budgerigar, popular species of parakeet

melorheostosis, rare disorder of unknown cause in which cortical bone overgrowth occurs along the main axis of a bone in such a way as to resemble candle drippings. Pain is the major symptom, and stiffness and deformity may result. Usually only one limb and the nearest hip or shoulder are affected.

Meloria, rocky islet in the Ligurian Sea, off the coast of Tuscany, north central Italy, opposite Livorno. Meloria is known as the site of two 13th-century naval battles, both features of the long-standing rivalry between Pisa and Genoa. In the first battle (1241) the fleets of the Holy Roman

Meloria: Meloria is known as the site of two 13th-century naval battles, both features of the long-standing rivalry between Pisa and Genoa. In the first battle (1241) the fleets of the Holy Roman emperor Frederick II and of Pisa attacked a Genoese squadron and captured the…

lyric: The latter, the melos, or song proper, had reached a height of technical perfection in “the Isles of Greece, where burning Sappho loved and sung,” as early as the 7th century bc. That poetess, together with her contemporary Alcaeus, were the chief Doric poets of the pure Greek…

Melos, island, most southwesterly of the major islands of Greece’s Cyclades (Modern Greek: Kykládes) in the Aegean Sea. The greater portion of the 58.1-square-mile (150.6-square-km) island, of geologically recent volcanic origin, is rugged, culminating in the west in Mount Profítis Ilías (2,464

animal social behaviour: The proximate mechanisms of social behaviour: …period of song learning in song sparrows (Melospiza melodia). There is a sensitive period in the first summer of life when young birds learn much of their song, but field studies show that learning also continues through the first year. In song sparrows this involves developing and storing fairly exact…

Matthew Locke: His treatise Melothesia (1673) was one of the earliest English works to deal with “Certain General Rules for playing upon a Continued Bass.”

The Decemberists: …were lead singer and guitarist Colin Meloy (b. October 5, 1974, Helena, Montana, U.S.), keyboardist and accordionist Jenny Conlee (b. December 12, 1971, Seattle, Washington), guitarist Chris Funk (b. November 28, 1971, Valparaiso, Indiana), drummer John Moen (b. August 23, 1968, Brainerd, Minnesota), and bassist Nate Query (b. September 5,…

Melozzo da Forlì was an early Renaissance painter whose style was influenced by Andrea Mantegna and Piero della Francesca. Melozzo was one of the great fresco artists of the 15th century, and he is noted for his skilled use of illusionistic perspective and foreshortening. Melozzo is mentioned in

Melozzo da Forlì was an early Renaissance painter whose style was influenced by Andrea Mantegna and Piero della Francesca. Melozzo was one of the great fresco artists of the 15th century, and he is noted for his skilled use of illusionistic perspective and foreshortening. Melozzo is mentioned in

Melpomene, in Greek religion, one of the nine Muses, patron of tragedy and lyre playing. In Greek art her attributes were the tragic mask and the club of Heracles. According to some traditions, the half-bird, half-woman Sirens were born from the union of Melpomene with the river god

Melqart, Phoenician god, chief deity of Tyre and of two of its colonies, Carthage and Gadir (Cádiz, Spain). He was also called the Tyrian Baal. Under the name Malku he was equated with the Babylonian Nergal, god of the underworld and death, and thus may have been related to the god Mot of Ras

Chott Melrhir, lake in northeastern Algeria. Lying almost entirely below sea level, the Chott Melrhir is a marshy, saline lake that fluctuates in area with the seasons; usually, it is more than 80 miles (130 km) wide east–west. The Melrhir occupies the westernmost of a series of depressions

Melrose, small burgh (town), Scottish Borders council area, historic county of Roxburghshire, Scotland, on the right bank of the River Tweed. It lies 33 miles (53 km) southeast of Edinburgh. The original Columban monastery was founded nearby in the 7th century at Old Melrose. It was burned in 839

Melrose: In 1136 an abbey was founded a little higher up the Tweed. The abbey was frequently attacked; it was destroyed in 1322 and again in 1385 and was finally reduced to ruin by the English in 1545. In 1822 the ruins were repaired under the supervision of the…

Television in the United States: Prime time in the new century: …Falcon Crest (CBS, 1981–90), and Melrose Place (Fox, 1992–99), the genre seemed to have played out by 2000. Desperate Housewives, however, with its provocative title and mischievous and intertwined story lines, consistently achieved high ratings.

