virus: Chronic and slowly progressive diseases: Hepatitis A is caused by a picornavirus usually transmitted by the fecal-oral route in a manner similar to that of poliovirus. Hepatitis B is caused by a small DNA virus that contains its own DNA polymerase and is transmitted by transfusion of blood and other blood…

mononucleosis, infection in humans, caused by the Epstein-Barr virus (EBV), whose most common symptoms are fever, general malaise, and sore throat. The disease occurs predominantly in persons from 10 to 35 years old, but it is known to appear at any age. Infection of young children by the EBV

myxomatosis, a highly fatal infectious viral disease of rabbits. It is characterized by fever, swelling of the mucous membranes, and the presence of nodular skin tumours. The disease exists naturally in populations of certain South American rabbits of the genus Sylvilagus and has been introduced

hazardous-waste management: Hazardous-waste characteristics: Infectious wastes include used bandages, hypodermic needles, and other materials from hospitals or biological research facilities.

endocarditis: Traditionally, infective endocarditis has been classified as acute or subacute. Acute infective endocarditis generally is caused by Staphylococcus, Pneumococcus, or Gonococcus bacteria or by fungi. This form of endocarditis develops rapidly, with fever, malaise, and other signs of systemic infection coupled with abnormal cardiac function and

inference, in statistics, the process of drawing conclusions about a parameter one is seeking to measure or estimate. Often scientists have many measurements of an object—say, the mass of an electron—and wish to choose the best measure. One principal approach of statistical inference is Bayesian

inference, in logic, derivation of conclusions from given information or premises by any acceptable form of reasoning. Inferences are commonly drawn (1) by deduction, which, by analyzing valid argument forms, draws out the conclusions implicit in their premises, (2) by induction, which argues from

expert system: …a knowledge base and an inference engine. A knowledge base is an organized collection of facts about the system’s domain. An inference engine interprets and evaluates the facts in the knowledge base in order to provide an answer. Typical tasks for expert systems involve classification, diagnosis, monitoring, design, scheduling, and…

formal logic: General observations: …above may be called an inference form, and (1) and (2) are then instances of that inference form. The letters—X, Y, and Z—in (3) mark the places into which expressions of a certain type may be inserted. Symbols used for this purpose are known as variables; their use is analogous…

formal logic: General observations: …above may be called an inference form, and (1) and (2) are then instances of that inference form. The letters—X, Y, and Z—in (3) mark the places into which expressions of a certain type may be inserted. Symbols used for this purpose are known as variables; their use is analogous…

formal logic: General observations: …above may be called an inference form, and (1) and (2) are then instances of that inference form. The letters—X, Y, and Z—in (3) mark the places into which expressions of a certain type may be inserted. Symbols used for this purpose are known as variables; their use is analogous…

logic: Definitory and strategic inference rules: There is a further reason why the formulation of systems of rules of inference does not exhaust the science of logic. Rule-governed, goal-directed activities are often best understood by means of concepts borrowed from the study of games. The “game” of logic is…

semantics: Conceptual-role semantics: In order to avoid having to distinguish between meaning and character, some philosophers, including Gilbert Harman and Ned Block, have recommended supplementing a theory of truth with what is called a conceptual-role semantics (also known as cognitive-role, computational-role, or inferential-role semantics). According to…

human nervous system: Mandibular nerve: …(4) the mandibular teeth (inferior alveolar nerve). Skin over the lateral and anterior surfaces of the mandible and the lower lip is served by cutaneous branches of the mandibular nerve.

human ear: Ascending pathways: …of which end in the inferior colliculus, the auditory centre of the midbrain, although some fibres may bypass the colliculus and end, together with the fibres from the colliculus, at the next higher level, the medial geniculate body. From the medial geniculate body there is an orderly projection of fibres…

conjunction: An inferior conjunction occurs when the planet passes approximately between Earth and Sun; if it passes exactly between them, moving across the Sun’s face as seen from Earth, it is said to be in transit. A superior conjunction occurs when Earth and the other planet are…

court: Courts of limited jurisdiction: …of a better term, “inferior” courts. These are often staffed by part-time judges who are not necessarily trained in the law. They handle minor civil cases involving small sums of money, such as bill collections, and minor criminal cases carrying light penalties. In addition to finally disposing of minor…

human nervous system: Vagus nerve (CN X or 10): …to the foramen is the inferior ganglion, containing visceral afferent cells.

