Science & Philosophy: Molecular distillation to My station and its duties:
Moles - Desmans, Golden Moles
Moles are small burrowing animals of the order Insectivora, mammals with teeth designed for crushing the outer shells of insects. The true moles and desmans (water-living moles) make up the family Talpidae, which inhabit most of North America and northern Eurasia. The similar golden moles of Africa, south of the Sahara, make up the family Chrysochloridae. Moles vary from 1-3 in (24-75 mm) in lengt…
Mollusks
Mollusks (phylum Mollusca) are the second largest group of invertebrates (the arthropods being the largest), with over 100,000 species. They are characterized by a head with sense organs and mouth, a muscular foot, a visceral hump containing the digestive and reproductive organs, and an envelope of tissue (the mantle) that usually secretes a hard, protective shell. Practically all of the shells fo…
Momentum
Momentum is a property of motion that in classical physics is a vector (directional) quantity that in closed systems is conserved during collisions. In Newtonian physics momentum is measured as the product of the mass and component velocity of a body. For massless particles (e.g., photons) moving at the speed of light (v = c) the momentum (p) is equal to Planck's constant divided by the wav…
Monarch Flycatchers
The monarch or old-world flycatchers are about 400 species of arboreal, insectivorous songbirds that make up the family Muscicapidae. There are three subfamilies in this group: the monarch and paradise flycatchers (Monarchinae), the fantails (Rhipidurinae), and the typical flycatchers (Muscicapinae). Some taxonomists consider these to be separate families, but they are treated as a single group he…
Monarchy - Religion, Naturalism, Modes Of Virtue, Limited Monarchy?, Bibliography
Monarchy derives from a Greek term that refers literally to rule by one person (as distinct from oligarchy, rule by the few, or democracy, rule by the people). Among political systems of a post-tribal nature, monarchy is certainly the most common form of human governance globally throughout human history. While the modern Western world tends to venerate nonmonarchic constitutions of the pastȁ…
Monasticism - History, Twentieth-century Changes, Monasticism As The Institutional Matrix Of Spirituality, What Do We Know About St. Benedict?
The "idea of monasticism" invites a misconception, because monasticism is not an idea but a practice. It is a discipline of life, encapsulated in a vow to obey a rule. Monasticism is not a theory about the good life, and still less an escape from practicality, but rather a commitment to live according to a rule handed down from a founder. In its classical Western form deriving from S…
Mongooses - Some mongoose species
Mongooses are African and Asian carnivores of the family Herpestidae. They are small, long, slender mammals, some of which are most widely known for their willingness and skill in attacking and killing poisonous snakes. In the past, members of the mongoose family have been included with the weasels (family Mustelidae), and sometimes the mongooses are included with civets and genets (family Viverri…
Monkeys
Monkeys are tree-dwelling mammals that, along with prosimians, apes, and humans, make up the order Primata of the primates. The primate suborder Anthropoidea includes two different infraorders: the Platyrrhini, comprised of New World monkeys, marmosets and tamarins; and the Catarrhini, the Old World monkeys, apes, and humans. The major division between New World and Old World monkeys, in addition …
Monomer
A monomer is a molecule or compound, usually containing carbon, with a relatively low molecular weight and simple structure; monomers form the fundamental building blocks of polymers, synthetic resins, and elastomers. Thus, vinylidene chloride is the monomer from which polyvinylidene chloride is made, and styrene is the monomer from which polystyrene resins are produced. One of the simplest monome…
Monosodium Glutamate (MSG) - Characteristics of MSG
The identification of MSG began with the isolation of glutamic acid from a mass of wheat protein, called gluten, in 1886. The chemical structure of glutamic acid, a naturally occurring amino acid, was later identified in 1890. The flavor enhancing ability of MSG was discovered by the Japanese chemist Ikeda Kibunae (1864-1936). From a kelplike seaweed, which was traditionally used to add flavor to …
Monotremes
