# started 2014-08-21T14:41:46Z "This is a list of characters in Ayn Rand's novel Atlas Shrugged."@en . "Animalia is an illustrated children's book by Graeme Base. It was originally published in 1986, followed by a tenth anniversary edition in 1996 and a 25th anniversary edition in 2012. Over three million copies have been sold. A special numbered and signed anniversary edition was also published in 1996 with an embossed gold jacket."@en . "Alain Connes (French: [al\u025B\u0303 k\u0254n]; born 1 April 1947) is a French mathematician, currently Professor at the Coll\u00E8ge de France, IH\u00C9S, The Ohio State University and Vanderbilt University."@en . "International Atomic Time (TAI, from the French name Temps atomique international) is a high-precision atomic coordinate time standard based on the notional passage of proper time on Earth's geoid. It is the basis for Coordinated Universal Time (UTC), which is used for civil timekeeping all over the Earth's surface, and for Terrestrial Time, which is used for astronomical calculations. Since 30 June 2012 when the last leap second was added, TAI has been exactly 35 seconds ahead of UTC."@en . "Allan Dwan (3 April 1885 \u2013 28 December 1981) was a pioneering Canadian-born American motion picture director, producer and screenwriter."@en . "The Academy Awards, commonly known as The Oscars, is an annual American awards ceremony honoring achievements in the film industry. Winners are awarded the statuette, officially the Academy Award of Merit, that is much better known by its nickname Oscar. The awards, first presented in 1929 at the Hollywood Roosevelt Hotel, are overseen by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences (AMPAS)."@en . "A (named a /\u02C8e\u026A/, plural aes) is the first letter and vowel in the ISO basic Latin alphabet. It is similar to the Ancient Greek letter alpha, from which it derives. The upper-case version consists of two more or less vertical lines, joined at the top, and crossed in their middle by a horizontal bar."@en . "The Academy Awards are the oldest awards ceremony for achievements in motion pictures. The Academy Award for Best Production Design recognizes achievement in art direction on a film. The category's original name was Best Art Direction, but was changed to its current name in 2012 for the 85th Academy Awards. This change resulted from the Art Director's branch of the Academy being renamed the Designer's branch. Since 1947, the award is shared with the Set Decorator(s)."@en . "Agricultural science is a broad multidisciplinary field of biology that encompasses the parts of exact, natural, economic and social sciences that are used in the practice and understanding of agriculture. (Veterinary science, but not animal science, is often excluded from the definition.)"@en . "Amoeboids are single-celled life-forms characterized by an irregular shape.\"Amoeboid\" and \"am\u0153ba\" are often used interchangeably even by biologists, and especially refer to a creature moving by using pseudopodia. Most references to \"amoebas\" or \"amoebae\" are to amoeboids in general rather than to the specific genus Amoeba. The genus Amoeba and amoeboids in general both derive their names from the ancient Greek word for change."@en . "Alchemy is an influential philosophical tradition whose practitioners have, from antiquity, claimed it to be the precursor to profound powers."@en . "An astronomer is a scientist who studies celestial bodies such as black holes, moons, planets, stars, nebulae, and galaxies, as well as Gamma-ray bursts and cosmic microwave background radiation. A related but distinct subject, cosmology, is concerned with studying the universe as a whole."@en . "Animation is the process of creating a continuous motion and shape change illusion by means of the rapid display of a sequence of static images that minimally differ from each other. The illusion\u2014as in motion pictures in general\u2014is thought to rely on the phi phenomenon.Animations can be recorded on either analogue media, such as a flip book, motion picture film, video tape, or on digital media, including formats such as animated GIF, Flash animation or digital video."@en . "Autism is a disorder of neural development characterized by impaired social interaction, by impaired verbal and non-verbal communication, and by restricted, repetitive or stereotyped behavior. The diagnostic criteria require that symptoms become apparent before a child is three years old. Autism affects information processing in the brain by altering how nerve cells and their synapses connect and organize; how this occurs is not well understood."@en . "Anarchism is a political philosophy that advocates stateless societies often defined as self-governed voluntary institutions, but that several authors have defined as more specific institutions based on non-hierarchical free associations. Anarchism holds the state to be undesirable, unnecessary, or harmful."@en . "Ayn Rand (/\u02C8a\u026An \u02C8r\u00E6nd/; born Alisa Zinov'yevna Rosenbaum; February 2 [O.S. January 20] 1905 \u2013 March 6, 1982) was an American novelist, philosopher, playwright, and screenwriter. She is known for her two best-selling novels, The Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged, and for developing a philosophical system she called Objectivism. Born and educated in Russia, Rand moved to the United States in 1926. She had a play produced on Broadway in 1935\u20131936."@en . "The American Football Conference (AFC) is one of the two conferences of the National Football League (NFL). This conference and its counterpart, the National Football Conference (NFC), currently contain 16 teams each, making up the 32 teams of the NFL."