infant perception, process by which a human infant (age 0 to 12 months) gains awareness of and responds to external stimuli. At birth, infants possess functional sensory systems; vision is somewhat organized, and audition (hearing), olfaction (smell), and touch are fairly mature. However, infants

Infant Phenomenon, fictional character, a child performer who appears in the novel Nicholas Nickleby (1838–39) by Charles Dickens. Ninetta is the beloved eight-year-old daughter of Mr. and Mrs. Crummles, the manager-actors of a troupe of strolling players in which Nicholas Nickleby is a

kindergarten, educational division, a supplement to elementary school intended to accommodate children between the ages of four and six years. Originating in the early 19th century, the kindergarten was an outgrowth of the ideas and practices of Robert Owen in Great Britain, J.H. Pestalozzi in

infant stimulation program, approach to sensory enrichment for very young children, particularly those who are ill or who are otherwise deprived of typical sensory experiences. Infant stimulation is a process of providing supplemental sensory stimulation in any or all of the sensory modalities

infante, the title borne from the 13th century by the children of the Spanish and Portuguese monarchs. The title infante was borne by the sons of the sovereign, and the title infanta was given to the daughters and to the wife of an infante. From the reign of John I of Castile (1379–90) there began

infante, the title borne from the 13th century by the children of the Spanish and Portuguese monarchs. The title infante was borne by the sons of the sovereign, and the title infanta was given to the daughters and to the wife of an infante. From the reign of John I of Castile (1379–90) there began

Ferdinand I was the king of Aragon from 1412 to 1416, the second son of John I of Castile and Eleanor, daughter of Peter IV of Aragon. Because his elder brother, Henry III, was an invalid, Ferdinand took the battlefield against the Muslims of Granada. When Henry III died in 1406, his son John II

Blondie: bassist Nigel Harrison and guitarist Frank Infante.

Great Fish River, river in the Cape Midlands, Eastern Cape province, southern South Africa. The Great Fish River has a length of 430 miles (692 km) and a drainage area of 11,900 square miles (30,800 square km). Its main northern tributary, the Great Brak River, rises in 7,000-foot- (2,100-metre-)

infanticide, the killing of the newborn. It has often been interpreted as a primitive method of birth control and a means of ridding a group of its weak and deformed children; but most societies actively desire children and put them to death (or allow them to die) only under exceptional

chimpanzee: Social behaviour: Infanticide and cannibalism by adult males, and to a lesser extent by adult females, have been observed. Victimized infants are not only those of neighbouring groups but also those born to newly immigrated females. Between- and within-group competition among individuals of the same sex is…

memory: Amnesia: Known as infantile amnesia, this universal phenomenon implies that the brain systems required to encode and retrieve specific events are not adequately developed to support long-term memory before age three. Another theory points to developmental changes in the means by which memories are formed and retrieved after early…

Caffey syndrome, a hereditary disease of infants, characterized by swellings of the periosteum (the bone layer where new bone is produced) and the bone cortex of the upper arms, shoulder girdle, and lower jaw. The disease is accompanied by fever and irritability; after a series of periodic

cystinosis: …three distinct forms of cystinosis—nephropathic (infantile), intermediate (adolescent), and nonnephropathic (benign, or ocular)—which differ with respect to clinical presentation, progression, and severity.

infantile hemangioma, a congenital benign tumour made up of endothelial cells (the cells lining the inner surface of a blood vessel) that form vascular spaces, which then become filled with blood cells. Infantile hemangiomas are the most commonly occurring tumours in infants and are only rarely

Oedipus complex: …however, there occurs an “infantile neurosis” that is an important forerunner of similar reactions during the child’s adult life. The superego, the moral factor that dominates the conscious adult mind, also has its origin in the process of overcoming the Oedipus complex. Freud considered the reactions against the Oedipus…

metabolic disease: Peroxisomal disorders: adrenoleukodystrophy, hyperpipecolic acidemia, and infantile Refsum disease. Patients may have severely decreased muscle tone (hypotonia), cerebral malformations, seizures, and an enlarged liver in infancy. Many develop eye abnormalities, in particular a defect in retinal pigment. Patients with Zellweger syndrome also may have small kidney cysts and cranial abnormalities.

