Science & Philosophy: Reason to Retrovirus

Science Encyclopedia

Reception of Asians to the United States - Asian Immigration, Landmarks In Asian-american History, Bibliography

Asian America is a meaningful social construct in understanding and analyzing Western colonialism in Asia, and immigration policy and racial hierarchy in American society. As a group identity, Asian-American is an externally imposed label because it is based on race rather than culture. The most misleading reference to Asians is the term Oriental. Derogatory in nature, the term refers to people an…

less than 1 minute read

Recombinant DNA

Deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA) is the information blueprint that exists in most living organisms. Some viruses instead contain ribonucleic acid (RNA). Even these viruses require the production of DNA at some stage of their replication. DNA from different organisms of the same species combines together naturally to yield an organism that has traits from both parent organisms. There is also evidence ac…

2 minute read

Red Tide - Marine toxins and their effects

Red tides are a marine phenomenon in which water is stained a red, brown, or yellowish color because of the temporary abundance of a particular species of pigmented dinoflagellates (these events are known as "blooms"). Also called phytoplankton, or planktonic algae, these single-celled organisms of the class Dinophyceae move using a tail-like structure called a flagellum. They also p…

4 minute read

Reflections

A reflection is one of the three kinds of transformations of plane figures which move the figures but do not change their shape. It is called a reflection because figures after a reflection are the mirror images of the original ones. The reflection takes place across a line called the "line of reflection." Figure 1 shows a triangle ABC and its image A'B'C'. Each individual point and …

5 minute read

Reflex

Reflexes are set motor responses to specific sensory stimuli. All reflexes share three classical characteristics: they have a sensory inflow pathway, a central relay site, and a motor outflow pathway. Together, these three elements make up the reflex arc. Reflexes can also be characterized according to how much neural processing is involved in eliciting a response. Some reflexes, like the short re…

4 minute read

Reflexivity - Reflexivity In Sociology, Reflexivity In Anthropology, Bibliography

Reflexivity first entered into anthropological discourse in the late 1970s in response to several problematics that had emerged in the previous decade, but its use in the humanities and in sociology has a longer history. In the words of Barbara Myerhoff and Jay Ruby, two of its advocates, reflexivity "describes the capacity of any system of signification to turn back on itself, to make itse…

less than 1 minute read

Reform - Europe and the United States - Categories And Theories Of Causation, Principles Of Validation, Agencies Of Reform, Academic Approaches To Reform: Methodology And Conceptualization

Reform, from the Latin reformare, to recast or reshape, denotes the overhaul of an existing state or condition with a view to its improvement. Until the eighteenth century the terms reform and revolution were used interchangeably. In the wake of the French Revolution, however, they took on distinct meanings. Reform came to denote substantial change through an orderly and lawful process; revolution…

1 minute read

Reformation - Lutherans, The Reformed, Other Confessions, Confessionalism, Bibliography

The Reformation was a movement in Europe of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries that broke the monopoly over religion held by the Roman Catholic Church since the later years of the Roman Empire and that created a new set of alternative Protestant churches that have henceforth helped supply the needs of Christians in Western Europe and in countries influenced by Europe. Each of these churches d…

less than 1 minute read

Refrigerated Trucks and Railway Cars

Refrigerated trucks and railroad cars have had a great impact on the economy and eating habits of Americans. As the United States became more urbanized, the demand for fresh food shipped over long distances increased. Meat products were especially in demand. In the mid-1800s, cattle raised in Texas were shipped by rail to Chicago, Illinois. Although it was more efficient to slaughter the cattle i…

2 minute read

Regions and Eastern Europe Regionalism - Regions And Nations, Regionalism And Nationalism In Modern Europe, Central Versus Eastern Europe, The Future Of Eastern Europe

It would be difficult to find two people today—even two historians or political scientists—who would completely agree on the meaning of the phrase Eastern Europe. Unlike such phrases as Great Britain, the former Yugoslavia, or the Baltic states, Eastern Europe varies widely in what it denotes. The variation occurs in part because what the phrase denotes has changed frequently over ti…

2 minute read

Rehabilitation

Illness and trauma that lead to disability or functional loss can lead to an individual's need for a changed lifestyle to accommodate his reduced level of ability. A stroke, for example, can lead to partial paralysis; chronic arthritis can result in the inability to stand or to use one's hands; an automobile accident can cause blindness or can result in an individual's confine…

