Cox, James M(iddleton) (b. March 31, 1870, Jacksonburg, Ohio, U.S.—d. July 15, 1957, Dayton, Ohio) U.S. politician. He worked as a reporter in Cincinnati before buying the Dayton News (1898) and Spring- field Daily News (1903). A supporter of Woodrow Wilson, he served in the U.S. House of Representatives (1909-13) and then was elected gov¬ ernor of Ohio (1913-15, 1917-21), where he introduced workers’ com¬ pensation and the minimum wage. He won the Democratic presidential nomination in 1920 but was defeated by Warren G. Harding in a Repub¬ lican landslide.
Coxey's Army Group of unemployed men who marched to Washing¬ ton, D.C., in the depression year of 1894. Jacob S. Coxey (1854-1951), a businessman, led the group, which hoped to persuade Congress to autho¬ rize public-works programs to provide jobs. It left Ohio on March 25 and reached Washington on May 1 with about 500 men, the only one of sev¬ eral groups to reach its destination. It attracted much attention but failed to bring about any legislation.
coyote \k!-'o-te, 'kI-,ot\ Species ( Canis latrans) of canine found in North and Central America. Its range extends from Alaska and Canada south
William Cowper, detail of an oil paint¬ ing by Lemuel Abbott, 1792; in the National Portrait Gallery, London
COURTESY OF THE NATIONAL PORTRAIT GALLERY, LONDON
Cowrie (Cypraea)
BUCKY REEVES FROM THE NATIONAL AUDUBON SOCIETY COLLECTION/PHOTO RESEARCHERS-EB INC.
© 2006 Encyclopaedia Britannica, Inc.
478 I coypu ► cramp
through the continental U.S. and Mexico to Central America. It weighs about 20-50 lbs (9-23 kg) and is about 3—4 ft (1—1.3 m) long, including its 12-16-in. (30—40-cm) tail. Its coarse fur is generally buff above and whitish below; its legs are reddish, and its tail is bushy and black-tipped. The coyote feeds mainly on small mammals such as rodents, rabbits, and hares but can also take down deer, sometimes doing so in packs. Vegeta¬ tion and carrion are commonly eaten as well. Though persecuted by humans because of its potential (generally overstated) to prey on domes¬ tic or game animals, it has adapted well to human-dominated environ¬ ments, including urban areas. A coyote-dog cross is called a coydog.
coypu See nutria
Coysevox \kwaz-'voks\, Antoine (b. Sept. 29, 1640, Lyon, Fr.—d. Oct. 10, 1720, Paris) French sculptor. In 1666 he became sculptor to Louis XIV and by 1678 was working at Versailles. He was known for his por¬ trait busts, which show a naturalism and animation of expression that anticipates the Rococo style. He also executed decorative sculpture for the royal gardens and did much interior decoration. Coysevox exerted con¬ siderable influence on the development of French portrait sculpture in the 18th century.
CP violation In particle physics, the violation of the combined conser¬ vation laws associated with charge conjugation, C (the operation of turn¬ ing a particle into its antiparticle), and parity, P, by the weak force. In 1957 it was discovered that parity is violated in beta decay. No fully satisfac¬ tory explanation has been devised, but CP violation does enable physi¬ cists to make an absolute distinction between matter and antimatter.
CPR See cardiopulmonary resuscitation
CPU in full central processing unit Principal component of a digi¬ tal computer, composed of a control unit, an instruction-decoding unit, and an arithmetic-logic unit. The CPU is linked to main memory, peripheral equipment (including input/output devices), and storage units. The con¬ trol unit integrates computer operations. It selects instructions from the main memory in proper sequence and sends them to the instruction¬ decoding unit, which interprets them so as to activate functions of the system at appropriate moments. Input data are transferred via the main memory to the arithmetic-logic unit for processing (i.e., addition, subtrac¬ tion, multiplication, division, and certain logic operations). Larger com¬ puters may have two or more CPUs, in which case they are simply called “processors” because each is no longer a “central” unit. See also multi¬ processing.
crab Any of 4,500 species of short-tailed decapod, found in all oceans, in freshwater, and on land. Its cara¬ pace (upper body shield) is usually broad, and its first pair of legs is modified into pincers. Most crabs live in the sea and breathe through gills, which in land crabs are modi¬ fied to serve as lungs. They walk or crawl, generally with a sideways gait; some are good swimmers.
