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  • U (chemical element)
    radioactive chemical element of the actinoid series of the periodic table, atomic number 92. It is an important nuclear fuel....
  • U Cephei (astronomy)
    ...falls under the gravitational influence of the smaller star. Matter is continuously fed from the more rapidly evolving star to the less massive one, which still remains on the main sequence. U Cephei is a classic example of such a system for which spectroscopic evidence shows streams of gas flowing from the more highly evolved star to the hotter companion, which is now the more massive......
  • U component (astronomy)
    Space motions comprise a three-dimensional determination of stellar motion. They may be divided into a set of components related to directions in the Galaxy: U, directed away from the galactic centre; V, in the direction of galactic rotation; and W, toward the north galactic pole. For the nearby stars the average values for these galactic components are as follows: U......
  • U Geminorum star (astronomy)
    any of a class of irregular variable stars that display sudden increases in brightness so great that they are sometimes called dwarf novae. Some have been observed to brighten by as much as 5 magnitudes (100 times) in a period of hours. The prototype star, U Geminorum, brightens by as much as 4 magnitudes (about 40 times) in a few days, declining again to normal brightness in two or three weeks. U...
  • U kalicha (tavern, Prague, Czech Republic)
    ...lyric music of the great Czech composers Bedřich Smetana, Antonín Dvořák, and Leoš Janáček is commemorated each year in a spring music festival. The U kalicha (“At the Chalice”) beer parlour, which is still popular with local residents and tourists alike, provided the setting for the humorously antiauthoritarian activities of Schwei...
  • U Ku (Burmese playwright)
    ...Burmese literature. From 1875 onward, under British rule, the owners of printing presses began to publish popular works such as plays, complete with songs and stage directions. The tragic dramas of U Ku were extremely popular and dominated the period between 1875 and 1885. In 1904 the first Burmese novels appeared. The emergence of literary magazines in the 1910s stimulated the popularity of......
  • U registraturi (work by Kovačić)
    ...writers of the period, including Evgenij Kumičić, Ksaver Šandor Gjalski, and Silvije Strahimir Kranjčević. In his autobiographically charged U registraturi (1888; “In the Registrar’s Office”), commonly considered the best Croatian novel of the 19th century, Ante Kovačić tells a poignant tale of a tale...
  • U Thong style (Thai religious sculpture)
    one of the canonical styles for Buddha icons developed in Thailand (Siam) in the southern capital of Ayutthaya, beginning in the 14th century. To retain the greatest spiritual potency, Buddha icons in Thai temples had to resemble as closely as possible an original prototype that tradition erroneously believed had been made during the lifetime of the Buddha. Of the three major efforts by Thai king...
  • U-1 (German submarine)
    ...of the century, only Britain remained indifferent toward submarines. Finally, in 1901, the Royal Navy ordered five of the Holland-design undersea craft. Germany completed its first submarine, the U-1 (for Unterseeboot 1), in 1905. This craft was 139 feet long, powered on the surface by a heavy oil engine and by an electric motor when submerged, and was armed with one torpedo tube....
  • U-2 (United States aircraft)
    single-seat, U.S. high-altitude jet reconnaissance and research aircraft. A prototype flew in 1955. On May 1, 1960, a U-2 was shot down over the Soviet Union (see U-2 Affair), and in 1962 a U-2 took photographs that confirmed the presence of Soviet missiles in Cuba. The U-2 had a top speed of 494 miles (795 km) per hour and a service ceiling of approximately 70,000 feet (...
  • U-2 Affair (United States-Soviet history)
    (1960), confrontation between the United States and the Soviet Union that began with the shooting down of a U.S. U-2 reconnaissance plane over the Soviet Union and that caused the collapse of a summit conference in Paris between the United States, the Soviet Union, Great Britain, and France....
  • U-Bahn (railway, Berlin, Germany)
    ...since the 19th century. Construction of the Stadt- or Schnellbahn (S-Bahn), a largely elevated and partly underground railway system, began in 1871, and building of the subway, or Untergrundbahn (U-Bahn), was initiated in 1897. By World War II the city had one of the finest rapid transit systems in Europe. After the erection of the wall, the bus became the mainstay of transportation, although.....
  • U-boat (German submarine)
    (“undersea boat”), a German submarine. The destruction of enemy shipping by German U-boats was a spectacular feature of both World Wars I and II. ...
