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  • Untouchables (American law officers)
    American crime fighter, head of a nine-man team of law officers called the “Untouchables,” who opposed Al Capone’s underworld network in Chicago....
  • Untouchables, The (film by De Palma [1987])
    ...Blow Out (1981), and Body Double (1984), each of which makes strong references to Hitchcock. In the 1980s he also made the gangster movies Scarface (1983) and The Untouchables (1987) and the action film Casualties of War (1989). The most highly acclaimed of these was Scarface, which starred Al Pacino as a Cuban immigrant......
  • Untreated Syphilis in the Negro Male, Tuskegee Study of (American history)
    American medical research project that earned notoriety for its unethical experimentation on African American patients in the rural South....
  • ununbium (chemical element)
    American medical research project that earned notoriety for its unethical experimentation on African American patients in the rural South.......
  • ununnilium (chemical element)
    American medical research project that earned notoriety for its unethical experimentation on African American patients in the rural South..........
  • ununoctium (chemical element)
    a transuranium element that occupies position 118 in the periodic table and one of the noble gases. Element 118 is a synthetic element, and in 1999, scientists at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory in Berkeley, Calif., announced the production of atoms of element 118 as a result of the bombardment of lead...
  • Unvanquished, The (work by Faulkner)
    ...chapter by chapter, throughout. But Faulkner was beginning to return to the Yoknapatawpha County material he had first imagined in the 1920s and subsequently exploited in short-story form. The Unvanquished (1938) was relatively conventional, but The Hamlet (1940), the first volume of the long-uncompleted “Snopes” trilogy, emerged as a work of extraordinary......
  • Unveiled Mysteries (work by Ballard)
    Writing under the name Godfrey Ray King, Ballard compiled his experiences in a book, Unveiled Mysteries, published in 1934, and he afterward claimed to receive regular messages, termed “discourses,” from St. Germain and other Masters. Because one of the Masters from whom Ballard received dictations was Jesus, members of the I AM movement consider themselves.....
  • Unwin, Morley (British clergyman)
    Religion, however, also provided the comfort of Cowper’s convalescence, which he spent at Huntingdon, lodging with the Reverend Morley Unwin, his wife Mary, and their small family. Pious Calvinists, the Unwins supported the evangelical revival, then a powerful force in English society. In 1767 Morley Unwin was killed in a riding accident, and his family, with Cowper, took up residence at Ol...
  • Unz, Ron (American education activist)
    ...
  • “Unzeitgemässe Betrachtungen” (work by Nietzsche)
    Nietzsche’s writings fall into three well-defined periods. The early works, The Birth of Tragedy and the four Unzeitgemässe Betrachtungen (1873; Untimely Meditations), are dominated by a Romantic perspective influenced by Schopenhauer and Wagner. The middle period, from Human, All-Too-Human up to The Gay Science, reflects the tradition of French......
  • Unzen, Mount (volcano, Japan)
    volcano on central Shimabara Peninsula, western Kyushu, Japan. Mount Unzen is actually a group of composite volcanoes, the highest of which is Mount Fugen, at 4,462 feet (1,360 m). Mount Unzen underwent a major eruption in 1792 that killed as many as 15,000 people in what was probably the worst volcanic disaster in Japan’s history. No major eruptions occurred subsequently until June 3, 1991...
  • Unzen-dake (volcano, Japan)
    volcano on central Shimabara Peninsula, western Kyushu, Japan. Mount Unzen is actually a group of composite volcanoes, the highest of which is Mount Fugen, at 4,462 feet (1,360 m). Mount Unzen underwent a major eruption in 1792 that killed as many as 15,000 people in what was probably the worst volcanic disaster in Japan’s history. No major eruptions occurred subsequently until June 3, 1991...
  • Uomini e no (work by Vittorini)
    Among Vittorini’s other important works are Uomini e no (1945; “Men and Non-Men”), an account of his Resistance experiences; the allegorical Marxist novel Il sempione strizza l’occhio al frejus (1947; The Twilight of the Elephant); and another allegory, Le donne di Messina (1949; Women on the Road). Vittorini’s critical writings...
