Stein way German-U.S. piano manufacturing firm. Henry E. Stein¬ way, born Heinrich Engelhard Stein- weg (1797-1871), was trained as an organ builder in his native Germany and began building pianos in 1836.
He and most of his family followed one of his sons to the U.S. in 1850.
After working for other piano firms for several years to learn the Ameri¬ can business, in 1853 father and sons founded their own company in New York City, which came to dominate the market. In 1865 he brought to the U.S. the sons who had kept the German business going. He himself became involved in research and development, and his improvements set the standard for the modern grand piano.
stele Vste-le, *stel\ or stela Vste-l9\ Standing stone tablet used in the ancient world primarily as a grave marker but also for dedication, com¬ memoration, and demarcation. Though the stele’s origin is unknown, a stone slab was commonly used as a tombstone in Egypt, Greece, Asia, and the Mayan empire. In Babylon, the Code of Hammurabi was engraved on a tall stele. The largest number of stelae were produced in Attica, chiefly as grave markers. The dead were represented on the stelae as they were in life: men as warriors or athletes, women surrounded by their chil¬ dren, and children with their pets or toys.
Stella, Frank (Philip) (b. May 12, 1936, Malden, Mass., U.S.) U.S. painter. He moved to New York City after studying history at Princeton University and there began his innovative “black paintings” (1958-60), incorporating symmetrical series of thin white stripes that replicated the canvas shape when seen against their black backgrounds. As a leading figure of Minimalism, in the mid 1960s he began using polychromy in an influential series marked by intersecting geometric curvilinear shapes and plays of vivid and harmonious colours. In the 1970s he began producing sensuously coloured, mixed-media reliefs featuring more organic shapes. He was given retrospective exhibitions at the Museum of Modern Art in 1970 and 1987.
Steller's sea cow See sea cow
stem Plant axis that emerges from the roots, supports the branches, bears buds and shoots with leaves, and contains the vascular (conducting) tis¬ sues (xylem and phloem) that transport water, minerals, and food to other parts of the plant. The pith (a central core of spongy tissue) is surrounded by strands (in dicots; see cotyledon) or bundles (in monocots) of conduct¬ ing xylem and phloem, then by the cortex and outermost epidermis, or bark. The cambium (an area of actively dividing cells) lies just below the bark. Lateral buds and leaves grow out of the stem at intervals called nodes; the intervals on the stem between the nodes are called intemodes. In flowering plants, various stem modifications (rhizome, corm, tuber, bulb, stolon) let the plant survive dormantly for years, store food, or sprout asexually. All green stems perform photosynthesis, as do leaves; in plants such as the cacti (see cactus) and asparagus, the stem is the chief site of photosynthesis.
stem cell In living organisms, an undifferentiated cell that can produce other cells that eventually make up specialized tissues and organs. There are two major types of stem cells, embryonic and adult. Embryonic stem cells are located in the inner mass of a blastocyst (an embryo at a very early stage of development), and they eventually give rise to every cell type of the adult organism. Adult stem cells are found in some tissues in the adult body, such as the epidermis of the skin, the lining of the small intestine, and the bone marrow, where they serve in the regeneration of old or worn tissue. In cancer treatment, blood-forming adult stem cells are routinely harvested from bone marrow, stored, and then reinfused into patients to replace blood cells destroyed by chemotherapy or radiation therapy. This potential for
replacing damaged tissues has aroused great interest in using embryonic stem cells to treat a number of other conditions, such as Parkinson disease, severe burns, and damage to the spinal cord. Mouse embryonic stem cells are widely used to create genetically modified mice that serve as models for investigating human disease. However, the use of human embryonic stem cells, which requires destroying the blastocysts from which they are obtained, has raised objections by those who feel blastocyst-stage embryos are human beings. The first human stem cell line was created in 1998, using cells harvested from embryos produced through in vitro fertilization. The use of human embryonic stem cells is allowed in some countries and pro¬ hibited or restricted in others.
Stendhal \sta n -‘dal,\£>ig/w/i \sten-'dal\ orig. Marie-Henri Beyle (b. Jan. 23, 1783, Grenoble, France—d.
March 23, 1842, Paris) French nov¬ elist. He left for Paris in 1799 partly to escape his father’s rule. By 1802 he was keeping a diary (posthu¬ mously published as his Journal) and writing other texts dealing with his intimate thoughts. From 1806 he served in Napoleon’s army; after the French empire fell in 1814, he settled in Italy. As a result of political and romantic disappointments, he returned to Paris. During 1821-30, while leading an active social and intellectual life, he wrote works including the masterpiece The Red and the Black (1830), a powerful character study of an ambitious young man that is also an acute pic¬ ture of Restoration France. His other major work, The Charterhouse of Parma (1839), is remarkable for its sophisticated rendering of human psychology and its subtly drawn portraits. His unfinished autobiographi¬ cal works. Memoirs of an Egotist (1892) and The Life of Henry Brulard (1890), are among his most original achievements.
Stengel, Casey orig. Charles Dillon Stengel (b. July 30, 1891, Kansas City, Mo., U.S.—d. Sept. 29, 1975, Glendale, Calif.) U.S. baseball player and manager. Stengel played outfield with the Brooklyn Dodgers (1912-17), Pittsburgh Pirates (1918-19), Philadelphia Phillies (1920-21), New York Giants (1921-23), and Boston Braves (1924-25). He became a coach and manager of the Dodgers and Braves but achieved his greatest success with the New York Yankees (1949-61), leading the team to 10 pen¬ nants (5 in consecutive years) and 7 World Series championships (5 in con¬ secutive years) in 12 years. He later served as vice president and manager of the newly formed New York Mets (1962-65), a team that became noted for its dismal performance during these early years. Throughout his career Stengel was known for his showmanship and his idiosyncratic use and mis¬ use of English, called “Stengelese” (for example, “I’ve always heard it couldn’t be done, but sometimes it don’t always work”).
Stenmark, Ingemar (b. March 18, 1956, Josesjo, Lapland, Swed.) Swedish Alpine skier. Stenmark trained with Sweden’s junior national team from age 13 and won his first World Cup race in 1974. In 1976, 1977, and 1978 he was the overall victor in the World Cup (slalom, giant slalom, and downhill). In the 1980 Olympic Games he won gold medals in slalom and giant slalom. He turned professional later that year, and he retired in 1989. His lifetime total of 86 World Cup victories still stands as a record, and he is perhaps the greatest slalom and giant slalom skier of all time.
Steno \'sta-no\, Nicolaus Danish Niels Steensen or Niels Stensen (b. Jan. 10, 1638, Copenhagen, Den.—d. Nov. 26, 1686, Schw¬ erin, Prussia) Danish geologist and anatomist. An eminent physician, in 1660 he discovered the parotid salivary duct (Stensen’s duct). In his geo¬ logic observations, he was the first to realize that the Earth’s crust con¬ tains a chronological history of geologic events that might be deciphered by careful study of rock strata and fossils, which he identified as the remains of ancient living organisms. In 1669 he made the fundamental crystallographic discovery that all quartz crystals have the same angles between corresponding faces. He later abandoned science for religion and became a priest in 1675.