Crabs are omnivorous scavengers, but many are predatory and some are herbivorous. Two of the largest known crustaceans are the giant crab of Japan (13 ft, or 4 m, from claw tip to claw tip), a spider crab; and the Tas¬ manian crab (up to 18 in., or 46 cm, long, and weighing more than 20 lbs, or 9 kg). Other species are less than an inch long. Well-known crabs include the hermit crab, edible crab (Britain and Europe), blue crab, Dunge- NESS CRAB, FIDDLER CRAB, and KING CRAB.
crab louse See human louse
Crab Nebula Bright nebula in the constellation Taurus, about 5,000 light-years from Earth. Roughly 12 light-years in diameter, it is the rem¬ nant of a supernova, first observed by Chinese and other astronomers in 1054, that was visible in daylight for 23 days and at night for almost two years. Identified as a nebula c. 1731, it was named (for its form) in the mid-19th century. In 1921 it was discovered to be still expanding; the present rate is about 700 mi/second (1,100 km/second). The Crab is one of the few astronomical objects from which electromagnetic radiation has
been detected over the entire measurable spectrum. In the late 1960s a pul¬ sar, thought to be the collapsed remnant star of the supernova, was found near its centre.
Crabbe VkrabV George (b. Dec. 24, 1754, Aldeburgh, Suffolk, Eng.—d. Feb. 3, 1832, Trowbridge, Wiltshire) English poet. Reared in an impoverished seacoast village, Crabbe initially became a surgeon. In 1780 he left for London, where his poem The Village (1783) brought him fame; written partly as a protest against Oliver Goldsmith’s Deserted Village (1770), it was Crabbe’s attempt to show the misery of rural poverty. The Newspaper followed in 1785, but he did not publish again until 1807. In “The Parish Register,” he used the register of births, deaths, and marriages to depict the life of a rural community. Considered the last of the Augustan poets, he wrote in heroic couplets. His story of the isolated and violent Peter Grimes in The Borough became the basis of a famous opera by Ben¬ jamin Britten.
crabgrass Any of about 300 species of grasses in the genus Digitaria, especially D. sanguinalis or the slightly shorter D. ischaemum (smooth crabgrass). D. sanguinalis has long hairs covering its leaves and five or six spikelets; D. ischaemum has no hair and only two or three spikelets. Both are natives of Europe that became widely naturalized as weeds in North America. They and a few closely related species are very troublesome in lawns and fields. One species, Arizona cottontop ( D . cali- fornica ), is a useful forage grass in the American Southwest.
Cracow See Krakow
Craig, (Edward Henry) Gor¬ don (b. Jan. 16, 1872, Stevenage,
Hertfordshire, Eng.—d. July 29,
1966, Vence, France) British actor, stage designer, and drama theorist. The son of Ellen Terry, he acted with Henry Irving’s company (1889-97), then turned to designing stage sets, decor, and costumes. He moved to Flo¬ rence (1906), where he opened the School for the Art of the Theatre (1913). His international journal The Mask (1908-29) made his theatri¬ cal ideas widely known. His books On the Art of the Theatre (1911), Towards a New Theatre (1913), and Scene (1923) outlined innovations in stage design based on the use of portable screens and changing patterns of light; his theories influenced the antinaturalist trends of the modern theatre.
Craig, Sir James (Henry) (b. 1748, Gibraltar—d. Jan. 12, 1812, London, Eng.) British army officer and governor-general of Canada (1807-11). In the American Revolution, he was wounded at the Battle of Bunker Hill in 1775 and helped repel the American army’s invasion of Canada in 1776. He later served in India. As governor-general in Canada, he cooperated with the governing clique in Quebec but conducted an unpopular repressive policy toward French Canadians. He resigned in 1811 and returned to England.