strabismus: Congenital, or infantile, strabismus appears in infancy and is presumably due to defects present at birth that are poorly understood. However, given the strong tendency for strabismus to run in families, the causes undoubtedly have some genetic component. While congenital strabismus is more common in…

Batman: Batman in the Silver Age: He commissioned artist Carmine Infantino, whose distinctive work on the Flash had helped usher in the Silver Age, to update the appearance of the hero. Infantino’s “New Look” added a yellow oval to Batman’s chest insignia, and his sharp, stylish penciling marked such a break with the past…

infantry, troops who fight on foot, even though transported to the battlefield by horses, ships, aircraft, tanks and other motorized vehicles, skis, or other means. The term applies equally to troops armed with such hand weapons as the spear and sword in ancient times and with automatic rifles and

armoured vehicle: …tank is the principal fighting armoured vehicle. Other types armed with large-calibre main guns include tank destroyers and assault guns. This article traces the development of armoured personnel carriers, infantry fighting vehicles, and other armoured vehicles designed primarily as platforms for assault troops.

Sir Basil Liddell Hart: …he wrote the Army’s official Infantry Training manual that included his “battle drill” system evolved in 1917 and his so-called “expanding torrent” method of attack, which grew out of infiltration tactics introduced in 1917–18. Liddell Hart became an early advocate of air power and mechanized tank warfare. Defining strategy as…

T. Berry Brazelton: His best-known books, such as Infants and Mothers (1969), Toddlers and Parents (1974), and Families: Crisis and Caring (1990), focused on the parent-child relationship and the nature of individual differences in the behaviour of infants and young children.

Wallace Henry Thurman: …best known for his novel Infants of the Spring (1932), a satire of what he believed were the overrated creative figures of the Harlem scene. Some reviewers welcomed Thurman’s bold insight, while others vilified him as a racial traitor. Thurman never again wrote on African-American subjects.

infarction, death of tissue resulting from a failure of blood supply, commonly due to obstruction of a blood vessel by a blood clot or narrowing of the blood-vessel channel. The dead tissue is called an infarct. Myocardial infarction (heart attack)—death of a section of heart muscle—results from

benthos: …upon bottom objects; the so-called infauna live within the sediments of the seafloor. By far the best-studied benthos are the macrobenthos, those forms larger than 1 mm (0.04 inch), which are dominated by polychaete worms, pelecypods, anthozoans, echinoderms, sponges, ascidians, and crustaceans. Meiobenthos, those organisms between 0.1 and 1 mm…

pregnancy: Abortion: An infected abortion is an abortion associated with infection of the genital organs.

bacteria: Bacteria in medicine: …of the body and cause infection.

arthritis: Infectious arthritis: Infectious arthritides are a set of arthritic conditions caused by exposure to certain microorganisms. In some instances the microorganisms infiltrate the joint space and cause destruction, whereas in others an infection stimulates an inappropriate immune response leading to reactive arthritis. Typically caused by…

infectious bovine keratoconjunctivitis, an inflammation of the conjunctiva or the cornea of the eye in cattle as the result of an infection; early viral involvement is suspected. Moraxella bovis is usually found in discharge from the affected eye; other bacteria, such as Staphylococcus and

Sydenham chorea, a neurological disorder characterized by irregular and involuntary movements of muscle groups in various parts of the body that follow streptococcal infection. The name St. Vitus Dance derives from the late Middle Ages, when persons with the disease attended the chapels of St.