  • uomo che andrà in America, L’  (work by Buzzati)
    ...Il mantello (performed 1960; “The Overcoat”), a supernatural drama in which a soldier who has been declared missing mysteriously returns and is discovered to be a spirit, and L’uomo che andrà in America (performed and published 1962; “The Man Who Will Go to America”), the story of an old painter who realizes, on being told that he has won ...
  • “uomo come fine, L’ ” (work by Moravia)
    Moravia’s views on literature and realism are expressed in a stimulating book of essays, L’uomo come fine (1963; Man as an End), and his autobiography, Alberto Moravia’s Life, was published in 1990. He was married for a time to the novelist Elsa Morante....
  • “uomo da bruciare, Un” (motion picture)
    ...began to study and work in cinema. Their first efforts, often undertaken in collaboration with Orsini, were a series of documentaries on a variety of subjects. Un uomo da bruciare (1962; A Man for the Burning), made with Orsini’s collaboration, was their first feature film. It is a portrait of a murdered trade union leader, and its long tracking shots demonstrate what was t...
  • “uomo finito, Un” (work by Papini)
    ...in which he expressed disenchantment with traditional philosophies. One of his best-known and most frequently translated books is the autobiographical novel Un uomo finito (1912; A Man—Finished; U.S. title, The Failure), a candid account of his early years in Florence and his desires for ideological certainty and personal achievement....
  • uomo solo, Un (work by Cassola)
    ...Especially typical of Cassola’s works are Il taglio del bosco (1953; The Felling of the Forest), Un cuore arido (1961; An Arid Heart), and Un uomo solo (1978; “A Man by Himself”)....
  • Uomo universale (philosophical concept)
    an ideal that developed in Renaissance Italy from the notion expressed by one of its most accomplished representatives, Leon Battista Alberti (1404–72), that “a man can do all things if he will.” The ideal embodied the basic tenets of Renaissance Humanism, which considered man the centre of the universe, limitless in his capacities for development, and led t...
  • UP (news agency)
    American-based news agency, one of the largest proprietary news wire services in the world. It was created in 1958 upon the merger of the United Press (UP; 1907) with the International News Service (INS). UPI and its precursor agencies pioneered in some key areas of news coverage, including the wired transmission of news photographs in 1925....
  • UP (political party, South Africa)
    one of the leading political parties of the Republic of South Africa from 1934 to 1977, governing from 1934 to 1948....
  • UP (American railway)
    company that extended the American railway system to the Pacific Coast; it was incorporated by an act of the U.S. Congress on July 1, 1862. The original rail line was built westward 1,006 miles (1,619 km) from Omaha, Nebraska, to meet the Central Pacific, which was being built eastward from Sacramento, California. The two railroads were joined at Promontory, Utah, on May 10, 186...
  • UP (political party, Colombia)
    ...paramilitary organizations and sympathetic governments, such as the Cuban government of Fidel Castro. In 1985 the FARC and other left-wing groups, including the PCC, established a political party, Patriotic Union (Unión Patriótica; UP), in a cease-fire agreement with the government. The UP participated in elections beginning in 1986 and won a large portion of the votes. In......
  • Up from Slavery (work by Washington)
    ...attain dignity and prosperity in the South by proving themselves valuable, productive members of society deserving of fair and equal treatment before the law. A classic American success story, Up from Slavery solidified Washington’s reputation as the most eminent African American of the new century. Yet Washington’s primacy was soon challenged. In his landmark collect...
  • UP Movietone News (television news)
    ...World War I. Throughout its history United Press stressed human-interest and feature news, and it developed the subsidiary United Features syndicate to sell special features. It also established UP Movietone News to supply news film to television stations....
