Henri Pirenne: …in 1922 was published as Medieval Cities (1925), the classic exposition of Pirenne’s analysis of the revival of urban centres and commercial activity during the late Middle Ages. In a work published posthumously, Mahomet et Charlemagne (1937), he set forth the thesis that the Roman Empire and civilization declined not…

Holocene Epoch: Medieval Cool Period: This interval, extending roughly from 1250 to 1500, corresponds to the Paria Emergence in the eustatic record and has been called one of the “little ice ages” by certain authors. Solar activity records show a decline from 1250 to 1350, a brief…

Hebrew language: …people as a spoken language); Medieval Hebrew, from about the 6th to the 13th century ce, when many words were borrowed from Greek, Spanish, Arabic, and other languages; and Modern Hebrew, the language of Israel in modern times. Scholars generally agree that the oldest form of Hebrew is that of…

acquittal: In the Middle Ages it was an obligation of an intermediate lord to protect his tenants against interference from his own overlord. The term is also used in contract law to signify a discharge or release from an obligation.

medieval logic, in the history of Western philosophy, the concepts, principles, and systems of logical argumentation that were studied and developed primarily by Arabic philosophers from about the 9th century ce and by Latin philosophers from approximately the 12th century ce through the end of the

Middle Ages, the period in European history from the collapse of Roman civilization in the 5th century ce to the period of the Renaissance (variously interpreted as beginning in the 13th, 14th, or 15th century, depending on the region of Europe and other factors). A brief treatment of the Middle

medieval philosophy, in the history of Western philosophy, the philosophical speculation that occurred in western Europe during the Middle Ages—i.e., from the fall of the western Roman Empire in the 5th century ce to the start of the European Renaissance in the 15th century. Philosophy of the

David Randall-MacIver: …Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe), Randall-MacIver wrote Medieval Rhodesia (1906), in which he contended that the ruins were not built by an ancient and vanished white civilization as was currently believed but were of purely African origin and that they dated from about the 14th century; his view was borne out by…

military technology: The war-horse: The destrier, or medieval war-horse, was central to the tactical viability of European feudalism. This animal was a product of two great migrations of horses originating in Central Asia. One, moving westward, crossed into Europe and there originated the vast herds of primeval animals…

medieval warm period (MWP), brief climatic interval that is hypothesized to have occurred from approximately 900 ce to 1300 (roughly coinciding with the Middle Ages in Europe), in which relatively warm conditions are said to have prevailed in various parts of the world, though predominantly in the

medieval warm period (MWP), brief climatic interval that is hypothesized to have occurred from approximately 900 ce to 1300 (roughly coinciding with the Middle Ages in Europe), in which relatively warm conditions are said to have prevailed in various parts of the world, though predominantly in the

Joseph Medill was a Canadian-born American editor and publisher who from 1855 built the Chicago Tribune into a powerful newspaper. He was the grandfather of three newspaper publishers: Robert R. McCormick of the Chicago Tribune, Joseph M. Patterson of the New York Daily News, and Eleanor M.

Medina, city located in the Hejaz region of western Saudi Arabia, about 100 miles (160 km) inland from the Red Sea and 275 miles (445 km) from Mecca by road. It is the second holiest city in Islam, after Mecca. Medina is celebrated as the place from which Muhammad established the Muslim community

Morocco: Urban settlement: …the traditional urban centres, or medinas (madīnahs), which were usually surrounded by walls. Rather than modifying these traditional centres to accommodate new infrastructure for administration and economic development, they established villes nouvelles (“new towns”) alongside them. In addition, they shifted the focus of political and economic life from the interior…

Venezuela: Technocrats and party politics: Isaias Medina Angarita, a fellow Táchira general, was president in 1941–45. He continued López’s development program and also restored political liberties. Petroleum revenues declined sharply in 1941–42 because of a World War II transportation squeeze, and President Medina used a 1943 oil law to raise…