Rascal Flatts: The band followed with Melt (2002), a ballad-heavy collection that featured “These Days,” a single that dominated the country charts and gave the group its first number one hit. Melt fared equally well on the country album chart, reaching number one and spending two years in the top 100.…

crystal: Growth from the melt: This method is the most basic. A gas is cooled until it becomes a liquid, which is then cooled further until it becomes a solid. Polycrystalline solids are typically produced by this method unless special techniques are employed. In any case, the temperature must…

advanced ceramics: Infiltration: …reaction, the technique is called melt infiltration; in the case of vapour phases, it is called chemical vapour infiltration, or CVI. With infiltration it is possible to begin with woven carbon fibres or felts, building up composite materials with enhanced properties.

amorphous solid: Other preparation techniques: In melt spinning, a jet of molten metal is propelled against the moving surface of a cold, rotating copper cylinder. A solid film of metallic glass is spun off as a continuous ribbon at a speed that can exceed a kilometre per minute. In laser glazing,…

meltdown, occurrence in which a huge amount of thermal energy and radiation is released as a result of an uncontrolled chain reaction in a nuclear power reactor. The chain reaction that occurs in the reactor’s core must be carefully regulated by control rods, which absorb neutrons, and a moderator,

Sherrie Levine: …reconceptualization of her 1989 series Meltdown, in which she made a cycle of woodblock prints, reducing the paintings of Duchamp, Ernst Ludwig Kirchner, Mondrian, and Claude Monet into 12 blocks of colour.

ijolite: …as urtite (Kola Peninsula) and melteigite (near Fen, Nor.) are essentially similar assemblages; in the former, nepheline largely predominates, whereas the latter is a variant with an excessive proportion of pyroxene.

melting, change of a solid into a liquid when heat is applied. In a pure crystalline solid, this process occurs at a fixed temperature called the melting point; an impure solid generally melts over a range of temperatures below the melting point of the principal component. Amorphous

The Persistence of Memory, painting by Salvador Dali completed in 1931. Dalí was a Catalan Spanish artist who became one of the most important painters of the 20th century. He was also an accomplished sculptor, draftsman, and designer whose imagery came to influence not only the art world but also

liquid: Phase diagram of a pure substance: Line TM is the melting curve and represents an equilibrium between solid and liquid; when this curve is crossed from left to right, solid changes to liquid with the associated abrupt change in properties.

melting point, temperature at which the solid and liquid forms of a pure substance can exist in equilibrium. As heat is applied to a solid, its temperature will increase until the melting point is reached. More heat then will convert the solid into a liquid with no temperature change. When all the

nation-state: Diversity management: …polyethnic states have applied “melting pot” policies, aiming to assimilate ethnic minorities into the hegemonic national culture, which often represents the culture of a dominant group (typically the founding group). In contrast, exclusionary policies have targeted ethnic or religious groups seen as alien to the nation and unassimilable. Historically,…

Israel Zangwill: …and theme of Zangwill’s play The Melting Pot (1908).

Melton, borough (district), administrative and historic county of Leicestershire, south-central England, in the northeastern part of the county. Melton borough encompasses partly wooded, rolling countryside, with an elevation around 400 feet (120 metres), and is dotted with stone-built villages.

Melton: The only town of consequence, Melton Mowbray, has an important cattle market and is the administrative headquarters in the borough’s centre.

outwash, deposit of sand and gravel carried by running water from the melting ice of a glacier and laid down in stratified deposits. An outwash may attain a thickness of 100 m (328 feet) at the edge of a glacier, although the thickness is usually much less; it may also extend many kilometres in

Holocene Epoch: Faunal change: Mead and David J. Meltzer, 75 percent of the larger animals (those of more than 40 kilograms live weight) that became extinct during the late Pleistocene did so by about 10,800 to 10,000 years ago. Whether the cause of this decimation of Pleistocene fauna was climatic or…

