Shliapentokh's study indicated that, in the Soviet Union, women's absenteeism from their jobs, despite their home duties and their child-care responsibilities, were only a fifth of men.

On a glacier in the High Himalayas, a Japanese zoologist has found a species of midge that is unlike any other known insect in its spending its entire life cycle in the snow and ice of a glacier.

Though the artifacts of pre-Columbian civilization created a stir from the very first European contacts with the New World in the sixteenth century, it was not until the latter half of the nineteenth century that Western designers, artists, and crafters were inspired to imitate them.

Roughly twice each century the planet Venus passes between the Earth and the Sun, an occasion known as a transit of Venus, during which it makes the outline of the planet visible in stark relief.

The military governors and samurai warriors who ruled Japan were trained to respect simplicity, be austere, and a ritualized code of observed behavior.

It is the powerful compound capsaicin that makes a chili pepper hot; a single drop that has no taste and odor is capable of detection by humans at one part per million.

Glaciers form when the snow, sleet, and hail that fall in a given climatic region exceed the amount capable of being lost through evaporation or melting.

In Alexandria, the Ptolemys founded a library so as the written remains of Greek literature could be gathered together and systematized.

The first decision for most tenants living in a building undergoing being converted to cooperative ownership is if to sign a no-buy pledge with the other tenants.

Unlike a typical automobile loan, which requires a fifteen-to twenty-percent down payment, the lease-loan buyer is not required to make an initial deposit on the new vehicle.