Arcos de la Frontera, city, Cádiz provincia (province), in the comunidad autónoma (autonomous community) of Andalusia, southern Spain. It is located on a high rock bounded on three sides by the Guadalete River. Rich in Moorish architecture, the city also contains the Gothic churches of Santa María

Al-Andalus: The Golden Age of Muslim Spain: …the opulent royal city of Madīnat al-Zahrāʾ (Medina Azahara) some 5 miles (8 km) west of Córdoba. The city was abandoned after the unrest that consumed the Umayyad caliphate in 1009, and the ruins of Madīnat al-Zahrāʾ would remain undiscovered until the early 20th century. In 2018 Madīnat al-Zahrāʾ was…

Treaty of Medina del Campo, (1489), treaty between Spain and England, which, although never fully accepted by either side, established the dominating themes in Anglo-Spanish relations in the late 15th and early 16th centuries. It was signed at Medina del Campo, in northern Spain, on March 27 and

Danilo Medina is a Dominican politician and economist who served as the president of the Dominican Republic from 2012 to 2020. Medina was the oldest of eight children born to a family in the rural town of Arroyo Cano. After the fifth grade he went to live with an uncle in San Juan de la Maguana so

Bob Baffert: …2021 Baffert made history as Medina Spirit took first place at the Kentucky Derby, giving him an unprecedented seventh victory. However, the horse later tested positive for a banned substance, and Baffert was barred from competing in the race for two years. The New York Racing Association also issued a…

guinea worm, (Dracunculus medinensis), member of the phylum Nematoda. The guinea worm, a parasite of humans, is found in tropical regions of Asia and Africa and in the West Indies and tropical South America. A variety of other mammals are also parasitized by guinea worms. The disease caused by the

Bartolomé de Medina was a Spanish Dominican theologian who developed the patio process for extracting silver from ore. Medina developed the patio process, an intricate amalgamation process utilizing mercury, while mining in Pachuca, Mex., in 1557. The process proved especially useful in America,

Constitution of Medina, document from early Islamic history based upon two agreements concluded between the clans of Medina and the Prophet Muhammad soon after the Hijrah (Latin: Hegira), or emigration, to Medina in ad 622. The agreements established the muhājirūn, i.e., the early Muslims who

Danilo Medina is a Dominican politician and economist who served as the president of the Dominican Republic from 2012 to 2020. Medina was the oldest of eight children born to a family in the rural town of Arroyo Cano. After the fifth grade he went to live with an uncle in San Juan de la Maguana so

F. Lee Bailey: Ernest L. Medina in the latter’s court martial for his alleged involvement in the mass murder of hundreds of unarmed South Vietnamese villagers by U.S. soldiers in the 1968 My Lai Massacre during the Vietnam War. In 1976 Bailey, serving as defense attorney in the…

River Medina, river, Isle of Wight, England. The Medina drains much of the island, rising on the high sandstone ground near the south coast and flowing 12 miles (19 km) north through a gap in the chalk ridge that forms the backbone of the island. Past Newport at the head of its estuary it flows

Alonso Pérez de Guzmán, duke de Medina-Sidonia was the duke de Medina-Sidonia and the commander in chief of the Spanish Armada of 1588. A member of the noble and illustrious house of Guzmán, Medina-Sidonia became the seventh bearer of the ducal title in 1555 on the death of his father; he became

Israel, country in the Middle East, located at the eastern end of the Mediterranean Sea. It is bounded to the north by Lebanon, to the northeast by Syria, to the east and southeast by Jordan, to the southwest by Egypt, and to the west by the Mediterranean Sea. Jerusalem is the seat of government

Madīnat Habu, the necropolis region of western Thebes in Upper Egypt that is enclosed by the outer walls of the mortuary temple built there by Ramses III (1187–56 bce). This temple, which was also dedicated to the god Amon, was carved with religious scenes and portrayals of Ramses’ wars against the

Myrtales: Economic and ecological importance: …greenhouse plants of Melastomataceae are Medinilla magnifica, whose purple flowers are arranged in pendulous panicles up to one foot long and subtended by pink bracts 2.5–10 cm (1–4 inches) long, and various species of Bertolonia, Monolena, and Sonerila, which are cultivated for their interesting foliage.

