contredanse, genre of dance for several couples. The contredanse was an 18th-century French development of the English country dance (q.v.) and was performed into the 19th century by French, English, and German aristocrats and bourgeoisie. Contredanses at first used only the country dance’s

Western dance: English social dance: …dancers facing one another, became contredanses anglaises; the rounds became the contredanses françaises, which were also known as cotillions and quadrilles. These figure dances, which quickly spread to Spain, Germany, Poland, and other countries, were the dances of the rising middle class. By no means revolutionary in their content, they…

Western dance: English social dance: …anglaises; the rounds became the contredanses françaises, which were also known as cotillions and quadrilles. These figure dances, which quickly spread to Spain, Germany, Poland, and other countries, were the dances of the rising middle class. By no means revolutionary in their content, they were nonetheless a distinct declaration of…

Magdalena, delegación (administrative subdivision), west-central Federal District, central Mexico. It lies along the Magdalena River near Cerro Ajusco. Although once simply the commercial centre for the cereals, beans, fruits, and livestock produced in the surrounding area, Magdalena gained

Battle of Contreras, U.S. victory at a hamlet southwest of Mexico City, with which on Aug. 19–20, 1847, the army of Maj. Gen. Winfield Scott opened the final campaign of the Mexican War. Finding the road from Acapulco to Mexico City blocked by units of Gen. Antonio López de Santa Anna’s army, Scott

Among the many vexing aspects of retirement savings accounts and other tax-advantaged accounts is the challenge of keeping straight how much you’re allowed to save in each one. It doesn’t help that contribution limits often change, or adjust for inflation, as they have for 2025. The updated limits

Karl Marx: Early years in London of Karl Marx: …Kritik der politischen Ökonomie (A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy). In its preface he again summarized his materialistic conception of history, his theory that the course of history is dependent on economic developments. At this time, however, Marx regarded his studies in economic and social history at…

H.W. Bates: …1861 (published 1862) as “Contributions to an Insect Fauna of the Amazon Valley.” In 1864 Bates was appointed assistant secretary of the Royal Geographical Society (London) and held the position until his death. He wrote The Naturalist on the River Amazons, 2 vol. (1863), and many papers on entomology.

Ella Flagg Young: …University of Chicago series entitled Contributions to Education. The other two titles are Ethics in the School (1902) and Some Types of Modern Educational Theory (1902).

Ernst Mach: …zur Analyse der Empfindungen (1886; Contributions to the Analysis of the Sensations, 1897), Mach advanced the concept that all knowledge is derived from sensation; thus, phenomena under scientific investigation can be understood only in terms of experiences, or “sensations,” present in the observation of the phenomena. This view leads to…

Georg Cantor: Transfinite numbers: …in English under the title Contributions to the Founding of the Theory of Transfinite Numbers, 1915). This work contains his conception of transfinite numbers, to which he was led by his demonstration that an infinite set may be placed in a one-to-one correspondence with one of its subsets. By the…

Alfred Russel Wallace: The career of a naturalist: …of Paradise (1869), and wrote Contributions to the Theory of Natural Selection (1870). In the latter volume and in several articles from this period on human evolution and spiritualism, Wallace parted from the scientific naturalism of many of his friends and colleagues in claiming that natural selection could not account…

contributory negligence, in law, behaviour that contributes to one’s own injury or loss and fails to meet the standard of prudence that one should observe for one’s own good. Contributory negligence of the plaintiff is frequently pleaded in defense to a charge of negligence. Historically the

baseball: The pitching repertoire: Pitchers use changes of speed, control (the ability to pitch to specific points in the strike zone), and different grips that affect the flight of the pitch in order to confound batters. The fastball is the basis of pitching skill. Good fastball pitchers are capable of throwing the ball 100…

control system, means by which a variable quantity or set of variable quantities is made to conform to a prescribed norm. It either holds the values of the controlled quantities constant or causes them to vary in a prescribed way. A control system may be operated by electricity, by mechanical

