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  • rebab (musical instrument)
    stringed instrument of the fiddle family prominent in Arab and Persian art music. It is a spike fiddle; i.e., its small, round or cylindrical body appears skewered by the neck, which forms a “foot” that the instrument rests on when played. Measuring about 30 inches (76 cm) from neck to foot, it has a membrane belly and, commonly, two to four strings tuned in fourth...
  • Rebagliati, Ross (Canadian snowboarder)
    ...honoured a cease-fire for the duration of the Games. Two new sports, curling and snowboarding, were added to the Winter Olympic program. Snowboarding made a somewhat ignominious debut when Canadian Ross Rebagliati, the sport’s first Olympic gold medalist, tested positive for marijuana use; he was promptly disqualified. A day later the decision was overturned on appeal, and Rebagliati was...
  • Rebaptizer (Protestantism)
    (from Greek ana, “again”)member of a fringe, or radical, movement of the Protestant Reformation and spiritual ancestor of modern Baptists, Mennonites, and Quakers. The movement’s most distinctive tenet was adult baptism. In its first generation, ...
  • rebate (business)
    retroactive refund or credit given to a buyer after he has paid the full list price for a product or for a service such as transportation. Rebating was a common pricing tactic during the 19th century and was often used by large industrialists to preserve or extend their power by undercutting competition. Important customers were granted refunds in secret so that less influential buyers would know...
  • Rebatet, Lucien (French author)
    ...Republican government in Spain. Drieu’s example was followed by younger men, such as Robert Brasillach, author of Notre Avant-guerre (1941; “Our Prewar”), and Lucien Rebatet, who, like Brasillach, contributed during the Occupation to the virulently anti-Semitic newspaper Je Suis Partout....
  • rebato (clothing)
    wide, often lace-edged collar wired to stand up at the back of the head, worn by both men and women in the 16th and early 17th centuries. An example may be found in some of the portraits of Queen Elizabeth I, which often show her with a lace or gauze rabato rising up at the back of the neck in the shape of wings....
  • rebbe (religious leader)
    ...emphasizing prayer and personal religious devotion here and now. The major innovation that Hasidism introduced into Jewish religious life was the charismatic leader, the rebbe, who served as teacher, confessor, wonder-worker, God’s vicar on earth, and, occasionally, atoning sacrifice. The earliest rebbes were.....
  • rebec (musical instrument)
    bowed, stringed musical instrument of European medieval and early Renaissance music. It was originally called a rubebe, developed about the 11th century from the similar Arab rabāb, and was carried to Spain with Muslim culture. Like the rabāb, the rebec had a shallow, pear-shaped body, but on the rebec the rabāb’s skin bell...
  • Rebecca (film by Hitchcock [1940])
    Other Nominees...
  • Rebecca (novel by du Maurier)
    English novelist and playwright, daughter of actor-manager Sir Gerald du Maurier, best known for her novel Rebecca (1938)....
  • Rebecca, Lady (Powhatan princess)
    Powhatan Indian woman who fostered peace between English colonists and Native Americans by befriending the settlers at the Jamestown Colony in Virginia and eventually marrying one of them....
  • Rebecca Riots (United Kingdom [1839-44])
    disturbances that occurred briefly in 1839 and with greater violence from 1842 to 1844 in southwestern Wales. The rioting was in protest against charges at the tollgates on the public roads, but the attacks were symptomatic of a much wider disaffection caused by agrarian distress, increased tithe charges, and the Poor Law Amendment Act of 1834....
  • rebeck (musical instrument)
    bowed, stringed musical instrument of European medieval and early Renaissance music. It was originally called a rubebe, developed about the 11th century from the similar Arab rabāb, and was carried to Spain with Muslim culture. Like the rabāb, the rebec had a shallow, pear-shaped body, but on the rebec the rabāb’s skin bell...