  • U-boot (German submarine)
    (“undersea boat”), a German submarine. The destruction of enemy shipping by German U-boats was a spectacular feature of both World Wars I and II. ...
  • U-Hambo lom-Hambi (work by Soga)
    ...minister, translator, composer of hymns, and collector of black South African fables, legends, proverbs, history, praises, and customs. His translation of John Bunyan’s Pilgrim’s Progress (U-Hambo lom-Hambi, 1866) had almost as great an influence upon the Xhosa language as the Authorized Version of the Bible had upon the English....
  • U-in (Japanese government)
    ...branch, and six other departments. Reorganized several times, the Dajōkan was finally restructured on Sept. 13, 1871, into three chambers: a Left Chamber (Sa-in), the legislative body; a Right Chamber (U-in), which directed the various ministries; and a Central Chamber (Sei-in), which subsumed the powers of the other two chambers....
  • U-lu-lu (Mesopotamian god)
    in Mesopotamian religion, god of fertility embodying the powers for new life in nature in the spring. The name Tammuz seems to have been derived from the Akkadian form Tammuzi, based on early Sumerian Damu-zid, The Flawless Young. The later standard Sumerian form, Dumu-zid, in turn became Dumuzi in Akkadian. The earliest known mention of Tammuz is in texts dating to the early pa...
  • U–Pb dating
    As each dating method was developed, tested, and improved, mainly since 1950, a vast body of knowledge about the behaviour of different isotopic systems under different geologic conditions has evolved. It is now clear that with recent advances the uranium–lead method is superior in providing precise age information with the least number of assumptions. The method has evolved mainly around.....
  • U-shaped valley (geology)
    Glacial erosion produces U-shaped valleys, and fjords are characteristically so shaped. Because the lower (and more horizontally inclined) part of the U is far underwater, the visible walls of fjords may rise vertically for hundreds of feet from the water’s edge, and close to the shore the water may be many hundreds of feet deep. In some fjords small streams plunge hundreds of feet over the...
  • U-tanker (German military ship)
    ...middle of the year that the Allies’ introduction of the convoy system from the Caribbean northward constrained the raiders to go so far afield as the waters between Brazil and West Africa. Second, U-tankers were developed; i.e., large converted U-boats equipped to provide fuel, torpedoes, and other supplies to U-boats operating in remote waters. In the course of 1942, the U-boats ...
  • U-tube manometer (science)
    The simplest device for measuring static pressures up to about 90 pounds per square inch (62 newtons per square cm) is a U-tube manometer (shown in the figure), in which one column of a liquid in the tube is open to a region of high pressure and the other column to a region of low pressure. The differential pressure is indicated by the difference in level between the two columns of liquid, and......
  • U-value (heat transfer unit of measure)
    ...paper on one side. Fibre insulations are made in thicknesses up to 23 centimetres (9.25 inches). The effectiveness of an insulation material is measured in terms of its heat-transfer rate, or U-value, often expressed as the number of BTUs passing through a given unit of insulating material each hour at an expressed temperature differential across the material. Low U-values indicate good......
  • U.A.E.
    federation of seven emirates along the eastern coast of the Arabian Peninsula....
  • U.A.R. (historical republic, Egypt-Syria)
    political union of Egypt and Syria proclaimed on Feb. 1, 1958, and ratified in nationwide plebiscites. It ended on Sept. 28, 1961, when Syria, following a military coup, declared itself independent of Egypt. Despite the dissolution of the union, Egypt retained the name United Arab Republic until Sept. 2, 1971, when it took the name Arab Republic of Egypt....
  • U.C.L.A. (university system, California, United States)
    system of public universities in California, U.S., with campuses at Berkeley, Davis, Irvine, Los Angeles, Merced, Riverside, San Diego, San Francisco, Santa Barbara, and Santa Cruz. The university traces its or...
  • U.K.
    island country located off the northwestern coast of mainland Europe. The United Kingdom comprises the whole of the island of Great Britain—which contains England, Wales, and Scotland—as well as the northern portion of the island of Ireland. The name Britain is sometimes used to refer to the United Kingdom as...
  • U.S.
    country of North America, a federal republic of 50 states. Besides the 48 contiguous states that occupy the middle latitudes of the continent, the United States includes the state of Alaska, at the northwestern extreme of North America, and the island state of Hawaii, in the mid-Pacific Ocean. The coterminous states are bounded on the north by Canada, on the east by the Atlantic Ocean, o...