Janet Jackson: …1986 with her breakthrough record Control, which featured five singles that topped the rhythm-and-blues charts, including two Top Ten pop hits, “What Have You Done for Me Lately” and “Nasty.” Her fierce independence struck a chord with the youth of the day, and Jackson rose to a level of stardom…

statistics: Statistical process control: …display referred to as a control chart provides a basis for deciding whether the variation in the output of a process is due to common causes (randomly occurring variations) or to out-of-the-ordinary assignable causes. Whenever assignable causes are identified, a decision can be made to adjust the process in order…

airplane: Elevator, aileron, and rudder controls: …of a stick or wheel control column and rudder pedals, which control the movement of the elevator and ailerons and the rudder, respectively, through a system of cables or rods. In very sophisticated modern aircraft, there is no direct mechanical linkage between the pilot’s controls and the control surfaces; instead

stagecraft: Control consoles: The earliest electrical dimmer switchboard, or control console—a device that centralizes control of the intensity of the stage lights—resembled the gas table that was used with gas lights in the late 19th century. These first electrical switchboards, introduced in Europe and the United…

Sanford I. Weill: …the Commercial Credit division of Control Data Corporation in 1986. It was not an auspicious rebirth of an empire, as the small division was a faltering reject of its parent company. Weill, however, displayed a talent for rebuilding such organizations through cost cutting and employee motivation, and two years later…

Ugaki Kazushige: …War II headed the so-called Control Faction of the Japanese army, a group that stressed the development of new weapons and opposed the rightist “Imperial Way” faction, which emphasized increased indoctrination of troops with ultranationalist ideology. Ugaki’s faction was in control of the military most of the time between 1920…

flash memory: …the floating gate and the control gate, at each intersection, separated by an oxide layer that insulates the floating gate. When the floating gate is linked to the control gate, the two-transistor cell has a value of 1. To change the value of the cell to 0, a voltage is…

triode: …of its amplification function, the control grid is generally the most important and critical electrode in a vacuum tube. A small variable voltage applied to the grid can greatly modulate the flow of electrons reaching the plate. The control grid is normally a wire mesh that intercepts little or no…

control group, the standard to which comparisons are made in an experiment. Many experiments are designed to include a control group and one or more experimental groups; in fact, some scholars reserve the term experiment for study designs that include a control group. Ideally, the control group and

control theory: Principles of control: …any instant, is called a control law. This is a more general concept than the earlier idea of feedback; in fact, a control law can incorporate both the feedback and feedforward methods of control.

control theory: Principles of control: …state vector; (2) determining an optimal control law and mechanizing it by substituting into it the estimate of the state vector obtained in step 1.

computer: Control programs: In order to make the early computers truly useful and efficient, two major innovations in software were needed. One was high-level programming languages (as described in the preceding section, FORTRAN, COBOL, and ALGOL). The other was control. Today the systemwide control functions of…

nuclear reactor: Reactor control elements: …common method utilizes absorbing assemblies—namely, control rods or, in some cases, blades. Typically a reactor is equipped with three types of rods for different purposes: (1) safety rods for starting up and shutting down the reactor, (2) regulating rods for adjusting the reactor’s power rate, and (3) shim rods for…

computer programming language: Elements of programming: These include basic control structures and data structures. The former provide the means to express algorithms, and the latter provide ways to organize information.

control system, means by which a variable quantity or set of variable quantities is made to conform to a prescribed norm. It either holds the values of the controlled quantities constant or causes them to vary in a prescribed way. A control system may be operated by electricity, by mechanical

criminology: Sociological theories: Control theory emphasizes the links between the offender and his social group—his bond to society. According to this view, the ability of the individual to resist the inclination to commit crime depends on the strength of his attachment to his parents, his involvement in conventional…

control theory, field of applied mathematics that is relevant to the control of certain physical processes and systems. Although control theory has deep connections with classical areas of mathematics, such as the calculus of variations and the theory of differential equations, it did not become a

control unit, subcomponent of a central processing unit (CPU) that manages a computer’s operations. The control unit fetches instructions from the CPU’s memory, represented in bits, and translates those instructions into control signals in the form of pulses of electricity or light. The signals are

