  • Crisis on Infinite Earths (comic book by Wolfman and Pérez)

    ...time for the character. In an attempt to simplify a half-century of complicated and occasionally self-contradictory continuity, DC rebooted its entire comic universe with the Crisis on Infinite Earths event. As a result, Black Canary, who was a full generation older than her Justice League contemporaries, was rewritten as two different characters. The “Golden......

  • Crisis, The (American magazine)

    American monthly magazine published by the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP). It was founded in 1910 and, for its first 24 years, edited by W.E.B. Du Bois; by the end of its first decade it had achieved a monthly circulation of 100,000 copies. In its pages, Du Bois displayed the evolution of his thought from his early, hopeful ...

  • Crisis, The (work by Paine)

    During the war that followed, Paine served as volunteer aide-de-camp to Gen. Nathanael Greene. His great contribution to the patriot cause was the 16 “Crisis” papers issued between 1776 and 1783, each one signed Common Sense. “The American Crisis. Number I,” published on Dec. 19, 1776, when George Washington’s army was on the verge of....

  • crisis theology (Protestant theological movement)

    influential 20th-century Protestant theological movement in Europe and America, known in Europe as crisis theology and dialectical theology. The phrase crisis theology referred to the intellectual crisis of Christendom that occurred when the carnage of World War I belied the exuberant optimism of liberal Christianity. Dialectical theology referred to the apparently contra...

  • Crisp (British steeplechase horse)

    ...trainer Ginger McCain who ran him on the sand and in the sea. In 1973, ridden by Brian Fletcher, Red Rum won his first Grand National by spurting ahead in the last 100 yards of the course to pass Crisp, who had held the lead during most of the race, and beating him by 34 length in the record time of 9:01.9. The next year, with 11-to-1 odds against repeating......

  • Crisp, Donald (British-American actor and director)

    Bette Davis (Julie Marsden)Henry Fonda (Preston Dillard)George Brent (Buck Cantrell)Margaret Lindsay (Amy Bradford Cantrell)Donald Crisp (Dr. Livingstone)Fay Bainter (Aunt Belle)...

  • Crisp, Quentin (British author and raconteur)

    British author, performer, and raconteur who transcended physical abuse and poverty during his early years as a commercial artist, male prostitute, and nude artists’ model to achieve international celebrity in 1968 with the publication of his witty and candid autobiography, The Naked Civil Servant (filmed for television, 1975). Styling himself “one of the stately homos of Engl...

  • Crisp, Samuel (English author)

    Fanny educated herself by omnivorous reading at home. Her literary apprenticeship was much influenced by her father’s friend Samuel Crisp, a disappointed author living in retirement. It was to “Daddy” Crisp that she addressed her first journal letters, lively accounts of the musical evenings at the Burneys’ London house where the elite among European performers entertai...

  • Crispi family (Italian family)

    ...at Constantinople, the duchy later transferred its allegiance to Achaea in 1261 and to Naples in 1267, although Venice also claimed suzerainty. The Sanudo family was replaced in 1383 by the Lombard Crispi family, which retained its independence until 1566. At that time the duchy was conquered by the Ottomans, although it was ruled by an appointee of the sultan until 1579, when it was properly.....

  • Crispi, Francesco (Italian statesman)

    Italian statesman who, after being exiled from Naples and Sardinia-Piedmont for revolutionary activities, eventually became premier of a united Italy....

  • Crispin, Saint (Christian saint)

    (both b. traditionally Rome—d. c. 286, possibly Soissons, Fr.; feast day October 25), patron saints of shoemakers, whose legendary history dates from the 8th century....

  • Crispinian, Saint (Christian saint)

    (both b. traditionally Rome—d. c. 286, possibly Soissons, Fr.; feast day October 25), patron saints of shoemakers, whose legendary history dates from the 8th century....

  • Crispus (Roman ruler)

    eldest son of Constantine the Great who was executed under mysterious circumstances on his father’s orders....

  • Crispus, Andrea (Italian sculptor)

    Renaissance sculptor and goldsmith best known for his miniature sculptures in bronze....