  • U.S. 1 (poetry by Rukeyser)
    ...volume of poems appeared as Theory of Flight in the Yale Younger Poets series.Rukeyser’s travels over the next few years provided material for the poems in Mediterranean (1938), U.S. 1 (1938), and A Turning Wind (1939). Her use of fragmented, emotional imagery is sometimes considered excessive, but her work is noted for its power and acuity. In 1942 she publis...
  • U.S. Air Force Air Demonstration Squadron (United States Air Force aircraft squadron)
    U.S. Air Force fighter aircraft squadron that performs aerobatics at air shows and other events throughout the United States and around the world. The squadron includes six pilots, who fly with the team for two years (half the pilots are replaced each year), and some 135 support personnel. The squadron, which practices and performs 50 weeks a year, is statione...
  • U.S. Bancorp (American company)
    U.S. Air Force fighter aircraft squadron that performs aerobatics at air shows and other events throughout the United States and around the world. The squadron includes six pilots, who fly with the team for two years (half the pilots are replaced each year), and some 135 support personnel. The squadron, which practices and performs 50 weeks a year, is statione...
  • U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops (Catholic organization)
    American Roman Catholic prelate, archbishop of Atlanta, Georgia (from 2005). He also served as bishop of Belleville, Illinois (1994–2005), and was the first African American president of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops (2001–04)....
  • U.S. constitutional law
    American Roman Catholic prelate, archbishop of Atlanta, Georgia (from 2005). He also served as bishop of Belleville, Illinois (1994–2005), and was the first African American president of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops (2001–04).......
  • U.S. Diversified Group (American corporation)
    ...the operations formerly directed by the United States Steel Corporation. Its four independent operating units were USS (United States Steel Corporation), Marathon Oil, Texas Oil & Gas, and U.S. Diversified Group. After separating the businesses of U.S. Steel and Marathon in 2001, USX was renamed Marathon Oil Corporation in 2002....
  • U.S. National Institute of Standards and Technology (United States government)
    in Washington, D.C., an official source, with the U.S. National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST; formerly the National Bureau of Standards), for standard time in the United States. The positional measurement of celestial objects for purposes of timekeeping and navigation has been the main work of the observatory since its beginning. In 1833 the first small observatory building was......
  • U.S. Navy Flight Demonstration Squadron (United States Navy aircraft squadron)
    U.S. Navy fighter aircraft squadron that stages aerobatic performances at air shows and other events throughout the United States and around the world. The squadron, whose performances benefit public relations and recruitment, includes five U.S. Naval aviators and one U.S. Marine pilot, plus some 120 support personnel. The squadron is based at the Naval Air Station (NAS) in Pens...
  • U.S. News & World Report (American magazine)
    weekly news magazine published in Washington, D.C., one of the most influential of its kind and the first to successfully imitate the general format pioneered by Time. It was established in 1933 by David Lawrence as U.S. News and won general note for its thorough coverage of major news events in Washington, D.C., and the United States, often carrying the complete ...
  • U.S. Open (tennis)
    international tennis tournament, one of four major annual events in tennis (with the Australian Open, the French Open, and the Wimbledon Championships)....
  • U.S. Preventive Services Task Force (American medical organization)
    Following earlier work by the Canadian Task Force on the Periodic Health Examination, the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force was established to evaluate the effectiveness of various screening tests, immunizations, and prophylactic regimens based on a critical review of the scientific literature. Its report, Guide to Clinical Preventive Services, lists the recommendations for the 60......
  • U.S. Rabbit Experimental Station (science facility, Fontana, California, United States)
    ...was bought by Fontana Development Company. It was renamed Fontana (Italian: “Fountain”) in 1913 by A.B. Miller, who promoted the city’s growth as a poultry, hog, and citrus centre. The U.S. Rabbit Experimental Station, the only facility in the country devoted to research on the breeding and raising of rabbits, was established there in 1928 and operated until 1965. In 1942 F...
  • U.S. Seventh Cavalry (American military unit)
    ...km) southeast of the city. During the American Civil War, the town was occupied by Union troops and was bombarded by the forces of the Confederate general John Hunt Morgan. In the early 1870s the U.S. 7th Cavalry, commanded by George Armstrong Custer, was stationed in Elizabethtown to restrain the activities of the Ku Klux Klan and to break up the illegal distilleries that were flourishing......