human nervous system: Sympathetic ganglia: …the small intestine; and the inferior mesenteric ganglion innervates the descending colon, sigmoid colon, rectum, urinary bladder, and sexual organs.

human nervous system: Parasympathetic nervous system: …preganglionic neurons belongs to the inferior salivatory nucleus, located in the caudal part of the medullary reticular formation. Neurons of this group send axons out of the medulla in the ninth cranial (glossopharyngeal) nerve to the otic ganglion. From this site, postganglionic fibers travel to and innervate the parotid salivary…

vena cava: Inferior vena cava.: The inferior vena cava is formed by the coming together of the two major veins from the legs, the common iliac veins, at the level of the fifth lumbar vertebra, just below the small of the back. Unlike the superior vena cava,…

renal system: Blood and nerve supplies: The inferior vesical artery supplies the inferolateral surfaces of the bladder and assists in supplying the base of the bladder, the lower end of the ureter, and other adjacent structures.

inferiority complex, a psychological sense of inferiority that is wholly or partly unconscious. The term has been used by some psychiatrists and psychologists, particularly the followers of the early psychoanalyst Alfred Adler, who held that many neurotic symptoms could be traced to

Jean Cocteau: Influence of Radiguet: …to be his greatest play, La Machine infernale, a treatment of the Oedipus theme that is very much his own. In these two works he moved into closer contact with the great myths of humanity.

Stone Age: Rise of agriculture: Here, in the Infernillo phase, it appears that native American squash, peppers, and perhaps beans were being cultivated as early as 6500 bce. At this time, domesticates formed only a small portion of the total diet, the bulk of which was derived from wild animals and, to a…

Dan Brown: …which centres on Freemasons, and Inferno (2013), which saw Langdon following clues related to Dante’s poem The Divine Comedy in an effort to stop the release of a plague. The latter book was also adapted for the big screen, in 2016, with Hanks again portraying Langdon. Brown’s fifth installment in…

Ron Howard: …Angels & Demons (2009) and Inferno (2016).

John G. Avildsen: …the thriller genre again with Desert Heat (also released as Inferno), which starred Jean-Claude Van Damme; the film was loosely based on the 1961 classic Yojimbo by Kurosawa Akira.

One of the most profoundly influential works in all of literature, the Inferno by Italian poet Dante Alighieri helped to change the language of poetry and shaped people’s ideas about the afterlife. As the first section of the long narrative poem The Divine Comedy (c. 1308–21), it is composed of

infertility, the inability of a couple to conceive and reproduce. Infertility is defined as the failure to conceive after one year of regular intercourse without contraception or the inability of a woman to carry a pregnancy to a live birth. Infertility can affect either the male or the female and

animal disease: Infectious and noninfectious diseases: The term infestation indicates that animals, including spiny-headed worms (Acanthocephala), roundworms (Nematoda), flatworms (Platyhelminthes), and arthropods such as lice, fleas, mites, and ticks, are present in or on the body of a host. An infestation is not necessarily parasitic.

female genital cutting: The procedure: Infibulation (also called Pharoanic circumcision). The vaginal opening is reduced by removing all or parts of the external genitalia (the clitoris, labia minora, and labia majora) and sewing, pinning, or otherwise causing the remaining tissue to fuse together during the healing process. Those procedures that…

adultery, sexual relations between a married person and someone other than the spouse. Written or customary prohibitions or taboos against adultery constitute part of the marriage code of virtually every society. Indeed, adultery seems to be as universal and, in some instances, as common as

baseball: Play of the game: …play is divided into the infield and the outfield. Within the infield is a square area called the diamond, which has four white bases, one on each corner. The bases are 90 feet (27.4 meters) apart.

baseball: The force play: The infield fly rule protects base runners from the deception of an infielder who may allow an infield fly ball to drop, thus setting up an easy force play. The rule applies only if both first and second are occupied by runners and there are fewer…

baseball: Infielders: The infielders form the inner ring of defense. They sometimes catch line drives on the fly, but mainly they pick up ground balls that roll toward the outfield or shoot swiftly across the grass on one or more bounces. When a batted ball strikes…

breast cancer: Types of breast cancer: …most common type of tumor, infiltrating ductal carcinoma, is a single hard barely movable lump. This type of tumor accounts for about 70 percent of all cases. Fewer than 15 percent of all cases are lobular carcinomas.