Midnapore, city, south-central West Bengal state, northeastern India. It lies just north of the Kasai River. Midnapore is an agricultural trade centre on the Grand Trunk Road from Kolkata (Calcutta) to Amritsar. Kharagpur, across the river, provides major rail connections. Rice milling and the

Ricky Martin: Solo career and breakthrough in the United States: … (1993; “You’ll Love Me”), and A medio vivir (1995; “Half Living”). These albums were all successful in the Latin American market and did fairly well on the Billboard Latin Pop Albums chart. At the 1999 Grammy Awards Martin’s fourth album, Vuelve (1998; “Come Back”), won the award for best Latin…

Spanish literature: The novel: …largely testimonial, semiautobiographical novels of Dolores Medio, who frequently depicted working girls, schoolteachers, and aspiring writers as positive feminine role models opposing the dictatorship’s discouragement of education for women: Nosotros los Rivero (1952; “We Riveros”), El pez sigue flotando (1959; “The Fish Stays Afloat”), Diario de una maestra (1961; “A…

extraterrestrial intelligence: Argument for extraterrestrial intelligence: …is based on the so-called principle of mediocrity. Widely believed by astronomers since the work of Nicolaus Copernicus, this principle states that the properties and evolution of the solar system are not unusual in any important way. Consequently, the processes on Earth that led to life, and eventually to thinking…

human nervous system: Thalamus: …the anterior nuclear group, the mediodorsal nucleus, and the pulvinar. The anterior nuclear group receives input from the hypothalamus and projects upon parts of the limbic lobe (i.e., the cingulate gyrus). The mediodorsal nucleus, part of the medial nuclear group, has reciprocal connections with large parts of the frontal lobe…

Milan, city, capital of Milano province (provincia) and of the region (regione) of Lombardy (Lombardia), northern Italy. It is the leading financial centre and the most prosperous manufacturing and commercial city of Italy. The destiny of Milan, like that of many of the world’s great cities,

Luxembourg: Ancient and medieval periods: …Belgic tribes, the Treveri and Mediomatrici, inhabited the country from about 450 bce until the Roman conquest of 53 bce. The occupation of the country by the Franks in the 5th century ce marked the beginning of the Middle Ages in the locality. St. Willibrord played a very important role…

Indo-European languages: Verbal inflection: …affected by the action, and mediopassive, in which typically the subject was affected, directly or indirectly. Thus, Sanskrit active yájati and mediopassive yájate both mean ‘he sacrifices,’ but the former is said of a priest who performs a sacrifice for the benefit of another, while the latter is said of…

Charles Gounod: His Meditation (Ave Maria) superimposed on Johann Sebastian Bach’s Prelude in C Major (from The Well-Tempered Clavier, Book I) illustrates both his inventiveness and ease as a melodist and his naïveté in matters of style. The operas Faust, Mireille, and Le Médecin malgré lui show his…

Franz Kafka: Works of Franz Kafka: …Struggle (begun about 1904) and Meditation, though their style is more concretely imaged and their structure more incoherent than that of the later works, are already original in a characteristic way. The characters in these works fail to establish communication with others, they follow a hidden logic that flouts normal…

meditation, private devotion or mental exercise encompassing various techniques of concentration, contemplation, and abstraction, regarded as conducive to heightened self-awareness, spiritual enlightenment, and physical and mental health. Meditation has been practiced throughout history by

Abraham bar Hiyya: …treatise Hegyon ha-Nefesh ha-Aẓuva (Meditation of the Sad Soul), which dealt with the nature of good and evil, ethical conduct, and repentance; and Megillat ha-Megalleh (“Scroll of the Revealer”), in which he outlined his view of history, based on astrology and purporting to forecast the messianic future.