  • up quark (physics)
    ...(u), “down” (d), and “strange” (s). Each carries a fractional value of the electron charge (i.e., a charge less than that of the electron, e). The up quark (charge 23e) and down quark (charge −13e) make up protons and neutrons and are thus the ones.....
  • Up the Sandbox! (novel by Roiphe)
    Roiphe’s second novel, Up the Sandbox! (1970), is probably her best known. The sharply satiric novel chronicles the story of a college-educated young mother, Margaret, trapped in a humiliating marriage and a thankless domestic routine. To delineate Margaret’s vague longings for change, Roiphe’s narrative alternates between Margaret’s real life as an obedient wife...
  • Up There Cazaly (song)
    ...for the phrase “Up there Cazaly,” which became a battle cry used by fans and Australian troops in war and which gave rise to poems and songs. In 1979 the song Up There Cazaly topped the national record charts, and it has become a famous Australian anthem....
  • Up Where We Belong (song by Nitzsche, Sainte-Marie, and Jennings)
    ...Score: John Williams for E.T. the Extra-TerrestrialOriginal Song Score and Its Adaptation or Adaptation Score: Leslie Bricusse, Henry Mancini for Victor/VictoriaOriginal Song: “Up Where We Belong” from An Officer and a Gentleman; music by Jack Nitzsche and Buffy Sainte-Marie, lyrics by Will JenningsHonorary Award: Mickey Rooney...
  • Up-Helly-Aa (Scottish festival)
    The name Lerwick derives from Norse, and the strong Norse tradition of Shetland is dramatically represented in Lerwick’s Up-Helly-Aa (Fire Festival) at the end of January, when a full-sized model of a Norse longship is dragged through the town in a torchlight procession and then burned. The town is home to the Shetland Museum and Archives (2007), which contains artifacts relating to the......
  • UPA (Ukrainian military organization)
    ...and a Soviet partisan movement developed in the northern forests. Early in 1942 began the formation of nationalist partisan units in Volhynia, and later in Galicia, that became known as the Ukrainian Insurgent Army (Ukrainska Povstanska Armiia; UPA). As well as conducting guerrilla warfare with the Germans, the Soviet partisans and the UPA fought each other....
  • UPA (American film industry)
    ...advanced, most inventive work of this kind was done in countries such as Yugoslavia, Czechoslovakia, and Poland. In the United States, highly individual styles were pioneered in the 1940s by the United Productions of America (UPA) group under the direction of Stephen Bosustow. Among their creations were the series that featured Mr. Magoo and Gerald McBoing Boing....
  • UPA (political organization, India)
    ...BJP’s membership fell to 138 seats. As had become the pattern in other recent elections, no party was situated to call a government on its own, so the Congress (I) formed a coalition known as the United Progressive Alliance (UPA). Congress leader Sonia Gandhi opted not to take the premiership, however, and instead recommended Manmohan Singh, a Sikh, for the post....
  • upa-sampada (Buddhism)
    Buddhist rite of higher ordination, by which a novice becomes a monk, or bhikhu (Pali: bhikkhu; Sanskrit: bhikshu). Ordination is not necessarily permanent and, in some countries, may be repeated in a monk’s lifetime....
  • upādāna (Buddhist philosophy)
    (Sanskrit and Pāli), in the Buddhist chain of dependent origination, the grasping that leads to becoming. See pratītya-samutpāda....
  • upadeśa (Buddhism)
    Upadeśa (“instruction”), discussions of doctrine—sometimes esoteric doctrine—often in question-and-answer form. The term has also been used for Abhidhamma (scholastic section of the canon), for philosophical treatises, for Tantric works, and for commentaries....
  • Upadeśasāhasrī (work by Śaṇkara)
    ...author of the Yoga-sūtra-bhāṣya-vivaraṇa, the exposition of Vyāsa’s commentary on the Yoga-sūtra, a fundamental text of the Yoga school. The Upadeśasāhasrī, which is a good introduction to Śaṅkara’s philosophy, is the only non-commentative work that is certainly authentic....