6 minute read

Positive Reinforcement and Negative - Classical And Operant Conditioning, Reinforcement Schedules, Applications, Current Status/future Developments

Reinforcement is a term used to refer to the procedure of removing or presenting stimuli (reinforcers) to maintain or increase the frequency or likelihood of a response. The term is also applied to refer to an underlying process that leads to reinforcement or to the actual act of reinforcement, but many psychologists discourage such a broad application of the term. Reinforcement is usually divided…

1 minute read

Relation

In mathematics, a relation is any collection of ordered pairs. The fact that the pairs are ordered is important, and means that the ordered pair (a, b) is different from the ordered pair (b, a) unless a = b. For most useful relations, the elements of the ordered pairs are naturally associated or related in some way. More formally, a relation is a subset (a partial collection) of the set of all pos…

3 minute read

Relativity - Special Relativity, General Relativity, Conclusion, Bibliography

The first thing to note about the theory of relativity is that there are two different theories of relativity, the special theory put forward in Albert Einstein's (1879–1955) famous 1905 paper, "On the Electrodynamics of Moving Bodies," and the general theory, completed in November 1915 and first presented systematically in a review article published in March 1916. Spec…

1 minute read

General Relativity - History, Basic Concepts Of The Theory, Consequences Of General Relativity - General relativity, Experimental verification

The theory of relativity was developed by the German physicist Albert Einstein (1879–1955) in the early twentieth century and quickly became one of the basic organizing ideas of physics. Relativity actually consists of two theories, the special theory (announced in 1905) and the general (1915). Special relativity describes the effects of straight-line, constant-velocity motion on the mass a…

10 minute read

Religion - Africa - Myth And Cosmology, Gods And Spirits, Religion And Possession, Religious Authorities, Worship Spaces

The modern academic study of indigenous African religions began with the publication of ethnographic, missionary, and travel monographs by Leo Frobenius, R. S. Rattray, H. A. Junod, W. C. Willoughby, Edwin Smith, E. E. Evans-Pritchard, John Middleton, Godfrey Liendhardt, Geoffrey Parrinder, and Marcel Griaule, among others. The African scholars Bolajii Idowu, John Mbiti, and Gabriel Setiloane also…

2 minute read

Religion - African Diaspora - Religious Symbioses, Divinity, Ancestors, Spiritual Assets: Ase And Konesans, Leadership, Divination And Spirit Possession

The term African-derived religions (ADR) is used to identify various religions transplanted to the Americas with the enslavement of Africans. For simplicity, ADR will be used in this entry to denote Afro-Caribbean and Afro-Brazilian religions, whose traditions survived cultural and ideological assault and continued to provide spiritual resources for a civilization rooted in African cosmologies. Wi…

3 minute read

Religion - East and Southeast Asia - The Daoist Yin-yang, Three Teachings Are One, Modern China, Korea, Japan

When speaking of religion in East and Southeast Asia, a series of unique problems arises. What the West views as religion in Asia might well pass as philosophy and vice versa. The Harper Collins Dictionary of Philosophy views religion as oscillating between two extremes: Hence, the philosophy of religion studies a variety of topics from existence of "god" and moral thought to the rel…

3 minute read

South America Religion - Indigenous Peoples' View - Conceptualizing Space-times, The Axis Mundi, Shamans And Ritual, European Contact, Conclusion

Unlike Western systems of worship, religious thought and action from South American indigenous perspectives pervade every aspect of existence. As cultural systems, indigenous South American religions encompass quotidian life and become especially salient at times of life crises and during festival and protest activity. With more than three hundred languages grouped into a dozen or more macro famil…

less than 1 minute read

Religion - Latin America - Bibliography

Religion is a system of beliefs that explains what happens in the world, justifies order, and (usually) prescribes certain behaviors. In Latin America, the Spanish and Portuguese imported and spread Catholicism, the predominant religion, starting with the voyages of Columbus in 1492. The belief in and practice of Christianity gradually replaced the native belief systems; at the beginning of the tw…

6 minute read

Religion and the State - Africa - Bibliography

The modern African state system is a new political concept that came about from the struggle for independence. These states are organized in the matrix of the two great religious traditions: Islam and Christianity. The secular hegemonic nature of the founding of these states brings into play the political meaning of these religious traditions. Religion in Africa is projected as a part of a continu…

10 minute read

Religion and the State - Europe - Rome And Revelation., The Islamic Caliphate., Christian Europe: The Middle Ages., Christian Europe: The Reformation.