  • Criss Cross (film by Siodmak [1949])

    ...Cry of the City (1948), which featured notable performances by Victor Mature and Richard Conte as childhood pals who grow up on opposite sides of the law. Criss Cross (1949) was even better; Lancaster played a bitter armoured-car driver whose attempts to reunite with his ex-wife (Yvonne De Carlo), who is now married to a gangster (Dan Duryea),.....

  • Criss Cross (board game)

    board-and-tile game in which two to four players compete in forming words with lettered tiles on a 225-square board; words spelled out by letters on the tiles interlock like words in a crossword puzzle....

  • Crist, Judith (American film critic)

    May 22, 1922New York, N.Y.Aug. 7, 2012New York CityAmerican film critic who earned legions of fans and the fear and respect of filmmakers for her pithy and often scathing reviews in the New York Herald Tribune newspaper (1963–66), on the Today television show (1963...

  • crista (membrane)

    ...and the latter breaking them down. The inner membrane of the mitochondrion is infolded to a great extent, and this provides the surface area necessary for respiration. The infoldings, called cristae, have three morphologies: (1) flattened or sheetlike, (2) fingerlike or tubular, and (3) paddlelike. The mitochondria of land plants and animals, by comparison, generally have flattened......

  • crista acustica (anatomy)

    Each membranous ampulla contains a saddle-shaped ridge of tissue called the crista, the sensory end organ that extends across it from side to side. It is covered by neuroepithelium, with hair cells and supporting cells. From this ridge rises a gelatinous structure, the cupula, which extends to the roof of the ampulla immediately above it, dividing the interior of the ampulla into two......

  • crista ampullaris (anatomy)

    Each membranous ampulla contains a saddle-shaped ridge of tissue called the crista, the sensory end organ that extends across it from side to side. It is covered by neuroepithelium, with hair cells and supporting cells. From this ridge rises a gelatinous structure, the cupula, which extends to the roof of the ampulla immediately above it, dividing the interior of the ampulla into two......

  • crista galli (anatomy)

    The anterior cranial fossa shows a crestlike projection in the midline, the crista galli (“crest of the cock”). This is a place of firm attachment for the falx cerebri, a subdivision of dura mater that separates the right and left cerebral hemispheres. On either side of the crest is the cribriform (pierced with small holes) plate of the ethmoid bone, a midline bone important as a......

  • crista spiralis (anatomy)

    The spiral ligament extends above the attachment of Reissner’s membrane and is in contact with the perilymph in the scala vestibuli. Extending below the insertion of the basilar membrane, it is in contact with the perilymph of the scala tympani. It contains many stout fibres that anchor the basilar membrane and numerous connective-tissue cells. Behind the stria the structure of the spiral.....

  • cristae (membrane)

    ...and the latter breaking them down. The inner membrane of the mitochondrion is infolded to a great extent, and this provides the surface area necessary for respiration. The infoldings, called cristae, have three morphologies: (1) flattened or sheetlike, (2) fingerlike or tubular, and (3) paddlelike. The mitochondria of land plants and animals, by comparison, generally have flattened......

  • Cristal, Monts de (mountains, Africa)

    chain of low mountains that runs parallel along the Atlantic coast of west-central Africa. The chain extends through the countries of Equatorial Guinea, Gabon, the Republic of the Congo, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, and Angola....

  • Cristal Mountains (mountains, Africa)

    chain of low mountains that runs parallel along the Atlantic coast of west-central Africa. The chain extends through the countries of Equatorial Guinea, Gabon, the Republic of the Congo, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, and Angola....

  • cristallo glass (glassware)

    The greatest achievement of Venice, however, and that upon which its great export trade came to be based, was the manufacture of clear, colourless glass, which was apparently exclusive to Italy during the Middle Ages. From its resemblance to natural crystal, this material was called cristallo, although in fact it often has a not unpleasing brownish or grayish cast. Made with soda, it was......

  • Cristea, Miron (Romanian patriarch)

    first patriarch of the Romanian Orthodox Church, who worked for unity in church and state....

  • Cristechurch Twynham (district, England, United Kingdom)

    town and borough (district), administrative county of Dorset, historic county of Hampshire, England. It lies at the confluence of the Rivers Stour and Avon (East, or Hampshire, Avon) and adjoins the English Channel resort of Bournemouth....