  • upadhi (Indian philosophy)
    in Indian philosophy, the concept of adventitious limiting conditions. In logic, upadhi operates as follows: a syllogism requires a ground (hetu) to prove the proposition—e.g., that there is fire on the mountain is proved by the presence of smoke. But this ground needs a qualification: there...
  • upamana (Hindu philosophy)
    the fourth of the five means of knowledge (pramana) in Indian philosophy by which man can have valid cognitions of the world. Upamana describes knowledge imparted by means of analogy. Thus, when the meaning of a word is unknown, for example, gavaya...
  • upanayana (Hindu ritual)
    Hindu ritual of initiation, restricted to the three upper varnas, or social classes; it marks the male child’s entrance upon the life of a student (brahmacarin) and his acceptance as a full member of his religious community. The ceremony is performed between the ages of 5 and 24, the wide va...
  • Upanisad (Hindu religious text)
    (“session”), any of the speculative texts that contain elaborations in prose and verse of the Vedas, the most ancient Hindu sacred literature....
  • Upaniṣad (Hindu religious text)
    (“session”), any of the speculative texts that contain elaborations in prose and verse of the Vedas, the most ancient Hindu sacred literature....
  • Upanishad (Hindu religious text)
    (“session”), any of the speculative texts that contain elaborations in prose and verse of the Vedas, the most ancient Hindu sacred literature....
  • Uparkot (archaeological site, India)
    ...Orissa (Udayagiri-Khandagiri), in eastern India. These are much humbler than their counterparts in western India, and consist of a row of cells that open out into a porch, the hall being absent. At Uparkot in Junāgadh, Gujarāt, is a remarkable series of rock-cut structures dating from the 3rd–4th century ad, which appear to be secular in character and in all p...
  • upasaka (Buddhism)
    lay devotee of the Gautama Buddha. The term correctly refers to any Buddhist who is not a member of a monastic order, but its modern usage in Southeast Asia more often connotes the particularly pious person who visits the local monastery on the weekly holy days and who undertakes special vows....
  • upasampada (Buddhism)
    Buddhist rite of higher ordination, by which a novice becomes a monk, or bhikhu (Pali: bhikkhu; Sanskrit: bhikshu). Ordination is not necessarily permanent and, in some countries, may be repeated in a monk’s lifetime....
  • upasika (Buddhism)
    lay devotee of the Gautama Buddha. The term correctly refers to any Buddhist who is not a member of a monastic order, but its modern usage in Southeast Asia more often connotes the particularly pious person who visits the local monastery on the weekly holy days and who undertakes special vows....
  • Upavarṣa (Indian philosopher)
    ...survives from the period before Śaṅkara, though both Śaṅkara and Rāmānuja referred to the vṛttis by Bodhāyana and Upavarṣa (the two may indeed be the same person). There are, however, pre-Śaṅkara monistic interpreters of the scriptures, three of whom are important: Bhartṛhari,......
  • upavīta (Hinduism)
    ...dressed as an ascetic and brought before his guru (personal spiritual guide), who invests him with a deerskin to use as an upper garment, a staff, and the sacred thread (upavita, or yajnopavita). The thread, consisting of a loop made of three symbolically knotted and twisted strands of cotton cord, is replaced......
  • upāya (religious concept)
    ...Nepal, and Tibet, the representation of the male deity in sexual embrace with his female consort. The pose is generally understood to represent the mystical union of the active force, or method (upāya, conceived of as masculine), with wisdom (prajna, conceived of as feminine)—a fusion necessary to overcome the false duality of the world of appearances in the striving...
  • Upayoga (Buddism)
    ...Buddhist teaching into nine progressively superior groups and subdivides the tantras in a manner different from that of other Vajrayana schools. The six groups of tantras are: Kriya, or ritual; Upayoga, which involves the convergence of the two truths and meditation on the pentad of buddhas; Yoga, which involves the evocation of the god, the identification of the self with the god, and......