  • Rebecque, Henri-Benjamin Constant de (French author)
    Franco-Swiss novelist and political writer, the author of Adolphe, a forerunner of the modern psychological novel....
  • “Rebel Barons, Cycle of the” (French epic poem)
    ...of the epic, a wife called Guibourg and a nephew, Vivien, and who became a monk in 806). Guibourg, the most faithful of wives, and the noble Vivien take prominent roles in the epic. The so-called Cycle of the Revolted Knights groups those poems that tell of revolts of feudal subjects against the emperor (Charlemagne or, more usually, his son, Louis). The Cycle of the King consists of the......
  • Rebel Earl, The (Irish noble)
    Irish Roman Catholic nobleman who led one of the three major Irish rebellions against English rule under Queen Elizabeth I....
  • Rebel Generation, The (work by Ammers-Küller)
    ...Huysten’s Career), deal with life in and around the theatre and draw on her experiences as a dramatist in London from 1912 to 1921. Her most successful novel, De opstandigen (1925; The Rebel Generation), presents the struggle of three generations of women in the Coornvelt family for equality with men and against the strictures of their Calvinist environment....
  • Rebel, The (work by Camus)
    ...idea of moral and metaphysical “rebellion.” He contrasted this latter ideal with politico-historical revolution in a second long essay, L’Homme révolté (1951; The Rebel), which provoked bitter antagonism among Marxist critics and such near-Marxist theoreticians as Jean-Paul Sartre. His other major literary works are the technically brilliant nove...
  • Rebel Without a Cause (film by Ray [1955])
    ...typical of his early work in its exploration of the themes of violence and youthful rebellion. Ray’s film In a Lonely Place (1950) was an acclaimed commentary on Hollywood society, while Rebel Without a Cause (1955) is an account of middle-class juvenile delinquency. The latter film starred James Dean, and critics praised Ray for his compassionate portrait of a teenager ign...
  • “rebelión de las masas, La” (work by Ortega y Gasset)
    ...the Institute of Humanities in Madrid. Of his other works, the best known are España invertebrada (1922; Invertebrate Spain) and La rebelión de las masas (1929; The Revolt of the Masses), in which he characterized 20th-century society as dominated by masses of mediocre and indistinguishable individuals, who he proposed should surrender social leadership...
  • “Rebellion der Gehenkten, Die” (work by Traven)
    ...(1931; The Carreta), Regierung (1931; Government), Der Marsch ins Reich der Caoba (1933; March to the Monteria), Die Rebellion der Gehenkten (1936; The Rebellion of the Hanged), and Ein General kommt aus dem Dschungel (1940; General from the Jungle)....
  • Rebellion in the Backlands (work by Cunha)
    ...into the traditions, turmoil, and changing nature of Brazilian society. Euclides da Cunha, in his masterful historical narrative, Os Sertões (1902; Rebellion in the Backlands), described a bloody struggle between government forces and a group of messianic separatists in the untamed interior of Bahia state; against this tragic backdrop,......
  • Rebellion of the Hanged, The (work by Traven)
    ...(1931; The Carreta), Regierung (1931; Government), Der Marsch ins Reich der Caoba (1933; March to the Monteria), Die Rebellion der Gehenkten (1936; The Rebellion of the Hanged), and Ein General kommt aus dem Dschungel (1940; General from the Jungle)....
  • Rebelo, Jorge (Mozambican poet, lawyer, and journalist)
    African poet, lawyer, and journalist....
  • Rebel’s Refuge (Florida, United States)
    town, Hamilton county, northern Florida, U.S. It lies on the north bank of the Suwannee River at the site of some mineral springs, about 65 miles (105 km) west of Jacksonville. The Timucua peoples considered the springs sacred, and warring tribes went there to enjoy the waters and put aside their differences. Later, the ...
