finfoot: The sungrebe, or American finfoot (Heliornis fulica), is only half that size, with a red bill, an olive body, and black-banded yellow toes. The male has skin pouches under the wing in which he carries the naked, helpless chicks from the nest upon hatching, clamping them so tightly…

African literature: The epic: …in the West African epic Sunjata, magic keeps Sumanguru in charge and enables Sunjata to take over. It is a time of momentous change in the society. In Ibonia there are major alterations in the relationship between men and women; in Sunjata and in the epic Mwindo of the Nyanga…

sunk cost, in economics and finance, a cost that has already been incurred and that cannot be recovered. In economic decision making, sunk costs are treated as bygone and are not taken into consideration when deciding whether to continue an investment project. An example of a sunk cost would be

military technology: The sunken profile: While Pisa demonstrated the strength of earthen ramparts, Padua showed the power of a sunken profile supported by flanking fire in the ditch. With these two cities pointing the way, basic changes were undertaken in fortress design. Fortress walls, still essential for protection…

intaglio, in sculpture, engraving or incised figure in stone or other hard material such that all lines appear below the surface; it is thus the opposite of relief sculpture and is sometimes called “hollow relief.” When the technique is used in casting, the design is cut in reverse into a plaster

immersed tube, technique of underwater tunneling used principally for underwater crossings. The method was pioneered by the American engineer W.J. Wilgus in the Detroit River in 1903 for the Michigan Central Railroad. Wilgus dredged a trench in the riverbed, floated segments of steel tube into

sunlamp, electric discharge lamp (q.v.) that emits radiation of wavelengths present in sunlight, particularly the short wavelengths of the ultraviolet

Modest Mussorgsky: Life and career: …melancholy melodies, Bez solntsa (Sunless) and Pesni i plyaski smerti (Songs and Dances of Death). At that time Mussorgsky was haunted by the spectre of death—he himself had only seven more years to live. The death of another friend, the painter Victor Hartmann, inspired Mussorgsky to write the piano…

sunlight, solar radiation that is visible at Earth’s surface. The amount of sunlight is dependent on the extent of the daytime cloud cover. Some places on Earth receive more than 4,000 hours per year of sunlight (more than 90 percent of the maximum possible), as in the Sahara; others receive less

James Bridie: His first play, The Sunlight Sonata (1928), written under the pseudonym of Mary Henderson, was staged by the Scottish National Players. Three years later Bridie achieved success with his London production of The Anatomist (1931), based on a well-known criminal case. Considered distinctively Scottish in their unexpected twists…

Émile Verhaeren: …intimate Les Heures claires (1896; The Sunlit Hours) is an avowal of his love for his wife; it led to the series of his major works, among which the most outstanding are Les Visages de la vie (1899; “The Faces of Life”), the five-part Toute la Flandre (1904–11; “All of…

Gillian Anderson: Films: The House of Mirth and The Last King of Scotland: …film credits from 2019 included The Sunlit Night. Anderson subsequently appeared in White Bird (2023) and Scoop (2024). In the latter film, which is based on true events, she played a news anchor who interviews Prince Andrew about his friendship with Jeffrey Epstein, a convicted sex offender.

sunn, (Crotalaria juncea), annual plant of the pea family (Fabaceae) and its fibre, one of the bast fibre group. Sunn is likely native to the Indian subcontinent, where it has been cultivated since prehistoric times. The sunn plant is not a true hemp. The fibre is made into cordage, fishing nets,

Patrick Joseph Frawley, Jr.: (1961–70), and Sunn Classic Pictures (1972–81).

Sunnah, the body of traditional social and legal custom and practice of the Islamic community. Along with the Qurʾān (the holy book of Islam) and Hadith (recorded sayings of the Prophet Muhammad), it is a major source of Sharīʿah, or Islamic law. In pre-Islamic Arabia, the term sunnah referred to

Sunnah, the body of traditional social and legal custom and practice of the Islamic community. Along with the Qurʾān (the holy book of Islam) and Hadith (recorded sayings of the Prophet Muhammad), it is a major source of Sharīʿah, or Islamic law. In pre-Islamic Arabia, the term sunnah referred to

Sunni, member of one of the two major branches of Islam, the branch that consists of the majority of that religion’s adherents. Sunni Muslims regard their denomination as the mainstream and traditionalist branch of Islam—as distinguished from the minority denomination, the Shiʿah. The Sunnis