  • Cristero uprisings (Mexican history)

    As a child growing up in the rural countryside, Rulfo witnessed the latter part (1926–29) of the violent Cristero rebellion in western Mexico. His family of prosperous landowners lost a considerable fortune. When they moved to Mexico City, Rulfo worked for a rubber company and as a film scriptwriter. Many of the short stories that were later published in El llano en llamas......

  • Cristiani, Alfredo (president of El Salvador)

    Nevertheless, Salvadoran Pres. Alfredo Cristiani’s loss of faith in the army’s capacity to defeat the FMLN strengthened the president’s commitment to reaching a negotiated settlement with the group. The United Nations-brokered Chapultepec Peace Accords were signed by the Salvadoran government and the FMLN on January 16, 1992, in Mexico City, and the FMLN members then began to ...

  • Cristiani family (Italian circus performers)

    ...of a family would be trained from earliest childhood in the skills and discipline necessary to achieve perfection either in one specialty or in a group of related specialties. For example, the Cristiani family of Italy—known as the “Royal Family of the Circus,” with a history dating back to the mid-19th century—were perhaps the most famous equestrians in circus......

  • Cristillo, Louis Francis (American actor)

    As a young man, Costello greatly admired Charlie Chaplin. In 1927 he moved to Hollywood, where he worked as a stuntman; after an injury he quit stunt work to perform in New York burlesque. Although he had never worked onstage before, he quickly became one of the top burlesque comics and learned the hundreds of standard comedy routines of the circuit. Those stock routines allowed comics to work......

  • “Cristo alla colonna” (painting by Bramante)

    ...works attributed to him by various 16th-century writers, however, none seems to have been preserved. The only extant easel picture that has ever been attributed to him is the Christ at the Column of the Abbey of Chiaravalle (c. 1490). A fresco in a complex architectural setting (c. 1490–92) in the Castello Sforzesco in Milan is probably his, with...

  • “Cristo de Velázquez, El” (work by Unamuno)

    ...and San Manuel Bueno, mártir (1933; “Saint Manuel the Good, Martyr”), the story of an unbelieving priest. Unamuno’s El Cristo de Velázquez (1920; The Christ of Velázquez), a study in poetic form of the great Spanish painter, is regarded as a superb example of modern Spanish verse....

  • Cristo Redentor (statue, Mount Corcovado, Brazil)

    colossal statue of Jesus Christ at the summit of Mount Corcovado, Rio de Janeiro, southeastern Brazil. It was completed in 1931 and stands 98 feet (30 metres) tall, its horizontally outstretched arms spanning 92 feet (28 metres). The statue, made of reinforced concrete clad in a mosaic of thousands of triangular soapstone ...

  • “Cristo Redentor” (sculpture by Alonso)

    ...(1836–51, Berlin) and the several statues of Joan of Arc in France. These were works of not simply historical but also topical and political significance, as indeed was the colossal “Christ of the Andes” by Mateo Alonso erected in 1902 on the border of Chile and Argentina. Abstractions were also endowed with a more urgent ideological content than in former centuries. In......

  • “Cristo si è fermato a Eboli” (work by Levi)

    ...was a painter and a practicing physician when he was exiled (1935–36) to the southern district of Lucania for anti-Fascist activities. His Cristo si è fermato a Eboli (1945; Christ Stopped at Eboli) reflects the visual sensitivity of a painter and the compassionate objectivity of a doctor. Quickly acclaimed a literary masterpiece, it was widely translated....

  • Cristóbal (Panama)

    Atlantic terminal port, north-central Panama, adjoining Colón city. Both Cristóbal and Colón were named for Cristóbal Colón (the Spanish form of the name of Christopher Columbus). Located on an isthmus (made of artificial fill) that connects Manzanillo Island with the mainland, Cristóbal was conceive...

  • Cristóbal Colón and Simón Bolívar, Mount (mountain, Colombia)

    The isolated Santa Marta Mountains are an imposing fault-bounded granitic massif rising to 18,947 feet (5,775 metres) at the “twin peaks” of Cristóbal Colón and Simón Bolívar, the highest point in the country (for a discussion of the height of the Santa Marta Mountains, see Researcher’s Note: Heights of the “twin peaks...

