Polio Vaccine

Preparation of poliomyelitis virus given to prevent infection with the disease. The virus is grown in kidney tissue from rhesus monkeys. There are two types of vaccine: one with killed virus, which is injected, and the other with live, attenuated (weakened) virus, which is given orally. Vaccines, whether killed or live, must contain strains of all of the three poliovirus

External Auditory Canal

Also called  External Auditory Meatus, or External Acoustic Meatus,   passageway that leads from the outside of the head to the tympanic membrane, or eardrum membrane, of each ear. The structure of the external auditory canal is the same in all mammals. In appearance it is a slightly curved tube that extends inward from the floor of the auricle, or protruding portion of the outer ear, and ends blindly at the eardrum membrane, which separates

Aesthetics

Thomas Munro, Oriental Aesthetics (1965), includes a comparison of Eastern and Western attitudes and beliefs (with many bibliographic notes). Other informative studies are Indian Aesthetics and Art Activity (1968); Mai-Mai Sze, The Tao of Painting, 2nd ed. with corrections, 2 vol. (1963); and Makoto Ueda, Literary and Art Theories in Japan (1967, reissued 1991).

K.c.m.g.

Knight commander of St. Michael and St. George, member of the second highest rank of a British order of knighthood. See Saint Michael and Saint George, The Most Distinguished Order of.

Vieuxtemps, Henry

As a prodigy, Vieuxtemps was taken by his father on a number of European tours, during which he studied violin with Charles de Bériot in Brussels (1829–31), harmony with Simon Sechter in Vienna (1833–34), and composition with

Switzerland, Remaining challenges

At the end of the 20th century, growing doubts about Switzerland's past and future emerged. Many Swiss questioned the country's traditional “bunker mentality” in a Europe at peace and with open borders. Particularly troubling for Switzerland was an international debate during the 1990s about “dormant accounts”—assets left by foreign Jews in Swiss banks during the Nazi era

Francis, Sam

Francis studied medicine at the University of California at Berkeley in 1941–43 and began painting while in a hospital after being wounded in World War II. He painted his first abstract compositions in 1947. From 1950 to 1957 he lived and worked in Paris,

Carnivore, Natural history

The family Mustelidae contains a variety of animals unmatched by any other family in the Carnivora except the civets (Viverridae). The family includes the weasels, ferrets, mink (see photograph), marten, fisher, skunks (see photograph), wolverine (see photograph), otters (see photograph), badgers (see

Sculpture, Western, Romanesque

The term Romanesque—coined in 1818 —denotes in art the medieval synthesis of the widespread Roman architectural and artistic heritage and various regional influences, such as Teutonic, Scandinavian, Byzantine, and Muslim. Although derived primarily from the remains of a highly centralized imperial culture, the Romanesque flowered during a period of fragmented

Dulles, Allen W.

The younger brother of U.S. Secretary of State John Foster Dulles, Allen Dulles received an M.A. from Princeton in 1916 and then served in various diplomatic posts until 1922, when he was named chief