Thomas Babington Macaulay, Baron Macaulay: Early life and political career: …later the secretary of the Board of Control, which supervised the administration of India by the East India Company. Working on Indian affairs by day and attending the House of Commons in the evenings, he nevertheless found time to write a ballad, “The Armada,” as well as eight literary and…

plant disease: Principles of disease control: Successful disease control requires thorough knowledge of the causal agent and the disease cycle, host-pathogen interactions in relation to environmental factors, and cost. Disease control starts with the best variety, seed, or planting stock available and continues throughout the life of the plant.…

control theory: Principles of control: Most important is controllability; it expresses the fact that some kind of control is possible. If this condition is satisfied, methods of optimization can pick out the right kind of control using information of type B.

motivation: Attribution theory: dimensions: locus, stability, and controllability. Locus refers to the location, internal or external, of the perceived cause of a success or failure. Ability and effort, for example, are seen as internal dispositions of a person, while task difficulty and luck are situational factors external to the person. Stability refers…

association test: In “controlled association,” a relation may be prescribed between the stimulus and the response (e.g., the subject may be asked to give opposites). Though more complex analyses may be used for special purposes, the reaction time for each response and the words the subject gives are…

prescribed fire, form of land management in which fire is intentionally applied to vegetation. Prescribed fires are conducted under desired conditions to meet specific objectives, such as to restore fire regimes in adapted ecosystems or to limit the amount of dry brush in an area prone to

Tigris-Euphrates river system: Physiography of the Euphrates: …Euphrates water is diverted by controlled escape. A canal links Lake Al-Ḥabbāniyyah to Lake Al-Tharthār north of the river, which in turn draws overflow from the Tigris by canal. Between Al-Ramādī and Al-Hindiyyah—a distance of about 140 miles (225 km)—are the mouths of all the main controlled-irrigation canals, as well…

servomechanism: …least these basic components: a controlled device, a command device, an error detector, an error-signal amplifier, and a device to perform any necessary error corrections (the servomotor). In the controlled device, that which is being regulated is usually position. This device must, therefore, have some means of generating a signal…

waterboarding, method of torture in which water is poured into the nose and mouth of a victim who lies on his back on an inclined platform, with his feet above his head. As the victim’s sinus cavities and mouth fill with water, his gag reflex causes him to expel air from his lungs, leaving him

information processing: Machine indexing: …list of authorized descriptors (controlled indexing). A collection of authorized descriptors is called an authority list or, if it also displays various relationships among descriptors such as hierarchy or synonymy, a thesaurus. The result of the indexing process is a computer file known as an inverted index, which is…

Yves Chauvin: …Chemistry in 2005 for developing metathesis, an important chemical reaction used in organic chemistry. Chauvin offered a detailed explanation of “how metatheses reactions function and what types of metal compound act as catalysts in the reactions.”

surveying: Aerial surveying: …produce a photomap called a controlled mosaic.

attention: Memory and habituation: …two modes of processing information: controlled search and automatic detection. Controlled search is highly demanding of attentional capacity and is usually serial in nature. It is easily established and is largely under the individual’s control in that it can be readily altered or even reversed. It is strongly dependent on…

therapeutics: Indications for use: Controlled substances are drugs that foster dependence and have the potential for abuse. In the United States, the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) regulates their manufacture, prescribing, and dispensing. Controlled substances are divided into five classes, or schedules, based on their potential for abuse or physical…

designer drugs: …of 1986, which contained a Controlled Substance Analogue Enforcement Act (commonly called the Designer Drug Act), which prohibited the manufacture of “substantially similar” analogues of banned chemicals.

Controlled Substances Act (CSA), federal U.S. drug policy that regulates the manufacture, importation, possession, use, and distribution of certain narcotics, stimulants, depressants, hallucinogens, anabolic steroids, and other chemicals. In 1970 the Comprehensive Drug Abuse Prevention and Control

sanitary landfill, method of controlled disposal of municipal solid waste (refuse) on land. The method was introduced in England in 1912 (where it is called controlled tipping). Waste is deposited in thin layers (up to 1 metre, or 3 feet) and promptly compacted by heavy machinery (e.g.,

fruit farming: Postharvest physiology of fruits: …further by both refrigeration and controlled atmosphere (CA) storage in which oxygen is kept at about 5 percent and carbon dioxide at 1 to 3 percent, while temperature is held at a level best suited to the particular fruit. So-called CA storage is common today for apples and pears and…

turbine: Steam extraction: Controlled-extraction turbines are designed for withdrawing variable amounts of constant-pressure steam irrespective of the load on the turbine. They are frequently selected for industrial use when steam at fixed intermediate pressures is demanded by process operations. Since both extraction pressures and turbine speed should be…