  • cristobalite (mineral)

    the stable form of silica (silicon dioxide, SiO2) between its melting point of 1,728° C (3,142° F) and 1,470° C (2,678° F), below which tridymite is the stable form. Cristobalite has two modifications: low-cristobalite, which occurs naturally up to 268° C (514° F) but is not stable; and high-cristobalite, which occurs above 26...

  • Cristofano, Francesco di (Italian painter)

    Italian Renaissance painter, best known for his portraits and religious paintings. His style included early Renaissance, High Renaissance, and proto-Mannerist elements....

  • Cristofori, Bartolomeo (Italian harpsichord maker)

    Italian harpsichord maker generally credited with the invention of the piano, called in his time gravicembalo col piano e forte, or “harpsichord that plays soft and loud.” The name refers to the piano’s ability to change loudness according to the amount of pressure on the keys, a quality foreign to the harpsichord. Cristofori achiev...

  • Cristofori, Bartolomeo di Francesco (Italian harpsichord maker)

    Italian harpsichord maker generally credited with the invention of the piano, called in his time gravicembalo col piano e forte, or “harpsichord that plays soft and loud.” The name refers to the piano’s ability to change loudness according to the amount of pressure on the keys, a quality foreign to the harpsichord. Cristofori achiev...

  • Cristoforo Fini, Tommaso di (Italian painter)

    painter who achieved a compromise between the International Gothic manner and the advanced early Renaissance style of his own day and who owes his prominence in the history of Florentine art not to his innovations but to his lyrical style and his unfailing artistry....

  • Crişul Repede River (river, Romania)

    city, capital of Bihor judeţ (county), northwestern Romania. It lies about 8 miles (13 km) east of the Hungarian border, along the Crişul Repede River where it leaves the western foothills of the Western Carpathians and flows onto the Hungarian Plain....

  • Criswell, W. A. (American clergyman)

    Dec. 19, 1909Eldorado, Okla.Jan. 9, 2002Dallas, TexasAmerican clergyman who , was pastor of the First Baptist Church of Dallas from 1944 to 1991; under his leadership the church grew to become the largest Southern Baptist congregation in the U.S., with some 26,000 members. Criswell served a...

  • Criswell, Wallie Amos (American clergyman)

    Dec. 19, 1909Eldorado, Okla.Jan. 9, 2002Dallas, TexasAmerican clergyman who , was pastor of the First Baptist Church of Dallas from 1944 to 1991; under his leadership the church grew to become the largest Southern Baptist congregation in the U.S., with some 26,000 members. Criswell served a...

  • Critchfield, James Hardesty (United States official)

    1917Hunter, N.D.April 22, 2003Williamsburg, Va.American spymaster who , employed his military, diplomatic, and intelligence skills—and readiness to make moral compromises—on many fronts in the Cold War, including Germany, Iraq, Tibet, and Cuba. Critchfield was a colonel in a U...

  • Criterion, The (international journal)

    Eliot’s career as editor was ancillary to his main interests, but his quarterly review, The Criterion (1922–39), was the most distinguished international critical journal of the period. He was a “director,” or working editor, of the publishing firm of Faber & Faber Ltd. from the early 1920s until his death and as such was a generous and discriminatin...

  • criterium (cycling)

    ...a series of classic races run on successive days. The winner of a stage race is the rider with lowest aggregate time for all stages. Also popular, especially in Britain and the United States, are criterium races, which are run over a relatively short distance of 4 to 5 km (2.5 to 3 miles) for a succession of laps totaling up to 100 km (62 miles)....

  • Crithidia (protozoan genus)

    genus of zooflagellate protozoan of the order Kinetoplastida. Crithidia is a parasite of invertebrates, living mainly in the intestines of arthropods, usually insects. It passes from host to host encysted in feces. Crithidia is polymorphic, but its characteristic form, which also is assumed temporarily by certain related genera, is fusiform (spindle shaped). It also has a short undu...