hydrologic sciences: Infiltration: When water from a rainstorm or a period of snowmelt reaches the ground, some or all of it will infiltrate the soil. The rate of infiltration depends on the intensity of the input, the initial moisture condition of the surface soil layer, and the…

advanced ceramics: Infiltration: The siliconization of RBSC is a good example of infiltration, which may be described as any technique of filling in pores by reaction with or deposition from a liquid or vapour. In the case of liquid reaction, the technique is called melt infiltration; in…

anesthetic: Local anesthetics: This is called infiltration anesthesia. Some local anesthetics are applied directly to mucous membranes, such as those of the nose, throat, larynx, and urethra or those of the conjunctiva of the eye. This is called surface or topical anesthesia. A familiar example of topical anesthesia is

water supply system: Groundwater sources: …out of a well or infiltration gallery. An infiltration gallery typically includes several horizontal perforated pipes radiating outward from the bottom of a large-diameter vertical shaft. Wells are constructed in several ways, depending on the depth and nature of the aquifer. Wells used for public water supplies, usually more than…

Bryan Cranston: In The Infiltrator (2016), Cranston played real-life undercover federal agent Robert Mazur, who, in the 1980s, impersonated a money-laundering businessman in a sting operation that traced enormous sums of money back to Colombian drug kingpin Pablo Escobar and helped uncover the wide-reaching malfeasance of the Bank…

Dominique Rolin: …Bruegel the Elder, while in L’Infini chez soi (1980; “The Infinite at Home”) a first-person narration identifying mother with daughter offers prenatal and birth visions. In Le Gâteau des morts (1982; The Deathday Cake) the narrator fantasizes her own death in the year 2000. Trente ans d’amour fou (1988; “Thirty…

metalogic: Nonelementary logic and future developments: …such as second-order logic and infinitary logics, that develop the model theory of nonelementary logic. Second-order logic contains, in addition to variables that range over individual objects, a second kind of variable ranging over sets of objects so that the model of a second-order sentence or theory also involves, beyond…

Mark Wahlberg: In the sc-fi thriller Infinite (2021), Wahlberg was cast as a schizophrenic who discovers that his hallucinations are memories of past lives that stretch back thousands of years. In 2022 he appeared in several movies, including Uncharted, about treasure hunters.

Judaism: Ḥasdai Crescas: …on the contrast between an infinite being and finite beings. It is through infinitude that God’s essential attributes—wisdom, for instance—differ from the corresponding and otherwise similar attributes found in created beings. In Crescas’s doctrine, as in that of Spinoza, God’s attributes are infinite in number. The central place assigned to…

number theory: Pierre de Fermat: He used a technique called infinite descent that was ideal for demonstrating impossibility. The logical strategy assumes that there are whole numbers satisfying the condition in question and then generates smaller whole numbers satisfying it as well. Reapplying the argument over and over, Fermat produced an endless sequence of decreasing…

Hilbert space: …new subfield of topology called infinite dimensional topology in the 1960s and ’70s.

game theory: Classification of games: Infinite games are more subtle and will only be touched upon in this article.

Burnside problem: …clear to Burnside that an infinite group (such as the positive integers) may have a finite number of generators and a finite group must have finite generators, but he wondered if every finitely generated periodic group must necessarily be finite. The answer turned out to be no, as shown in…

Freeman Dyson: … (1984), Origins of Life (1985), Infinite in All Directions (1988), Imagined Worlds (1998), and The Sun, the Genome, and the Internet (1999). Disturbing the Universe (1979) and the epistolary Maker of Patterns (2018) are autobiographies.