Norman Dello Joio: …Pulitzer Prize in music for Meditation on Ecclesiastes, for string orchestra. His other compositions include the operas The Trial at Rouen (1955; rev. 1959 and retitled The Triumph of St. Joan) and Blood Moon (1961); A Psalm of David for mixed chorus (1950); Antiphonal Fantasy on a Theme by Vincenzo…

Maya Deren: …in her last two films, Meditation on Violence (1948), a study of movement in Chinese martial arts and her first picture with sound, and The Very Eye of Night (1954), which features choreography by Antony Tudor.

Sandra Oh: …Catfight (2016), and the drama Meditation Park (2017). In addition, in the early 21st century Oh voiced characters for such animated television series as American Dad!, She-Ra and the Princesses of Power, and Invincible. She lent her voice to several animated movies as well. Those included Over the Moon (2020),…

Edward Waring: In 1762 Waring published Miscellanea analytica… (“Miscellany of analysis…”), a notoriously impenetrable work, but the one upon which his fame largely rests. It was enlarged and republished as Meditationes algebraicae (1770, 1782; “Thoughts on Algebra”) and Proprietates algebraicarum Curvarum (1772; “The Properties of Algebraic Curves”). It covers the theory…

Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz: The Hanoverian period of Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz: …Cognitione, Veritate et Ideis (Reflections on Knowledge, Truth, and Ideas) appeared at this time and defined his theory of knowledge: things are not seen in God—as Nicolas Malebranche suggested—but rather there is an analogy, a strict relation, between God’s ideas and those of humans, an identity between God’s logic…

Meditations on First Philosophy, a treatise by the French scientist, mathematician, and philosopher René Descartes (1596–1650), first published in 1641, that set forth a new metaphysical dualism based on a radical distinction between mind and matter (or mind and body) and established a rational

aesthetics: The aesthetic experience: …Leibnizian philosopher Alexander Baumgarten in Meditationes Philosophicae de Nonnullis ad Poema Pertinentibus (1735; Reflections on Poetry). Baumgarten borrowed the Greek term for sensory perception (aisthēsis) in order to denote a realm of concrete knowledge (the realm, as he saw it, of poetry), in which a content is communicated in sensory…

Meditations, work by the Roman emperor Marcus Aurelius (121–180 ce; ruled 161–180 ce) consisting of Stoicism-inspired philosophical reflections, probably written during the early 170s, while Marcus was leading a series of military campaigns against Germanic tribes along the Danube River in central

Maria Stewart: Activism: …of the money to publish Meditations from the Pen of Mrs. Maria W. Stewart in 1879; it was a revised edition of her 1835 work. She died later that year.

Ireland: In “Meditations in Time of Civil War” William Butler Yeats, perhaps Ireland’s best-known poet, evokes the idyllic and idealized countryside, a place central to the memories of the country’s millions of expatriates and their descendants:

Meditations on First Philosophy, a treatise by the French scientist, mathematician, and philosopher René Descartes (1596–1650), first published in 1641, that set forth a new metaphysical dualism based on a radical distinction between mind and matter (or mind and body) and established a rational

Meditations on First Philosophy, a treatise by the French scientist, mathematician, and philosopher René Descartes (1596–1650), first published in 1641, that set forth a new metaphysical dualism based on a radical distinction between mind and matter (or mind and body) and established a rational

Robert Bly: Such later collections as Meditations on the Insatiable Soul (1994) and The Urge to Travel Long Distances (2005) are preoccupied with the pastoral landscape of Minnesota. Bly employed the Arabic ghazal form in the poems comprising The Night Abraham Called to the Stars (2001) and My Sentence Was a…

