The term god is very vague; its common uses include reference to an extremely wide range of sorts of thing, including living human beings (for example, the Egyptian pharaohs and the Roman emperors), humanlike beings with superhuman powers (for example, the Greek pantheon), and impersonal or even abstract concepts (for example, the Hindu Brahman). The
Gene flow is the transfer of genes from one population to another population, usually by migration of one population into the other population’s territory. Descriptively, it is also referred to as gene migration, gene admixture, interbreeding, or gene exchange between populations. Almost always, gene flow refers to migration taking place primarily in one direction. It
The nation of Fiji contains a large group of islands known as an archipelago. Officially titled the Sovereign Democratic Republic of Fiji, the archipelago contains 330 islands that sprawl over 501,800 square miles in the world’s largest ocean, the Pacific. The people of Fiji inhabit about one third of the islands within the archipelago. The
Food is any substance that can be metabolized by an organism to give energy and build tissue. Foods are made up of a combination of calories, proteins, fats, minerals, and carbohydrates. Enzymes in the mouth begin to break down sugars as food is processed for digestion. Upon entering the stomach, the acids therein separate the
The sign, in terms first articulated by Ferdinand de Saussure (1857–1913), the Swiss linguist, has come to serve as the basic unit of approaches to communication that focus on meaning-making relations rather than on the effectiveness of senders’ communication of intended messages to designated receivers. Semiotic approaches have been taken up by general communication studies
Human skeletal remains of Late Pleistocene antiquity were recovered from several caves and open-air sites in Sri Lanka during the last half of the 20th century. Fa Hien Cave is one of the largest on this island nation and is situated in the southwestern lowland wet zone of Katutara District, Sabaragamuva Province. In 1968, human
A mask is a facial representation worn by performers and exists in a continuum with puppetry, which often represents the same characters (Harlequin, Punch, Devil, etc.). Emigh (1996, 3, 7) theorizes masks as “transitional objects” that bridge gaps through strategies of play and argues that though in the west the mask is “generally regarded as
The Nature of Evil The notion of evil is complex but usually involves some combination of or interplay between four basic categories, consisting of two sorts of effect and two sorts of cause or origin. The two sorts of effect are suffering and metaphysical evil, and the two sorts of cause are moral and natural
A code is a term in semiotics that designates a set of related signs or signifying practices that correspond to a system of meaning. While each sign has a unique signifier, what is signified is generally understood as a marker of difference within a larger group of signs. For instance, the number sign “2” has
The book is a durable vehicle for words and images and often is a central artifact in cultures with the written word. Those produced in the era before the advent of printing are unique “manuscript” books that were made by hand. The book became the first mass medium, and conventions for its presentation shaped those