  • Critias (Greek statesman)

    ...his father’s side claimed descent from the god Poseidon, and his mother’s side was related to the lawgiver Solon (c. 630–560 bce). Less creditably, his mother’s close relatives Critias and Charmides were among the Thirty Tyrants who seized power in Athens and ruled briefly until the restoration of democracy in 403....

  • Critias (work by Plato)

    a legendary island in the Atlantic Ocean, lying west of the Straits of Gibraltar. The principal sources for the legend are two of Plato’s dialogues, Timaeus and Critias. In the former, Plato describes how Egyptian priests, in conversation with the Athenian lawgiver Solon, described Atlantis as an island larger than Asia Minor and Libya combined, and situated just beyond the......

  • Critic (American periodical)

    ...life of the city, and she numbered many of the leading writers, artists, and actors of the day among her friends. In January 1881 she and another brother, Joseph B. Gilder, established the Critic, a biweekly (later weekly) journal of criticism and review that enjoyed a long life and earned for itself an important place in American cultural affairs. She contributed a regular column,......

  • Critic as Artist, The (work by Wilde)

    ...known in the 1840s for writing strident poetry and articles for The Nation. He attended Trinity College in Dublin but thereafter moved to England. The Critic as Artist (1890), a dialogue on aesthetics, emphasizes Wilde’s elevation of the individual. “Criticism is itself an art,” he wrote; the response of the critic to ...

  • “Critic, or a Tragedy Rehearsed, The” (work by Sheridan)

    burlesque drama in three acts by Richard Brinsley Sheridan, produced in Drury Lane, London, in 1779 and published in 1781....

  • Critic, The (photograph by Weegee)

    ...gestures of his subjects, who for the most part came from the lower strata of New York society. His feelings about privileged New Yorkers were typified in a photograph entitled The Critic, in which an ill-clothed onlooker hisses at two bejeweled women attending the opera. In 1945 Naked City, the first of Weegee’s five books, was publishe...

  • Critic, The (animated short film [1963])

    ...performed in television appearances and on best-selling comedy record albums. Brooks entered the motion picture industry as the writer and narrator of the Academy Award-winning animated short The Critic (1963), a devastating lampoon of avant-garde films. He and Buck Henry then created Get Smart (1965–70), a television situation comedy spoofing the...

  • Critic, The (work by Sheridan)

    burlesque drama in three acts by Richard Brinsley Sheridan, produced in Drury Lane, London, in 1779 and published in 1781....

  • Critica, La (Italian periodical)

    He was delivered from his malaise, and the second period of his life was opened in 1903 with his founding of La Critica, a journal of cultural criticism in which, during the course of the next 41 years, he published nearly all of his writings and reviewed all of the most important historical, philosophical, and literary work that was being produced in Europe at the......

  • Critica Musica (periodical founded by Mattheson)

    ...and Charles Avison and Charles Burney in England. Their work coincided with the emergence of periodicals and newspapers all over Europe. The first journal devoted entirely to music criticism was Critica Musica, founded by Johann Mattheson in 1722. Mattheson had a number of successors, notably the Leipzig composer Johann Adolph Scheibe, who brought out his weekly Der critische......

  • Critica Sacra (work by Cappel)

    ...he spent two years in England. In 1613 he accepted the chair of Hebrew at Saumur, and in 1633 he became professor of theology there. Cappel’s important critical study of Scripture, Critica Sacra (1634), met with such theological opposition that he was not able to print it until 1650, at Paris, and then only with the aid of a son who had turned Roman Catholic. The...

  • critical angle (optics)

    in optics, the greatest angle at which a ray of light, travelling in one transparent medium, can strike the boundary between that medium and a second of lower refractive index without being totally reflected within the first medium. (The refractive index of a transparent substance is the ratio of the speed of light in a vacuum to its speed in that substance.) For any a...

  • critical bibliography

    Critical, or analytical, bibliography began early in the 20th century when scholars developed techniques to study the physical features of books. They were first successful at dating, identifying, and authenticating the earliest printed books, known as incunabula, which date from the second half of the 15th century. Methods pioneered at the British Museum and the University of Oxford’s Bodl...