infectious disease, in medicine, a process caused by an agent, often a type of microorganism, that impairs a person’s health. In many cases, infectious disease can be spread from person to person, either directly (e.g., via skin contact) or indirectly (e.g., via contaminated food or water). An

endocarditis: Traditionally, infective endocarditis has been classified as acute or subacute. Acute infective endocarditis generally is caused by Staphylococcus, Pneumococcus, or Gonococcus bacteria or by fungi. This form of endocarditis develops rapidly, with fever, malaise, and other signs of systemic infection coupled with abnormal cardiac function and

feline distemper, viral disease of cats, kittens two to six months old being most susceptible. Highly contagious, it is caused by a parvovirus that is closely related to canine parvovirus type 2. About 3 to 10 days after exposure to the disease, infected kittens cough and sneeze, have running eyes

virus: Chronic and slowly progressive diseases: Hepatitis A is caused by a picornavirus usually transmitted by the fecal-oral route in a manner similar to that of poliovirus. Hepatitis B is caused by a small DNA virus that contains its own DNA polymerase and is transmitted by transfusion of blood and other blood…

mononucleosis, infection in humans, caused by the Epstein-Barr virus (EBV), whose most common symptoms are fever, general malaise, and sore throat. The disease occurs predominantly in persons from 10 to 35 years old, but it is known to appear at any age. Infection of young children by the EBV

myxomatosis, a highly fatal infectious viral disease of rabbits. It is characterized by fever, swelling of the mucous membranes, and the presence of nodular skin tumours. The disease exists naturally in populations of certain South American rabbits of the genus Sylvilagus and has been introduced

hazardous-waste management: Hazardous-waste characteristics: Infectious wastes include used bandages, hypodermic needles, and other materials from hospitals or biological research facilities.

endocarditis: Traditionally, infective endocarditis has been classified as acute or subacute. Acute infective endocarditis generally is caused by Staphylococcus, Pneumococcus, or Gonococcus bacteria or by fungi. This form of endocarditis develops rapidly, with fever, malaise, and other signs of systemic infection coupled with abnormal cardiac function and

inference, in logic, derivation of conclusions from given information or premises by any acceptable form of reasoning. Inferences are commonly drawn (1) by deduction, which, by analyzing valid argument forms, draws out the conclusions implicit in their premises, (2) by induction, which argues from

inference, in statistics, the process of drawing conclusions about a parameter one is seeking to measure or estimate. Often scientists have many measurements of an object—say, the mass of an electron—and wish to choose the best measure. One principal approach of statistical inference is Bayesian

expert system: …a knowledge base and an inference engine. A knowledge base is an organized collection of facts about the system’s domain. An inference engine interprets and evaluates the facts in the knowledge base in order to provide an answer. Typical tasks for expert systems involve classification, diagnosis, monitoring, design, scheduling, and…

formal logic: General observations: …above may be called an inference form, and (1) and (2) are then instances of that inference form. The letters—X, Y, and Z—in (3) mark the places into which expressions of a certain type may be inserted. Symbols used for this purpose are known as variables; their use is analogous…

formal logic: General observations: …above may be called an inference form, and (1) and (2) are then instances of that inference form. The letters—X, Y, and Z—in (3) mark the places into which expressions of a certain type may be inserted. Symbols used for this purpose are known as variables; their use is analogous…

formal logic: General observations: …above may be called an inference form, and (1) and (2) are then instances of that inference form. The letters—X, Y, and Z—in (3) mark the places into which expressions of a certain type may be inserted. Symbols used for this purpose are known as variables; their use is analogous…

logic: Definitory and strategic inference rules: There is a further reason why the formulation of systems of rules of inference does not exhaust the science of logic. Rule-governed, goal-directed activities are often best understood by means of concepts borrowed from the study of games. The “game” of logic is…

semantics: Conceptual-role semantics: In order to avoid having to distinguish between meaning and character, some philosophers, including Gilbert Harman and Ned Block, have recommended supplementing a theory of truth with what is called a conceptual-role semantics (also known as cognitive-role, computational-role, or inferential-role semantics). According to…

human nervous system: Mandibular nerve: …(4) the mandibular teeth (inferior alveolar nerve). Skin over the lateral and anterior surfaces of the mandible and the lower lip is served by cutaneous branches of the mandibular nerve.