  • Rebéniste (art)
    any of the artists and critics who championed the sovereignty of colour over design and drawing in the “quarrel” of colour versus drawing that broke out in the French Royal Academy of Painting and Sculpture in Paris in 1671 (see also Poussinist). The dispute raged for many years before the Rubenists emerged victorious. The aim of painting, they maintained, i...
  • Reber, Grote (American astronomer)
    American astronomer and radio engineer who built the first radio telescope and was largely responsible for the early development of radio astronomy, which opened an entirely new research front in the study of the universe....
  • rebetika (Greek music)
    ...tanbur, the bouzouki was traditionally used for dancing and entertainment at social gatherings. It became a featured instrument in rebetika, a type of improvised early 20th-century music associated with the Greek underworld. Since gaining a wider audience, the bouzouki has become the major popular-music instrument of....
  • Rebild Hills (hills, Denmark)
    ...Vildmose (marsh). Rare clovers, orchids, and blue anemones grow in the Rold Forest, the remnant of a spruce forest that once covered most of the region. North of Rold Forest the heather-covered Rebild Hills, bought by Danish Americans in 1911 and donated to Denmark (1912) as a national park, are the site of annual Danish-American July 4th celebrations....
  • rebirth (religion)
    “Rebirth” has often been identified with a definite, temporally datable form of “conversion,” especially in the pietistic and revival type of Christianity. In the history of Christian piety a line of prominent personalities, most notably Paul and Augustine, experienced their rebirth in the form of a temporally datable and also locally ascertainable conversion event.......
  • Rebka, Glen A. (American physicist)
    ...“up” loses energy and its frequency is shifted toward the red (longer wavelengths). These shifts are very small but have been detected by the American physicists Robert V. Pound and Glen A. Rebka....
  • Rebmann, Johannes (German explorer and missionary)
    German missionary and explorer, the first European to penetrate Africa from its Indian Ocean coast. Rebmann and his associate, Johann Ludwig Krapf, also were the discoverers of Kilimanjaro and Mt. Kenya and paved the way for the great East African explorations of the Britons Sir Richard Burton, John Hanning Speke, and David Livingstone....
  • reboil (technology)
    Two problems that may arise toward the working end of the glassmaking process are known as devitrification and reboil. Devitrification, or loss of the glassy state, entails the development of crystals when the molten glass happens to be subjected to temperatures within the shaded region of Figure 1. The most serious threat is the formation of quartz crystals in the throat and forehearth......
  • rebolera
    ...bull’s charge; these maneuvers were invented, respectively, by the Mexican Rodolfo Gaona and by the Spaniard Manuel Jiménez, known as “Chicuelo.” The rebolera is a finishing flourish to the passes in which the cape is swirled around the bullfighter’s waist like a dancer’s dress. If beautifully executed, a variatio...
  • Rebora, Roberto (Italian poet)
    ...Luciano Erba—include Erba himself and the poet and filmmaker Nelo Risi, both of them Milanese, as well as the Italian Swiss Giorgio Orelli. All three are from northern Italy and, along with Roberto Rebora and others, have been seen as the continuers of a hypothetical linea lombarda (“Lombard line”) of sober moral realism that,......
  • Rebound (play by Stewart)
    ...witty repartee of its members, Dorothy Parker, Robert Benchley, and others. In 1928 he made his New York City acting debut as Nick Potter in Holiday and subsequently wrote his first play, Rebound, in which he also appeared (1930)....
  • rebound (sports)
    Both teams attempting to gain possession of the ball after any try for a basket that is unsuccessful, but the ball does not go out-of-bounds and remains in play....
  • rebound sputtering (physics)
    ...are most common. The latter avoid unwanted chemical interactions between the ions of the beam and the substrate. Sputtering results from several interaction mechanisms. Conceptually, the simplest is rebound sputtering, in which an incident ion strikes an atom on the surface, causing it to recoil into the target. The recoiling atom promptly collides with a neighbouring atom in the target,......