Melun, town, Seine-et-Marne département, Île-de-France région, northern France. It lies 28 miles (45 km) south-southeast of Paris. Like Paris, it is situated on both banks of the Seine, and its ancient church of Notre-Dame stands on an island between two branches of the river. Built in the 11th

Sénart, community in the départements of Seine-et-Marne and Essonne, Île-de-France région, north-central France. An agglomeration of eight villages southeast of Paris (Cesson, Combs-la-Ville, Tigery, Vert-Saint-Denis, Nandy, Mossy Cramayel, Réau, and Savigny-le-Temple), Sénart is one of the villes

bear: Evolution and classification: Genus Melursus (sloth bear) 1 species of the Indian subcontinent. Genus Tremarctos (spectacled bear) 1 species of the Andes Mountains of South America.

sloth bear, (Melursus ursinus), forest-dwelling bear (family Ursidae) that inhabits tropical or subtropical regions of India and Sri Lanka. Named for its slow-moving habits, the sloth bear has poor senses of sight and hearing but a good sense of smell. Various adaptations equip this nocturnal

Franz Hellens: …were mingled, as in his Mélusine (1920), a proto-Surrealist work that reinterpreted an ancient legend with great originality and daring. This combination of elements is also present in his short-story collections, Nocturnal (1919) and Réalités fantastiques (1923; “Fantastic Realities”). Satire and picaresque were also within his range, as in Bass-Bassina-Boulou…

Michael Melvill is an American test pilot, the first commercial astronaut, and the first person to travel into space aboard a privately funded spacecraft. Melvill was raised in Durban, S.Af., and attended but did not graduate from Hilton College, a private boarding high school in Hilton. He

Michael Melvill is an American test pilot, the first commercial astronaut, and the first person to travel into space aboard a privately funded spacecraft. Melvill was raised in Durban, S.Af., and attended but did not graduate from Hilton College, a private boarding high school in Hilton. He

undersea exploration: Platforms: …this kind is the “Melville,” operated by the Scripps Institution of Oceanography. It has a displacement of 2,075 tons and can carry 25 scientists in addition to 25 crew members. It is powered by a dual cycloidal propulsion system, which provides remarkable manoeuvrability.

John P. Marquand: …the 1950s were depicted in Melville Goodwin, U.S.A. (1951), about a professional soldier, and Sincerely, Willis Wayde (1955), a sharply satiric portrait of a big business promoter. His last important novel, Women and Thomas Harrow (1958), is about a successful playwright and is partly autobiographical.

Melville Island, one of the largest of the Parry Islands, in the Arctic Ocean, divided between the Northwest Territories and Nunavut territory, Canada. Separated from Victoria Island (south) by Viscount Melville Sound and from Banks Island (southwest) by McClure Strait, Melville Island is about 200

Australia: The Portuguese: …including a reference indicating that Melville Island, off the northern coast, supplied slaves. Certainly the Portuguese debated the issue of a terra australis incognita (Latin: “unknown southern land”)—an issue in European thought in ancient times and revived from the 12th century onward. The so-called Dieppe maps present a landmass, “Java…

Henry Dundas, 1st Viscount Melville was a British careerist politician who held various ministerial offices under William Pitt the Younger and whose adroit control of Scottish politics earned him the nickname “King Harry the Ninth.” Educated at the University of Edinburgh, he became a member of the

Melville Peninsula, peninsula in Nunavut, on the north coast of Canada. It is 250 miles (400 km) long, 70–135 miles wide, and separates the Gulf of Boothia (west) from the Foxe Basin

Viscount Melville Sound, arm of the Arctic Ocean, Kitikmeot and Baffin regions, Northwest Territories, northern Canada. It is 250 miles (400 km) long and 100 miles (160 km) wide. The discovery of this body of water, reached from the east by Sir William Edward Parry (1819–20) and from the west

Andrew Melville was a scholar and Reformer who succeeded John Knox as a leader of the Scottish Reformed Church, giving that church its Presbyterian character by replacing bishops with local presbyteries, and gaining international respect for Scottish universities. After attending Scottish