human ear: Ascending pathways: …of which end in the inferior colliculus, the auditory centre of the midbrain, although some fibres may bypass the colliculus and end, together with the fibres from the colliculus, at the next higher level, the medial geniculate body. From the medial geniculate body there is an orderly projection of fibres…

conjunction: An inferior conjunction occurs when the planet passes approximately between Earth and Sun; if it passes exactly between them, moving across the Sun’s face as seen from Earth, it is said to be in transit. A superior conjunction occurs when Earth and the other planet are…

court: Courts of limited jurisdiction: …of a better term, “inferior” courts. These are often staffed by part-time judges who are not necessarily trained in the law. They handle minor civil cases involving small sums of money, such as bill collections, and minor criminal cases carrying light penalties. In addition to finally disposing of minor…

human nervous system: Vagus nerve (CN X or 10): …to the foramen is the inferior ganglion, containing visceral afferent cells.

human nervous system: Sympathetic ganglia: …the small intestine; and the inferior mesenteric ganglion innervates the descending colon, sigmoid colon, rectum, urinary bladder, and sexual organs.

human nervous system: Parasympathetic nervous system: …preganglionic neurons belongs to the inferior salivatory nucleus, located in the caudal part of the medullary reticular formation. Neurons of this group send axons out of the medulla in the ninth cranial (glossopharyngeal) nerve to the otic ganglion. From this site, postganglionic fibers travel to and innervate the parotid salivary…

vena cava: Inferior vena cava.: The inferior vena cava is formed by the coming together of the two major veins from the legs, the common iliac veins, at the level of the fifth lumbar vertebra, just below the small of the back. Unlike the superior vena cava,…

renal system: Blood and nerve supplies: The inferior vesical artery supplies the inferolateral surfaces of the bladder and assists in supplying the base of the bladder, the lower end of the ureter, and other adjacent structures.

inferiority complex, a psychological sense of inferiority that is wholly or partly unconscious. The term has been used by some psychiatrists and psychologists, particularly the followers of the early psychoanalyst Alfred Adler, who held that many neurotic symptoms could be traced to

Jean Cocteau: Influence of Radiguet: …to be his greatest play, La Machine infernale, a treatment of the Oedipus theme that is very much his own. In these two works he moved into closer contact with the great myths of humanity.

Stone Age: Rise of agriculture: Here, in the Infernillo phase, it appears that native American squash, peppers, and perhaps beans were being cultivated as early as 6500 bce. At this time, domesticates formed only a small portion of the total diet, the bulk of which was derived from wild animals and, to a…

John G. Avildsen: …the thriller genre again with Desert Heat (also released as Inferno), which starred Jean-Claude Van Damme; the film was loosely based on the 1961 classic Yojimbo by Kurosawa Akira.

The Divine Comedy: Divided into three major sections—Inferno, Purgatorio, and Paradiso—the poem traces the journey of Dante from darkness and error to the revelation of the divine light, culminating in the Beatific Vision of God.

Ron Howard: …Angels & Demons (2009) and Inferno (2016).

Dan Brown: …which centres on Freemasons, and Inferno (2013), which saw Langdon following clues related to Dante’s poem The Divine Comedy in an effort to stop the release of a plague. The latter book was also adapted for the big screen, in 2016, with Hanks again portraying Langdon. Brown’s fifth installment in…

infertility, the inability of a couple to conceive and reproduce. Infertility is defined as the failure to conceive after one year of regular intercourse without contraception or the inability of a woman to carry a pregnancy to a live birth. Infertility can affect either the male or the female and

animal disease: Infectious and noninfectious diseases: The term infestation indicates that animals, including spiny-headed worms (Acanthocephala), roundworms (Nematoda), flatworms (Platyhelminthes), and arthropods such as lice, fleas, mites, and ticks, are present in or on the body of a host. An infestation is not necessarily parasitic.

female genital cutting: The procedure: Infibulation (also called Pharoanic circumcision). The vaginal opening is reduced by removing all or parts of the external genitalia (the clitoris, labia minora, and labia majora) and sewing, pinning, or otherwise causing the remaining tissue to fuse together during the healing process. Those procedures that…

adultery, sexual relations between a married person and someone other than the spouse. Written or customary prohibitions or taboos against adultery constitute part of the marriage code of virtually every society. Indeed, adultery seems to be as universal and, in some instances, as common as

baseball: Play of the game: …play is divided into the infield and the outfield. Within the infield is a square area called the diamond, which has four white bases, one on each corner. The bases are 90 feet (27.4 metres) apart.