  • rebound tumbling (tumbling equipment)
    an elevated, resilient webbed bed or canvas sheet supported by springs in a metal frame and used as a springboard for tumbling. Trampolining, or rebound tumbling, is an individual sport of acrobatic movements performed after rebounding into the air from the trampoline....
  • Rebozo, Bebe (American banker)
    American banker who for over 40 years was Richard Nixon’s best friend and confidant, remaining loyal throughout the scandal that brought down Nixon’s presidency (b. Nov. 17, 1912, Tampa, Fla.--d. May 8, 1998, Miami, Fla.)....
  • Rebozo, Charles Gregory (American banker)
    American banker who for over 40 years was Richard Nixon’s best friend and confidant, remaining loyal throughout the scandal that brought down Nixon’s presidency (b. Nov. 17, 1912, Tampa, Fla.--d. May 8, 1998, Miami, Fla.)....
  • Rebreanu, Liviu (Romanian author)
    In the period of national unity in Romania following World War I, the novel began to compete with lyric poetry. Writers took inspiration from society or recent events, principally the war. Liviu Rebreanu wrote of the peasants’ need for land and independence and in Răscoala (1932; The Uprising) described the 1907 peasant uprising in Moldavia and Walachia. His best...
  • rebuilding period (psychology)
    The buoyed-up state of the disaster community can last only a short time. Tasks that call for intense effort within a brief time span are completed, and the slow and discouraging work of rebuilding confronts the community. Because the old community cleavages begin to reappear, and because tensions created and repressed during the rescue phase are now released, this period has been called the......
  • rebus (writing principle)
    representation of a word or syllable by a picture of an object the name of which resembles in sound the represented word or syllable. Several rebuses may be combined—in a single device or successively—to make a phrase or sentence. Literary rebuses use letters, numbers, musical notes, or specially placed words to make sentences. Complex rebuses combine pictures and letters. Rebuses m...
  • rebus principle (writing principle)
    representation of a word or syllable by a picture of an object the name of which resembles in sound the represented word or syllable. Several rebuses may be combined—in a single device or successively—to make a phrase or sentence. Literary rebuses use letters, numbers, musical notes, or specially placed words to make sentences. Complex rebuses combine pictures and letters. Rebuses m...
  • rebus sic stantibus (law principle)
    The concept of rebus sic stantibus (Latin: “things standing thus”) stipulates that, where there has been a fundamental change of circumstances, a party may withdraw from or terminate the treaty in question. An obvious example would be one in which a relevant island has become submerged. A fundamental change of circumstances, however, is not......
  • RecA (enzyme)
    ...which the segment between the two nicks has been replaced. The enzymes involved in recombination have been characterized best in the prokaryote E. coli. A key enzyme is RecA, which catalyzes the strand invasion process. RecA coats single-stranded DNA and facilitates its pairing with a double-stranded DNA molecule containing the same sequence, which produces a loop....
  • recall (business)
    There are many categories of returned products. A few are subjects of product recalls, meaning that a safety defect or hazard has been discovered. These products are removed from the shelves, and both retailers and consumers attempt to return them to the manufacturer. This is a form of reverse distribution, with goods moving in the opposite direction of their usual flow. Eventually, the......
  • recall (memory)
    in psychology, the act of retrieving information or events from the past while lacking a specific cue to help in retrieving the information. A person employs recall, for example, when reminiscing about a vacation or reciting a poem after hearing its title. Most students would rather take a multiple-choice test, which utilizes recognition memory, than an essay test, which employs...
  • recall (elections)
    Like most populist innovations, the practice of recalling officeholders is an attempt to minimize the influence of political parties on representatives. Widely adopted in the United States, the recall is designed to ensure that an elected official will act in the interests of his constituency rather than in the interests of his political party or according to his own conscience. The actual......
  • Récamier, Jeanne-Françoise Julie-Adélaïde, dame de (French patroness)
    French hostess of great charm and wit whose salon attracted most of the important political and literary figures of early 19th-century Paris....