The order Monotremata (one-holed creatures) is comprised of two families, the Ornithorhynchidae, including the platypus, and the Tachyglossidae, including the long- and short-beaked spiny anteaters or echidnas. Monotremes are found only in Australia, Tasmania, and New Guinea. Monotremes are a derivative of an ancient mammal stock but there is no direct evidence of what it might have been. Monotrem…
Monsoon - General Monsoon Circulation, The Asian Monsoons, The Monsoon Of India, The Monsoons Of South China And Japan
A monsoon is a seasonal change in the direction of the prevailing wind. This wind shift typically brings about a marked change in local weather. Monsoons are often associated with rainy seasons in the tropics (the areas of Earth within 23.5° latitude of the equator) and the subtropics (areas between 23.5° and about 35° latitude, both north and south). In these areas, life is c…
Moon - Phases And Eclipses, The Lunar Surface, Moon Rocks, Lunar Origin, Dynamic Moon - Lunar ice
Earth's moon is a roughly spherical, rocky body orbiting Earth at an average distance of 238,000 mi (382,942 km). Its diameter is about one-fourth Earth's diameter. Compared to moons of other planets, this is a The first footprint on the moon's surface, made by astronaut Neil A. Armstrong on July 20, 1969, shows the fineness of the lunar soil. The soil is produced when moon…
Mooneyes
The mooneye is a freshwater fish with very large eyes. Usually measuring between 16-21 in (40-51 cm) long, it has a deep, laterally thin body. Because it generally resembles a shad or herring, the mooneye has acquired such common names as toothed herring, big-eyed shad, or white shad. Mooneyes can be distinguished from shads and herrings by the presence of well-developed teeth on their jaws and to…
Moose
The moose (Alces alces), also known as elk in Europe, is a horse-sized, northern species of deer that occurs in the boreal and north-temperate forests of both North America and Eurasia. At one time, the Eurasian and American moose were considered to be separate species, but these animals are fully interfertile and are now thought to be the same species. However, there are many geographically disti…
Moral Sense - Bibliography
Sentimentalism, of which moral sense theory was a part, initially had a short run. Until the end of the twentieth century, all the major versions of the theory were produced within a sixty-year period in eighteenth-century Britain. Anthony Ashley Cooper, third earl of Shaftesbury (1671–1713), initiated the sentimentalist line of thought with his theory that morality is grounded in the refle…
Morphine
Morphine has similar painkilling properties to endorphins and enkephalins, a group of amino acid compounds produced in the pituitary gland. The molecular structure of morphine is so much like that of endorphins that it is able to bind to and occupy specialized receptor sites located in various pain centers in the central nervous system. Morphine also alters the release of neurotransmitters. The pe…
Moss Animals
Moss animals, polyzoa, or ectoprocts (phylum Bryozoa) are some of the most abundant and widespread organisms in the animal kingdom. A considerable amount of confusion has surrounded the taxonomic arrangement of the moss animals. A similar, although not so diverse, group of animals known as entoprocts have now been distinguished in their own phylum, Entoprocta. The vast majority of moss animals are…
Motherhood and Maternity - History, Religion, And Myth, Feminist Critiques, Motherhood And Development Discourses, Contentious Debates
Motherhood the world over is commonly understood in terms of a generic terminology. Regardless of country, clime, or class, age-old mythologies in all cultures eulogize motherhood and impart to it an importance that goes well beyond the physical act of birthing. At the level of twenty-first-century popular culture, however, motherhood and maternity have been appropriated by modern-day consumerism,…
Moths
Moths, along with butterflies, belong to the order Lepidoptera, the second largest order of insects. They possess two pairs of wings covered with microscopic, overlapping scales having distinctive colors and patterns. The body and legs are covered with scales, or with long, hairlike bristles. The adult lepidopteran lacks mandibles (found in most other insects); it feeds on liquids, mostly nectar, …
Motif in Literature - Ambiguity, Size, Etymology: Dynamism, King Motifs In The Medieval Arthurian Tradition, Stith Thompson's Motif-index Of Folk-literature
George Steiner has described culture as a matrix of recurrent and interrelated elements, a motor fueled by revolving constants. Broadly speaking, cultural literacy relies on our ability to recognize these constants—in literature, music, painting, or any other form of cultural production—and to work out relationships between them, to translate and recycle the meaning we inherit from t…