Sunni, member of one of the two major branches of Islam, the branch that consists of the majority of that religion’s adherents. Sunni Muslims regard their denomination as the mainstream and traditionalist branch of Islam—as distinguished from the minority denomination, the Shiʿah. The Sunnis

Iraq War: The surge: …with classic counterinsurgency strategy; the Sunni Awakening, a movement in which Sunni tribesmen who had formerly fought against U.S. troops eventually realigned themselves to help counter other insurgents, particularly those affiliated with al-Qaeda; and the voluntary peace observed by Ṣadr and his forces beginning in August of that year.

Sonni ʿAlī was a West African monarch who initiated the imperial expansion of the western Sudanese kingdom of Songhai. His conquest of the leading Sudanese trading cities established the basis for Songhai’s future prosperity and expansion. When Sonni ʿAlī ascended the Songhai throne about 1464, the

Anglo-Irish Agreement: The road to the Anglo-Irish Agreement: …Heath that resulted in the Sunningdale Agreement. That accord recognized that Northern Ireland’s relationship with Britain could not be changed without the agreement of a majority of its population, and it provided for the establishment of a Council of Ireland composed of members from both the Dáil (the lower chamber…

Sunni, member of one of the two major branches of Islam, the branch that consists of the majority of that religion’s adherents. Sunni Muslims regard their denomination as the mainstream and traditionalist branch of Islam—as distinguished from the minority denomination, the Shiʿah. The Sunnis

Sunni, member of one of the two major branches of Islam, the branch that consists of the majority of that religion’s adherents. Sunni Muslims regard their denomination as the mainstream and traditionalist branch of Islam—as distinguished from the minority denomination, the Shiʿah. The Sunnis

William A. Seiter: …productions, including Strictly Modern and Sunny, the latter of which was an adaptation of a popular Broadway musical with Marilyn Miller. During this period, Seiter made several Bert Wheeler–Robert Woolsey comedies, notably Caught Plastered and Peach-O-Reno (both 1931). In 1933 Seiter directed Ginger Rogers in both the radio satire Professional…

Ray Davies: Life as a Kink: His “Sunny Afternoon,” a number one hit in the United Kingdom in 1966, centred on Davies’s disenchantment with the high level of the progressive income tax imposed by the Labour government of Prime Minister Harold Wilson. Among Davies’s other acclaimed songs with the Kinks in the…

Richard Quine: …directing credit until 1951, with Sunny Side of the Street, a low-budget musical featuring Terry Moore and singer Frankie Laine. The comedy Sound Off starred Mickey Rooney, and Rainbow ’Round My Shoulder (both 1952) was another Laine musical; Quine cowrote the latter with Blake Edwards, and the two

David Butler: …early films included the musicals Sunny Side Up (1929), featuring Janet Gaynor and Charles Farrell, and Just Imagine (1930), an ambitious futuristic comedy starring comedian El Brendel as a man who awakes after 50 years and finds himself in 1980s New York City. Butler also directed Will Rogers in several…

Sunnyvale, city, Santa Clara county, western California, U.S. Adjacent to the cities of Santa Clara and Mountain View, Sunnyvale lies at the southern end of San Francisco Bay, near San Jose. Settled in 1850, it was known as Murphy’s Station (later as Encinal), but it was renamed Sunnyvale in 1912

Sunoco, Inc., American petroleum company primarily focused on refining and distributing oil in the United States. Headquarters are in Philadelphia. The company was incorporated in 1971 as the successor to a New Jersey oil and gas business incorporated in 1901. The earlier company had been in

Paul Beattie MacCready: MacCready’s later inventions include Sunraycer, a solar-powered car that in 1987 won a 1,867-mile (3,006-km) race in Australia. He was president of the International Human Powered Vehicle Association, which is dedicated to maximizing the speed of the bicycle. In 1991 MacCready was inducted into the National Aviation Hall of…

sunlight: …tints to the sky at dawn and dusk.

Marshall Islands: …parallel chains of coral atolls—the Ratak, or Sunrise, to the east and the Ralik, or Sunset, to the west. The chains lie about 125 miles (200 km) apart and extend some 800 miles northwest to southeast.