  • Récamier, Julie, dame de (French patroness)
    French hostess of great charm and wit whose salon attracted most of the important political and literary figures of early 19th-century Paris....
  • Récamier, Madame de (French patroness)
    French hostess of great charm and wit whose salon attracted most of the important political and literary figures of early 19th-century Paris....
  • recapitulation (music)
    The basic elements of sonata form are three: exposition, development, and recapitulation, in which the musical subject matter is stated, explored or expanded, and restated. There may also be an introduction, usually in slow tempo, and a coda, or tailpiece, but these optional sections do not affect the basic structure. Although sonata form is sometimes called first-movement form, the first......
  • recapitulation theory (biology)
    postulation, by Ernst Haeckel in 1866, that ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny—i.e., the development of the animal embryo and young traces the evolutionary development of the species. The theory was influential and much-popularized earlier but has been of little significance in elucidating either evolution or embryonic growth. ...
  • Recared (Visigoth king)
    Recognizing that the majority of the people adhered to the Catholic faith, Reccared (586–601) repudiated his father’s religion and announced his conversion to Catholicism. As the Gothic nobles and bishops followed his lead, a principal obstacle to the assimilation of Visigoths and Hispano-Romans was lifted. Thereafter, the Hispano-Romans, no longer expecting deliverance by Byzantium,...
  • RecBC (protein)
    Another protein, known as RecBC, is important for the recombination process. Functioning at free ends of DNA, RecBC catalyzes an unwinding-rewinding reaction as it traverses the length of the molecule. Since unwinding is faster than rewinding, a loop is produced behind the enzyme that facilitates subsequent pairing with another DNA molecule. A number of other proteins are also important for......
  • Reccared (Visigoth king)
    Recognizing that the majority of the people adhered to the Catholic faith, Reccared (586–601) repudiated his father’s religion and announced his conversion to Catholicism. As the Gothic nobles and bishops followed his lead, a principal obstacle to the assimilation of Visigoths and Hispano-Romans was lifted. Thereafter, the Hispano-Romans, no longer expecting deliverance by Byzantium,...
  • Recceswinth (Visigoth king)
    Visigothic law code that formed the basis of medieval Spanish law. It was promulgated in 654 by King Recceswinth and was revised in 681 and 693. Although called Visigothic, the code was in Latin and owed much to Roman tradition....
  • Received Pronunciation (British standard speech)
    British Received Pronunciation (RP), by definition, the usual speech of educated people living in London and southeastern England, is one of the many forms of standard speech. Other pronunciations, although not standard, are entirely acceptable in their own right on conversational levels....
  • received text (document)
    ...of learning was in reality a practical movement to enlist the heritage of classical antiquity in the service of the new Christian humanism. In order to make them usable (i.e., readable), texts were corrected freely and often arbitrarily by scholars, copyists, and readers (the three categories being in fact hardly distinguishable). At its best, as seen in the activities of a scholar......
  • receiver (electronics)
    ...the communication process extant nor is it universally accepted. As originally conceived, the model contained five elements—an information source, a transmitter, a channel of transmission, a receiver, and a destination—all arranged in linear order. Messages (electronic messages, initially) were supposed to travel along this path, to be changed into electric energy by the......
  • receiver tube (instrument)
    Picture tubes...
  • receivership (law)
    in law, the judicial appointment of a person, a receiver, to collect and conserve certain assets and to make distributions in accordance with judicial authorization. A receivership is properly an intermediate or incidental step toward some other principal objective and not generally the object of litigation. The principal objective may be the preservation of the assets pending a decision as to who...
  • receiving antenna (electronics)
    ...specifically to transmit or to receive, although these functions may be performed by the same antenna. A transmitting antenna, in general, must be able to handle much more electrical energy than a receiving antenna. An antenna also may be designed to transmit at specific frequencies. In the United States, amplitude modulation (AM) radio broadcasting, for instance, is done at frequencies......