  • U.S. Soil Taxonomy (American organization)
    The U.S. Soil Taxonomy classifies soils within a hierarchy of six categories. Only the highest-level category, order, is discussed here. Soil orders are named by adding the suffix -sol to a root word, as shown in the table of the U.S. Soil Taxonomy. The resulting 12 soil order names thus represent a classification based either on parent material or on processes related to the five......
  • U.S. standard pitch (music)
    ...as “French pitch,” or “international pitch”) at a′ = 435. England, in 1896, adopted the “New Philharmonic Pitch” at a′ = 439 and, in 1939, adopted the U.S. standard pitch of a′ = 440. In the mid-20th century, pitch again tended to creep upward as some European woodwind builders used the pitch a′ = 444....
  • U.S. Steel Corporation (American corporation)
    leading U.S. producer of steel and related products, founded in 1901....
  • U.S. transit (instrument)
    ...a tripod with adjustable legs, the theodolite is used in the field to obtain precise angular measurements for triangulation in road building, tunnel alignment, and other civil-engineering work. The transit is a variety of theodolite that has the telescope so mounted that it can be completely reversed, or transited. The phototheodolite, a combination camera and theodolite mounted on the same......
  • U.S. Virgin Islands (island, West Indies)
    organized unincorporated island territory of the United States, at the eastern end of the Greater Antilles, about 40 miles (64 km) east of Puerto Rico, in the northeastern Caribbean Sea. It is composed of three large islands, St. Croix, St. John, and St. Thomas, and about 50 small islets and cays. The capital is Charlotte Amalie on St. Thomas....
  • U.S.A.
    country of North America, a federal republic of 50 states. Besides the 48 contiguous states that occupy the middle latitudes of the continent, the United States includes the state of Alaska, at the northwestern extreme of North America, and the island state of Hawaii, in the mid-Pacific Ocean. The coterminous states are bounded on the north by Canada, on the east by the Atlantic Ocean, o...
  • U.S.A. (trilogy by Dos Passos)
    ...the losing battle to win their pardon. The crisis crystallized his image of the United States as “two nations”—one of the rich and privileged and one of the poor and powerless. U.S.A. is the portrait of these two nations. It consists of The 42nd Parallel (1930), covering the period from 1900 up to the war; 1919 (1932), dealing with the war and the criti...
  • U.S.S.R. (historical state, Eurasia)
    former northern Eurasian empire (1917/22–1991) stretching from the Baltic and Black seas to the Pacific Ocean and, in its final years, consisting of 15 Soviet Socialist Republics (S.S.R.’s)–Armenia, Azerbaijan, Belorussia (now Belarus), Estonia, Georgia, Kazakhstan, Kirgiziya (now Kyrgyzstan), Latvia, Lithuania, Moldavia (now Moldova), Russia, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, Ukraine...
  • U2 (Irish music group)
    Irish postpunk band that by the end of the 1980s had established itself not only as one of the world’s most popular bands but also as one of the most innovative. The members are Bono (byname of Paul Hewson; b. May 10, 1960Dublin, Ireland), the Edge (byname of Dav...
  • Uaimh, An (Ireland)
    urban district and county seat of County Meath, Ireland. It lies at the confluence of the Rivers Boyne and Blackwater. The Great Motte, an imposing earthwork 52 feet (16 m) high, is on its western outskirts. The town was walled and fortified by Hugh de Lacy and later became an outpost of the English Pale (territory). At Donaghmore are remains of a 13th-century Celtic church and ...
  • uakari (monkey genus)
    any of several types of short-tailed South American monkeys with shaggy fur, humanlike ears, and distinctive bald faces that become flushed when the animal is excited. In two of the three colour forms, the face is bright red. Uakaris are about 35–50 cm (14–20 inches) long, excluding their strangely short 15–20-cm nonprehensile, or nongrasping, tails....
  • Ualan Island (island, Micronesia)
    easternmost of the Caroline Islands, Federated States of Micronesia, western Pacific Ocean. Kosrae is volcanic in origin and hilly, rising to 2,064 feet (629 metres) at Mount Finkol (Crozier). Fertile and well-watered, Kosrae produces taros, oranges, breadfruit, and bananas and has valuable stands of timber. There are deposits of bauxite and...
