sedimentary rock: Coal: …into the various kinds of coal: initially brown coal or lignite, then soft or bituminous coal, and finally, with metamorphism, hard or anthracite coal. In the geologic record, coal occurs in beds, called seams, which are blanketlike coal deposits a few centimetres to metres or hundreds of metres thick.

private: Navy it is seaman, in the U.S. Air Force, airman.

Robert C. Seamans, Jr. was an American aeronautical engineer who pioneered in the development of advanced systems of flight control, fire control, and guidance for modern aircraft. In 1941 Seamans became an instructor of aircraft instrumentation at Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT),

Robert C. Seamans, Jr. was an American aeronautical engineer who pioneered in the development of advanced systems of flight control, fire control, and guidance for modern aircraft. In 1941 Seamans became an instructor of aircraft instrumentation at Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT),

Stephen Bleecker Luce: …to that end he published Seamanship (1863), which became a standard text.

Massachusetts: Cultural life: …and some 600 logbooks; the Seamen’s Bethel (chapel), also located in New Bedford, was immortalized by Melville in Moby Dick.

Zeami was the greatest playwright and theorist of the Japanese Noh theatre. He and his father, Kan’ami (1333–84), were the creators of the Noh drama in its present form. Under the patronage of the shogun Ashikaga Yoshimitsu, whose favour Zeami enjoyed after performing before him in 1374, the Noh

steel: Tubes: Seamless tubing involved the piercing of a round billet; this process was developed in Britain in 1841. A greatly improved process was developed by the Mannesmann company in Germany in 1886; this involved rolling the billet longitudinally and at the same time forcing it onto…

seamount, large submarine volcanic mountain rising at least 1,000 m (3,300 feet) above the surrounding deep-sea floor; smaller submarine volcanoes are called sea knolls, and flat-topped seamounts are called guyots. Great Meteor Tablemount in the northeast Atlantic, standing more than 4,000 m

Fernand Léger: In 1909 he produced The Seamstress, in which he reduced his colours to a combination of blue-gray and buff and rendered the human body as a mass of slabs and cylinders that resembled a robot. His style was aptly nicknamed “tubism.”

50 Cent: Acting, writing, and producing projects: In 2025 he produced Sean Combs: The Reckoning, a Netflix docuseries about his longtime nemesis, who was sentenced earlier in the year to 50 months in prison for charges involving prostitution. Combs’s sentence came after a high-profile criminal trial in which several women claimed that he had subjected them…

Sean Hannity: …as well, as host of The Sean Hannity Show (1998– ), which was eventually syndicated on more than 500 stations in the United States. He also hosted the Fox News Channel show Hannity’s America, a weekly conservative current-affairs program. Following the end of Hannity & Colmes in 2009, Hannity assumed…

Simon Pegg: Career: …again for the 2004 film Shaun of the Dead, with Wright again directing and Pegg starring and cowriting the script. Frost, who had in part helped inspire the story—a “romantic zombie comedy” (also called a “rom-zom-com”) about friends who attempt to weather a zombie apocalypse from their local pub—again played…

Ireland: Constitutional framework: …the Oireachtas—the Dáil and the Seanad Éireann (Senate). Chief legislative power is centred in the 158-member Dáil. The Seanad may delay bills passed by the Dáil, or it may suggest changes in them, but it cannot indefinitely block their passage into law.

séance, (French: “sitting”), in occultism, meeting centred on a medium (q.v.), who seeks to communicate with spirits of the dead. Because strong light is said to hinder communication, a séance usually takes place in darkness or subdued light. It generally involves six or eight persons, who normally

surfperch, any of 23 species of fishes of the family Embiotocidae (order Perciformes). Surfperches are found in the North Pacific Ocean; three or four species are native to Japanese waters, but all others are confined to the North American coast, mostly off California. One species, the tule perch

seaplane, any of a class of aircraft that can land, float, and take off on water. Seaplanes with boatlike hulls are also known as flying boats, those with separate pontoons or floats as floatplanes. The first practical seaplanes were built and flown in the United States by Glenn H. Curtiss, in 1911

Boston: Transportation: There a newly created Seaport District featured a large convention centre, an international trade centre, the Institute of Contemporary Art, and a series of hotels, restaurants, and residential buildings.

earthquake: Seiches: This phenomenon is called a seaquake.