  • recension (textual criticism)
    The operation of recension is the reconstructing of the earliest form or forms of the text that can be inferred from the surviving evidence. Such evidence may be internal or external. Internal evidence consists of all extant copies or editions of the text, together with versions in other languages, citations in other authors, and other sources not belonging to the main textual tradition. These......
  • Recent Bronze culture (anthropology)
    ...minor. Although the terminology is vexed for this transition period, varying from “sub-Apennine” to “Recent Bronze,” “Final Bronze,” and, most frequently, “Proto-Villanovan,” the social and economic changes are clear. There was an increase in population and in overall wealth, a tendency to have larger, permanent settlements, an expansion o...
  • Recent Economic Changes (work by Wells)
    Wells’s most important economic works include Reports of the Special Commissioner of the Revenue (1866–69), which contains an analysis of indirect taxation, Recent Economic Changes (1889), and the posthumous Theory and Practice of Taxation (1900). The last two demonstrate his ability as an empirical investigator. Wells was also one of the......
  • Recent Epoch (geology)
    younger of the two epochs that constitute the Quaternary Period and the latest interval of geologic time, covering approximately the last 12,000 years of the Earth’s history (see ). The sediments of the Holocene, both continental and marine, cover the largest area of the globe of any epoch in the geologic record, but the Holocene is unique because it is coincident with the late and post-Sto...
  • Recent phase (geology)
    younger of the two epochs that constitute the Quaternary Period and the latest interval of geologic time, covering approximately the last 12,000 years of the Earth’s history (see ). The sediments of the Holocene, both continental and marine, cover the largest area of the globe of any epoch in the geologic record, but the Holocene is unique because it is coincident with the late and post-Sto...
  • Recent Social Trends in the United States (work by Odum)
    ...Society (1947), and American Sociology (1951). At President Herbert Hoover’s request, Odum and William Fielding Ogburn edited the report Recent Social Trends in the United States, 2 vol. (1933), for the President’s Research Committee on Social Trends....
  • Recent Trends in New Zealand Poetry (work by Baxter)
    ...he first published Beyond the Palisade (1944), which displayed youthful promise. Blow, Wind of Fruitfulness (1948), superficially a less attractive collection, was more profound. Recent Trends in New Zealand Poetry (1951) was his first critical work, its judgments revealing a maturity beyond his years. Later verse collections include The Fallen House (1953), the......
  • receptacle (plant anatomy)
    The receptacle is the axis (stem) to which the floral organs are attached. Floral organs are attached either in a low continuous spiral, as is common among primitive angiosperms, or in alternating successive whorls, as is found among most angiosperms....
  • receptaculum seminis (anatomy)
    ...directly to the female but rather initiates courtship rituals in which the female is induced to accept the gelatinous sperm capsule (spermatophore). During mating the sperm are transferred to a sac (spermatheca) within the female reproductive system. The eggs are fertilized as they are laid. Mating in sunspiders is more active, occurring at dusk or during the night. During courting the male......
  • reception (legal systems)
    The foreign inspiration of a number of legal rules or institutions is a well-known phenomenon, sometimes so all-embracing that one speaks of “reception”—reception, for instance, of the English common law in the United States, Canada, Australia, India, and Nigeria; reception of French law in French-speaking Africa, Madagascar, Egypt, and Indochina; reception of Swiss law in......
  • receptive field (physiology)
    Records from single optic nerve fibres of the frog and from the ganglion cell of the mammalian retina indicated three types of response. In the frog there were fibres that gave a discharge when a light was switched on the “on-fibres.” Another group, the “off-fibres,” remained inactive during illumination of the retina but gave a powerful discharge when the light was......