  • critical care unit (medicine)

    hospital facility for care of critically ill patients at a more intensive level than is needed by other patients. Staffed by specialized personnel, the intensive care unit contains a complex assortment of monitors and life-support equipment that can sustain life in once-fatal situations, including adult respiratory distress syndrome, kidney failure, multiple o...

  • critical concentration (nuclear engineering)

    Not every arrangement of material containing fissile fuel can be brought to criticality. Even if a reactor was designed such that no neutrons could leak out, a critical concentration of fissile material would have to be present in order to bring the reactor to a critical state. Otherwise, absorption of neutrons by other constituents of the reactor might dominate and inhibit a sustained chain......

  • critical concentration of impurities (physics)

    If a sufficient number of conduction electrons are added to a semiconductor through the introduction of impurities, the electrical properties become metallic. There is a critical concentration of impurities Nc, which depends on the type of impurity. For impurity concentrations less than the critical amount Nc, the conduction electrons become......

  • critical core size (nuclear engineering)

    ...reactor must occupy an appropriate volume and be of a prescribed geometric form, or else more neutrons will leak out than are created through fission. This requirement imposes a limit on the minimum critical volume and critical mass within a reactor....

  • critical density (cosmology)

    ...expansion rate to a halt depends on the amount of mass (per unit volume) present. This is indeed the case; the Newtonian and relativistic formalisms give the same criterion for the critical, or closure, density (in mass equivalent of matter and radiation) that separates closed or bound universes from open or unbound ones. If Hubble’s constant at the present epoch is denoted as......

  • Critical Dissertation on the Nature, Measures, and Causes of Value, A (work by Bailey)

    ...are independent of his will. Sequels were Essays on the Pursuit of Truth, on the Progress of Knowledge, and on the Fundamental Principle of All Evidence and Expectation (1829) and A Critical Dissertation on the Nature, Measures, and Causes of Value (1825), which criticized the political economics of the Ricardian school, named after the English economist David Ricardo.......

  • Critical Fable, A (poetry by Lowell)

    ...(1914), and in that year she published her second book, Sword Blades and Poppy Seed, which includes her first experimentation with free verse and “polyphonic prose.” A Critical Fable (1922), an imitation of her kinsman James Russell Lowell’s Fable for Critics, was published anonymously and stirred widespread speculation until she revealed her......

  • critical field (superconductors)

    One of the ways in which a superconductor can be forced into the normal state is by applying a magnetic field. The weakest magnetic field that will cause this transition is called the critical field (Hc) if the sample is in the form of a long, thin cylinder or ellipsoid and the field is oriented parallel to the long axis of the sample. (In other configurations the......

  • critical flicker frequency (vision)

    ...flashes of a stationary light is less than this visual-persistence time, the flicker will appear to fuse into a continuous light. The flicker frequency at which this occurs is called the perceiver’s flicker-fusion frequency (or critical flicker frequency) and represents the temporal resolving power of his visual system at the time. Another process on which apparent movement depends is a ...

  • critical fusion frequency (vision)

    ...flashes of a stationary light is less than this visual-persistence time, the flicker will appear to fuse into a continuous light. The flicker frequency at which this occurs is called the perceiver’s flicker-fusion frequency (or critical flicker frequency) and represents the temporal resolving power of his visual system at the time. Another process on which apparent movement depends is a ...

  • critical geopolitics (political science)

    An example of such analyses is critical geopolitics. Political geography was a marginal subdiscipline for several decades after World War II, with geopolitical thinking disparaged because of its association with the work of geographers in 1930s Nazi Germany. Its revival involved regaining an appreciation of how influential political thinkers and politicians develop and propagate mental maps of......

  • critical illumination (optics)

    ...bright, uniform illumination in the region of the object under observation. Typically, the condenser focuses the image of the light source directly onto the plane of the specimen, a technique called critical illumination. Alternatively, the image of the source is focused onto the condenser, which is in turn focused onto the entrance pupil of the microscope objective, a system known as......

  • Critical Inquiry (American literary journal)

    ...of the place of ethics in literary criticism. In addition to writing further works of criticism, Booth cofounded (1974) and coedited from 1974 to 1985 the quarterly Critical Inquiry. His other books include Now Don’t Try to Reason with Me: Essays and Ironies for a Credulous Age (1970), A Rhetoric of Irony......