Infinite Jest, novel by David Foster Wallace, published in 1996, that satirically attacks the vacuous predilections of contemporary American culture mercilessly while shamelessly reveling in them. Where does one begin with a book of over a thousand pages, of which nearly a hundred pages consist of

transfinite number, denotation of the size of an infinite collection of objects. Comparison of certain infinite collections suggests that they have different sizes even though they are all infinite. For example, the sets of integers, rational numbers, and real numbers are all infinite; but each is

Isabel Allende: …and El plan infinito (1991; The Infinite Plan) and the collection of stories Cuentos de Eva Luna (1990; The Stories of Eva Luna). All are examples of magic realism, in which realistic fiction is overlaid with elements of fantasy and myth. Her concern in many of these works is the…

Ben Okri: …Songs of Enchantment (1993) and Infinite Riches (1998) continue the themes of The Famished Road, relating stories of dangerous quests and the struggle for equanimity in an unstable land. Okri’s other novels included Astonishing the Gods (1995); Dangerous Love (1996), about “star-crossed” lovers in postcolonial Nigeria; In Arcadia (2002); Starbook

infinite series, the sum of infinitely many numbers related in a given way and listed in a given order. Infinite series are useful in mathematics and in such disciplines as physics, chemistry, biology, and engineering. For an infinite series a1 + a2 + a3 +⋯, a quantity sn = a1 + a2 +⋯+ an, which

axiom of choice: For infinite sets, however, it would take an infinite amount of time to choose elements one by one. Thus, infinite sets for which there does not exist some definite selection rule require the axiom of choice (or one of its equivalent formulations) in order to proceed…

Robert J. Aumann: …methodologies and analyses of so-called infinitely repeated games, he identified the outcomes that could be sustained in long-term relations and demonstrated the prerequisites for cooperation in situations where there are many participants, infrequent interaction, or the potential for a break in relations and when participants’ actions lack transparency.

infinitesimal, in mathematics, a quantity less than any finite quantity yet not zero. Even though no such quantity can exist in the real number system, many early attempts to justify calculus were based on sometimes dubious reasoning about infinitesimals: derivatives were defined as ultimate ratios

mechanics of solids: Strain and strain-displacement relations: …to this situation, are called small strain or infinitesimal strain. Expressions for strain will also be given that are valid for rotations and fractional length changes of arbitrary magnitude; such expressions are called finite strain.

Infinitesimals were introduced by Isaac Newton as a means of “explaining” his procedures in calculus. Before the concept of a limit had been formally introduced and understood, it was not clear how to explain why calculus worked. In essence, Newton treated an infinitesimal as a positive number that

John Banville: Fiction: The Infinities (2009) is an eccentric work that relates a domestic drama that takes place in a parallel reality through the narrative of the Greek god Hermes, and Ancient Light (2012) uses characters that previously appeared in Eclipse and Shroud to recount an older man’s…

Celtic languages: Grammatical characteristics: …is its lack of the infinitive form of the verb found in most other Indo-European languages—e.g., English “to do,” “to call.” The equivalent is the verbal noun, which is a noun closely linked to the verb, though not necessarily derived from the same stem. Being a noun, it can have…

Matthew Broderick: Roles from the late 1980s and early ’90s and marriage to Sarah Jessica Parker: Prize-winning physicist Richard Feynman in Infinity (1996), for which his mother cowrote the script. Meanwhile, in 1991 Broderick met Sarah Jessica Parker through her brothers, Pippin Parker and Toby Parker, who were founding members of the Naked Angels theater company in New York City. Parker and Broderick began dating and…

infinity, the concept of something that is unlimited, endless, without bound. The common symbol for infinity, ∞, was invented by the English mathematician John Wallis in 1655. Three main types of infinity may be distinguished: the mathematical, the physical, and the metaphysical. Mathematical

Yayoi Kusama: Installations from that time included Infinity Mirror Room—Phalli’s Field (1965), a mirrored room whose floors were covered with hundreds of stuffed phalli that had been painted with red dots. Mirrors gave her the opportunity to create infinite planes in her installations, and she would continue to use them in later…

Umberto Eco: …book, Vertigine della lista (2009; The Infinity of Lists), produced in conjunction with an exhibition he organized at the Louvre Museum, in which he investigated the Western passion for list making and accumulation. Costruire il nemico e altri scritti occasionali (2011; Inventing the Enemy, and Other Occasional Writings) collected pieces—some…

foundations of mathematics: Foundational logic: …axiom to make them work—the axiom of infinity, which postulates the existence of an infinite set. Since the simplest infinite set is the set of natural numbers, one cannot really say that arithmetic has been reduced to logic. Most mathematicians follow Peano, who preferred to introduce the natural numbers directly…

abbey: …housed the novitiate and the infirmary. In the manner of an early isolation hospital, it had its own chapel, bathhouse, refectory, kitchen, and garden. The doctor’s house, with its physic garden of essential medicinal herbs and with small sickrooms, was nearby.