Alphonse de Lamartine: Early life and Méditations poétiques: …his first collection of poetry, Méditations poétiques, which became immensely successful because of its new romantic tone and sincerity of feeling. It brought to French poetry a new music; the themes were at the same time intimate and religious. If the vocabulary remained that of the somewhat faded rhetoric of…

Immanuel Kant: Tutor and Privatdozent: In one, Meditationum Quarundam de Igne Succincta Delineation (1755; “A Brief Outline of Some Meditations on Fire”), he argued that bodies operate on one another through the medium of a uniformly diffused elastic and subtle matter that is the underlying substance of both heat and light. His…

Mediterranean Sea: Impact of human activity: …the Mediterranean Action Plan (Med Plan) in 1975. The Med Plan comprises four elements: legal measures, institutional and financial support, integrated planning to prevent environmental degradation, and coordinated pollution monitoring and research. The two most important legal measures are the Barcelona Convention (1976), which calls for protective action against…

Austria: Foreign policy, 1878–1908: The First and Second Mediterranean Agreements of 1887 joined Great Britain to the powers (Austria-Hungary and Italy) interested in blocking Russia from the Straits and enabled Kálnoky to abandon direct agreements with Russia. The Three Emperors’ League of 1881 was allowed to expire, and Austria-Hungary was thus left without…

Fernand Braudel: …l’époque de Philippe II (1949; The Mediterranean and the Mediterranean World in the Age of Philip II). First submitted as a doctoral thesis to the Sorbonne in 1947 and subsequently published as a two-volume book, this geohistorical study centred not only on the conflict between Spain and the Ottoman Empire…

thalassemia, group of blood disorders characterized by a deficiency of hemoglobin, the blood protein that transports oxygen to the tissues. Thalassemia (Greek: “sea blood”) is so called because it was first discovered among peoples around the Mediterranean Sea, among whom its incidence is high.

biogeographic region: Mediterranean region: The Mediterranean region is the winter rainfall zone of the Holarctic kingdom (Figure 1). It is characterized by sclerophyllous plants mainly of the scrubland type known as maquis. It is difficult to define, however, because many of its characteristic plants (about 250 genera)…

Mediterranean climate, major climate type of the Köppen classification characterized by hot, dry summers and cool, wet winters and located between about 30° and 45° latitude north and south of the Equator and on the western sides of the continents. In the Köppen-Geiger-Pohl system, it is divided

Mediterranean diet, popular diet based on the eating patterns of people living in the Mediterranean region. It is low in sugar and animal products, especially red meat, and high in olive oil, whole grains, legumes, fish, eggs, and fresh fruits and vegetables. Studies have suggested that the

archery: Equipment: In Western nations, the so-called Mediterranean draw is used to draw and loose the arrow; this is executed by pulling the string back with three fingers, the first being above and the second and third below the nocked arrow. In right-handed shooting, the arrow is shot from the left side…

tsunami: Notable tsunamis: One of the most destructive tsunamis in antiquity took place in the eastern Mediterranean Sea on July 21, 365 ce. A fault slip in the subduction zone beneath the island of Crete produced an earthquake with an estimated magnitude of 8.0–8.5, which was powerful enough to raise parts of the…

brucellosis, infectious disease of humans and domestic animals characterized by an insidious onset of fever, chills, sweats, weakness, pains, and aches, all of which resolve within three to six months. The disease was initially referred to as Malta fever, having been observed first in the 1850s

flour moth, (Ephestia kuehniella), species of moth in the subfamily Phycitinae (family Pyralidae, order Lepidoptera) that is a cosmopolitan pest of cereal products and other stored foods. Sometimes also called Anagasta kuehniella, the flour moth requires vitamins A and B and the larvae cannot live

Mediterranean fruit fly, particularly destructive and costly insect pest, a species of fruit fly

lizard: General features: …of the best-known lizards, the Mediterranean gecko (Hemidactylus mabouia), is so common in houses and buildings that most Brazilians know more about it, based on their own observations, than they know about any of the endemic species. As is the case with many introduced lizards, the Mediterranean gecko appears to…