cryopreservation: …of cellular cryopreservation use a controlled-rate freezer. This freezing system delivers liquid nitrogen into a closed chamber into which the cell suspension is placed. Careful monitoring of the rate of freezing helps to prevent rapid cellular dehydration and ice-crystal formation. In general, the cells are taken from room temperature to…

control theory: Principles of control: …unit of hardware, called the controller, which may be viewed as a special-purpose computer. The theoretical formulation given here can be shown to include all other previous methods as a special case; the only difference is in the engineering details of the controller.

nervous system: Stimulus-response coordination: …stimuli by utilizing hormones as controllers in a stimulus-response system. Directional responses of movement are known as tropisms and are positive when the movement is toward the stimulus and negative when it is away from the stimulus. When a seed germinates, the growing stem turns upward toward the light, and…

Barbara McClintock: …genes that she called “controlling elements.” These genes controlled the genes that were actually responsible for pigmentation. McClintock found that the controlling elements could move along the chromosome to a different site, and that these changes affected the behaviour of neighbouring genes. She suggested that these transposable elements were…

Pilates, exercise discipline created by German American gymnast, bodybuilder, and entrepreneur Joseph H. Pilates in the mid-20th century and refined by his students and disciples. The Pilates regimen was practiced largely in a prone, supine, or seated position on a mat and emphasized the

Andrea Sansovino was an Italian architect and sculptor whose works reflect the transition from early to High Renaissance. His earliest great work was the marble Altar of the Sacrament in S. Spirito, Florence, executed for the Corbinelli family between 1485 and 1490; the fineness of detail, high

bruise, a visible bluish or purplish mark or patch occurring beneath the surface of unbroken skin, resulting from the rupture of blood vessels in the deeper layers of subcutaneous tissues. Bruises are usually caused by a blow or pressure but, in aged persons, may occur spontaneously. In healing,

jus Latii: …right to legal intermarriage (conubium). Upon the decline and depopulation of Latium after 300 bc the application of the jus Latii shifted to the Latin colonies, many of whose settlers had been recruited from the Roman citizenry. These colonies were autonomous communities subject to Rome in foreign policy and…

Venezuela: Agriculture, fishing, and forestry: …type of holding is the conuco (family farm), which is typically leased by the farmer; it is usually small in size and includes a mixture of food crops such as corn and beans for local consumption and commercial crops such as coffee and cacao. The third type are the fincas…

cnidarian: Evolution: The Conulariida, which existed from the Cambrian Period to the Triassic Period (251.9 million to 201.3 million years ago), are considered by some scientists to be skeletal remains of scyphopolyps, either ancestral to the coronates or without modern derivatives. Presumed fossil sea anemones are found in…

Devonian Period: Sediment types: …reefs are largely formed of stromatoporoids. These marine invertebrates suddenly vanished almost entirely by the end of the Frasnian Age, after which reefs were formed locally of cyanobacterian stromatolites. Other areas have reefs formed by mud mounds, and there are spectacular examples in southern Morocco, southern Algeria, and Mauritania. Also…

United Kingdom: Urban settlement: …of the country’s 10 largest metropolitan areas.

conure, any of numerous gaudy American parrots of the subfamily Psittacinae (family Psittacidae). There are about 45 species, formerly grouped as Conurus and now placed in Aratinga, Pyrrhura, and about 5 other genera. These birds, with slender build and long, pointed tail, resemble parakeets and

psittaciform: …the early 1900s, however, the Carolina parakeet (Conuropsis carolinensis) inhabited most of the eastern United States; it was rendered extinct by human persecution. The last captive died in the Cincinnati Zoological Garden in 1914, but the last generally accepted observation in the wild was a flock seen in Florida in…

cone shell: …(class Gastropoda) constituting the genus Conus and the family Conidae (about 500 species). The shell is typically straight-sided, with a tapering body whorl, low spire, and narrow aperture (the opening into the shell’s first whorl). Cones inject a paralyzing toxin by means of a dart; a few of the larger…