infitāḥ, program of economic liberalization in Egypt initiated by Pres. Anwar Sadat in the early 1970s. Sadat’s program of infitāḥ, officially outlined in the October Paper of April 1974, represented a marked departure from the socialist framework of his predecessor, Gamal Abdel Nasser. The

Austroasiatic languages: Morphology: …extremely complex system of prefixes, infixes (elements inserted within the body of a word), and suffixes. Verbs, for instance, are inflected for person, number, tense, negation, mood (intensive, durative, repetitive), definiteness, location, and agreement with the object. Furthermore, derivational processes indicate intransitive, causative, reciprocal, and reflexive forms. On the other…

inflammation, a response triggered by damage to living tissues. The inflammatory response is a defense mechanism that evolved in higher organisms to protect them from infection and injury. Its purpose is to localize and eliminate the injurious agent and to remove damaged tissue components so that

inflammatory bowel disease (IBD), chronic inflammation of the intestines that results in impaired absorption of nutrients. Inflammatory bowel disease (IBD) encompasses two disorders: Crohn disease (regional ileitis) and ulcerative colitis. The onset of IBD typically occurs between ages 15 and 35,

breast cancer: Types of breast cancer: Inflammatory carcinoma is a rare type of breast cancer that results in swelling and reddening of the affected area. The area then becomes purplish, the skin is hot, and the nipple usually becomes crusted and retracted.

myositis, inflammation, and frequently infection, of muscle tissue; it may be caused by any of a number of bacteria, viruses, and parasites; in many cases it is of unknown origin. Most inflammatory muscle diseases are destructive to the tissue involved and to the surrounding areas. They may occur

inflammation, a response triggered by damage to living tissues. The inflammatory response is a defense mechanism that evolved in higher organisms to protect them from infection and injury. Its purpose is to localize and eliminate the injurious agent and to remove damaged tissue components so that

Frank Stella: …attached to another sculpture (Inflated Star and Wooden Star [2014]). In 2015 the Whitney Museum of American Art celebrated his long career with a major retrospective covering 60 years of his work.

Inflation refers to the general increase in prices or the money supply, both of which can cause the purchasing power of a currency to decline. From a consumer’s point of view, inflation is often perceived in relation to prices. We call it “inflation” when consumer goods and services across a wide

cosmic microwave background: Isotropy in the cosmic background: A mechanism called “inflation” offers an attractive way out of this dilemma. The basic idea is that at high energies, matter is better described by fields than by classical means. The contribution of a field to the energy density (and therefore the mass density) and the pressure of…

respiratory system: The lung: As the lungs are inflated, there is an accompanying increase in the energy stored within the elastic tissues of the lungs, just as energy is stored in a stretched rubber band. The conversion of this stored, or potential, energy into kinetic, or active, energy during the deflation process supplies…

These days, you can’t tune into TV or social media without hearing about inflation. But what is inflation, why does it happen, and how is it measured? Are rising prices good or bad? Alarm bells ring if prices rise too quickly, but the opposite—deflation, or falling prices—is arguably worse.

If you want hefty investment returns, you usually have to take on a fair amount of risk. But as inflation raged in the early 2020s, a high return/low risk savings vehicle rose to prominence: Series I Savings Bonds. Although “I bonds” won’t solve all your inflation woes, they’re one way to help

cosmic microwave background: Isotropy in the cosmic background: A mechanism called “inflation” offers an attractive way out of this dilemma. The basic idea is that at high energies, matter is better described by fields than by classical means. The contribution of a field to the energy density (and therefore the mass density) and the pressure of…

inflection, in linguistics, the change in the form of a word (in English, usually the addition of endings) to mark such distinctions as tense, person, number, gender, mood, voice, and case. English inflection indicates noun plural (cat, cats), noun case (girl, girl’s, girls’), third person singular