F.W. Murnau: His first American production, Sunrise (1927), was another masterpiece that has been hailed by many critics as the finest silent film ever produced by a Hollywood studio; it was also one of three films to earn for Janet Gaynor the first Academy Award for best actress. Unfortunately, it was…

Ralph Bellamy: … as he battled polio in Sunrise at Campobello (1958), for which he won a Tony Award; he reprised his brilliant portrayal of Roosevelt in the 1960 film version of the play and again in 1983 for the television miniseries The Winds of War. He also appeared in numerous anthology television…

Ishihara Shintarō: …Ishihara had helped form the Sunrise Party of Japan (Tachiagare Nippon), consisting of former LDP members and others who espoused nationalistic and other politically conservative policies. On October 31, 2012, he formally resigned as governor of Tokyo in order to seek election to a seat in the lower house of…

solarium, in architecture, any room that is exposed to the sun. While the term may also be applied to the open sunporches or apartments on the roofs of ancient Greek or Roman houses, it is now used especially to designate a room that is enclosed in glass. In such a solarium, three or possibly four

Ahmadou Kourouma: …Les Soleils des indépendances (1968; The Suns of Independence), satirized contemporary African politics. Narrated in a French flavoured with pungent Malinke folk aphorisms, the story follows the last of a line of tribal princes as he is mistreated by French colonial as well as postindependence African authorities. The work was…

sunscald, common disorder of exposed, thin-barked trees, shrubs, and other plants. Dead patches form on the sun-exposed trunk and limbs of young trees, often those recently transplanted to open areas from nurseries where they were shaded by nearby trees. Evergreens and shrubs show scorched foliage

coral bleaching: …found that the chemicals in sunscreens and other personal care products can accumulate in areas with significant marine tourism and recreational use by humans and can promote viral infections in hard corals that lead to bleaching. Exposure to increased temperatures and solar irradiance also causes zooxanthellae to manufacture abnormally large…

Marshall Islands: …to the east and the Ralik, or Sunset, to the west. The chains lie about 125 miles (200 km) apart and extend some 800 miles northwest to southeast.

László Nemes: …cowrote and directed Napszállta (2018; Sunset), which is set in 1913 Budapest, then a capital of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. The drama centres on a young woman who was orphaned at age two. As she attempts to learn more about her family, including a long-lost brother, she also discovers an empire…

sunlight: …the sky at dawn and dusk.

Andrew Lloyd Webber: Later career: However, Sunset Boulevard became the third Lloyd Webber musical to win Tony Awards for both best musical and best score.

Hollywood: In 1911 a site on Sunset Boulevard was turned into Hollywood’s first studio, and soon about 20 companies were producing films in the area. In 1913 Cecil B. DeMille, Jesse Lasky, Arthur Freed, and Samuel Goldwyn formed Jesse Lasky Feature Play Company (later Paramount Pictures). DeMille produced The Squaw Man…

Sunset Boulevard, American film noir, released in 1950, that is often cited as one of Hollywood’s greatest films, especially noted for Gloria Swanson’s portrayal of a fading silent-film star. The movie is named after the iconic street that runs through Los Angeles and Beverly Hills, Calif. Deemed

Sunset Crater Volcano National Monument, geologic formation in north-central Arizona, U.S. The monument lies 15 miles (24 km) northeast of Flagstaff and about 10 miles (16 km) southwest of Wupatki National Monument. Established in 1930, it occupies an area of 5 square miles (13 square km) within

Elechi Amadi: Sunset in Biafra (1973), his only work of nonfiction, recounts his experiences as a soldier and civilian during the Biafran conflict.

sunset law, a legal provision that provides for the automatic termination of a government program, agency, or law on a certain date unless the legislature affirmatively acts to renew it. Sunset laws were widely promoted in the United States in the 1970s as reform measures to eliminate bloated and

Cormac McCarthy: Film adaptations and other projects: …plays The Stonemason (2001) and The Sunset Limited (2006; television movie 2011) and the screenplay for The Counselor (2013), a drama about drug trafficking. A number of his novels were adapted for film, some with more success than others. All the Pretty Horses (2000), directed by Billy Bob Thornton and…

Paul Auster: …unfolds in his mind, while Sunset Park (2010) concerns the travails of a group of young artists illegally inhabiting an abandoned building in Brooklyn.