  • UPC (Ugandan political party)
    ...yellow stripes, with the silhouette of a yellow crane in the centre. The colours were those of the ruling Democratic Party, and when it lost national elections on April 25, 1962, the newly dominant Uganda People’s Congress (UPC) rejected the flag proposal. Instead, the UPC horizontal tricolour of black-yellow-red was repeated to produce six equal horizontal stripes, and the crested crane...
  • UPC (political party, Cameroon)
    In French Cameroun the major question was the type and intensity of the relationship with France after independence. The first nationalist party, the Cameroon People’s Union (UPC) led by Felix-Roland Moumie and Reuben Um Nyobe, demanded a thorough break with France and the construction of a socialist economy. French officials suppressed the UPC, leading to a bitter civil war, while encourag...
  • UPC (retailing)
    a standard machine-readable bar code used to identify products purchased in grocery and other retail stores....
  • Updike, Daniel Berkeley (American printer and publisher)
    American printer and scholar, founder in 1893 of the distinguished Merrymount Press in Boston....
  • Updike, John (American author)
    American writer of novels, short stories, and poetry, known for his careful craftsmanship and realistic but subtle depiction of “American, Protestant, small-town, middle-class” life....
  • Updike, John Hoyer (American author)
    American writer of novels, short stories, and poetry, known for his careful craftsmanship and realistic but subtle depiction of “American, Protestant, small-town, middle-class” life....
  • updraft (meteorology)
    in meteorology, upward-moving and downward-moving air currents, respectively, that are due to several causes. Local daytime heating of the ground causes surface air to become much warmer than the air above, and, because warmer air is less dense, it rises and is replaced by descending cooler air. The vertical ascending current, called a thermal, may reach an altitude of 3 km (2 m...
  • updraw machine (technology)
    Two continuous flat-glass machines were introduced about the turn of the 20th century: the updraw machine, designed by Émile Fourcault of Belgium; and the Irving Colburn machine, developed at the Libbey-Owens Glass Company in Charleston, W.Va., U.S. In the Fourcault process, a one- to two-metre-wide steel mesh bait was introduced into molten glass at the working end of the furnace. The......
  • upekkha (Buddhist doctrine)
    in Buddhism, the perfect virtue of equanimity. It is one of the four practices known as brahmavihāra....
  • upekṣa (Buddhist doctrine)
    in Buddhism, the perfect virtue of equanimity. It is one of the four practices known as brahmavihāra....
  • Upelluri (Anatolian mythology)
    ...from his supremacy by begetting a monstrous stone as champion. Ullikummi, the stone monster, grows in the sea, which reaches his waist, while his head touches the sky; he stands on the shoulder of Upelluri, an Atlas figure who carries heaven and earth. Teshub is warned of the danger and goes out to battle in his chariot drawn by bulls, but he fails and appeals for help to Ea (Babylonian god of....
  • Upemba, Lake (lake, Democratic Republic of the Congo)
    ...than 60 miles, the upper Lualaba joins the Luvua and then the Lukuga. Each stream for part of its course undergoes at least a lacustrine type of expansion, even when it does not form a lake. Thus, Lake Upemba occurs on the upper Lualaba; Lakes Bangweulu and Mweru occur on the Chambeshi–Luapula–Luvua system; and finally Lake Tanganyika, which is fed by the Ruzizi (flowing from Lake...
  • Upemba National Park (park, Democratic Republic of the Congo)
    park in southeastern Congo (Kinshasa). It was created in 1939 and has an area of 4,529 square miles (11,730 square km). Its northern and western borders touch the Lualaba River and the surrounding lakes and marshlands of the Kamolondo plains. Lake Upemba, an expansion of the Lualaba River, lies largely within the park; it covers approximately 200 square miles (500 square km) and...