  • Uale, Frank (American gangster)
    American gangster and national president, during its heyday (1918–28), of the Unione Siciliane, a Sicilian fraternal organization that by World War I had become a crime cartel operating in several U.S. cities and active in robbery, prostitution, labour-union extortion, and other rackets....
  • UANC (political party, Zimbabwe)
    Unsuccessful negotiations with Britain continued. A 1971 proposal to lessen restrictions on the opposition led to the creation of a third nationalist movement, the United African National Council (UANC), led by the Methodist bishop Abel Muzorewa. Unlike ZAPU and ZANU—both banned and operating only from exile in Zambia and Mozambique, respectively—UANC was able to organize inside......
  • Uanga-feitiço (work by Ribas)
    ...Ribas gradually went blind during his early 20s but remained an indefatigable researcher and writer. He began his literary career as a writer of romantic tales. The publication of Uanga-feitiço (1951; “The Evil Spell”) and Ecos da minha terra (1952; “Echoes of My Land”) marked a new African direction in his......
  • Uap (island, Micronesia)
    archipelago of the western Caroline Islands, Federated States of Micronesia. The archipelago comprises the islands of Gagil-Tamil, Maap, Rumung, and Yap (also called Rull, Uap, and Yapa), within a coral reef. Yap, the largest island, has a central range of hills rising to Taabiywol, 568 feet (173 metres), and is thickly wooded. Temperatures are fairly constant throughout the year. The mean......
  • UAP (political party, Australia)
    (UAP; 1931–44), political party formed by a fusion of Nationalist Party and conservative erstwhile Australian Labor Party members, which alone or in coalition with the Country Party controlled the Australian commonwealth government for 10 years. Brought to power in the general election of 1931, the UAP sought to meet the Great Depression with deflationary policies. The UAP’s conserva...
  • UAV
    Unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), a class of aircraft akin to radio-controlled models and cruise missiles, have become significant factors in military reconnaissance. Carrying sensors for surveillance, they are designed to fly either for long duration at very high altitudes or for shorter periods at low altitudes and to transmit their acquired data to orbiting satellites. A subclass of UAVs,......
  • UAW (North American industrial union)
    North American industrial union of automotive and other vehicular workers, headquartered in Detroit, Mich., and representing workers in the United States, Canada, and Puerto Rico....
  • Uaxactún (archaeological site, Guatemala)
    ruined ancient Mayan city of the southern lowlands, located in what is now north-central Guatemala, about 12 miles (20 km) north of the ancient Mayan city of Tikal. Uaxactún was a ceremonial centre of only modest size, compared with Tikal, but it has been important in Mayan archaeology because intensive excavations made there by archaeologists of the Ca...
  • Uayeb (Mesoamerican almanac)
    ...start of the 365-day year varied. The 365-day year was divided into 18 named months (uinals) of 20 days plus one month of 5 “nameless” days, called Uayeb. The nameless days were considered extremely unlucky, causing the Maya to observe them with fasting and sacrifices to deities. Each ordinary day had a fourfold designation—in order, da...
  • Ubaid Period (Mesopotamian history)
    ...be one of the most important of the prehistoric urban centres in southern Babylonia. Founded on sand dunes probably in the 5th millennium bc, it fully illustrated the sequence of the preliterate Ubaid civilization, with its long succession of superimposed temples portraying the growth and development of an elaborate mud-brick architecture....
  • Ubaid, Tell el- (archaeological site, Iraq)
    ancient site that gave its name to a prehistoric cultural period, the Ubaid, in Mesopotamia; it is located near the ruins of ancient Ur in present-day southeastern Iraq. Excavations have uncovered Ubaidian remains throughout southern Mesopotamia. The hallmark of the period was a painted pottery decorated with geometric and sometimes floral and animal designs in dark paint on a b...
  • Ubaidian (people)
    Sumer was first settled between 4500 and 4000 bc by a non-Semitic people who did not speak the Sumerian language. These people now are called proto-Euphrateans or Ubaidians, for the village Al-Ubaid, where their remains were first discovered. The Ubaidians were the first civilizing force in Sumer, draining the marshes for agriculture, developing trade, and establishing industries, in...
