S Doradus

Variable supergiant star in the Large Magellanic Cloud (the latter is one of two galactic companions to the Milky Way Galaxy). S Doradus (and the Large Magellanic Cloud) is visible to viewers in the Southern Hemisphere in the constellation Dorado. It is one of the most luminous stars known, radiating almost 1,000,000 times as much energy as the Sun.

Bach Long Vi

Island of northern Vietnam in the Gulf of Tonkin, halfway between the mouth of the Red River (Song Hong) near Nam Dinh and the Chinese island of Hainan. The island is a plateau that rises abruptly to 190 ft (58 m) above sea level and is fringed with precipitous cliffs. Fishing resources are abundant in the surrounding gulf of the South China Sea.

Epistemology, Ancient

An excellent collection on skepticism is Miles Burnyeat (ed.), The Skeptical Tradition (1983). For Greek Skepticism in particular, see Charlotte L. Stough, Greek Skepticism: A Study in Epistemology (1969). The chief epistemological works of Plato are his Meno, Theaetetus, and Republic, especially Books V - VII. The views of Aristotle can be found in On the Soul, Metaphysics, Book IV, ch. 5 and 6, and Posterior Analytics, Book I, ch. 3. The locus classicus for ancient skepticism is R.G. Bury (trans.), Sextus Empiricus, 4 vol. (1933 - 49), in The Loeb Classical Library series. From among the voluminous writings of Augustine, see Against the Academicians, trans. by Mary Patricia Garvey (1942, reissued 1978).

T'u-ti

Pinyin �Tudi� (Chinese: �Place God�), type of Chinese god whose deification and functions are determined by local residents. The chief characteristic of a T'u-ti is the limitation of his jurisdiction to a single place - e.g., a bridge, a street, a temple, a public building, a private home, or a field. In the case of private homes, the T'u-ti is often identified with the god of riches. In all cases, a T'u-ti

Paleolithic Period

At sites dating from the Lower Paleolithic Period (about 2,500,000 to 200,000 years ago), simple pebble tools have been found in association with the remains of what may have been the earliest human ancestors. A somewhat more sophisticated Lower Paleolithic tradition,

Abelard, Peter

The outline of Abelard's career is well known, largely because he described so much of it in his famous Historia calamitatum (�History of My Troubles�). He was born the son of a knight in Brittany south of the Loire River. He sacrificed his inheritance and the prospect of a military career in order to study philosophy, particularly logic, in France. He provoked bitter quarrels

Wagner, Richard

For the next 15 years Wagner was not to present any further new works. Until 1858 he lived in Z�rich, composing, writing treatises, and conducting (he directed the London Philharmonic concerts in 1855). Having already studied the Siegfried legend and the Norse myths as a possible basis for an opera, and having written an operatic �poem,� Siegfrieds Tod (Siegfried's Death), in which he

Lake, Basins formed by glaciation

The basin-forming mechanism responsible for the most abundant production of lakes, particularly in the Northern Hemisphere, is glaciation. The Pleistocene glaciers, which seem to have affected every continent, were especially effective in North America, Europe, and Asia. The retreat of ice sheets produced basins through mechanical action and through the damming

Astrakhan

Formerly �Khadzhi-tarkhan, � city and administrative centre of Astrakhan oblast (province), southwestern Russia. Astrakhan city is situated in the delta of the Volga River, 60 miles (100 km) from the Caspian Sea. It lies on several islands on the left bank of the main, westernmost channel of the Volga. Astrakhan was formerly the capital of a Tatar khanate, a remnant of the Golden Horde, located on the higher