Truong Chinh Uru-'oq-'chinV orig. Dang Xuan Khu (b. Feb. 9, 1907, Ha Nam Ninh province, Viet.—d. Sept. 30, 1988, Hanoi) Vietnam¬ ese statesman, writer, and communist intellectual. He was an anticolo¬ nialist activist as a youth, joining Ho Chi Minh in 1928. He became a teacher and joined the Indochinese Communist Party, becoming its secretary-general in 1941. With Vo Nguyen Giap he developed the strat¬ egy that led to a Vietnamese victory over the Japanese occupation forces in 1945. With Le Duan (1908-86) and Pham Van Dong (1906-2000) he ruled North Vietnam after Ho’s death in 1969.
Truro City (pop., 1995 est.: 25,000), county seat of Cornwall, south¬ western England. It is located on the River Truro at the head of Falmouth Harbor. Industries include food processing and light engineering.
truss In building construction, a structural frame usually fabricated from pieces of metal or timber to form a series of triangles lying in a single plane. The linear members are subject only to compression or tension. The horizontal pieces forming the top and bottom of the truss are called the chords, and the sloping and vertical pieces connecting the chords are collectively called the web. Unlike a vault, the truss exerts no thrust but only downward pressure; supporting walls require no buttressing or extra thickening. Trusses have been used extensively in roofing and bridges. Wood trusses were probably first used in primitive dwellings c. 2500 bc. Wood was replaced by iron, which in turn was succeeded by steel.
A truss's outer members are called the chords, its interior members are called the web members, and each triangular section is called a panel. A pitched truss (top) has inclined top chords; a flat truss (bottom) has parallel top and bottom chords.
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trust In law, a relationship between parties in which one, the trustee or fiduciary, has the power to manage property, and the other, the beneficiary, has the privilege of receiving the benefits from that property. Trusts are used in a variety of contexts, most notably in family settlements and in charitable gifts. The traditional requirements of a trust are a named ben¬ eficiary and trustee, an identified property (constituting the principal of the trust), and delivery of the property to the trustee with the intent to create a trust. Trusts are often created for the sake of advantageous tax treatment (including exemption). A charitable trust, unlike most trusts, does not require definite beneficiaries and may exist in perpetuity. See also TRUST COMPANY.
trust company Company, often a commercial bank, acting as trustee for individuals and businesses and providing related financial or estate¬ planning services. Trust services for individuals commonly include the administration of estates, living trusts (trusts that become effective dur¬ ing the lifetimes of their makers, or settlors), and testamentary trusts (trusts originating in a will). Services for businesses include the admin-
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1944 I trust fund ► tsunami
istration of corporate bond indentures and corporate pension funds. Trust companies may also serve as corporate stock registrars and as paying agents for the distribution of dividends.
trust fund Property (e.g, money or securities) held in a trust; that is, property held legally by one party (the legal owner) for the benefit of another party (the equitable owner). The legal owner, or trustee, has the right of possession and the right of use of the property, but must exercise those rights to the benefit of the equitable owner, or beneficiary. In Anglo- American law, trust funds are set up principally for family settlements and for charitable giving. In the commercial sector, trust funds are often set up to provide for employee pensions and profit-sharing programs.
truth In philosophy, the property of statements, thoughts, or propositions that are said, in ordinary discourse, to agree with the facts or to state what is the case. At least four major types of truth theory have been proposed: correspondence theories (see realism), coherence theories (see coherentism, idealism), pragmatic theories (see pragmatism), and deflationary theories. The latter group encompasses a wide variety of views, including the redundancy theory, the disquotation theory, and the prosentential theory.
Truth, Sojourner orig. Isabella Van Wagener (b. c. 1797, Ulster county, N.Y., U.S.—d. Nov. 26,
1883, Battle Creek, Mich.) U.S. evangelist and social reformer. The daughter of slaves, she spent her childhood as an abused chattel of several masters. After being freed in about 1827, she worked as a domes¬ tic in New York City (1829^13) and began preaching on street comers with the evangelical missionary Eli¬ jah Pierson. Adopting the name Sojourner Truth, she left New York to obey a “call” to travel and preach.
Adding abolitionism and women’s rights to her religious messages, she traveled in the Midwest, where her magnetism drew large crowds. At the start of the American Civil War she gathered supplies for black volunteer regiments. In 1864 she went to Washington, D.C., where she helped integrate streetcars and was received at the White House by Pres. Abraham Lincoln. After the war she worked for the freedmen’s relief organization and encouraged migration to Kan¬ sas and Missouri.
TRW Inc. U.S manufacturer of advanced equipment and systems for industry and government. Founded in 1901 as a maker of cap screws, it was incorporated in 1916 as the Steel Products Co. The name was changed to Thompson Products, Inc., in 1926, then to Thompson Ramo Woold¬ ridge Inc. after a merger in 1958, and to TRW Inc. in 1965. Through its various divisions and subsidiaries, TRW designed and manufactured a wide range of automotive parts, electronic systems for military aircraft, and spacecraft. Its information systems and services segments maintain databases for screening credit histories. In 2002 defense contractor Northrop Grumman acquired TRW for its aerospace division.
tryptophan Vtrip-to-.fanX One of the essential amino acids. It is a het¬ erocyclic compound that is found in small amounts in most proteins. It plays an important role in the growth and development of infants and in the biosynthesis of serotonin and niacin (thus, deficiency of niacin or tryp¬ tophan can cause pellagra). Its occurrence in milk has been suggested as the reason that drinking milk before bedtime helps people sleep. It is used in medicine and nutrition research, in enriched foods, and as a dietary supplement.
Ts'ai-shen See Caishen Ts'ao Chan See Cao Zhan
Ts'ao Ts'ao See Cao Cao
tsar or czar Vzar, ‘(t)sar\ Byzantine or Russian emperor. The title, derived from caesar, was used in the Middle Ages to refer to a supreme ruler, particularly the Byzantine emperor. With the fall of the Byzantine Empire in 1453, the Russian monarch became the only remaining Ortho¬
dox monarch, and the Russian Orthodox clergy considered him a possible new supreme head of Orthodox Christianity. Ivan IV (the Terrible) was the first to be crowned tsar, in 1547. Though theoretically wielding absolute power, he and his successors were limited by the power of the Orthodox church, the Boyar Council, and the successive legal codes of 1497, 1550, and 1649. In 1721 Peter I changed his title to “Emperor of All Russia,” but he and his successors continued to be popularly called tsars.
Tsaritsyn See Volgograd
Tsavo Vtsa-,vo\ National Park Park, southeastern Kenya, east of Mount Kilimanjaro. Established in 1948, it covers 8,036 sq mi (20,812 sq km) and is Kenya’s largest national park. It comprises semiarid plains covered by dormant vegetation (which blooms after a light rain) and aca¬ cia and baobab trees. Wildlife includes elephants, lions, rhinoceroses, hippopotamuses, hartebeests, and hundreds of bird species. Poaching and brush fires are constant problems.
Tschermak von Seysenegg Vcher-.mak-fon-'zI-zo-.nekV Erich (b. Nov. 15, 1871, Vienna, Austria—d. Oct. 11, 1962, Vienna) Austrian bota¬ nist. He was one of the codiscoverers of Gregor Mendel’s classic papers on heredity and the garden pea. Before running across Mendel’s papers he had conducted his own breeding experiments with the garden pea, but he found that Mendel’s work duplicated and in some ways surpassed his own. In the same year that he reported his findings (1900), Hugo de Vries and Carl Erich Correns also reported their discovery of Mendel’s papers. See also William Bateson.