particle accelerator: Synchrotrons: …by a device called an inflector. They begin their acceleration in the ring when the magnetic field is small. As the field created by the ring magnets increases, the injection pulse is timed so that the field and the energy of the particles from the linear accelerator are properly matched.…

submarine: Strategic submarines: …of the 1970s, France built L’Inflexible. This 8,000-ton submarine, which entered service in 1985, carried 16 M-4 SLBMs, each with a range of 2,800 nautical miles (5,200 km). Between 1997 and 2010 four Triomphant-class submarines entered service; as replacements of L’Inflexible and the older Redoutable class, these are designed to…

immunosuppressant: Infliximab is an antibody that binds to the cytokine tumour necrosis factor alpha (TNFα), which prevents TNFα from binding to its receptor. TNFα is thought to play a role in the development of rheumatoid arthritis and Crohn disease, and infliximab, which blocks the activity of…

inflorescence, in a flowering plant, a cluster of flowers on a branch or a system of branches. An inflorescence is categorized on the basis of the arrangement of flowers on a main axis (peduncle) and by the timing of its flowering (determinate and indeterminate). In determinate (cymose)

weather forecasting: Analysis of synoptic weather reports: …Storms (1841) that air would flow toward the regions of lowest pressure and then would be forced upward, causing clouds and precipitation. Both Redfield and Espy proved to be right. The air does spin around the cyclone, as Redfield believed, while the layers close to the ground flow inward and…

David Williamson: …1996), Up for Grabs (2001), Influence (2005), Let the Sunshine (2010), and Nearer the Gods (2018). Williamson also wrote several screenplays, including Phar Lap (1982) and, in collaboration with Peter Weir, Gallipoli (1981) and The Year of Living Dangerously (1982).

proximity fuze, an explosive ignition device used in bombs, artillery shells, and mines. The fuze senses when a target is close enough to be damaged or destroyed by the weapon’s explosion. The sensor is typically a small radar set that sends out signals and listens for their reflections from nearby

Germaine de Staël: Literary theories: …Ancient and Modern Literature and The Influence of Literature upon Society). This complex work, though not perfect, is rich in new ideas and new perspectives—new, at least to France. The fundamental theory, which was to be restated and developed in the positivism of Hippolyte Taine, is that a work must…

Alfred Thayer Mahan: …his college lectures as The Influence of Sea Power upon History, 1660–1783. In this book he argued for the paramount importance of sea power in national historical supremacy. The book, which came at a time of great technological improvement in warships, won immediate recognition abroad. In his second book, The…

Alfred Thayer Mahan: In his second book, The Influence of Sea Power upon the French Revolution and Empire, 1793–1812 (1892), Mahan stressed the interdependence of the military and commercial control of the sea and asserted that the control of seaborne commerce can determine the outcome of wars. Both books were avidly read in…

Instagram: Influence and criticisms: …the era of the “influencer”—individuals who have built a considerable social media following and use that influence to advertise particular products or services. Influencers are often courted by brands and may receive financial compensation and free products for posting information or reviews or name-dropping a product in their posts…

You see them everywhere on TikTok and Instagram. Social media influencers share products and document lavish travel. They may offer advice about investing and share their favorite apps for trading stocks. Perhaps your favorite “finfluencer” has a budget tracker you can buy. But what is an

influenza, an acute viral infection of the upper or lower respiratory tract that is marked by fever, chills, and a generalized feeling of weakness and pain in the muscles, together with varying degrees of soreness in the head and abdomen. Influenza is caused by any of several closely related

influenza A H1N1, virus that is best known for causing widespread outbreaks, including epidemics and pandemics, of acute upper or lower respiratory tract infection. The influenza A H1N1 virus is a member of the family Orthomyxoviridae (a group of RNA viruses). Type A is one of the three major types

influenza A H1N1, virus that is best known for causing widespread outbreaks, including epidemics and pandemics, of acute upper or lower respiratory tract infection. The influenza A H1N1 virus is a member of the family Orthomyxoviridae (a group of RNA viruses). Type A is one of the three major types

1957 flu pandemic: … known as influenza A subtype H2N2. Research has indicated that this virus was a reassortant (mixed species) strain, originating from strains of avian influenza and human influenza viruses. In the 1960s the human H2N2 strain underwent a series of minor genetic modifications, a process known as antigenic drift. These slight…