Motif in Music - Early History Of The Motif, Structural Uses Of A Motif, Bibliography
A motif is a small but recognizable musical unit. The motif might consist merely of a series of pitches or a distinctive rhythm, or it might be harmonically conceived; quite often, pitch and rhythm are combined in a motif to create a discrete melodic fragment. No matter what its constituent elements, the motif needs to be repeated before it can be recognized as a unit. The repetition may be nearly…
Motion
The process by which something moves from one position to another is referred to as motion; that is, a changing position involving time, velocity and acceleration. Motions can be classified as linear or translational (motion along a straight line), rotational (motion about some axis), or curvilinear (a combination of linear and rotational). A detailed description of all aspects of motion is called…
Motion Pictures - The Invention Of Motion Pictures, Sound Joins The Image, Color Comes To Film, Later Film History - Equipment
Motion pictures, also called film, cinema or movies, are a series of images, recorded on strips of film, that create the illusion of continuous motion. A series of rapidly shown images appear to move because of a phenomena called the persistence of vision. The eye does not react instantly to changes in its field of vision. In fact, the eye continues to "see" an image for 1/10-1/20 of…
Moundbuilders
The megapodes, or moundbuilders, are a fascinating group of birds found in Australia, New Guinea and its surrounding islands, eastern Indonesia, and the Philippines. Also known as "thermometer birds," scrubfowl, or brush turkeys, 22 species are recognized (seven genera) in the family Megapodiidae. A wide range of habitats are occupied by these species, ranging from semi-arid scrublan…
Earthen Mounds - The Hopewell Culture (c. 2300 B.c.c. A.d. 400) - Burial mounds
Mounds are artificially constructed heaps or banks of earth built to contain sacred objects. Their basic construction is the same all over the world: a pit is dug and lined, and the sacred contents are deposited and covered with earth. Sometimes these objects are sprinkled with red ocher, a pigment used to make paint, perhaps as a way to revive the spirits thought to dwell within them. If we were …
Mountains - Relative Size Of Mountains, Duration Of Mountains, Plate Tectonics, The Force That Builds Mountains - Types of mountains
A mountain is a large-scale topographic feature that is set apart from the local landscape by being much higher in elevation (topographic means having to do with the shape of the land surface). When the edge of a plate of Earth's crust runs over another plate, forcing the lower plate deep into Earth's elastic interior, a long, curved mountain chain of volcanos usually forms on the fo…
Mousebirds
Mousebirds, or colies, are six species of non-migratory birds of sub-Saharan Africa, making up the family Colidae. Their usual habitat is open brushlands, savannas, and forest edges. Mousebirds are about 11-14 in (29-36 cm) long, at least one-half of which is made up of their long tail. This structure is composed of ten feathers of variable, but graduated length, the longest being in the center of…
Africa Multiculturalism - Multicultural Problems In Africa, Multiculturalism And Culture, Bibliography
Multiculturalism means different things to different people. For some it is directly linked to the politics of recognition and of difference (Taylor). In this regard, it concerns an appreciation of the necessity to deal with diversity in ways that affirm the value of different cultures and to respect the various claims made by minority groups. For others, multiculturalism concerns an explicit poli…
Multiple Identity - The Critique Of The Subject, The Linguistic Turn And The Social Construction Of The Subject, New Philosophical Challenges
Within Western thought the subject—that is, the self as a thinking, feeling, psycho-physiological entity—has been traditionally defined as a centered consciousness, characterized and unified by one self-defining identity. Within this tradition, a centered subjectivity was long thought to exist and function independently of the social contexts surrounding it, without significant influ…
Multiple Identity in Asian-Americans - Endogenous And Exogenous Perspectives, Panethnic Identity, The Ongoing Creation Of Identities, Bibliography