Hong Kong: Relief: …2,851 feet (869 meters) on Sunset Peak. Extending southeastward from Mount Tai Mo, the Kowloon Peak attains an elevation of 1,975 feet (602 meters), but there is an abrupt drop to about 650 feet (198 meters) at Devil’s Peak. Victoria (Hong Kong) Harbor is well protected by mountains on Hong…

sunset law, a legal provision that provides for the automatic termination of a government program, agency, or law on a certain date unless the legislature affirmatively acts to renew it. Sunset laws were widely promoted in the United States in the 1970s as reform measures to eliminate bloated and

bivalve: External features: …brightly coloured, as in the Tellinidae. The shell is laterally compressed and thus more bladelike, but the adductor muscles are still of similar size (the isomyarian form). Such structural features adapt the animal for rapid movement through the sand; long siphons project to the surface above. Deep burrowing has been…

Lewis Grassic Gibbon: …published under the collective title A Scots Quair (1946) made him a significant figure in the 20th-century Scottish Renaissance.

sundown town, in U.S. history, a town that excluded nonwhite people—most frequently African Americans—from remaining in town after sunset. More generally, sundown town is used to describe a place where the resident population was through deliberate action made to be overwhelmingly composed of white

Frank Sargeson: …of Hide and Seek; and Sunset Village (1976), a novella that details the nefarious goings-on at a retirement community. His short fiction was compiled in Collected Stories, 1935–63 (1964), The Stories of Frank Sargeson (1973), and Frank Sargeson’s Stories (2010).

Chris Evans: Superheroes: the Human Torch and Captain America: …2007 included the science-fiction movie Sunshine, directed by Danny Boyle; the comic drama The Nanny Diaries; and Fantastic 4: Rise of the Silver Surfer. Among his next movies were The Loss of a Teardrop Diamond (2008), scripted by Tennessee Williams; the action movie The Losers (2010); and the

Marissa Mayer: In 2018 Mayer cofounded Lumi Labs, which was involved in “building consumer applications enabled by artificial intelligence.” The company was renamed Sunshine in 2020, and that year it released its first product, Sunshine Contacts, an app for managing contact information.

sunlight, solar radiation that is visible at Earth’s surface. The amount of sunlight is dependent on the extent of the daytime cloud cover. Some places on Earth receive more than 4,000 hours per year of sunlight (more than 90 percent of the maximum possible), as in the Sahara; others receive less

Herbert Ross: Films of the mid-1970s: The Sunshine Boys (1975), Ross’s first handling of source material by playwright Neil Simon, proved to be an excellent comic vehicle for George Burns and Walter Matthau, who played a pair of ancient vaudevillians coming out of retirement to make a television special. Burns won…

Alan Arkin: …his staging of Neil Simon’s The Sunshine Boys (1972–74). He also appeared in the 1972 film adaptation of the Simon’s play Last of the Red Hot Lovers, played a San Francisco detective in the comedy Freebie and the Bean (1974), portrayed Sigmund Freud in The Seven-Per-Cent Solution (1976), and appeared…

Amy Adams: Breakthrough and stardom: …Lives for a Day and Sunshine Cleaning, a dramedy about sisters who open a crime-scene cleaning service.

Kellogg: The Sunshine Mine, a few miles east of Kellogg, is one of the largest single-lode producers of silver in the United States; in 1972 it was the scene of a disastrous fire that killed 91 miners. A downturn in the world metals-production market led to severe…

Cream: Its second track, “Sunshine of Your Love,” highlighted the smooth transition from blues to a more psychedelic sound and was touted by critics as the perfect hybrid of hard rock, blues, and psychedelia. It was by far the most popular single from Disraeli Gears and the only Cream…

John Denver: …and the smash hit "Sunshine on My Shoulders" (1974).

South Korea: The Sixth Republic: Kim implemented a so-called “sunshine” policy toward the North, which led in 2000 to a historic summit between Kim and North Korean leader Kim Jong Il and to Kim Dae-Jung’s selection as the recipient of that year’s Nobel Prize for Peace. Nevertheless, his administration was also plagued by corruption…

Sunshine Skyway Bridge, cable-stayed concrete bridge over the southern end of Tampa Bay in western Florida that connects St. Petersburg in Pinellas county with Terra Ceia (near Bradenton) in Manatee county. Designed by Eugene C. Figg, Jr., and Jean Muller, the Sunshine Skyway Bridge was the longest

John Sayles: with Guns (1997); Limbo (1999); Sunshine State (2002); Casa de Los Babys (2003); Silver City (2004); and Honeydripper (2007).