Ukraine: Plant and animal life: …of the Mediterranean gull (Larus melanocephalus). Also located on the Black Sea, the Danube Water Meadows Reserve protects the Danube River’s tidewater biota. Other reserves in Ukraine preserve segments of the forest-steppe woodland, the marshes and forests of the Polissya, and the mountains and rocky coast of Crimea.

hackberry: The Mediterranean hackberry, or European nettle tree (C. australis), is an ornamental that has lance-shaped, gray-green leaves and larger edible fruit. Some West African species produce valuable timber.

ling: …other deepwater European fishes: the Spanish, or Mediterranean, ling (M. macrophthalma, or M. elongata) and the blue ling (M. dypterygia, or M. byrkelange).

Europe: Air pressure belts: …a high-pressure ridge; the (winter) Mediterranean low; the Siberian high, centred over Central Asia in winter but extending westward; and the Asiatic low, a low-pressure summertime system over southwestern Asia. Given those pressure conditions, westerly winds prevail in northwestern Europe, becoming especially strong in winter. The winter westerlies, often from…

maquis, scrubland plant community of the Mediterranean region, composed primarily of leathery broad-leaved evergreen shrubs or small trees. Maquis ecosystems occur primarily on the lower slopes of mountains bordering the Mediterranean Sea and are considered part of the Mediterranean vegetation

maquis, scrubland plant community of the Mediterranean region, composed primarily of leathery broad-leaved evergreen shrubs or small trees. Maquis ecosystems occur primarily on the lower slopes of mountains bordering the Mediterranean Sea and are considered part of the Mediterranean vegetation

maquis, scrubland plant community of the Mediterranean region, composed primarily of leathery broad-leaved evergreen shrubs or small trees. Maquis ecosystems occur primarily on the lower slopes of mountains bordering the Mediterranean Sea and are considered part of the Mediterranean vegetation

monk seal: …danger of extinction, are the Mediterranean monk seal (M. monachus) and the Hawaiian, or Laysan, monk seal (M. schauinslandi). The seals are threatened by human disturbance of their coastal habitats, disease, and continued hunting. By the 1990s there were only about 1,400 Hawaiian monk seals and 300 to 600 Mediterranean…

paracanthopterygian: Life cycle and reproduction: In the Mediterranean pearlfish (Carapus acus), a member of the order Ophidiiformes (family Carapidae), clumps of eggs released by the female in late summer appear at the surface and hatch into a specialized larva, the vexillifer, which lives amid the plankton. After attaining a length of about…

Pyrenees: Physiography: …into three natural regions: the Eastern (or Mediterranean), Pyrenees, the Central Pyrenees, and the Western Pyrenees. The different vegetation, the linguistic divisions of the people, and—to a point—certain ethnic and cultural distinctions appear to confirm this classification.

biogeographic region: Mediterranean region: The Mediterranean region is the winter rainfall zone of the Holarctic kingdom (Figure 1). It is characterized by sclerophyllous plants mainly of the scrubland type known as maquis. It is difficult to define, however, because many of its characteristic plants (about 250 genera)…

Mediterranean Sea, an intercontinental sea that stretches from the Atlantic Ocean on the west to Asia on the east and separates Europe from Africa. It has often been called the incubator of Western civilization. This ancient “sea between the lands” occupies a deep, elongated, and almost landlocked

sea lavender: Major species: …or common, sea lavender (Limonium vulgare). Bearing small flowers in dense spikes, it grows naturally in large tracts that sometimes turn acres lilac-coloured in late summer. It is a popular ornamental in warm climates. Wavy-leaf sea lavender (L. sinuatum) is one of several species cultivated for use as cut…

Andisol: …and in volcanic regions of Mediterranean countries.