George Wallace Melville was a U.S. explorer and naval engineer who led the sole surviving party from George Washington De Long’s tragic North Polar expedition. Melville entered the U.S. Navy in 1861 and in 1879 joined De Long’s crew on the “Jeanette.” When the vessel became lodged in the ice off

Henry Dundas, 1st Viscount Melville was a British careerist politician who held various ministerial offices under William Pitt the Younger and whose adroit control of Scottish politics earned him the nickname “King Harry the Ninth.” Educated at the University of Edinburgh, he became a member of the

Herman Melville was an American novelist, short-story writer, and poet, best known for his novels of the sea, including his masterpiece, Moby Dick (1851). Melville’s heritage and youthful experiences were perhaps crucial in forming the conflicts underlying his artistic vision. He was the third

James Melville was a Scottish Presbyterian reformer and educator. Melville studied at the University of St. Andrews, where he heard John Knox preach, in 1571–72. He taught at the University of Glasgow (1575–80) and at St. Andrews (1581–84), helping his uncle Andrew Melville, who had succeeded John

Jean-Pierre Melville was a French motion-picture director whose early films strongly influenced the directors of the New Wave, the innovative French film movement of the late 1950s. Grumbach’s enthusiasm for American culture prompted him to change his name to that of his favourite writer, Herman

Lake Melville, tidal extension of Hamilton Inlet (from which it is separated by the Narrows), on the Labrador coast of Newfoundland and Labrador, Canada. Averaging 12 miles (19 km) in width and with depths of nearly 400 feet (120 metres), it extends southwestward for 66 miles from the Backway (east

Jason Robards: …“real-life” character, Howard Hughes, in Melvin and Howard (1980). Robards’s later films included Philadelphia (1993), A Thousand Acres (1997), and Magnolia (1999).

Kurt Cobain: …the local “sludge rock” band the Melvins (who would themselves go on to earn a measure of national fame in the 1990s). In 1985 he created a homemade tape of some songs with the drummer of the Melvins that later caught the attention of local bassist Krist Novoselic. Cobain and…

Smashing Pumpkins: …peak of their popularity when Jonathan Melvoin, the band’s touring keyboardist, died of a heroin overdose. Thereafter, matters worsened as the band experienced a series of lineup changes. Adore (1998) not only met with mixed reviews but sold poorly, and MACHINA/The Machines of God (2000) sounded as if Corgan were…

Virginia Woolf: Early fiction: …a novel, which she called Melymbrosia. In November 1910, Roger Fry, a new friend of the Bells, launched the exhibit “Manet and the Post-Impressionists,” which introduced radical European art to the London bourgeoisie. Virginia was at once outraged over the attention that painting garnered and intrigued by the possibility of…

coleopteran: Annotated classification: Family Melyridae (soft-winged flower beetles) About 4,000 species widely distributed; diverse; example Malachius. Family Phloiophilidae Rare; 1 species in Britain. Family Phycosecidae Few species; examples Phycosecis, Alfieriella; in

pain: Theories of pain: …ideas appealed to Canadian psychologist Ronald Melzack and British neuroscientist Patrick David Wall. Melzack and Wall combined the ideas of Goldscheider, Livingston, and Noordenbos with available research evidence and in 1965 proposed the so-called gate control theory of pain. According to gate control theory, the perception of pain depends on…

Italy: The French Consulate, 1799–1804: …affairs was the Milanese patrician Francesco Melzi d’Eril, who during the triennium had hoped to see northern Italy united in a constitutional monarchy under a Habsburg or Bourbon prince. Melzi was the most clear-sighted exponent of an older moderate ruling class that still yearned for enlightened autocracy. Napoleon also favored…

Leonardo da Vinci: Second Milanese period (1508–13): …Luini, and the young nobleman Francesco Melzi, Leonardo’s most faithful friend and companion until the artist’s death.

set theory: The objects are called elements or members of the set.

Fred Zinnemann: Films of the 1950s: Zinnemann followed this triumph with The Member of the Wedding (1952), an adaptation of a lauded Broadway production (by way of Carson McCullers’s coming-of-age novel of the same name). It used five members of the original cast, including Julie Harris, Ethel Waters, and Brandon deWilde.