  • Ubaldi, Baldo degli (Italian lawyer)
    ...of governance and relations between nations included the Italian lawyers Bartolo da Sassoferrato (1313/14–1357), regarded as the founder of the modern study of private international law, and Baldo degli Ubaldi (1327–1400), a famed teacher, papal adviser, and authority on Roman and feudal law. The essence of the new approach, however, can be more directly traced to the philosophers...
  • Ubaldini, Ruggieri degli (Italian archbishop)
    ...his position to banish his personal enemies and to destroy their castles. He soon quarreled with his allies, the Visconti of Milan, and his interests then conflicted with those of the archbishop Ruggieri degli Ubaldini, who wanted to revive the republican order. Ruggieri accused Ugolino of treason and in 1288 imprisoned him, along with two of his sons and two of his grandsons, in the tower......
  • Ubange-Uele plateau (plateau, Africa)
    The high plateaus border almost every side of the central basin. In the north the basin is protected by the Ubangi-Uele plateaus forming the divide between the drainage basins of the Nile and Congo rivers. Rising to between 3,000 and 4,000 feet, the plateaus also separate the central basin from the vast plains of the Lake Chad system. In the south the plateaus begin at the lower terraces of the......
  • Ubangi (people)
    ...clusters. The southern region between Brazzaville and the coast is inhabited by the Kongo peoples. Also in the south, the Teke inhabit the Batéké Plateau region. In the north, the Ubangi groups inhabit the Congo River basin to the west of Mossaka, while the Binga Pygmies and the Sanga are scattered through the northern Congo basin. Precolonial trade between north and south......
  • Ubangi languages (African language)
    ...hypothesis, therefore, these two groups—Gur and Adamawa-Ubangi—are being linked together as North Volta-Congo. The Adamawa-Ubangi languages are further subdivided into Adamawa and Ubangi subgroups....
  • Ubangi River (river, Africa)
    largest right-bank tributary of the Congo River, marking the border between Congo (Kinshasa) and Congo (Brazzaville). The Ubangi is formed by the union (near Yakoma, Congo [Kinshasa], on the border of the Central African Republic) of the Bomu and Uele (Welle) rivers, and it then flows west for about 350 miles (560 km). It bends northeast of ...
  • Ubani (Nigeria)
    town and Atlantic oil port situated in Rivers state, southern Nigeria. It lies along the Bonny River (an eastern distributary of the Niger River) 6 miles (10 km) upstream from the Bight of Biafra. A traditional trading centre (fish, salt, palm oil, and palm kernels) of the Ijo people, it was the capital ...
  • ʿUbayd Allāh al-Mahdī (Fāṭimid ruler)
    When news of al-Shīʿī’s success reached ʿUbayd ʿAllāh al-Mahdī, the leader of the Ismāʿīlīs, at his headquarters at Salamiyya, ʿUbayd disguised himself as a merchant and traveled toward northwest Africa. He was captured and jailed by the Khārijī emir of Sijilmāssa but was then rescued by...
  • ʿUbayd Allāh ibn Ziyād (Umayyad governor)
    ...became governor of Iraq in 669, he was forced to flee to Medina, where he remained for several years. On the death of Ziyād, he returned to Basra and gained the support of Ziyād’s son, ʿUbayd Allāh. When al-Ḥajjāj became governor (694), al-Farazdaq was again out of favour, in spite of the laudatory poems he dedicated to al-Ḥajjāj an...
  • ʿUbayd, Tall al- (archaeological site, Iraq)
    ancient site that gave its name to a prehistoric cultural period, the Ubaid, in Mesopotamia; it is located near the ruins of ancient Ur in present-day southeastern Iraq. Excavations have uncovered Ubaidian remains throughout southern Mesopotamia. The hallmark of the period was a painted pottery decorated with geometric and sometimes floral and animal designs in dark paint on a b...
  • Ubayyiḍ, al- (The Sudan)
    town, central Sudan. It lies on a sandy, scrub-covered plateau at an elevation of 1,869 feet (570 metres). Founded by the Egyptians in 1821, the town was captured and largely destroyed by the Mahdist forces in 1882, but it was rebuilt after Kurdufān was federated with the Anglo-Egyptian Sudan in 1899. Al-Ubayyiḍ is encircled by a forest reserve that tends to allevi...
  • Ube (Japan)
    city, Yamaguchi ken (prefecture), Honshu, Japan, on the Inland Sea. Coal was mined in the area in the late 17th century, but Ube remained a small village until undersea mining operations began in the Meiji period (1868–1912). It then developed into a large mining and industrial city, manufacturing chemicals from coal. Because of the gradual decline of coal mining i...
