Columbia Encyclopedia

(Encyclopedia) fraud, in law, willful misrepresentation intended to deprive another of some right. The offense, generally only a tort, may also constitute the crime of false pretenses. Frauds are either actual or co...

(Encyclopedia) name. Personal identifying names are found in every known culture, and they often pass from one language to another. Hence the occurrence of Native American place names throughout the United States an...

(Encyclopedia) International Criminal Court (ICC), first permanent world court created specifically to try individuals for genocide, war crimes, crimes of aggression, and crimes against humanity, est. 2002; located ...

(Encyclopedia) Levelers or Levellers, English Puritan sect active at the time of the English civil war. The name was apparently applied to them in 1647, in derision of their beliefs in equality. The leader of the mo...

(Encyclopedia) liposome līˈpəsōmˌ, lĭpˈə– [key], microscopic, fluid-filled pouch whose walls are made of layers of phospholipids identical to the phospholipids that make up cell membranes. Liposomes are us...

(Encyclopedia) acceleration, change in the velocity of a body with respect to time. Since velocity is a vector quantity, involving both magnitude and direction, acceleration is also a vector. In order to produce an ...

(Encyclopedia) Hirst, Damien Steven, 1965–, British artist-provacateur, b. Bristol. While at Goldsmiths College, London (grad. 1988), he organized the exhibition Freeze, whose participants, led by Hirst, became kn...

(Encyclopedia) Hoffa, Jimmy (James Riddle Hoffa) hôfˈə [key], 1913–75?, U.S. labor leader, b. Brazil, Indiana. As a young warehouseman he organized (1932) a union that was admitted two years later into the Team...

(Encyclopedia) orangutan ōrăngˈo͝otăn [key], an ape of the genus Pongo, found in rain forests of Borneo and Sumatra. Highly specialized for arboreal life, orangutans usually travel by grasping branches with han...

(Encyclopedia) mantid or mantis, name applied to the large, slender, slow-moving, winged insects of the family Mantidae in the order Mantodea. Predatory insects, mantids have strong, elongate, spiny front legs, used...