Although Filipinos lived in the United States in the sixteenth century, the first large Asian group in the modern era arrived in the United States in the nineteenth century. Since then two inclinations have simultaneously characterized how Asian-Americans' ethnic identity has been viewed. One tendency has been to look at their identity either in terms of a collective panethnic identity as &…
Multiplication
Multiplication is often described as repeated addition. For example, the product 3 × 4 is equal to the sum, 4 + 4 + 4, of three 4s. The law on which this is based is the distributive law: a(b + c) = ab + ac. In this instance, the law is applied to 4(1 + 1 + 1), which gives 4(1) + 4(1) + 4(1) or 4 + 4 + 4. When one or both of the multipliers are not natural numbers, the law still applies, 0.…
Murchison Meteorite
The Murchison meteorite was a meteorite that entered Earth's atmosphere in September 1969. The meteor fragmented before impact and remnants were recovered near Murchison, Australia (located about 60 mi [96.5 km] north of Melbourne). The fragments recovered dated to nearly five billion years ago—to the time greater than the estimated age of Earth. In addition to interest generated by …
Muscle Relaxants
Muscle relaxants are drugs that are administered to relax muscles. They are given to relieve the discomfort of muscle spasm or involuntary muscle contracture and also in cases of surgery to relax muscles and provide easier access for the surgeon. Some nonprescription drugs are available to combat painful contraction of the uterus during a woman's menstrual period. Muscles can be divided int…
Muscular System - Skeletal Muscles, Cardiac Muscles, Smooth Muscles, Disorders Of The Muscular System
The muscular system is the body's network of tissues for both conscious and unconscious movement. Movement is generated through the contraction and relaxation of specific muscles. Some muscles, like those in the arms and legs, are involved in voluntary movements such as raising a hand or flexing the foot. Other muscles are involuntary and function without conscious effort. Voluntary muscles…
Museums - Origins, Early Development, Growth, Agencies Of Influence, Future Challenges, Bibliography
It is often assumed that museums have been a permanent feature of society, simply because they contain some of the oldest things in the world. In fact, in their current form, museums are surprisingly recent in origin, almost entirely Western in conception, internally confused about their identity, and unsure of their future role. The British Museum, effectively the mother of all modern museums, wa…
Mushrooms - Biology And Ecology Of Mushroom-producing Fungi, Mushrooms Of North America, Poisonous Mushrooms And Drugs
Mushrooms are the fruiting bodies of certain species of higher fungi. The vegetative tissues of these fungi consists of immense lengths of microscopic, thread-like hyphae, and their aggregations known as mycelium, which grow in surface soils, organic debris, and in association with plant roots. Strictly speaking, a mushroom is the sporulating or fruiting body of a fungus in the division Basidiomyc…
Anthropology of Music - Musical Anthropology, Comparative Musicology And Ethnomusicology, The Anthropology Of Music, Bibliography
The phrase anthropology of music is most closely associated with Alan P. Merriam's 1964 landmark book bearing this title. In this prescriptive text, influential through the 1980s, Merriam defines ethnomusicology as the study of music in culture in relation to the mutual interactions of sound, behavior, and concepts. In consonance with many ethnomusicologists to this day, Mieczyslaw Kolinski…
Musical Performance and Audiences - Origins And Types Of Performance, Performance Considerations, Bibliography
Musical performance is an organized presentation of musical sounds (and, arguably, controlled silences), usually for the entertainment, edification, or enrichment of listeners. The parameters of a performance are often determined by culturally understood boundaries—symphony audiences disregard the warming up and tuning of orchestral musicians, whereas listeners to Indian classical music und…
Musicology - Subdisciplines Of Musicology, Principal Methodologies For Musicological Research, Music Notation, Bibliography
Musicology is the scholarly study of music, where music can be considered either as a fixed object of investigation or as a process whose participants are the composer, the performer, and the listener. As a field of knowledge, it encompasses every aspect of the aesthetic, physical, psychological, and cultural dimensions of the musical art. In practice, consequently, the discipline includes not jus…