Nicolas Malebranche: (1674–75; Search After Truth). Criticism of its theology by others led him to amplify his views in Traité de la nature et de la grâce (1680; Treatise of Nature and Grace). His Entretiens sur la métaphysique et sur la religion (1688; “Dialogues on Metaphysics and on…

information processing: Information searching and retrieval: State-of-the-art approaches to retrieving information employ two generic techniques: (1) matching words in the query against the database index (key-word searching) and (2) traversing the database with the aid of hypertext or hypermedia links.

search and seizure, practices engaged in by law enforcement officers in order to gain sufficient evidence to ensure the arrest and conviction of an offender. The latitude allowed police and other law enforcement agents in carrying out searches and seizures varies considerably from country to

search engine, computer program to find answers to queries in a collection of information, which might be a library catalog or a database but is most commonly the World Wide Web. A Web search engine produces a list of “pages”—computer files listed on the Web—that contain or relate to the terms in a

search engine optimization (SEO), practice of increasing both the quality and quantity of “organic” (unpaid) traffic to a website by improving its ranking in the indexes of search engines. Search engines use “bots” (data-collecting programs) to hunt the Web for pages. Information about these pages

SETI, ongoing effort to seek intelligent extraterrestrial life. SETI focuses on receiving and analyzing signals from space, particularly in the radio and visible-light regions of the electromagnetic spectrum, looking for nonrandom patterns likely to have been sent either deliberately or

Sam Rockwell: …Somebody to Love (1994), and The Search for One-Eye Jimmy (1994). However, it was his leading role as an eccentric free spirit in Box of Moonlight (1996) that first gained him widespread attention. He later had starring roles in such independent films as Lawn Dogs (1997) and Safe Men (1998),…

Lily Tomlin: …in the one-woman Broadway show The Search for Signs of Intelligent Life in the Universe (1985–86), for which she received a Tony for best actress. The 1991 film adaptation, however, was largely ignored.

Umberto Eco: …perfetta nella cultura europea (1993; The Search for the Perfect Language) and Kant e l’ornitorinco (1997; Kant and the Platypus). He edited the illustrated companion volumes Storia della bellezza (2004; History of Beauty) and Storia della bruttezza (2007; On Ugliness), and he wrote another pictorial book, Vertigine della lista (2009;…

coloration: Coloration changes in populations: The phenomenon—known as a perceptual set or a search image—is exemplified by the predator of the European snail Cepaea. Predators encounter one morph and form a search image; they continue to hunt for that one form until its increasing rarity causes the predator to hunt randomly, encounter a different…

Peter A. Diamond: …their analysis of markets with search frictions.” The theoretical framework collectively developed by the three men—which describes the search activity of the unemployed, the methods by which firms recruit and formulate wages, and the effects of economic policies and regulation—became widely used in labour market analysis.

Alia Shawkat: Career: …in the dark comedy series Search Party, which follows the adventures of four friends searching for a former college classmate who has gone missing. In Time magazine’s review of the fifth season of Search Party, critic Judy Berman wrote that Shawkat’s portrayal of Sief “embodied the aimlessness of grads who’d…

operations research: Search problems: Search problems involve finding the best way to obtain information needed for a decision. Though every problem contains a search problem in one sense, situations exist in which search itself is the essential process; for example, in auditing accounts, inspection and quality control…

Annette Bening: Career: …The Face of Love (2013), The Search (2014), Danny Collins (2015), and 20th Century Women (2016). She also appeared in Rules Don’t Apply (2016), written and directed by Beatty, and played an aging Gloria Grahame in Film Stars Don’t Die in Liverpool (2017). In 2018 she starred in a film…

Fred Zinnemann: Films of the late 1930s and 1940s: Zinnemann’s next project, The Search (1948), was considerably more prestigious. The first film shot in Germany following the conclusion of World War II, it was the moving story of an American soldier (played by Montgomery Clift, in his second film) stationed in Berlin who tries to adopt a…

ground beetle: The searcher, or caterpillar hunter (Calosoma scrutator), is a common, brightly coloured North American ground beetle about 35 mm (1.5 inches) long. Its green or violet wings are edged in red, and its body has violet-blue, gold, and green markings. This and related species of ground beetles are…

