wife. When the authorities forced Käutner to add an illogical upbeat ending to the latter film, he responded by making the enforced sequence deliberately contrived and farcical. Käutner…

  • Aufbau principle (chemistry)

    Aufbau principle, (from German Aufbauprinzip, “building-up principle”), rationalization of the distribution of electrons among energy levels in the ground (most stable) states of atoms. The principle, formulated by the Danish physicist Niels Bohr about 1920, is an application of the laws of quantum

  • Aufbauprinzip (chemistry)

    Aufbau principle, (from German Aufbauprinzip, “building-up principle”), rationalization of the distribution of electrons among energy levels in the ground (most stable) states of atoms. The principle, formulated by the Danish physicist Niels Bohr about 1920, is an application of the laws of quantum

  • Aufeis (ice formation)

    ice in lakes and rivers: Ice buildups: These are known as icings, Aufeis (German), or naleds (Russian). Icings may become so thick that they completely block culverts and in some cases overflow onto adjacent roads.

  • Aufgesang (music)

    minnesinger: …called individually Stollen and collectively Aufgesang, and a third section, or Abgesang (the terms derive from the later meistersingers); the formal ratio between Aufgesang and Abgesang is variable. The basic aab pattern was subject to much variation (see Bar form).

  • Aufhaltsame Aufsteig des Arturo Ui, Der (play by Brecht)

    Bertolt Brecht: …Aufstieg des Arturo Ui (1957; The Resistible Rise of Arturo Ui), a parable play of Hitler’s rise to power set in prewar Chicago; Herr Puntila und sein Knecht Matti (1948; Herr Puntila and His Man Matti), a Volksstück (popular play) about a Finnish farmer who oscillates between churlish sobriety and…

  • Aufidius (fictional character)

    Coriolanus: …joins forces with his enemy Aufidius, a Volscian, against Rome. Leading the enemy to the edge of the city, Coriolanus is ultimately persuaded by his mother, Volumnia—who brings with her Coriolanus’s wife, Virgilia, and his son—to make peace with Rome, and in the end he is killed at the instigation…

  • Aufklärung (European history)

    Enlightenment, a European intellectual movement of the 17th and 18th centuries in which ideas concerning God, reason, nature, and humanity were synthesized into a worldview that gained wide assent in the West and that instigated revolutionary developments in art, philosophy, and politics. Central

  • Aufstieg und Fall der Stadt Mahagonny (opera by Brecht and Weill)

    Mahagonny, opera in 20 scenes with music by Kurt Weill and text by Bertolt Brecht, published in 1929 and performed in German as Aufstieg und Fall der Stadt Mahagonny in 1930. The opera’s premiere in Leipzig was disrupted by Nazi sympathizers and others hostile to the Weimar Republic. Mahagonny is

  • Aufzeichnungen des Malte Laurids Brigge, Die (novel by Rilke)

    The Notebook of Malte Laurids Brigge, novel in journal form by Rainer Maria Rilke, published in 1910 in German as Die Aufzeichnungen des Malte Laurids Brigge. The book, which is composed of 71 diary-like entries, contains descriptive, reminiscent, and meditative parts. Brigge, its supposed author,

  • Augeas (Greek mythology)

    Augeas, in Greek legend, king of the Epeians in Elis, a son of the sun-god Helios. He possessed an immense wealth of herds, and King Eurystheus imposed upon the Greek hero Heracles the task of clearing out all of Augeas’s stables unaided in one day. Heracles did so by turning the Alpheus (or

  • Augeias (Greek mythology)

    Augeas, in Greek legend, king of the Epeians in Elis, a son of the sun-god Helios. He possessed an immense wealth of herds, and King Eurystheus imposed upon the Greek hero Heracles the task of clearing out all of Augeas’s stables unaided in one day. Heracles did so by turning the Alpheus (or

  • auger (tool)

    auger, tool (or bit) used with a carpenter’s brace for drilling holes in wood. It looks like a corkscrew and has six parts: screw, spurs, cutting edges, twist, shank, and tang. The screw looks like a tapered wood screw and is short and small in diameter; it centres the bit and draws it into the

  • auger boring (tool)

    auger, tool (or bit) used with a carpenter’s brace for drilling holes in wood. It looks like a corkscrew and has six parts: screw, spurs, cutting edges, twist, shank, and tang. The screw looks like a tapered wood screw and is short and small in diameter; it centres the bit and draws it into the

  • Auger effect (physics)

    Auger effect, in atomic physics, a spontaneous process in which an atom with an electron vacancy in the innermost (K) shell readjusts itself to a more stable state by ejecting one or more electrons instead of radiating a single X-ray photon. This internal photoelectric process is named for the

  • Auger electron spectroscopy (physics)

    surface analysis: Auger electron spectroscopy: Energies of Auger electrons (named after French physicist Pierre Auger), like energies of XPS photoelectrons, are characteristic of the individual chemical elements. Thus, it is possible to use AES to analyze surfaces in much the same way as XPS is used. However,…

  • auger mining (coal mining)

    auger mining, method for recovering coal by boring into a coal seam at the base of strata exposed by excavation. Normally one of the lowest-cost techniques of mining, it is limited to horizontal or slightly pitched seams that have been exposed by geologic erosion. Augering is usually associated

  • auger shell (gastropod)

    gastropod: Classification: Toxoglossa Auger shells (Terebridae), cone shells (Conidae) and turrid shells (Turridae) are carnivorous marine snails with poison glands attached to highly modified radular teeth; several cone shells have caused human deaths through poisoning and can catch and kill fish. Subclass Opisthobranchia