circulatory system: The heart: …atrium, the ventricle, and the conus arteriosus (called the bulbus cordis in embryos), and eventually to the arterial system. The blood is pushed through the heart because the various parts of the tube contract in sequence. As the heart develops from embryo to adult, each part of the tube becomes…

cone shell: The glory-of-the-seas cone (C. gloriamaris) is 10 to 13 cm (4 to 5 inches) long and coloured golden brown, with a fine net pattern. Throughout most of the 19th and 20th centuries, it was known from fewer than 100 specimens, making it the most valuable shell…

human nervous system: The spinal cord: …spinal cord is called the conus medullaris. The spinal cord is composed of long tracts of myelinated nerve fibers (known as white matter) arranged around the periphery of a symmetrical butterfly-shaped cellular matrix of gray matter. The gray matter contains cell bodies, unmyelinated motor neuron fibers, and interneurons connecting either…

history of flight: Postwar airlines: …Corporation, more commonly known as Convair, built the speedy twin-engine 240/340/440 series, with trendy tricycle landing gear, which sold more than 1,000 models between 1947 and 1956, plus several hundred military versions that often trickled back into civil service. Convairs had a maximum cruising speed of 280 miles (450 km)…

industrial design: Modern design in the United States: …he planned and tested the Convair car (1947), a flying vehicle whose wings could be unbolted and whose fuselage could then function as an automobile, with that same company. Walter Dorwin Teague worked on converting the C97 military transport for Boeing into the double-decked Stratocruiser (1945) airliner, the conceptual forerunner…

military aircraft: Supersonic flight: Convair F-102 Delta Dagger, an all-weather interceptor that was the first operational “pure” delta fighter without a separate horizontal stabilizer. Other aircraft included the Grumman F11F Tigercat, the first supersonic carrier-based fighter; the North American F-100 Super Sabre; the Dassault Mystère B-2; the Saab 35, with…

lily of the valley, (Convallaria majalis), fragrant perennial herb and only species of the genus Convallaria in the asparagus family (Asparagaceae). Native to Eurasia and eastern North America, lily of the valley is cultivated in shaded garden areas in many temperate parts of the world. The plants

solar pond: …of two types: non-convecting and convecting. The more common non-convecting solar pond reduces heat loss by preventing convection (the transfer of heat from one place to another by the movement of fluids) with the addition of a concentration of 20–30 percent salt to the bottom level (lower convective zone) of…

convection, process by which heat is transferred by movement of a heated fluid such as air or water. Natural convection results from the tendency of most fluids to expand when heated—i.e., to become less dense and to rise as a result of the increased buoyancy. Circulation caused by this effect

Earth: The outer shell: Slow convection currents deep within the mantle generated by radioactive heating of the interior drive lateral movements of the plates (and the continents on top of them) at a rate of several centimetres per year. The plates interact along their margins, and these boundaries are classified…

electron tube: Energy transfer: When a modulated electron convection current flows in an electric field of the same modulation frequency, the power transfer, P, between the field and the electron is given by where lc is the electron convection current and E is the electric field. Both lc and E are

CoRoT, French satellite that studied the internal structure of stars and detected extrasolar planets. It was launched on December 27, 2006, by a Soyuz launch vehicle from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan. It operated until November 2, 2012, when its computer malfunctioned, and it was unable to

continent: …drifted apart; and (4) the convection-current theory, in which convection currents in the Earth’s interior dragged the crust to cause folding and mountain making.

centrifuge: Vacuum-type centrifuges: Many vacuum-type centrifuges are ultracentrifuges; i.e., they operate at speeds of more than about 20,000 revolutions per minute. Figure 2 shows a schematic diagram of an early vacuum-type ultracentrifuge. The centrifuge rotor located inside the vacuum chamber is connected to the air-supported, air-driven turbine by a vertical, small-diameter, flexible…

thunderstorm: Isolated thunderstorms: …composed of one or more convective cells, each of which goes through a well-defined life cycle. Early in the development of a cell, the air motions are mostly upward, not as a steady, uniform stream but as one that is composed of a series of rising eddies. Cloud and precipitation…

geomagnetic field: Convective electrojets: The auroral electrojets are two broad sheets of electric current that flow from noon toward midnight in the northern and southern auroral ovals. The dawn-side current flows westward, creating a decrease in the magnetic field on the surface. The dusk-side current flows eastward…