The Member of the Wedding, novel by Carson McCullers, published in 1946. It depicts the inner life of a lonely person, in this case 12-year-old Frankie Addams, a Georgia tomboy who imagines that she will be taken by the bride and groom (her brother) on their honeymoon. Frankie finds refuge in the

The 56 member states of the Commonwealth, which is also called Commonwealth of Nations, encompass the United Kingdom and 55 of its former dependencies. After becoming independent, these 55 states have chosen to work with one another and with the United Kingdom in cooperation while also recognizing

member states of the United Nations (UN), states that have been admitted into the United Nations (UN). The UN is an international organization that was established in 1945. Following its predecessor, the League of Nations (1920–46), it was the second multipurpose international organization to be

The House of Representatives is one of the two houses of the bicameral United States Congress, established in 1789 by the Constitution of the United States. It shares equal responsibility for lawmaking with the U.S. Senate. The allocation of seats is based on the population within the states, and

The Senate is one of the two houses of the bicameral United States Congress, established in 1789 by the Constitution of the United States. It shares equal responsibility for lawmaking with the U.S. House of Representatives. Each state elects two senators for six-year terms. The terms of about

collective behavior: …by which to distinguish between members and outsiders, to identify leaders, to establish the aims of the collectivity, to set acceptable limits of behavior for members, and to specify how collective decisions are to be made accounts for the volatility of collective behavior. The leader of a mob can become…

set theory: Essential features of Cantorian set theory: …a set is called the membership relation.

treehopper, (family Membracidae), any of approximately 3,200 species of insects (order Homoptera) that are easily recognized by their vertical face and grotesquely enlarged thorax, which may extend anteriorly over the head to form one or more spines and expands posteriorly over the body to form a

membrane, in biology, the thin layer that forms the outer boundary of a living cell or of an internal cell compartment. The outer boundary is the plasma membrane, and the compartments enclosed by internal membranes are called organelles. Biological membranes have three primary functions: (1) they

wastewater treatment: Improved treatment methods: In the membrane bioreactor process, hollow-fibre microfiltration membrane modules are submerged in a single tank in which aeration, secondary clarification, and filtration can occur, thereby providing both secondary and tertiary treatment in a small land area.

ion channel, protein expressed by virtually all living cells that creates a pathway for charged ions from dissolved salts, including sodium, potassium, calcium, and chloride ions, to pass through the otherwise impermeant lipid cell membrane. Operation of cells in the nervous system, contraction of

separation and purification: Separations based on rates: …divided in half by a porous membrane, and a solution of different proteins is placed in one section and pure water in the other, some of the proteins will be able to diffuse freely through the membrane, while others will be too large to fit through the holes or pores.…

nervous system: The neuronal membrane: …neurons this potential, called the membrane potential, is between −60 and −75 millivolts (mV; or thousandths of a volt; the minus sign indicates that the inner surface is negative). When the inside of the plasma membrane has a negative charge compared to the outside, the neuron is said to be…

water supply system: Membrane processes: Two commercially important membrane processes used for desalination are electrodialysis and reverse osmosis. They are used mainly to desalt brackish or highly mineralized water supplies rather than much saltier seawater. In both methods, thin plastic sheets act as selective barriers, allowing fresh water…

separation and purification: Separations based on rates: …divided in half by a porous membrane, and a solution of different proteins is placed in one section and pure water in the other, some of the proteins will be able to diffuse freely through the membrane, while others will be too large to fit through the holes or pores.…

membrane structure, Structure with a thin, flexible surface (membrane) that carries loads primarily through tensile stresses. There are two main types: tent structures and pneumatic structures. The Denver International Airport (1995) features a terminal building roofed by a white membrane stretched

protozoan: Mechanisms of food ingestion: …stream of water against a membranelle composed of cilia. The membranelle acts as a collecting sieve, where the food particles become trapped in the free spaces between the cilia. Using this mode of feeding, ciliates can shift considerable volumes of water in relation to their size. Tetrahymena, for example, can…

moss animal: Marine bryozoans: …genus is the lacy gymnolaemate Membranipora, which is found throughout the world and is well adapted to living on kelp weeds at, and just below, the low-water mark. Although the zooid walls of Membranipora colonies are calcified, they contain flexible joints, which allow the colony to bend as the alga…

membranophone, any of a class of musical instruments in which a stretched membrane vibrates to produce sound. Besides drums, the basic types include the mirliton, or kazoo, and the friction drum (sounded by friction produced by drawing a stick back and forth through a hole in the membrane).