The historical division between religion and politics that leads to the problem of their proper ordering and relation emerges only in coincidence with the phenomenon of divine revelation, and hence only with the so-called Abrahamic religions of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. Religions that rest on a direct relationship between individual human beings and a deity effectively circumvent the monop…

1 minute read

Religion and the State - Middle East - The Shia-sunni Controversy, The Early Modern Islamic States, From Secularization To Islamic Revivalism

The relationship between religious and political domains in Islam is extraordinarily complex and is rooted in a rich conceptual and a long (although conflicting) institutional tradition. Koranic verses clearly endorse the prophet Muhammad's spiritual and temporal authority. Muslims agree that he was the sole transmitter of the divine message, the most qualified person to decide the meaning …

less than 1 minute read

Remote Sensing

Remote sensing is the science and art of obtaining and interpreting information about an object, area, or phenomenon through the analysis of data acquired by a sensor that is not in contact with the object, area, or phenomenon being observed. There are four major characteristics of a remote sensing system, namely, an electromagnetic energy source, transmission path, target, and sensor. The Sun is…

6 minute read

Renaissance - Comparison Of Culture To Horticulture, The Influence Of The Burckhardtian Renaissance, Rebirth Of Culture As A Regrowth Of Plants In The Spring

The term Renaissance (English, French, German; rinascità in Italian) refers to (1) "a rebirth of arts and letters" noticed by authors and artists living between the 1300s and the 1600s; (2) Italian cultural history from about 1300 to 1520 ("La Rinascimento"), as in the period concept of Jacob Burckhardt's The Civilization of the Renaissance in Italy (1860); …

1 minute read

Reproductive System - The Male Reproductive System, Testes, The Spermatic Ducts And Glands, The Penis, Sexual Arousal

The reproductive system is the structural and physiological network whose purpose is the creation of a new life to continue the species. It is the only body system that is not concerned with supporting the life of its host. Human reproduction is sexual—meaning that both a male and a female are required to produce a life. Gender is determined at conception by the sex chromosome in the sperm …

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Reproductive Toxicant

Reproductive toxicants are substances that adversely affect fertility or a developing embryo or fetus. Toxicants, strictly speaking, are poisons. However, reproductive toxicants loosely include any infectious, physical, chemical, or environmental agent that has a damaging effect on fertility or embryonic development. Some substances that have a beneficial effect on one occasion (such as a dental x…

2 minute read

Reptiles

The class Reptilia includes over 6,000 species grouped into four orders: the turtles (Chelonia), the snakes and lizards (Squamata), the crocodiles and alligators (Crocodilia), and the tuataras (Sphenodonta). Other, now extinct, reptilian orders included Earth's largest terrestrial animals, and some enormous marine creatures. The fishlike ichthyosaurs were large marine reptiles, as were the …

2 minute read

Republicanism in Latin America - Bibliography

Republicanism advocates a government headed by commoners rather than a hereditary monarchy. It is similar to democracy in that it favors a representative form of government that receives its legitimacy from the people it rules, but democracy in theory also champions political, social, and economic equality. All of the Latin American countries (as well as the United States) are established as repub…

8 minute read

Republicanism - Republic - Roman Republicanism, Medieval Republicanism, Renaissance Italian Republicanism, English Republicanism, Modern Republicanism, Bibliography

The term republic derives from the Latin phrase res publica ("matter" or "thing of the people"). Most generally, the word refers to any political regime in which no king or hereditary dynasty rules over subjects in a state of submission or servility. A republic is thus populated by "citizens" who enjoy some manner of political and legal rights to govern th…

2 minute read

Resins - Natural Resins, Thermosetting Resins - Synthetic resins, Thermoplastic resins

Historically, the term resin has been applied to a group of substances obtained as gums from trees or manufactured synthetically. Strictly speaking, however, resins are complex mixtures, whereas gums are compounds that can be represented by a chemical formula. The word gum was originally applied to any soft sticky product derived from trees; for example, the latex obtained from Hevea trees, which …

4 minute read

Resistance and Accommodation - Statement Of Frederick Law Olmsted, Having Visited Virginia, United States, The Effects Of Culture And Consciousness

Until recently, definitions of accommodation and resistance, particularly in relation to slavery and colonialism, have reproduced the stark decisions that faced the Melians more than two thousand years ago. To accommodate was to agree, however tacitly, with the existing order of things—to compromise, to oblige, to be pliable. Accommodation entailed the avoidance of further conflict, as in a…