boutonneuse fever, a mild typhuslike fever caused by the bacterium Rickettsia conorii conorii and transmitted by the dog tick Rhipicephalus sanguineus. The disease is endemic to the Mediterranean region. Similar forms of boutonneuse fever occur in Africa, India, and southern Europe but are caused

spurge: Major species: …with golden bracts in spring; Mediterranean spurge (E. characias, subspecies wulfenii), from Europe, 0.9 to 1.2 metres (3 to 4 feet) tall with greenish yellow heads on bluish foliage; cushion spurge (E. epithymoides), from Europe, a 30.5-cm (12-inch) globe of gold to chartreuse that blooms in spring; and E. griffithii,…

pine: …including black, white, Himalayan, and stone pines, and some are planted in reforestation projects or for windbreaks. Pine-leaf oil, used medicinally, is a distillation product of the leaves; charcoal, lampblack, and fuel gases are distillation by-products.

Nicolas Sarkozy: Presidency: …oversaw the launch of the Mediterranean Union, an international organization made up of Mediterranean rim countries in Europe, North Africa, and the Middle East.

Mediterranean vegetation, biome of any dense scrubland composed of broad-leaved evergreen shrubs, bushes, and small trees usually less than 2.5 metres (about 8 feet) tall and growing in regions lying between 30° and 40° north and south latitudes. These regions have a climate similar to that of the

Nicolas Sarkozy: Presidency: …oversaw the launch of the Mediterranean Union, an international organization made up of Mediterranean rim countries in Europe, North Africa, and the Middle East.

mountain: The Alpine-Himalayan, or Tethyan, System: The interconnected system of mountain ranges and intermontane plateaus that lies between the stable areas of Africa, Arabia, and India on the south and Europe and Asia on the north owes its existence to the collisions of different continental fragments during the past…

Fernand Braudel: …l’époque de Philippe II (1949; The Mediterranean and the Mediterranean World in the Age of Philip II). First submitted as a doctoral thesis to the Sorbonne in 1947 and subsequently published as a two-volume book, this geohistorical study centred not only on the conflict between Spain and the Ottoman Empire…

Patricia Arquette: …crime-solving psychic on the show Medium (2005–11) earned her a 2005 Emmy Award for best lead actress in a drama series, and she had a recurring part (2013–14) as the owner of a Florida speakeasy in the series Boardwalk Empire. Arquette later starred in the short-lived CSI: Crime Scene Investigation…

medium, in occultism, a person reputedly able to make contact with the world of spirits, especially while in a state of trance. A spiritualist medium is the central figure during a séance (q.v.) and sometimes requires the assistance of an invisible go-between, or control. During a séance,

musical criticism: Medium: Another question is why a composition expresses itself through its particular medium? Why that medium rather than another?

tank: World War I: …and in 1918 the 14-ton Medium A appeared with a speed of 8 miles (13 km) per hour and a range of 80 miles (130 km). After 1918, however, the most widely used tank was the French Renault F.T., a light six-ton vehicle designed for close infantry support.

Middle Ages, the period in European history from the collapse of Roman civilization in the 5th century ce to the period of the Renaissance (variously interpreted as beginning in the 13th, 14th, or 15th century, depending on the region of Europe and other factors). A brief treatment of the Middle

Medium Cool, American film drama, released in 1969, that captured the fractious spirit of its day and highlighted the many social and ethical issues of the late 1960s. Medium Cool follows television news cameraman John Cassellis (played by Robert Forster) as he shoots hard-to-get footage of

satellite communication: How satellites work: …orbits: low Earth orbit (LEO), medium Earth orbit (MEO), and geostationary or geosynchronous orbit (GEO). LEO satellites are positioned at an altitude between 160 km and 1,600 km (100 and 1,000 miles) above Earth. MEO satellites operate from 10,000 to 20,000 km (6,300 to 12,500 miles) from Earth. (Satellites do…