human ear: Inner ear: …one inside the other, the membranous labyrinth contained within the bony labyrinth. The bony labyrinth consists of a central chamber called the vestibule, the three semicircular canals, and the spirally coiled cochlea. Within each structure, and filling only a fraction of the available space, is a corresponding portion of the…

meme, unit of cultural information spread by imitation. The term meme (from the Greek mimema, meaning “imitated”) was introduced in 1976 by British evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins in his work The Selfish Gene. Dawkins conceived of memes as the cultural parallel to biological genes and

Will 2024 be known throughout history as the year of the meme coin? As cryptocurrency investing entered a new bullish phase after bottoming out in the fall of 2023, digital tokens based on nothing more than a cute or funny meme began getting plenty of attention. Meme coins may inspire your fear of

Ingrid Betancourt: …silence a un fin (Even Silence Has an End). Her first novel, La Ligne bleue (2014; The Blue Line), was a love story set during the Argentine Dirty War.

You’re probably familiar with memes—bits of cultural info spread by imitation—but what about meme stocks? A meme stock is one whose share price is being driven by Internet culture. As a concept, they’ve only been around for a few years, but meme stocks have caused plenty of excitement—and, at

Myrtales: Family distributions and abundance: The former family Memecylaceae, which contained 435 species in 6 genera, is now placed within Melastomataceae.

Yaşar Kemal: …the novel İnce Memed (1955; Memed, My Hawk). The latter, a popular tale about a bandit and folk hero, was translated into more than 20 languages and was made into a movie in 1984. Kemal wrote three more novels featuring Memed as the protagonist. In 1962 he joined the Turkish…

Klaipėda, city and port, Lithuania. It lies on the narrow channel by which the Curonian Lagoon and the Neman River connect with the Baltic Sea. Beside a small earlier settlement, the local population constructed a fortress in the early 13th century. In 1252 this fort was seized and destroyed by the

Memel dispute, post-World War I dispute regarding sovereignty over the former German Prussian territory of Memelland. Its seizure by Lithuania was eventually approved by the great powers. Before World War I, Memelland, an area on the Baltic Sea located to the north of the Neman (Memel) River,

Neman River, river in Belarus and Lithuania. The Neman River is 582 miles (937 km) long and drains about 38,000 square miles (98,000 square km). It rises near Minsk in the Minsk Upland and flows west through a broad, swampy basin; it then turns north into Lithuania, cutting through terminal

Memel dispute: …Ambassadors’ Conference) and sign the Memel Statute, which officially made Memelland an autonomous region within Lithuania, outlined the governmental structure of the territory, and also established an administrative body for the port of Memel, renamed Klaipėda.

Memel dispute: …former German Prussian territory of Memelland. Its seizure by Lithuania was eventually approved by the great powers.

Christopher Nolan: Memento and Batman: …came with the 2000 film Memento, a sleeper hit that he adapted from a short story written by his brother Jonathan Nolan. It used a destabilizing reverse-order storyline to mirror the fractured mental state of its protagonist, a man with short-term amnesia who is trying to track down the person…

memento mori, in art and spirituality, a symbolic trope or meditative practice that serves as a reminder of mortality and the transitory nature of earthly pleasures. Memento mori is a Latin phrase meaning “remember you must die.” The notion of “remembering death” appears throughout European

Memento Mori, comic and macabre novel by Muriel Spark, published in 1959. This psychological fantasy was Spark’s most widely praised novel. In characteristically spare, exacting prose, the author looked unflinchingly at old age. Several elderly London friends receive anonymous telephone calls with

Richard Dawkins: …entire field of study called memetics. The book was notable not just because of what it espoused but also because of its approachable style, which made it accessible to a popular audience.