baseball: The force play: The infield fly rule protects base runners from the deception of an infielder who may allow an infield fly ball to drop, thus setting up an easy force play. The rule applies only if both first and second are occupied by runners and there are fewer…

baseball: Infielders: The infielders form the inner ring of defense. They sometimes catch line drives on the fly, but mainly they pick up ground balls that roll toward the outfield or shoot swiftly across the grass on one or more bounces. When a batted ball strikes…

breast cancer: Types of breast cancer: …common type of tumour, called infiltrating ductal carcinoma, is a single, hard, barely movable lump. This type of tumour accounts for about 70 percent of all cases. Fewer than 15 percent of all cases are lobular carcinomas.

advanced ceramics: Infiltration: The siliconization of RBSC is a good example of infiltration, which may be described as any technique of filling in pores by reaction with or deposition from a liquid or vapour. In the case of liquid reaction, the technique is called melt infiltration; in…

hydrologic sciences: Infiltration: When water from a rainstorm or a period of snowmelt reaches the ground, some or all of it will infiltrate the soil. The rate of infiltration depends on the intensity of the input, the initial moisture condition of the surface soil layer, and the…

anesthetic: Local anesthetics: This is called infiltration anesthesia. Some local anesthetics are applied directly to mucous membranes, such as those of the nose, throat, larynx, and urethra or those of the conjunctiva of the eye. This is called surface or topical anesthesia. A familiar example of topical anesthesia is

water supply system: Groundwater sources: …out of a well or infiltration gallery. An infiltration gallery typically includes several horizontal perforated pipes radiating outward from the bottom of a large-diameter vertical shaft. Wells are constructed in several ways, depending on the depth and nature of the aquifer. Wells used for public water supplies, usually more than…

Bryan Cranston: In The Infiltrator (2016), Cranston played real-life undercover federal agent Robert Mazur, who, in the 1980s, impersonated a money-laundering businessman in a sting operation that traced enormous sums of money back to Colombian drug kingpin Pablo Escobar and helped uncover the wide-reaching malfeasance of the Bank…

Dominique Rolin: …Bruegel the Elder, while in L’Infini chez soi (1980; “The Infinite at Home”) a first-person narration identifying mother with daughter offers prenatal and birth visions. In Le Gâteau des morts (1982; The Deathday Cake) the narrator fantasizes her own death in the year 2000. Trente ans d’amour fou (1988; “Thirty…

metalogic: Nonelementary logic and future developments: …such as second-order logic and infinitary logics, that develop the model theory of nonelementary logic. Second-order logic contains, in addition to variables that range over individual objects, a second kind of variable ranging over sets of objects so that the model of a second-order sentence or theory also involves, beyond…

Mark Wahlberg: In the sc-fi thriller Infinite (2021), Wahlberg was cast as a schizophrenic who discovers that his hallucinations are memories of past lives that stretch back thousands of years. In 2022 he appeared in several movies, including Uncharted, about treasure hunters.

Judaism: Ḥasdai Crescas: …on the contrast between an infinite being and finite beings. It is through infinitude that God’s essential attributes—wisdom, for instance—differ from the corresponding and otherwise similar attributes found in created beings. In Crescas’s doctrine, as in that of Spinoza, God’s attributes are infinite in number. The central place assigned to…

number theory: Pierre de Fermat: He used a technique called infinite descent that was ideal for demonstrating impossibility. The logical strategy assumes that there are whole numbers satisfying the condition in question and then generates smaller whole numbers satisfying it as well. Reapplying the argument over and over, Fermat produced an endless sequence of decreasing…

Hilbert space: …new subfield of topology called infinite dimensional topology in the 1960s and ’70s.

game theory: Classification of games: Infinite games are more subtle and will only be touched upon in this article.

Burnside problem: …clear to Burnside that an infinite group (such as the positive integers) may have a finite number of generators and a finite group must have finite generators, but he wondered if every finitely generated periodic group must necessarily be finite. The answer turned out to be no, as shown in…

Freeman Dyson: … (1984), Origins of Life (1985), Infinite in All Directions (1988), Imagined Worlds (1998), and The Sun, the Genome, and the Internet (1999). Disturbing the Universe (1979) and the epistolary Maker of Patterns (2018) are autobiographies.