  • UBE
    Moving up in the spectrum of flight speeds to the transonic regime—Mach numbers from 0.75 to 0.9—the most common engine configurations are turbofan engines, such as those shown in Figures 4 and 5. In a turbofan, only a part of the gas horsepower generated by the core is extracted to drive a propulsor, which usually consists of a single low-pressure-ratio, shrouded turbocompression......
  • Úbeda (Spain)
    city, Jaén provincia (province), in the comunidad autónoma (autonomous community) of Andalusia, southern Spain. Úbeda lies northeast of the city of Jaén, on the Úbeda Hills in the Guadalimar Valley. Originally an Iberian settlem...
  • Ubehebe Crater (crater, California, United States)
    ...of unique landforms. The five dune areas include the 680-foot- (205-metre-) high Eureka Sand Dunes, California’s tallest. The northern section of the park is dotted with volcanic craters such as Ubehebe Crater, 700 feet (215 metres) deep and 0.5 mile (0.8 km) wide. At Racetrack Playa, rocks as large as 700 pounds (320 kg) leave trails as they mysteriously slide across a flat area; they a...
  • Übelherr, Johann Georg (German artist)
    ...glory of these Rococo interiors. Feichtmayr was a member of the group of families from Wessobrunn in southern Bavaria that specialized in stucco work and produced a long series of masters, including Johann Georg Übelherr and Joseph Anton Feuchtmayer, whose masterpieces are the Rococo figures at Birnau on Lake Constance. The sculptor Christian Wenzinger worked at Freiburg im Breisgau in.....
  • Über allen Gipfeln (poem by Goethe)
    ...the longing for calm after storm and stress that he expressed in his two “Wandrers Nachtlieder” (“Wanderer’s Night Songs”), the second of which—Über allen Gipfeln (“Over All the Peaks”), written in 1780—is probably the best-known of all his poems....
  • Über Annahmen (work by Meinong)
    In his major work, Über Annahmen (1902; “On Assumptions”), Meinong discussed the assumptions men make in believing they know or do not know a particular truth. Like Brentano, Meinong considered intentionality, or the direction of attention to objects, to be the basic feature of mental states. Yet he drew his own distinction between two elements in every experienc...
  • Uber Cup (sports trophy)
    trophy representing the women’s world championship in the sport of badminton. The cup was contributed by Mrs. H.S. Uber, former English champion, in 1956 for a series of women’s international team competitions to be held every three years....
  • Über das Conjugationssystem der Sanskritsprache in Vergleichung mit jenem der griechischen, lateinischen, persischen und germanischen Sprache (work by Bopp)
    Bopp’s first important work, Über das Conjugationssystem der Sanskritsprache . . . (1816; “On the System of Conjugation in Sanskrit . . .”), foreshadowed his major achievement. In it he sought to trace the common origin of Sanskrit, Persian, Greek, Latin, and German, a task never before attempted. Concentrating on a historical analysis of the...
  • Über das Dirigieren (work by Weingartner)
    Weingartner composed operas, incidental music, choral works, symphonies, concerti, chamber music, and songs. His pamphlet on conducting, “Über das Dirigieren” (1895; “On Conducting”), is famous. He did much editing of the works of Hector Berlioz. His memoirs, Lebenserinnerungen (1923; “Reminiscences”), were translated into English as Buffe...
  • Uber das farbige Licht der Doppelsterne (work by Doppler)
    ...Doppler became director of the Physical Institute and professor of experimental physics of the University of Vienna in 1850. His earliest writings were on mathematics, but in 1842 he published Über das farbige Licht der Doppelsterne (“Concerning the Coloured Light of Double Stars”), which contained his first statement of the Doppler effect. He theorized that since th...
  • “Über das Gedächtnis” (work by Ebbinghaus)
    ...brought him to the conclusion that memory is orderly. His findings, which included the well-known “forgetting curve” that relates forgetting to the passage of time, were reported in Über das Gedächtnis (1885; Memory)....
  • “Über das Geistige in der Kunst” (work by Kandinsky)
    ...Kandinsky had begun to associate music with the abstract aspects of his art, and he discussed the connections in his book Über das Geistige in der Kunst (1912; Concerning the Spiritual in Art)....