  • Upernavik (Greenland)
    town, western Greenland, situated on a small island in Baffin Bay, about 100 miles (160 km) north of Nordost Bay. It was founded by Danes as a whaling and sealing base in 1772. During the 20th century fisheries expanded, and halibut fishing and processing became a major contributor to the economy. The town also serves as a municipal administrative centre. Graphite deposits are l...
  • Upfield, Arthur William (Australian writer)
    English-born Australian popular novelist who wrote more than 30 novels featuring Detective Inspector Napoleon (Boney) Bonaparte, a half-Aboriginal Australian detective....
  • upgrading (engineering)
    The most elaborate type of program under the general heading of maintenance is the remanufacturing process. Performed at aircraft-manufacturing facilities, remanufacture is a measure that combines a general overhaul with an upgrade of some of the aircraft’s systems. The latter process often paces the progressive development of a basic airplane type through several models, and it incorporate...
  • Uphold Democracy, Operation (Haitian history)
    ...After 36 hours of intense discussions, Cédras agreed to leave the country and order his soldiers not to resist a U.S. occupation, in return for amnesty. The first contingents of Operation Uphold Democracy arrived on the 19th, and President Aristide returned home on October 15. U.S. forces remained until March 1995 and were then replaced by a UN force....
  • upholsterer’s chair (furniture)
    armless chair with a wide seat covered in high-quality fabric and fitted with a cushion; the backrest is an upholstered panel, and the legs are straight and rectangular in section. It was introduced as a chair for ladies in the late 16th century and was named in England, probably in the 19th century, for its ability to accommodate the exceptionally wide-hooped skirts known as fa...
  • upholstery
    materials used in the craft of covering, padding, and stuffing seating and bedding. The earliest upholsterers, from early Egyptian times to the beginning of the Renaissance, nailed animal skins or dressed leather across a rigid framework. They slowly developed the craft to include cushions, padding, and pillows—stuffed with such materials as goose down and horsehair....
  • Upi (ancient province, Asia)
    ...was divided into three administrative districts, each under an Egyptian governor. The northernmost district (Amurru) included the coastal region from Ugarit to Byblos, the central district (Upi) included the southern Al-Biqāʿ valley and Anti-Lebanon Mountains, and the third district (Canaan) included all of Palestine from the Egyptian border to Byblos. Also among the letters......
  • UPI (American news agency)
    American-based news agency, one of the largest proprietary news wire services in the world. It was created in 1958 upon the merger of the United Press (UP; 1907) with the International News Service (INS). UPI and its precursor agencies pioneered in some key areas of news coverage, including the wired transmission of news photographs in 1925....
  • Upington (South Africa)
    ...another sharp bend to the northwest, and this marks the beginning of its middle course. Quartzites and ironstones form a “barrier zone” through which the river has cut deep gorges. At Upington the river—by then flowing westward—spreads out over a granite surface. In this area the Orange splits up into innumerable channels, between which are islands of varying length;...
  • Upjohn, Richard (American architect)
    British-American architect who was the most active exponent in his time of the Gothic Revival style in ecclesiastical architecture....
  • Upjohn, Richard M. (American architect)
    ...State Capitol Building in Hartford. Their design was reminiscent of that submitted by William Burges in 1866 for the Royal Courts of Justice in London. The competition, however, was won by Richard M. Upjohn, son of the church builder, who provided a Gothic project that was equally grandiose if more equivocal in expression. Within a few years Hartford was to possess an authentic Burges......
  • Upjohn’s Rural Architecture (work by Upjohn)
    ...that he refused to design a church for Unitarians, a sect he considered anti-Christian. He usually contributed designs for at least one mission church a year. For poor parishes he published in Upjohn’s Rural Architecture (1852; reprinted 1975) an unpretentious design in wood, remarkable for its structural honesty and its liturgical character....
  • Upland (Pennsylvania, United States)
    city, Delaware county, southeastern Pennsylvania, U.S., on the Delaware River (across from Bridgeport, New Jersey), within the Philadelphia metropolitan area. One of the oldest communities in the state, the Chester area was granted by the Swedish crown to a bodyguard of Johan Printz, the governor of New Sweden, in 1644. Af...