  • receptor (information processing)
    ...with the contents of the short-term memory. The memory stores symbolic expressions, including those that represent composite information processes, called programs. The two other components, the receptor and the effector, are input and output mechanisms whose functions are, respectively, to receive symbolic expressions or stimuli from the external environment for manipulation by the......
  • receptor (nerve ending)
    in biology, a specialized cell or group of cells that translates a certain type of stimulus, received from the environment or from within the organism, into nerve impulses that aid the organism in effecting future behavioral or physiological changes....
  • receptor (cellular binding site)
    Receptors are protein molecules that recognize and respond to the body’s own (endogenous) chemical messengers, such as hormones or neurotransmitters. Drug molecules may combine with receptors to initiate a series of physiological and biochemical changes. Receptor-mediated drug effects involve two distinct processes: binding, which is the formation of the drug-receptor complex, and receptor....
  • receptor potential (physiology)
    ...designed to respond to that stimulus, then the energy of the stimulus (e.g., mechanical, chemical, light) is transduced, or transformed, into an electrical response. This response is called the receptor potential, a type of local potential that, when it reaches high enough amplitude, generates the nerve impulse. (Another type of local potential is the postsynaptic potential, which......
  • receptor protein (cellular binding site)
    Receptors are protein molecules that recognize and respond to the body’s own (endogenous) chemical messengers, such as hormones or neurotransmitters. Drug molecules may combine with receptors to initiate a series of physiological and biochemical changes. Receptor-mediated drug effects involve two distinct processes: binding, which is the formation of the drug-receptor complex, and receptor....
  • receptor site (biochemistry)
    ...hormones or neurotransmitters. Drug molecules may combine with receptors to initiate a series of physiological and biochemical changes. Receptor-mediated drug effects involve two distinct processes: binding, which is the formation of the drug-receptor complex, and receptor activation, which moderates the effect. The term affinity describes the tendency of a drug to bind to a......
  • receptor–effector coupling (physiology)
    ...processes must take place before the drug effect is measurable. Various mechanisms are known to be involved in the processes between receptor activation and the cellular response (also called receptor-effector coupling). Among the most important ones are the following: (1) direct control of ion channels in the cell membrane, (2) regulation of cellular activity by way of intracellular......
  • recession (economics)
    in economics, a downward trend in the business cycle characterized by a decline in production and employment, which in turn causes the incomes and spending of households to decline. Even though not all households and businesses experience actual declines in income, their expectations about the future become less certain during a recession and cause them to delay making large pur...
  • recession of galaxies (astronomy)
    The second method for galactic distance measurements makes use of the observation that the distances to galaxies generally correlate with the speeds with which those galaxies are receding from Earth (as determined from the Doppler shift in the wavelengths of their emitted light (see redshift). This correlation is expressed in the Hubble law:......
  • recession velocity (physics)
    It was noted earlier that the galaxies in the Virgo cluster had an average recession velocity v (as measured by their redshift) of roughly 1,000 km/sec with respect to the Local Group. If the distance r to the Virgo cluster is 5 × 107 light-years and if the Virgo galaxies can be assumed to be far enough away to partake in the general Hubble flow, then the......
  • Recessional (work by Kipling)
    ...of common soldiers and sailors it broke new ground. But balladry, music-hall song, and popular hymnology provide its unassuming basis; and even at its most serious—as in Recessional (1897) and similar pieces in which Kipling addressed himself to his fellow countrymen in times of crisis—the effect is rhetorical rather than imaginative....
  • recessional moraine (geology)
    A recessional moraine consists of a secondary terminal moraine deposited during a temporary glacial standstill. Such deposits reveal the history of glacial retreats along the valley; in some instances 10 or more recessional moraines are present in a given valley, and the ages of growing trees or other sources of dates provide a chronology of glacial movements....
  • recessive trait (genetics)
    in genetics, the failure of one of a pair of genes (alleles) present in an individual to express itself in an observable manner because of the greater influence, or dominance, of its opposite-acting partner. Both alleles affect the same inherited characteristic, but the presence of the recessive gene cannot be determined by observation of the organism; i.e., although present in the organis...