Tana French: The Witch Elm and the Cal Hooper series: In 2020 she published The Searcher, her first novel with a non-Irish main character: a retired detective from Chicago named Cal Hooper who settles into an old house in a small Irish village. The story launched a new series, which includes The Hunter (2024) and The Keeper (2026). As…

The Searchers, American western film, released in 1956, that is widely considered director John Ford’s masterpiece. It features John Wayne in one of his most-notable performances, portraying perhaps the most morally ambiguous character of his career. Ethan Edwards (played by Wayne) is a mysterious

British Invasion: …exuberant male quartets such as the Searchers, the Fourmost, and Gerry and the Pacemakers—plus the quintet Billy J. Kramer and the Dakotas—launched “Merseybeat,” so named for the estuary that runs alongside Liverpool. The Beatles first reached the British record charts in late 1962 (shortly after the Tornados’ “Telstar,” an instrumental…

the Coasters: …directed at teenage listeners: “Searchin’ ” and “Young Blood” (both 1957), “Yakety Yak” (1958), and “Charlie Brown” and “Poison Ivy” (both 1959). The Coasters alternated lead singers and featured clever arrangements, including amusing bass replies and tenor saxophone solos by King Curtis, who played a crucial role in creating…

information processing: Information searching and retrieval: State-of-the-art approaches to retrieving information employ two generic techniques: (1) matching words in the query against the database index (key-word searching) and (2) traversing the database with the aid of hypertext or hypermedia links.

Laurence Fishburne: Film roles: … (1991), Deep Cover (1992), and Searching for Bobby Fischer (1993). His portrayal of musician Ike Turner in What’s Love Got to Do with It (1993) earned him an Academy Award nomination for best actor. In 1995 he became the first African American to play Shakespeare’s Othello in a major film.…

Anne Tyler: …of Celestial Navigation (1974) and Searching for Caleb (1975) that Tyler came to nationwide attention.

James Martin: Editor at America and first books: …Center is the topic of Searching for God at Ground Zero (2002). In My Life with the Saints Martin reflects on how religious figures such as Merton, Dorothy Day, Mother Teresa, Peter the Apostle, Joan of Arc, Francis of Assisi, and the Martyrs of Uganda influenced his spiritual development.

Kate Grenville: …wrote such nonfiction books as Searching for the Secret River (2006) and One Life: My Mother’s Story (2015).

Montgomery Clift: …Teeth (1942), and Lillian Hellman’s The Searching Wind (1944). He worked with, among others, actor Alfred Lunt and director Robert Lewis (both of whom served as mentors) and became known for the intelligence and dedication he brought to his work.

searchlight, high-intensity electric light with a reflector shaped to concentrate the beam, used to illuminate or search for distant objects or as a beacon. Carbon arc lamps have been used from about 1870 and from about 1910 rare-earth fluorides or oxides have been added to the carbon to create

Searcy, city, seat (1837) of White county, east-central Arkansas, U.S., near the Little Red River, 50 miles (80 km) northeast of Little Rock. It originated as White Sulphur Springs, a spa popular in the 19th century until the springs ran dry. Incorporated in 1835, it was renamed for Richard Searcy,

John Searle was an American philosopher best known for his work in the philosophy of language—especially speech act theory—and the philosophy of mind. He also made significant contributions to epistemology, ontology, the philosophy of social institutions, and the study of practical reason. He

Ronald Searle was a British graphic satirist, best known for his cartoons of the girls at an imaginary boarding school he called St. Trinian’s. Searle was educated at the Cambridge School of Art and published his first humorous work in the late 1930s. During World War II he served with the Royal

Ronald Searle was a British graphic satirist, best known for his cartoons of the girls at an imaginary boarding school he called St. Trinian’s. Searle was educated at the Cambridge School of Art and published his first humorous work in the late 1930s. During World War II he served with the Royal

Searles Lake, playa in San Bernardino county, southern California, U.S. Lying to the west of the southern edge of Death Valley National Park, it formed part of a Pleistocene drainage network linking a number of now-arid basins. Certain minerals constituting the playa’s evaporites are relatively

Sears, American retailer of general merchandise, tools, home appliances, clothing, and automotive parts and services. It is a subsidiary of Sears Holdings Corporation, which, following a bankruptcy auction, was purchased by the hedge fund ESL Investments in 2019. In 1886 Richard W. Sears founded