atmosphere: Convection: This process, referred to as free convection, occurs when the environmental lapse rate (the rate of change of an atmospheric variable, such as temperature or density, with increasing altitude) of temperature decreases at a rate greater than 1 °C per 100 metres (approximately 1 °F per 150 feet). This rate…

cultural globalization: Food: …might be expected to disdain fast food. In France, for example, food, especially haute cuisine, is commonly regarded as the core element of French culture. Nevertheless, McDonald’s continues to expand in the very heartland of opposition: by the turn of the 21st century there were more than 850 McDonald’s restaurants…

marketing: Convenience goods: Convenience goods are those that the customer purchases frequently, immediately, and with minimum effort. Soaps and newspapers are considered convenience goods, as are common staples like ketchup or pasta. Convenience-goods purchasing is usually based on habitual behaviour, where the consumer will routinely purchase…

food desert: Food deserts and health disparities: …a relatively high number of convenience stores and few or no supermarkets. While convenience stores sell food products, they generally offer high-calorie foods that are low in vital nutrients at relatively high prices and do not offer the wide selection of healthy foods, such as vegetables, fruits, and whole grains,…

convent, local community or residence of a religious order, particularly an order of nuns. See

Manoel de Oliveira: The mystery O convento (1995; The Convent) added international stars Catherine Deneuve and John Malkovich to Oliveira’s repertory of actors, and Viagem ao princípio do mundo (1997; Voyage to the Beginning of the World) featured Marcello Mastroianni’s final screen role.

Romania: New constitution: …Constantinescu, the leader of the Democratic Convention of Romania (Convenția Democrată din România; CDR), whose party had formed a centre-right coalition with the Social Democratic Union (Uniunea Social Democrată; USD) and the Hungarian Democratic Union of Romania (Uniunea Democrată a Maghiarilor din România; UDMR). In 1997 the former monarch Michael,…

Protestantism: Pietism in the 17th century: …private reading, group study (conventicles under the guidance of pastors), and family devotions.

The Pilgrim’s Progress: …imprisoned for offenses against the Conventicle Act of 1593 (which prohibited the conducting of religious services outside the bailiwick of the Church of England).

Protestantism: The Restoration (1660–85): The Conventicle Act of 1664 punished any person over 16 years of age for attending a religious meeting not conducted according to The Book of Common Prayer. The Five Mile Act of 1665 prohibited any ejected minister from living within five miles of a corporate town…

political convention, meeting of delegates of a political party at the local, state, provincial, or national level to select candidates for office and to decide party policy. As representative organs of political parties, party conventions—or party conferences as they are commonly called in

diplomacy: Diplomatic agreements: A convention is a multilateral instrument of a lawmaking, codifying, or regulatory nature. Conventions are usually negotiated under the auspices of international entities or a conference of states. The UN and its agencies negotiate many conventions, as does the Council of Europe. Treaties and conventions require…

John Livingston Lowes: Lowes’s first book was Convention and Revolt in Poetry (1919), an account of innovations and the ensuing reactions to them in the history of English poetry. His masterpiece is The Road to Xanadu (1927), which traced the origins of the inspiration and wordings in Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s “The Rime…

theatre: Theatre and stage design in America: …Belasco was forced to rent Convention Hall, a leaky building in New York City, for his productions. During the first performance there was a violent rainstorm, and the audience had to sit through the last act holding umbrellas. Belasco’s productions became so popular that the syndicate was finally forced to…

National Convention, assembly that governed France from September 20, 1792, until October 26, 1795, during the most critical period of the French Revolution. The National Convention was elected to provide a new constitution for the country after the overthrow of the monarchy (August 10, 1792). The

Silesian Wars: …Silesia by the Truce of Klein Schnellendorf (Oct. 9, 1741). After further warfare from December 1741 to June 1742, the empress Maria Theresa of Austria decided to make peace with Frederick, ceding in the Treaty of Breslau (June 11, 1742) all of Silesia except the districts of Troppau, Teschen, and…

Convention on Biological Diversity, international treaty designed to promote the conservation of biodiversity and to ensure the sustainable use and equitable sharing of genetic resources. Work on the treaty concluded in Nairobi in May 1992 with the adoption of the Nairobi Final Act by the Nairobi