Florida, constituent state of the United States of America. It was admitted as the 27th state in 1845. Florida is the most populous of the southeastern states and the second most populous Southern state after Texas. The capital is Tallahassee, located in the northwestern panhandle. Geographic

Donovan: …hippie lifestyle such as “Sunshine Superman” (1966), “Mellow Yellow” (1967), and “Hurdy Gurdy Man” (1968). His obscure lyrics, often laced with drug references, were sung in a soft and sometimes soulful voice over melodies influenced by folk, blues, jazz, and Indian music.

Marvin Hamlisch: …a hit recording of “Sunshine, Lollipops, and Rainbows,” for which several years earlier Hamlisch had written the music and his friend Howard Liebling had written the lyrics.

sunspider, (order Solifugae), any of more than 1,000 species of the arthropod class Arachnida whose common name refers to their habitation of hot dry regions as well as to their typically golden colour. They are also called wind scorpions because of their swiftness, camel spiders because of their

sunspot, vortex of gas on the surface of the Sun associated with strong local magnetic activity. Spots look dark only by contrast with the surrounding photosphere, which is several thousand degrees hotter. The dark centre of a spot is called the umbra; the outer, lighter ring is the penumbra. Spots

telecommunications media: HF: …the peaks of the 11-year sunspot cycle, solar ultraviolet radiation produces the highest ionization densities. These sunspot peaks can last several days or months, depending on the persistence of sunspot visibility, producing a sporadic E layer that often can be used for multiple-skip communications by amateur radio operators at frequencies…

plasma: Regions of the Sun: …greatest in number (called the sunspot maximum), the corona is very extended and the solar wind is fierce. Sunspot activity waxes and wanes with roughly an 11-year cycle. During the mid-1600s and early 1700s, sunspots virtually disappeared for a period known as the Maunder minimum. This time coincided with the…

Samantha Power: …she met her future husband, Cass Sunstein, a noted constitutional-law scholar who was also advising Obama; the couple married in 2008. Later that year she abruptly resigned from the Obama campaign after making derogatory remarks about Hillary Clinton, Obama’s main opponent in the primaries, for which she apologized.

sunstone, a gemstone variety of feldspar that has minute platelike inclusions of iron oxide (hematite or goethite) oriented parallel to one another throughout. The reflections from these inclusions give the mineral (usually the plagioclase feldspars albite, oligoclase, or labradorite, but sometimes

heatstroke: The term sunstroke refers to the same disorder when exposure to direct sunlight is the main cause of the condition. The primary feature of heatstroke is an extreme and uncontrolled elevation of body temperature (106 to 110 °F [41 to 43 °C], or even higher), which can…

melanocyte-stimulating hormone: …process manifests most noticeably as skin darkening, with exposure to sunlight serving as the stimulus for MSH production and secretion. Similar effects are seen in amphibians, in some fishes, and in reptiles, in which MSH regulates melanin synthesis in cells known as melanophores (a type of chromatophore) and enables the…

Southeast Asian arts: Second golden age: King Rama II (1809–24): …testified to his greatness, and Sunthon Phu, the king’s private secretary, who was born of humble parents but made his way in the court by the excellence of his poetry. A strongly religious king, Rama III disbanded the corps of writers and discouraged the performance of plays at his court.…

Stanislao Cannizzaro: Atomic weights and Avogadro: Università de Genova” (“Sketch of a Course in Chemical Philosophy at the Royal University of Genoa”). To make clear the significance of this pamphlet, it is necessary to describe something of the state of chemical theory at the time.