  • “Über das Sehn und die Farben” (work by Schopenhauer)
    ...lived in Dresden until 1818, associating occasionally with a group of writers for the Dresdener Abendzeitung (“Dresden Evening Newspaper”). Schopenhauer finished his trea tise Über das Sehn und die Farben (1816; “On Vision and Colours”), supporting Goethe against Isaac Newton....
  • Über den Begriff der Zahl: Psychologische Analysen (work by Husserl)
    ...He had become a close friend of Stumpf, and he was indebted to Stumpf for many suggestions in the formation of his own descriptive concepts. The theme of Husserl’s Habilitation thesis, Über den Begriff der Zahl: Psychologische Analysen (“On the Concept of Number: Psychological Analyses”), already showed Husserl in the transition from his mathematical re...
  • “Über den feineren Bau und die Formen der krankhaften Geschwülste” (work by Müller)
    ...assistant, Theodor Schwann, that the cell was the basic unit of structure in the animal body, he concentrated on the cellular structure of tumours with the aid of a microscope. In 1838 his work Über den feineren Bau und die Formen der krankhaften Geschwülste (On the Nature and Structural Characteristics of Cancer, and of Those Morbid Growths Which May Be Confounde...
  • “Über den Prozess der Zivilisation” (work by Elias)
    sociologist who described the growth of civilization in western Europe as a complex evolutionary process, most notably in his principal work, Über den Prozess der Zivilisation (1939; The Civilizing Process: The History of Manners)....
  • “Über den Standort der Industrien” (work by Weber)
    In 1909 the German location economist Alfred Weber formulated a theory of industrial location in his book entitled Über den Standort der Industrien (Theory of the Location of Industries, 1929). Weber’s theory, called the location triangle, sought the optimum location for the production of a good based on the fixed locations of the market and two raw material sour...
  • Über den Umgang mit Menschen (work by Knigge)
    (baron of) German writer, best-known for his work Über den Umgang mit Menschen (1788; “On Social Intercourse with People”), a practical guide to happiness and success, written in a pleasant and easy style....
  • “Über den Willen in der Natur” (work by Schopenhauer)
    His leisure, though, was not idle. In 1836, after 19 years of “silent indignation,” he published his short treatise Über den Willen in der Natur (On the Will in Nature), which skillfully employed the queries and findings of the rapidly expanding natural sciences in support of his theory of the will. The preface for the first time openly expressed his devastating....
  • Über die britische Finanzverwaltung (work by Gentz)
    ...against British usurpation, in the latter an antihistorical, aggressive, ideology-laden undertaking. These political investigations were complemented by economic research, as in the great essay Über die britische Finanzverwaltung (“On British Financial Administration”)....
  • Über die bürgerliche Verbesserung der Juden (work by Dohm)
    ...arose when his friend Christian Wilhelm von Dohm agreed to compose a petition for the Jews of Alsace, who originally had sought Mendelssohn’s personal intervention for their emancipation. Dohm’s Über die bürgerliche Verbesserung der Juden (1781; “On the Civil Improvement of the Jews”) pleaded for emancipation but, paradoxically, added that the st...
  • Über die bürgerliche Verbesserung der Weiber (work by Hippel)
    ...in the misadventures and ultimate reconciliation with society of a quixotic hero. Hippel’s two essays Über die Ehe (1774; “On Marriage”), a praise of marriage, and Über die bürgerliche Verbesserung der Weiber (1792; “On the Civic Betterment of Women”) attracted much attention with their emphasis on the emancipation of women. ...
  • Über die Ehe (work by Hippel)
    ...Crisscrossing Journeys from A to Z”), portrays the prejudice and pride of the nobility in the misadventures and ultimate reconciliation with society of a quixotic hero. Hippel’s two essays Über die Ehe (1774; “On Marriage”), a praise of marriage, and Über die bürgerliche Verbesserung der Weiber (1792; “On the Civic Betterment...
  • “Über die Entwicklung des Begriffs Religion” (work by Forberg)
    An exponent of the Idealist school developed by Johann Gottlieb Fichte, Forberg is best known for his essay Über die Entwicklung des Begriffs Religion (1798; “On the Development of the Concept of Religion”), a work that occasioned Fichte’s dismissal from the University of Jena on the charge of atheism after he had published a corroborative treatise. Forber...
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