  • upland cress (plant)
    Upland cress (Barbarea verna), a hardy biennial native to Europe, is a coarse, often weedy plant rarely cultivated. The closely related winter cress, or yellow rocket (B. vulgaris), is a common weed, conspicuous in fields for its bright-yellow spring flowers. Bitter cress, cuckoo flower, or meadow cress (Cardamine pratensis), of......
  • upland cypress (plant)
    The smaller pond, or upland, cypress of the southeastern U.S., a variety (T. distichum, variety imbricatum) of the bald cypress, sometimes is considered to be a separate species (T. ascendens). It has erect branches and shorter, more scalelike leaves....
  • upland plover (bird)
    ...sandpiper (C. fuscicollis; see photograph), which breeds in Arctic North America and winters in southern South America, is rust-coloured in breeding season but gray otherwise. The upland sandpiper (Bartramia longicauda), also called Bartram’s sandpiper and, mistakenly, the upland plover, is an American bird of open fields. It is a slender, gray-streaked bird almost 30......
  • upland sandpiper (bird)
    ...sandpiper (C. fuscicollis; see photograph), which breeds in Arctic North America and winters in southern South America, is rust-coloured in breeding season but gray otherwise. The upland sandpiper (Bartramia longicauda), also called Bartram’s sandpiper and, mistakenly, the upland plover, is an American bird of open fields. It is a slender, gray-streaked bird almost 30......
  • Upland South (region, United States)
    The Upland South, which comprises the southern Appalachians, the upper Appalachian Piedmont, the Cumberland and other low interior plateaus, and the Ozarks and Ouachitas, was colonized culturally and demographically from the Chesapeake Bay hearth area and the Midland; it is most emphatically white Anglo-Saxon Protestant (WASP) in character. The latter area, which contains a large black......
  • uplift (geology)
    in geology, vertical elevation of the Earth’s surface in response to natural causes. Broad, relatively slow and gentle uplift is termed warping, or epeirogeny, in contrast to the more concentrated and severe orogeny, the uplift associated with earthquakes and mountain building. Uplift of the Earth’s surface also has occurred in response to the r...
  • uplink (communications)
    A telecommunications satellite is a sophisticated space-based cluster of radio repeaters, called transponders, that link terrestrial radio transmitters to terrestrial radio receivers through an uplink (a link from terrestrial transmitter to satellite receiver) and a downlink (a link from satellite transmitter to terrestrial receiver). Most telecommunications satellites have been placed in......
  • Upolu (island, Samoa)
    most populous island of Samoa, in the South Pacific Ocean. It lies across the Apolima Strait from the island of Savai’i to the west. Upolu is about 46 miles (74 km) long and 16 miles (26 km) across at its widest point, with an area of 432 square miles (1,119 square km). Its volcanic central mountain range reaches a maximum elevation of 3,608 feet (1,100...
  • uposatha (Buddhism)
    fortnightly meetings of the Buddhist monastic assembly, at the times of the full moon and the new moon, to reaffirm the rules of discipline. The uposatha observance, now confined almost entirely to the Theravāda (“Way of the Elders”) tradition of Southeast Asia, can be traced back to pre-Buddhist ceremonies of ancient India. Later Buddhists added the quarter days in th...
  • Uppdal, Kristofer Oliver (Norwegian novelist)
    working-class Norwegian novelist whose major work is the 10-volume Dansen gjenom skuggeheimen (1911–24; “The Dance Through the World of Shadows”), which deals with the development of the Norwegian industrial working class from its peasant origin....
  • Upper Atmosphere Research Panel
    ...to Earth. Although the primary purpose of the tests was to advance rocket technology, the army invited American scientists interested in high-altitude research to put experiments aboard the V-2s. An Upper Atmosphere Research Panel, chaired by the physicist James Van Allen, was formed to coordinate the scientific use of these rocket launchings. The panel had a central role in the early years of....