Muskoxen
Muskoxen or muskox (Ovibos moschatus) are a species of large mammal in the family Bovidae, which also includes cattle, buffalo, antelope, sheep, and goats. The muskox is anatomically intermediate between sheep and cattle, and there has been taxonomic debate over which of these two groups the muskox should be more closely aligned with. As a result, its genus, Ovibos, is a composite of the scientifi…
Mustard Family (Brassicaceae) - The Many Varieties Of The Cabbage, Other Edible Species, Weeds
The mustard family, or Brassicaceae, contains about 3,000 species of plants. These plants occur widely on all continents except Antarctica and in a wide range of habitats from tundra and desert to forests of all types. Most species in the mustard family occur in the temperate zones, and many occur in the alpine or arctic tundra. The flowers of members of the Brassicaceae have four petals arranged …
Mustard Gas
Mustard gas is a substance used in chemical warfare. It is the popular name for the compound with the chemical designation 1,1-thiobis(2-chloroethane) (chemical formula: Cl-CH2-CH2-S-CH2-CH2-Cl). Mustard gas has a number of other names by which it has been known over the years, including H, yprite, sulfur mustard and Kampstoff Lost. Because the impure substance is said to have an odor similar to t…
Mutagen - History, Where Mutagens Exist, How Mutagens Work, Somatic Vs. Germline Mutations, Types Of Mutagens
In the living cell, deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA) undergoes frequent chemical change, especially when it is being replicated. Most of these changes are quickly repaired. Those that are not, result in a mutation. Thus, mutation is a failure of DNA repair. Mutagens are chemicals or physical factors (such as radiation) that increase the rate of mutation in the cells of bacteria, plants, and animals (in…
Mutagenesis
Mutagenesis is the induction of genetic change in a cell by the alterations in the cell's genetic material (usually deoxyribonucleic acid [DNA]). This change or alteration can subsequently be inherited from one cell to the next. While many mutations are benign, some can be detrimental and cause human genetic disease. If the mutation occurs in a gamete (sex cell), the genetic alteration may …
Mutation - Mutational Errors In Dna, Causes Of Mutation, Mutation And Evolution
A mutation is the alteration in the composition in deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA). Mutations that are inherited can change the character of a species. Living organisms rely upon change as a means of adapting to new environments or conditions. Change is a crucial survival mechanism. Evolution hinges on the appearance and inheritance of mutations. Mutations are the source of genetic variation in humans…
Mutualism
Mutualism is a biological interaction that is beneficial to both parties. Most mutualisms are facultative, meaning the partners can successfully live apart. However, some mutualisms are so intimate that the interacting species can no longer live without each other; they have a mutually obligate interdependence. Many mutualisms are fascinating in their intricacies and reciprocal usefulness as is ap…
Mycorrhiza - Biology Of Mycorrhizae, Importance Of Mycorrhizae
A "fungus root" or mycorrhiza (plural: mycorrhizae) is a fungus living in a mutually beneficial symbiosis (or mutualism) with the roots of a vascular plant. In this intimate relationship, the fungus benefits from access to energy-containing carbohydrates, proteins, and other organic nutrients excreted by, or contained in, the roots while the host plant benefits from an enhanced suppl…
Mycotoxin
Mycotoxins are toxic substances produced by molds and fungi, such as mushrooms. These toxic substances, known as secondary metabolites, are by-products of metabolism that are inessential to fungal growth. Although some mycotoxins can be used for medicinal purposes, most are poisonous if eaten in sufficient quantity. Numerous mycotoxins have been studied and identified. Of particular interest are m…
Myrtle Family (Myrtaceae) - Broad Taxonomy, Economic Value
In both the New and Old Worlds many genera of the myrtle family (Myrtaceae) unfurl their waxy, leathery leaves. Containing both trees and shrubs, this angiosperm family takes its name from the shrub Myrtus, which is found near the Mediterranean, in North Africa, and in South America. Other well known genera from the Myrtaceae include ornamentals such as Leptospermum (Australian tea tree), Eucalypt…