Willis Tower, skyscraper in Chicago, located at 233 South Wacker Drive, that was the world’s tallest building until 1996. That year it was surpassed by the Petronas Twin Towers (1,483 feet [452 meters] tall), in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. Sears Tower, as the building was originally called, opened to

Atari console, video game console released in 1977 by the North American game manufacturer Atari, Inc. Using a cartridge-based system that allowed users to play a variety of video games, the Atari console marked the beginning of a new era in home gaming systems. Developed by Atari cofounder Nolan

Isaac Sears was a patriot leader in New York City before the American Revolution, who earned the nickname “King Sears” by virtue of his prominent role in inciting and commanding anti-British demonstrations. A merchant whose shipping activities included privateering, Sears first exhibited his

Richard Dudley Sears was the first American men’s singles champion in lawn tennis (1881) and winner of that title for each of the six following years. His record has never been equaled by any other amateur player. Sears also won the U.S. men’s doubles championship for six straight years (1882–84

Richard W. Sears was an American merchant who developed his mail-order jewelry business into the huge retail company Sears, Roebuck. Sears’s father had been wealthy but lost his fortune in speculation. After his death the young Sears, age 17, went to work for the Minneapolis and St. Louis Railway

Richard W. Sears was an American merchant who developed his mail-order jewelry business into the huge retail company Sears, Roebuck. Sears’s father had been wealthy but lost his fortune in speculation. After his death the young Sears, age 17, went to work for the Minneapolis and St. Louis Railway

frustration-aggression hypothesis: Background and assumptions: Mowrer, and Robert Sears—in an important monograph, Frustration and Aggression (1939), in which they integrated ideas and findings from several disciplines, especially sociology, anthropology, and psychology. Their work was notable for its eclectic use of psychoanalysis, behaviourism, and Marxism. It became

Sears, American retailer of general merchandise, tools, home appliances, clothing, and automotive parts and services. It is a subsidiary of Sears Holdings Corporation, which, following a bankruptcy auction, was purchased by the hedge fund ESL Investments in 2019. In 1886 Richard W. Sears founded

William Le Baron Jenney: …of Montgomery Ward); and the second Leiter Building (1889–90), which became Sears, Roebuck and Co.’s Loop store.

high seas: …subjected to national sovereignty (freedom of the seas) was proposed by the Dutch jurist Hugo Grotius as early as 1609. It did not become an accepted principle of international law, however, until the 19th century. Freedom of the seas was ideologically connected with other 19th-century freedoms, particularly laissez-faire economic…

Seasat, experimental U.S. ocean surveillance satellite launched June 26, 1978. During its 99 days of operation, Seasat orbited the Earth 14 times daily. Instruments of the unmanned spacecraft, engineered to penetrate cloud cover, provided data on a wide array of oceanographic conditions and

Seascape, drama in two acts by Edward Albee, produced and published in 1975; it won the Pulitzer Prize for drama that year. The play presents Nancy and Charlie, a married couple. Picnicking by the ocean one day, they meet Leslie and Sarah, middle-aged giant lizards from beneath the sea who want to

Winslow Homer: The move to Prouts Neck: …to America in 1883, the sea became the dominant theme in his work. He moved to Prouts Neck, a fishing village on the bleak, desolate coast of Maine. He traveled extensively but always returned to his Prouts Neck studio to convert his sketches into major paintings. Solitude became for Homer…

seashell, hard exoskeleton of marine mollusks such as snails, bivalves, and chitons that serves to protect and support their bodies. It is composed largely of calcium carbonate secreted by the mantle, a skinlike tissue in the mollusk’s body wall. Seashells are usually made up of several layers of

Germaine Dulac: Silent cinema: The second short, The Seashell and the Clergyman (1928), is widely considered the first Surrealist film, predating Luis Buñuel and Salvador Dali’s Un Chien Andalou (1929). Dramatist and actor Antonin Artaud, famed for the “theater of cruelty,” wrote the script, about a clergyman’s lust for the wife of…

bindweed: Seashore false bindweed (Calystegia soldanella), with fleshy kidney-shaped leaves and deep pink 5-cm blooms, creeps along European seaside sand and gravel.