  • Critical Legal Studies (American movement)

    In the United States, the Critical Legal Studies movement applied deconstruction to legal writing in an effort to reveal conflicts between principles and counterprinciples in legal theory. The movement explored fundamental oppositions such as public and private, essence and accident, and substance and form. In anthropology, deconstruction contributed to an increased awareness of the role that......

  • critical mass (physics)

    in nuclear physics, the minimum amount of a given fissile material necessary to achieve a self-sustaining fission chain reaction under stated conditions. Its size depends on several factors, including the kind of fissile material used, its concentration and purity, and the composition and geometry of the surrounding reaction system. ...

  • critical membrane potential (physiology)

    ...having a greater concentration of positive ions. Atrial and ventricular myocytes are normally quiescent (nonrhythmic); however, when the resting membrane potential is depolarized to a critical potential (Ecrit), a self-generating action potential follows, leading to muscle contraction. Phase 0, the upstroke, is associated with a sudden increase in membrane permeability......

  • critical method

    Sometimes Kant called this the “transcendental method,” but more often the “critical method.” His purpose was to reject the dogmatic assumptions of the rationalist school, and his wish was to return to the semiskeptical position with which Descartes had begun before his dogmatic pretensions to certainty took hold. Kant’s method was to conduct a critical examinati...

  • Critical Observations on the Sixth Book of the Aeneid (work by Gibbon)

    ...continuing it. He and Deyverdun published two volumes of Mémoires littéraires de la Grande Bretagne (1768–69). In 1770 he sought to attract some attention by publishing Critical Observations on the Sixth Book of the Aeneid....

  • critical organ (radiobiology)

    The term critical organ refers to the part of the body most vulnerable to a given isotope. The critical organ for plutonium, radium, strontium, and many other fission products is bone and the adjacent bone marrow. For iodine, the critical organ is the thyroid gland. Insoluble airborne radioactive dust often settles in the alveoli of the lungs, while small colloidal particles may become......

  • critical path analysis (management)

    technique for controlling and coordinating the various activities necessary in completing a major project. It utilizes a chart that consists essentially of a series of circles, each of which represents a particular part of a project, and lines representing the activities that link these parts together. The critical path is the minimum time that a project can take, represented by the greatest of th...

  • critical path method (management)

    technique for controlling and coordinating the various activities necessary in completing a major project. It utilizes a chart that consists essentially of a series of circles, each of which represents a particular part of a project, and lines representing the activities that link these parts together. The critical path is the minimum time that a project can take, represented by the greatest of th...

  • Critical Period of American History, 1783–1789, The (work by Fiske)

    The same belief in inevitable progress through evolutionary change prevailed in Fiske’s interpretation of American history in such works as The Critical Period of American History, 1783–1789 (1888). His primary contribution to American thought was popularizing the evolutionary thesis against the adamant opposition of the churches, however....

  • critical philosophy (philosophy)

    either the system of thought contained in the writings of the epoch-making 18th-century philosopher Immanuel Kant or those later philosophies that arose from the study of Kant’s writings and drew their inspiration from his principles. Only the latter is the concern of this article....

  • critical point (phase change)

    in physics, the set of conditions under which a liquid and its vapour become identical (see phase diagram). For each substance, the conditions defining the critical point are the critical temperature, the critical pressure, and the critical density....

  • critical pressure (chemistry)

    Water exhibits particularly unusual behaviour beyond its critical temperature and pressure (374 °C [705.2 °F], 218 atmospheres). Above its critical temperature, the distinction between the liquid and gaseous states of water disappears—it becomes a supercritical fluid, the density of which can be varied from liquidlike to gaslike by varying its temperature and pressure. If the....

  • critical realism (economics)

    A popular alternative approach for some of a generally Marxist persuasion was critical realism. This accepts that there are general tendencies within capitalism but contends that they are only realized when implemented by individuals making decisions in local contexts: the profit motive is general, but individual entrepreneurs decide how to pursue it. The outcomes then change the local......