Infinite Jest, novel by David Foster Wallace, published in 1996, that satirically attacks the vacuous predilections of contemporary American culture mercilessly while shamelessly reveling in them. Where does one begin with a book of over a thousand pages, of which nearly a hundred pages consist of

transfinite number, denotation of the size of an infinite collection of objects. Comparison of certain infinite collections suggests that they have different sizes even though they are all infinite. For example, the sets of integers, rational numbers, and real numbers are all infinite; but each is

Isabel Allende: …and El plan infinito (1991; The Infinite Plan) and the collection of stories Cuentos de Eva Luna (1990; The Stories of Eva Luna). All are examples of magic realism, in which realistic fiction is overlaid with elements of fantasy and myth. Her concern in many of these works is the…

Ben Okri: …Songs of Enchantment (1993) and Infinite Riches (1998) continue the themes of The Famished Road, relating stories of dangerous quests and the struggle for equanimity in an unstable land. Okri’s other novels included Astonishing the Gods (1995); Dangerous Love (1996), about “star-crossed” lovers in postcolonial Nigeria; In Arcadia (2002); Starbook

infinite series, the sum of infinitely many numbers related in a given way and listed in a given order. Infinite series are useful in mathematics and in such disciplines as physics, chemistry, biology, and engineering. For an infinite series a1 + a2 + a3 +⋯, a quantity sn = a1 + a2 +⋯+ an, which

axiom of choice: For infinite sets, however, it would take an infinite amount of time to choose elements one by one. Thus, infinite sets for which there does not exist some definite selection rule require the axiom of choice (or one of its equivalent formulations) in order to proceed…

Robert J. Aumann: …methodologies and analyses of so-called infinitely repeated games, he identified the outcomes that could be sustained in long-term relations and demonstrated the prerequisites for cooperation in situations where there are many participants, infrequent interaction, or the potential for a break in relations and when participants’ actions lack transparency.

infinitesimal, in mathematics, a quantity less than any finite quantity yet not zero. Even though no such quantity can exist in the real number system, many early attempts to justify calculus were based on sometimes dubious reasoning about infinitesimals: derivatives were defined as ultimate ratios

mechanics of solids: Strain and strain-displacement relations: …to this situation, are called small strain or infinitesimal strain. Expressions for strain will also be given that are valid for rotations and fractional length changes of arbitrary magnitude; such expressions are called finite strain.

Infinitesimals were introduced by Isaac Newton as a means of “explaining” his procedures in calculus. Before the concept of a limit had been formally introduced and understood, it was not clear how to explain why calculus worked. In essence, Newton treated an infinitesimal as a positive number that

John Banville: Fiction: The Infinities (2009) is an eccentric work that relates a domestic drama that takes place in a parallel reality through the narrative of the Greek god Hermes, and Ancient Light (2012) uses characters that previously appeared in Eclipse and Shroud to recount an older man’s…

Celtic languages: Grammatical characteristics: …is its lack of the infinitive form of the verb found in most other Indo-European languages—e.g., English “to do,” “to call.” The equivalent is the verbal noun, which is a noun closely linked to the verb, though not necessarily derived from the same stem. Being a noun, it can have…

infinity, the concept of something that is unlimited, endless, without bound. The common symbol for infinity, ∞, was invented by the English mathematician John Wallis in 1655. Three main types of infinity may be distinguished: the mathematical, the physical, and the metaphysical. Mathematical

Yayoi Kusama: Installations from that time included Infinity Mirror Room—Phalli’s Field (1965), a mirrored room whose floors were covered with hundreds of stuffed phalli that had been painted with red dots. Mirrors gave her the opportunity to create infinite planes in her installations, and she would continue to use them in later…

Umberto Eco: …book, Vertigine della lista (2009; The Infinity of Lists), produced in conjunction with an exhibition he organized at the Louvre Museum, in which he investigated the Western passion for list making and accumulation. Costruire il nemico e altri scritti occasionali (2011; Inventing the Enemy, and Other Occasional Writings) collected pieces—some…