motion sickness, sickness induced by motion and characterized by nausea. The term motion sickness was proposed by J.A. Irwin in 1881 to provide a general designation for such similar syndromes as seasickness, train sickness, car sickness, and airsickness. The term, though imprecise for scientific

Seaside, city, Clatsop county, northwestern Oregon, U.S., on the Pacific Coast, south of Astoria. The site became popular as a seaside resort with the construction of a lavish guesthouse in the 1870s. A 2-mile (3-km) boardwalk runs atop a seawall paralleling the coast. Members of the Lewis and

Andrés Duany and Elizabeth Plater-Zyberk: …with their revolutionary scheme for Seaside (begun 1980, completed 1983), a resort on the Gulf Coast of Florida.

Superstorm Sandy: Damage: The boardwalks of Seaside Heights and Belmar were also destroyed, along with many coastal developments along New Jersey’s shoreline. During the storm, water from the Hudson River overtopped the seawall protecting Hoboken and flooded much of the city, isolating an estimated 20,000 residents in their homes.

Bridgeport: …the entrance to the city’s Seaside Park, which covers more than 300 acres (120 hectares) on the shore of Long Island Sound. The arch is dedicated to William H. Perry, a prominent citizen and manufacturer. The city is the home of the University of Bridgeport (1927) and Housatonic Community-Technical College…

season, any of four divisions of the year according to consistent annual changes in the weather. The seasons—winter, spring, summer, and autumn—are commonly regarded in the Northern Hemisphere as beginning respectively on the winter solstice, December 21 or 22; on the vernal equinox, March 20 or

A Season in Hell, collection of prose and poetry pieces by French Symbolist poet Arthur Rimbaud, published in 1873, when Rimbaud was 19, as Une Saison en enfer. The collection is a form of spiritual autobiography in which the author comes to a new self-awareness through an examination of his life

Breyten Breytenbach: …Seisoen in die Paradys (A Season in Paradise) was published in 1976, and other prison writings were published as Mouroir: Bespieëlende notas van ’n roman (Mouroir: Mirrornotes of a Novel) in 1983. In 1982 he was freed, and he subsequently returned to Paris. The True Confessions of an Albino…

Maryse Condé: Un Saison à Rihata (1981; A Season in Rihata) is set in a late 20th-century African land.

Aimé Césaire: …Une Saison au Congo (1966; A Season in the Congo), the epic of the 1960 Congo rebellion and of the assassination of the Congolese political leader Patrice Lumumba. Both depict the fate of black power as forever doomed to failure.

Canadian literature: Contemporary trends: …dans la vie d’Emmanuel (1965; A Season in the Life of Emmanuel), which won the Prix Médicis, presented a scathing denunciation of Quebec rural life, and Godbout’s Salut, Galarneau! (1967; Hail, Galarneau!) described the Americanization of Quebec. Blais went on to receive critical acclaim for Soifs (1995; These Festive Nights),…

George Lamming: …problems of political independence; and Season of Adventure (1960), in which a West Indian woman discovers her African heritage. The Pleasures of Exile (1960) is a collection of essays that examines Caribbean politics, race, and culture in an international context. Lamming’s later novels included Water with Berries (1971), a political…

Wole Soyinka: Novels and poetry collections: …the novels The Interpreters (1965), Season of Anomy (1973), and Chronicles from the Land of the Happiest People on Earth (2021), the latter of which drew particular praise for its satirical take on corruption in Nigeria. Upon its release, Soyinka told The Guardian that he had attempted to complete it…

Yoko Ono: Later music career: …Ice” (1981) and the album Season of Glass (1981), which captured her emotional reaction to Lennon’s death, among the highlights. Her later releases include Rising (1995), recorded with Sean’s band IMA, and Between My Head and the Sky (2009), for which she resurrected the Plastic Ono Band moniker. Beginning in…

Season of Migration to the North, novel by Sudanese-born writer al-Ṭayyib Ṣāliḥ, first published in 1966. It originally appeared serially in the Arabic-language journal Hiwar and was translated into English by Denys Johnson-Davies in 1969. The story, set in the 1950s, is told in the first person by

seasonal affective disorder (SAD), mood disorder characterized by recurring depression in autumn and winter, separated by periods of nondepression in spring and summer. The condition was first described in 1984 by American psychiatrist Norman Rosenthal. In autumn, when the days grow progressively

season, any of four divisions of the year according to consistent annual changes in the weather. The seasons—winter, spring, summer, and autumn—are commonly regarded in the Northern Hemisphere as beginning respectively on the winter solstice, December 21 or 22; on the vernal equinox, March 20 or

