Los Altos, residential city (1990 pop. 26,303), Santa Clara co., W Calif.; inc. 1952. There is diversified light manufacturing.

El Alto, city (2001 pop. 649,958), La Paz dept., W Bolivia. A burgeoning suburb of La Paz, El Alto is on a plateau overlooking the capital from the west. Although predominantly poor and reside...

Palo Alto, city (1990 pop. 55,900), Santa Clara co., W Calif.; inc. 1894. Although primarily residential, Palo Alto has aerospace, electronics, and advanced research industries. A local attrac...

Palo Alto, locality not far from Brownsville, Tex., where the first battle of the Mexican War was fought on May 8, 1846. American troops under Gen. Zachary Taylor defeated a Mexican force led ...

Contralto, female voice of lowest pitch. Originally, the term denoted a second voice set against (contra) a high voice (alto); thus, a second high voice. Since most second parts were for a hig...

Falsetto [Ital.,=diminutive of false], high-pitched, unnatural tones above the normal register of the male voice, produced, according to some theories, by the vibration of only the edges of th...

Countertenor, a male singing voice in the alto range. Singing in this range requires either a special vocal technique called falsetto, or a high extension of the tenor range. Countertenors wer...

Castrato [Ital.,=castrated], a male singer with an artificially created soprano or alto voice, the result of castration in boyhood. The combination of the larynx of a youth and the chest and l...

Brubeck, Dave (David Warren Brubeck), 1920–, American pianist and composer, b. Concord, Calif. Brubeck began studying piano at the age of four and later studied composition with Milhaud and Sc...

Ernst, Richard 1933–, Swiss chemist. He worked as a research scientist from 1963 until 1968 in Palo Alto, Calif., before becoming a professor in Zürich. He was awarded the 1991 Nobel Prize in ...