  • recessiveness (genetics)
    in genetics, the failure of one of a pair of genes (alleles) present in an individual to express itself in an observable manner because of the greater influence, or dominance, of its opposite-acting partner. Both alleles affect the same inherited characteristic, but the presence of the recessive gene cannot be determined by observation of the organism; i.e., although present in the organis...
  • Rechabite (Israelite sect)
    member of a conservative, ascetic Israelite sect that was named for Rechab, the father of Jehonadab. Jehonadab was an ally of Jehu, a 9th-century-bc king of Israel, and a zealous antagonist against the worshippers of Baal, a Canaanite fertility deity. Though of obscure origin, the Rechabites apparently were related to the Kenites, according to I Chron. 2:55, a tribe eventually absorb...
  • recharge, groundwater (hydrology)
    The water found in groundwater bodies is replenished by drainage through the soil, which is often a slow process. This drainage is referred to as groundwater recharge. Rates of groundwater recharge are greatest when rainfall inputs to the soil exceed evapotranspiration losses. When the water table is deep underground, the water of the aquifer may be exceedingly old, possibly resulting from a......
  • rechargeable battery
    In contrast to primary cells, which are discharged once and then discarded, storage batteries can be supplied with direct current (DC) of the correct polarity and recharged to or near their original energy content and power capability—i.e., they can repeatedly store electrical energy. In discharging, the difference in electrical potential (voltage) of a battery’s electrodes causes......
  • Rechendorfer, Joseph (inventor)
    ...was named rubber in 1770 by the English chemist Joseph Priestley, because it was used to rub out marks. The first patent on an integral pencil and eraser was issued in the United States to Joseph Rechendorfer of New York City on March 30, 1858....
  • “Recherche de la vérité, De la” (work by Malebranche)
    Malebranche’s principal work is De la recherche de la vérité, 3 vol. (1674–75; Search After Truth). Criticism of its theology by others led him to amplify his views in Traité de la nature et de la grâce (1680; Treatise of Nature and Grace). His Entretiens sur la métaphysique et sur la religion (1688; “Dialog...
  • Recherches chimiques sur la végétation (work by Saussure)
    ...Jean Senebier, and Jan Ingenhousz. In 1797 he published three articles on carbonic acid and its formation in plant tissues in the Annales de chimie (“Annals of Chemistry”). In Recherches chimiques sur la végétation (1804; “Chemical Research on Vegetation”), Saussure proved Steven Hales’s theory that plants absorb water and carbon di...
  • Recherches de la France (work by Pasquier)
    French lawyer and man of letters who is known for his Recherches de la France, 10 vol. (1560–1621), which is not only encyclopaedic but also an important work of historical scholarship....
  • Recherches sur les poissons fossiles (work by Agassiz)
    ...had been critically studied. As early as 1829 Agassiz planned a comprehensive and critical study of these fossils and spent much time gathering material wherever possible. His epoch-making work, Recherches sur les poissons fossiles, appeared in parts from 1833 to 1843. In it, the number of named fossil fishes was raised to more than 1,700, and the ancient seas were made to live again......
  • “Recherches sur les principes mathématiques de la théorie des richesses” (work by Cournot)
    ...to the treatment of economics. His main work in economics is Recherches sur les principes mathématiques de la théorie des richesses (1838; Researches into the Mathematical Principles of the Theory of Wealth). His primary concern was the analysis of partial market equilibrium, which he based on the assumption that participants in......
  • Réchicourt (France)
    ...trade route connecting the Paris Basin with the industrial regions of Alsace-Lorraine. The improvements included major works on either side of the Vosges summit level, replacing 23 old locks. At Réchicourt a new lock with a lift of 3212 feet bypasses six locks and a winding section of the old canal; on the other side of the summit a new canal section......
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