Per Teodor Cleve: …and Cleve’s work on diatoms, The Seasonal Distribution of Atlantic Plankton Organisms (1900), became a basic text on oceanography.

economic development: Surplus resources and disguised unemployment: …may be better described as seasonal unemployment during the off-seasons. The magnitude of this seasonal unemployment, however, depends not so much on the population density on land as on the number of crops cultivated on the same piece of land through the year. There is thus little seasonal unemployment in…

transhumance, form of pastoralism or nomadism organized around the migration of livestock between mountain pastures in warm seasons and lower altitudes the rest of the year. The seasonal migration may also occur between lower and upper latitudes (as in the movement of Siberian reindeer between the

levonorgestrel: …in combination with estradiol in Seasonale—an extended-cycle oral contraceptive, which enables an 84-day span between menstruations—and in a morning-after pill called Plan B. In 1999 Plan B became available by prescription in the United States. In 2006, after a long politically charged debate, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration approved…

slavery: The international slave trade: …began the period of “seasoning” for the slave, the period of about a year or so when he either succumbed to the disease environment of the New World or survived it. Many slaves landed on the North American mainland before the early 18th century had already survived the seasoning…

seasoning, in lumbering, drying lumber to prepare it for use. Unseasoned (green) wood is subject to attack by fungi and insects, and it also shrinks as it dries. Because it does not shrink evenly in all directions, it is likely to split and warp. The most common seasoning methods are air seasoning

flavouring, any of the liquid extracts, essences, and flavours that are added to foods to enhance their taste and aroma. Flavourings are prepared from essential oils, such as almond and lemon; from vanilla; from fresh fruits by expression; from ginger by extraction; from mixtures of essential oils

Kenneth Koch: …also in ottava rima, as Seasons on Earth (1987). He also wrote Sleeping with Women (1969) and the long prose poem The Burning Mystery of Anna in 1951 (1979), as well as many shorter verses, including those collected in Selected Poems 1950–82 (1991). In 1994 he published two collections, On…

Auguste Blanqui: …of Families”) and then the Société des Saisons (“Society of the Seasons”). The latter society’s disastrous attempt at insurrection on May 12, 1839, was the classic prototype of the Blanquist surprise attack. Five hundred armed revolutionaries took the Hôtel de Ville (“City Hall”) of Paris, but, isolated from the rest…

oratorio: Oratorio after 1750: Haydn called Die Jahreszeiten (1801; The Seasons) an oratorio, though its content is secular and its form a loosely articulated series of evocative pieces. Ludwig van Beethoven’s single oratorio, Christus am Ölberg (1803; Christ on the Mount of Olives), does not succeed, nor do most of those occasioned by the…

Kristijonas Donelaitis: His main work, Metai (1818; The Seasons), 2,997 lines in length, was written in hexameters, which were never before used in Lithuanian verse. It depicts realistically and in their own dialect the life of the serfs and the countryside of 18th-century Prussian Lithuania. The poem was first published in an…

Joseph Haydn: The late Esterházy and Viennese period: An extended poem, The Seasons, by James Thomson, was chosen as the basis for the (much shorter) libretto, again adapted and translated—if somewhat awkwardly—by van Swieten so as to enable performance in either German or English. The libretto allowed Haydn to compose delightful musical analogues of events in…

Victor Sjöström was a motion-picture actor and director who contributed significantly to the international preeminence of the Swedish silent film in the post-World War I era. Influenced by the novels of Selma Lagerlöf, whose art is rooted in sagas and folklore and imbued with a reverence for

Solange: A Seat at the Table: ” Solange’s commercial breakthrough came in 2016 with her album A Seat at the Table, which reached the top spot on the Billboard 200 chart. That year Beyoncé also had a number one album, Lemonade, and the two became the first…

accident: Motor vehicle accidents: Although seat belts can save lives, millions of people fail to use them. Likewise, helmets are an effective means of protecting motorcyclists from traumatic brain injury and death, yet many riders choose not to wear a helmet.