  • Upper Austria (state, Austria)
    Bundesland (federal state), northern Austria. It borders Germany and the Czech Republic on the west and north and is bounded by Bundesländer Niederösterreich (Lower Austria) on the east and Steiermark (Styria) and Salzburg on the south. Oberösterreich lies between the Inn and the Enns rivers and is traversed by the Danube River....
  • Upper Avon (river, central England, United Kingdom)
    river, eastern tributary of the River Severn that rises near Naseby in central England and flows generally southwestward for 96 miles (154 km) through the counties of Northamptonshire, Leicestershire, Warwickshire, and Worcestershire. The river shares the name Avon (derived from a Celtic word meaning “river”) with several other rivers in Great Britain, including the Avon...
  • Upper Bavarian law code (German law)
    ...prerequisite—the welding of his family into a uniform body motivated by a single political will. He strove for this unity with all the diplomatic and juridical means at his disposal, and the Upper Bavarian law code of 1346 (first formulated about 1335) remains a monument to these efforts. For, while Charles IV did what he could to erase Louis’ memory within the empire, Charles...
  • Upper Beni (region, Bolivia)
    ...Northward from the Chaco the relief of the Santa Cruz department is somewhat more varied, exhibiting a gentle downward slope to the north. The Oriente includes much of the northern departments of Beni and Pando, where the low plains are covered by savanna and, in the far north, by expanses of tropical rainforest....
  • upper bout (music)
    ...on an artistic unity of opposed curves that allows free play to individual nuance with scarcely any measurable deviation from the norm. The rounded, outward-curving sections of the body, called the upper and lower bouts, are separated by the indented waist, or middle bout, which provides clearance for the bow on the outer strings. The middle bout meets the upper and lower to form outturned......
  • Upper Burma (region, Myanmar)
    geographic and historical division of Burma (Myanmar), referring to the central and northern portion of the country. The division between Upper and Lower Burma was accentuated during 1852–85, when Lower Burma (comprising the extreme southern fringes of the country) became British Burma. In 1885 Upper Burma also fell under British domination. Unlike coastal Lower Burma, Upper Burma is consi...
  • Upper Cambrian Series (geochronology)
    ...ago. The Cambrian Period is divided into four stratigraphic series: Series 1 (542 to 521 million years ago), Series 2 (521 to 510 million years ago), Series 3 (510 to 501 million years ago), and the Furongian Series (501 to 488.3 million years ago)....
  • Upper Canada (historical region, Canada)
    in Canadian history, the region in Canada now known as Ontario. From 1791 to 1841 the region was known as Upper Canada and from 1841 to 1867 as Canada West, though the two names continued to be employed interchangeably....
  • Upper Canada Academy (college, Cobourg, Ontario, Canada)
    ...later, missionary to American Indians. He founded the first non-Anglican school to receive a royal charter in Canada, the Upper Canada Academy at Cobourg, Ontario, in 1836. The school was renamed Victoria College in 1841, and he was its principal....
  • Upper Canadian Village (museum, Morrisburg, Ontario, Canada)
    ...with them, are to be found in many parts of the world: the National Museum of Niamey, Niger, or the Museum of Traditional Architecture in Jos, Nigeria; the Village Museum of Bucharest, Rom.; Upper Canada Village, Morrisburg, Ont.; Colonial Williamsburg, Va., U.S. (see photograph); or the Novgorod State Museum Preserve in Russia. Individual historic houses have been preserved as museums,......
  • Upper Circassian (people)
    ...territory). Among the many peoples that make up the two smaller northern groups, the Chechens, who constitute the majority of the population of Chechnya republic in southwestern Russia, and the Kabardians, settled along the Kuban and upper Terek river basins, are the most populous. Among other northern Caucasian peoples are the Abkhaz, the Ingush, and the Lezgi. There are a vast number of......
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