State University of New York, state-supported system of higher education established in 1948 with some 64 campuses located throughout the state of New York. SUNY was officially organized more than 150 years after the state legislature, in its first session (1784) after the American Revolution,

sunyata, in Buddhist philosophy, the voidness that constitutes ultimate reality; sunyata is seen not as a negation of existence but rather as the undifferentiation out of which all apparent entities, distinctions, and dualities arise. Although the concept is encountered occasionally in early Pāli

Rashid Sunyaev is a Russian-German astrophysicist who, with Soviet physicist Yakov Zeldovich, first proposed the Sunyaev-Zeldovich (SZ) effect, in which distortions in the cosmic microwave background (CMB) are caused by clusters of galaxies. With Russian astrophysicist Nikolay Shakura, he also

Rashid Sunyaev is a Russian-German astrophysicist who, with Soviet physicist Yakov Zeldovich, first proposed the Sunyaev-Zeldovich (SZ) effect, in which distortions in the cosmic microwave background (CMB) are caused by clusters of galaxies. With Russian astrophysicist Nikolay Shakura, he also

Rashid Sunyaev: >Sunyaev-Zeldovich (SZ) effect, in which distortions in the cosmic microwave background (CMB) are caused by clusters of galaxies. With Russian astrophysicist Nikolay Shakura, he also developed the Shakura-Sunyaev model, which describes the accretion of matter onto a black hole.

Sunyani, town, west-central Ghana. It is surrounded by the forested Southern Ashanti Uplands. The site was a camping place for elephant hunters in the late 19th century. The British set up a district headquarters there in 1924, and, with construction of the road to Kumasi, Sunyani became

sunyata, in Buddhist philosophy, the voidness that constitutes ultimate reality; sunyata is seen not as a negation of existence but rather as the undifferentiation out of which all apparent entities, distinctions, and dualities arise. Although the concept is encountered occasionally in early Pāli

Mādhyamika, (Sanskrit: “Intermediate”), important school in the Mahāyāna (“Great Vehicle”) Buddhist tradition. Its name derives from its having sought a middle position between the realism of the Sarvāstivāda (“Doctrine That All Is Real”) school and the idealism of the Yogācāra (“Mind Only”)

Chechnya: Land: …valleys of the Terek and Sunzha rivers, which cross the republic from the west to the east, where they unite. Third, in the north, are the level, rolling plains of the Nogay Steppe.

modular arithmetic: …Sun Zi’s Sunzi suanjing (Master Sun’s Mathematical Manual), asks

Suo Masayuki is a Japanese film director and screenwriter whose best-known movies address subjects largely unfamiliar to mainstream Japanese audiences. After graduating from Tokyo’s Rikkyo (St. Paul’s) University, in 1982 Suo established a movie-production company, Unit 5, that specialized in adult

Church of Finland, national church of Finland, which changed from the Roman Catholic to the Lutheran faith during the Protestant Reformation in the 16th century. Christianity was known in Finland as early as the 11th century, and in the 12th century Henry, bishop of Uppsala (Sweden), began

Gulf of Finland, easternmost arm of the Baltic Sea, between Finland (north) and Russia and Estonia (east and south, respectively). Covering an area of 11,600 square miles (30,000 square km), the gulf extends for 250 miles (400 km) from east to west but only 12 to 80 miles (19 to 130 km) from north

Finland: Finance: The Bank of Finland (Suomen Pankki), established in 1811 and guaranteed and supervised by the parliament since 1868, is the country’s central bank and a member of the European System of Central Banks. In 2002, the EU’s common currency, the euro, replaced the markka, which had…

Finland, country located in northern Europe. Finland is one of the world’s most northern and geographically remote countries and is subject to a severe climate. Nearly two-thirds of Finland is blanketed by thick woodlands, making it the most densely forested country in Europe. Finland forms a

Helsinki: History: …secure when a fortress, called Sveaborg in Swedish and Viapori (later Suomenlinna) in Finnish, was constructed on a group of small islands southeast of the town.

Finland, country located in northern Europe. Finland is one of the world’s most northern and geographically remote countries and is subject to a severe climate. Nearly two-thirds of Finland is blanketed by thick woodlands, making it the most densely forested country in Europe. Finland forms a

Finnish language, member of the Finno-Ugric group of the Uralic language family, spoken in Finland. At the beginning of the 19th century, Finnish had no official status, with Swedish being used in Finnish education, government, and literature. The publication in 1835 of the Kalevala, a national

suona, Chinese double-reed woodwind instrument, the most commonly used double-reed instrument. Similar to the shawm, the suona originated in Arabia; it has been widely used in China since the 16th century. The reed is affixed to a conical wooden body covered by a copper tube with eight finger holes