  • critical realism

    A second postwar current, “social literature,” or “critical realism,” arrived with the so-called Midcentury Generation, who were adolescents during the war; it expressed more vigorous, if necessarily covert, opposition to the dictatorship. In such works as La hoja roja (1959; “The Red Leaf”), which examines poverty and loneliness among the......

  • critical region (phase change)

    in physics, the set of conditions under which a liquid and its vapour become identical (see phase diagram). For each substance, the conditions defining the critical point are the critical temperature, the critical pressure, and the critical density....

  • Critical Remarks on the Subject of Russia’s Economic Development (work by Struve)

    While studying economic theory and history at the University of St. Petersburg, Struve became a Marxist. The Marxist analysis of Russian capitalism that he presented in 1894 in his Kriticheskiye zametki k voprocy ob ekonomicheskom razviti rossi (“Critical Remarks on the Subject of Russia’s Economic Development”) procured for him a reputation among the left-wing......

  • critical review (arts)

    The critical review developed strongly in the 19th century, often as an adjunct to a book-publishing business. It became a forum for the questions of the day—political, literary, and artistic—to which many great figures contributed. There were also many magazines with a literary flavour, and these serialized some of the best fiction of the period. A few marked the beginning of......

  • Critical Review, The (British periodical)

    ...Don Quixote from the Spanish of Miguel de Cervantes, and this translation was published in 1755. Smollett was already suffering from tuberculosis. Early in 1756 he became editor of The Critical Review, a Tory and church paper, at the same time writing his Complete History of England, which was financially successful. This work relieved the financial pressure that he......

  • critical state (phase change)

    in physics, the set of conditions under which a liquid and its vapour become identical (see phase diagram). For each substance, the conditions defining the critical point are the critical temperature, the critical pressure, and the critical density....

  • Critical Studies (work by Morelli)

    ...Masters in German Galleries (1880; Eng. trans., 1883) marks an epoch in 19th-century art criticism. The so-called Morellian method was explored in this and his Italian Painters: Critical Studies of Their Work (1890; Eng. trans., 1892). Essentially 19th century in its scientific rigorousness, his method’s apparently simple thesis is that the evidence....

  • critical temperature

    A superconductor loses all electrical resistance when cooled below a characteristic temperature called its critical temperature (Tc). Most superconductors, such as those used in the powerful electromagnets of magnetic-resonance devices, have a Tc close to absolute zero (0 K, −273.15 °C, or −459.67 °F). The identification of a new family of......

  • critical theory

    Marxist inspired movement in social and political philosophy originally associated with the work of the Frankfurt school. Drawing particularly on the thought of Karl Marx and Sigmund Freud, critical theorists maintain that a primary goal of philosophy is to understand and to help overcome the social structures through which people are domina...

  • critical thinking (education and philosophy)

    Many educators and educational scholars have championed the educational aim of critical thinking. It is not obvious what critical thinking is, and philosophers of education accordingly have developed accounts of critical thinking that attempt to state what it is and why it is valuable—i.e., why educational systems should aim to cultivate it in students. These accounts generally (though......

Or click Continue to submit anonymously:

Continue
http://www.britannica.com/browse/alpha/c/240
www.britannica.com
crawl=CC-MAIN-2016-07
59992
application/http; msgtype=response
sha1:SLJI6LLO53FOLMHC2FRL6HNNCIZJ7FB5
<urn:uuid:ee44c4fc-8406-4333-8a7d-1689ebfcf78a>
2016-02-13T07:35:56Z
72.21.92.20
sha1:K7SN6AONWCNHQW4OTJ55JG7SZN5RAXZ4
<urn:uuid:db047c4b-5107-4b39-badb-ed55bbc1f41c>
http://www.britannica.com/browse/alpha/c/240
response
<urn:uuid:91f0cd20-dce0-4866-b67e-6bea3f8c06a1>
robots: classic
hostname: ip-10-236-182-209.ec2.internal
software: Nutch 1.6 (CC)/CC WarcExport 1.0
isPartOf: CC-MAIN-2016-07
operator: CommonCrawl Admin
description: Wide crawl of the web for February 2016
publisher: CommonCrawl
format: WARC File Format 1.0
conformsTo: http://bibnum.bnf.fr/WARC/WARC_ISO_28500_version1_latestdraft.pdf