Columbia Encyclopedia

(Encyclopedia) elevator, in machinery, device for transporting people or goods from one level to another. The term is applied to the enclosed structures as well as the open platforms used to provide vertical transpo...

(Encyclopedia)  CE5 glycine glīˈsēn [key], organic compound, one of the 20 amino acids commonly found in animal proteins. Glycine is the only one of these amino acids that is not optically active, i.e., it does...

(Encyclopedia) government, system of social control under which the right to make laws, and the right to enforce them, is vested in a particular group in society. There are many classifications of government. Accord...

(Encyclopedia) guardian and ward, in law. A guardian is someone who by appointment or by relationship has the care of a person or that person's property, or both. The protected individual, known as the ward, is cons...

(Encyclopedia) euchre yo͞oˈkər [key], card game, played usually by four persons (two sets of partners). The game originated among the Amish and was a popular card game in America in the late 19th cent. The pack h...

(Encyclopedia) Davis, Bette bĕtˈē [key], 1908–89, American film actress, b. Lowell, Mass., as Ruth Elizabeth Davis. One of the most durable stars of the American screen, she made her debut in 1931. With a strik...

(Encyclopedia) procedure, in law, the rules that govern the obtaining of legal redress. This article deals only with civil procedure in Anglo-American law (for criminal procedure, see criminal law). Except for evide...

(Encyclopedia)  CE5 Constructive interference: Two crests or two troughs meet and combine (A, B, C). Destructive interference: A crest and a trough meet and cancel each other (D, E, F). interference, in physics, ...

(Encyclopedia) Germanic languages, subfamily of the Indo-European family of languages, spoken by about 470 million people in many parts of the world, but chiefly in Europe and the Western Hemisphere. All the modern ...

(Encyclopedia) Lyme disease or Lyme borreliosis, a nonfatal bacterial infection that causes symptoms ranging from fever and headache to a painful swelling of the joints. The first American case of Lyme's characteris...