4 minute read

Resonance

There are many instances in which we want to add energy to the motion of an object which is oscillating. In order for this transfer to be efficient, the oscillation and the source of new energy have to be "matched" in a very specific way. When this match occurs, we say that the oscillation and source are in resonance. A simple example of an oscillation that we have all seen is that o…

6 minute read

Natural Resources

Natural resources, unlike man-made resources, exist independently of human labor. These resources are, however, not unlimited and must be used with care. Some natural resources are called "fund resources" because they can be exhausted through use, like the burning of fossil fuels. Other fund resources such as metals can be dissipated or wasted if they are discarded instead of being r…

1 minute read

Cellular Respiration

Cellular respiration is the process by which a living cell produces adenosine triphosphate (ATP), carbon dioxide, and water from oxygen and organic fuel. It is a catabolic pathway that involves the release of stored energy from the break down of complex molecules to more simple ones. No single chemical reaction covers the entire process of cellular respiration. Instead it is the cumulative functio…

2 minute read

Respirator - Positive Pressure Ventilators, Negative Pressure Ventilators

A respirator is a means to provide needed oxygen to a patient, to infuse medication directly into the lungs, or to provide the power to breathe to someone who is unable to do so on his own. A respirator may be needed following a serious trauma that interferes with the individual's breathing or for a person who has contracted a disease such as poliomyelitis that has affected the nerves that …

1 minute read

Respiratory Diseases - Treatments, Bronchial Diseases, Bronchodilators, Tuberculosis, Pneumonia, Cancer, Miscellaneous Disorders - flu Colds and allergies

There are many different types of respiratory diseases that interfere with the vital process of breathing. Respiratory obstructions arising from diseases can occur in the nasal area, the regions of the throat and windpipe (upper respiratory system), or in the bronchial tubes and lungs (lower respiratory system). The common cold and allergic reactions to airborne pollens block the nasal passages by…

4 minute read

Respiratory System - Respiration In Insects, Respiratory System Of Fish, Respiration In Terrestrial Vertebrates, Human Respiratory System - Respiration in the earthworm

Aerobic organisms take in oxygen from the external environment and release carbon dioxide in a process known as respiration. At the most basic level, this exchange of gases takes place in cells and involves the release of energy from food materials by oxidation. Carbon dioxide is produced as a waste product of these oxidation reactions. The gas exchange in cells is called cellular respiration. In …

1 minute read

Responses in Africa and the Middle East - Different Understandings, Alternative Genealogies, Afro-arab Discourses, Bibliography

"All vogue words tend to share a similar fate," observes Zygmunt Bauman. "The more experiences they pretend to make apparent, the more they themselves become opaque. The more numerous are the orthodox truths they elbow out and supplant, the faster they turn into no-questions-asked canons" (p. 1). Bauman's specific subject was globalization, but he may well have b…

1 minute read

Responsibility - The First Condition: Freedom, The Second Condition: Mentality, Bibliography

The term responsibility has several related meanings. First, there is causal responsibility. To say that the short circuit is responsible for the fire is simply to say that the short circuit caused the fire. Second, there is personal responsibility. This comes in two forms, prospective and retrospective. To say that the lifeguard is responsible for the swimmers' safety is to say that the li…

2 minute read

Restoration Ecology - Difficulties Of Ecological Restoration, Restoration, Rehabilitation, And Replacement, Some Successful Examples Of Restoration Ecology

Restoration ecology refers to activities undertaken to increase populations of an endangered species or to manage or reconstruct a threatened ecosystem. Ecological restoration is an extremely difficult and expensive endeavor, and only attempted when the population of an endangered species is considered too small to be self-maintaining or the area of a threatened ecosystem is not large enough to al…

1 minute read

Retrograde Motion

Retrograde motion means "moving backward," and describes the loop or Z-shaped path that planets farther from the Sun than Earth appear to trace in the sky over Figure 1. Illustration by Hans & Cassidy. Courtesy of Gale Group. Figure 2. Illustration by Hans & Cassidy. Courtesy of Gale Group. the course of a few months. All the visible planets farther from…

2 minute read

Retrovirus

Retroviruses are spherical viruses that contain ribonucleic acid (RNA) as their genetic material. In contrast, most other organisms, including humans, store their genetic information in the form of deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA). Retroviruses are of concern to humans because of their disease causing ability. Examples of retroviruses include human T cell leukemia virus, which causes cancer in humans, …

4 minute read