@en . "The Austroasiatic languages, in recent classifications synonymous with Mon\u2013Khmer, are a large language family of continental Southeast Asia, also scattered throughout India, Bangladesh, and the southern border of China. The name Austroasiatic comes from the Latin words for \"south\" and \"Asia\", hence \"South Asia\"."@en . "Aristotle (/\u02C8\u00E6r\u026A\u02CCst\u0252t\u0259l/; Greek: \u1F08\u03C1\u03B9\u03C3\u03C4\u03BF\u03C4\u03AD\u03BB\u03B7\u03C2 [aristot\u00E9l\u025B\u02D0s], Aristot\u00E9l\u0113s; 384 \u2013 322 BCE) was a Greek philosopher and scientist born in Stagirus, northern Greece, in 384 BCE. His father, Nicomachus, died when Aristotle was a child, whereafter Proxenus of Atarneus became his guardian. At eighteen, he joined Plato's Academy in Athens and remained there until the age of thirty-seven (c. 347 BCE)."@en . "Afroasiatic (Afro-Asiatic), also known as Afrasian and traditionally Hamito-Semitic (Chamito-Semitic), is a large language family, of several hundred related languages and dialects. There are about 300 or so living languages and dialects, according to the 2009 Ethnologue estimate. It includes languages spoken predominantly in the Middle East, North Africa, the Horn of Africa, and parts of the Sahel."@en . "Anthropology /\u00E6n\u03B8r\u0275\u02C8p\u0252l\u0259d\u0292i/ is the study of humankind, past and present, that draws and builds upon knowledge from the social sciences and biological sciences, as well as the humanities and the natural sciences.Since the work of Franz Boas and Bronis\u0142aw Malinowski in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, anthropology in Great Britain and the US has been distinguished from ethnology and from other social sciences by its emphasis on cross-cultural comparisons, long-term in-depth examination of context, and the importance it places on participant-observation or experiential immersion in the area of research. "@en . "Analysis of variance (ANOVA) is a collection of statistical models used to analyze the differences between group means and their associated procedures (such as \"variation\" among and between groups), developed by R.A. Fisher. In the ANOVA setting, the observed variance in a particular variable is partitioned into components attributable to different sources of variation."@en . "Agriculture, also called farming or husbandry, is the cultivation of animals, plants, fungi, and other life forms for food, fiber, biofuel, medicinals and other products used to sustain and enhance human life. Agriculture was the key development in the rise of sedentary human civilization, whereby farming of domesticated species created food surpluses that nurtured the development of civilization. The study of agriculture is known as agricultural science."@en . "Apollo (Attic, Ionic, and Homeric Greek: \u1F08\u03C0\u03CC\u03BB\u03BB\u03C9\u03BD, Apoll\u014Dn (GEN \u1F08\u03C0\u03CC\u03BB\u03BB\u03C9\u03BD\u03BF\u03C2); Doric: \u1F08\u03C0\u03AD\u03BB\u03BB\u03C9\u03BD, Apell\u014Dn; Arcadocypriot: \u1F08\u03C0\u03B5\u03AF\u03BB\u03C9\u03BD, Apeil\u014Dn; Aeolic: \u1F0C\u03C0\u03BB\u03BF\u03C5\u03BD, Aploun; Latin: Apoll\u014D) is one of the most important and complex of the Olympian deities in classical Greek and Roman religion and Greek and Roman mythology. The ideal of the kouros (a beardless, athletic youth), Apollo has been variously recognized as a god of light and the sun, truth and prophecy, healing, plague, music, poetry, and more."@en . "Algeria (/\u00E6l\u02C8d\u0292\u026A\u0259ri\u0259/; Literary Arabic: \u0627\u0644\u062C\u0632\u0627\u0626\u0631al-Jaz\u0101\u02BCir; Tamazight: Dzayer, \u2D37\u2D63\u2D30\u2D62\u2D3B\u2D54; French: Alg\u00E9rie), officially The People's Democratic Republic of Algeria, is a country in the Maghreb region of North Africa on the Mediterranean coast. Its capital and most populous city is Algiers. With a total area of 2,381,741 square kilometres (919,595 sq mi), Algeria is the tenth-largest country in the world, and the largest in Africa and in the Mediterranean."@en . "The American Standard Code for Information Interchange (ASCII /\u02C8\u00E6ski/ ASS-kee) is a character-encoding scheme originally based on the English alphabet that encodes 128 specified characters - the numbers 0-9, the letters a-z and A-Z, some basic punctuation symbols, some control codes that originated with Teletype machines, and a blank space - into the 7-bit binary integers.ASCII codes represent text in computers, communications equipment, and other devices that use text."@en . "Altruism or selflessness is the principle or practice of concern for the welfare of others. It is a traditional virtue in many cultures and a core aspect of various religious traditions and secular worldviews, though the concept of \"others\" toward whom concern should be directed can vary among cultures and religions. Altruism or selflessness is the opposite of selfishness.Altruism can be distinguished from feelings of loyalty."@en . "An American in Paris is a symphonic poem by the American composer George Gershwin, written in 1928. Inspired by the time Gershwin had spent in Paris, it evokes the sights and energy of the French capital in the 1920s and is one of his best-known compositions.Gershwin composed An American in Paris on commission from the New York Philharmonic. He scored the piece for the standard instruments of the symphony orchestra plus celesta, saxophones, and automobile horns."@en . "In United States appellate procedure, an appeal is a petition for review of a case that has been decided by a court of law. The petition is made to a higher court for the purpose of overturning the lower court's decision.The specific procedures for appealing, including even whether there is a right of appeal from a particular type of decision, can vary greatly from state to state."@en