Be

City (pop., 2006 est.: 1,528,687), west-central Honshu, Japan. It is situated on Omacrsaka Bay and occupies a narrow shelf of land between mountains and the sea. With neighbouring cities Omacrsaka and Kyōto, it is the centre of a major industrial zone. Until the Meiji Restoration it was only a fishing village, but it grew rapidly in the late 19th century. It was severely bombed during World War II and was entirely rebuilt after 1945. It suffered a major earthquake in 1995. Kōbe is an important Japanese port and a centre of shipbuilding and steel production; it is the seat of Kōbe University.

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Chemical element, lightest of the alkaline earth metals, chemical symbol Be, atomic number 4. It does not occur uncombined in nature but is found chiefly as the mineral beryl (of which emerald and aquamarine are gemstone varieties). Beryllium metal, particularly in alloys, has many structural and thermal applications; it is used in nuclear reactors. Beryllium has valence 2 in all its compounds, which are generally colourless and taste distinctly sweet. All soluble beryllium compounds are toxic. Beryllium oxide is used in specialized ceramics for nuclear devices, and beryllium chloride is a catalyst for organic reactions.

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BE, B.E., Be or be may refer to:

• The verb to be (see Indo-European copula)
• Bachelor of Engineering, undergraduate academic degree
• Buddhist Era of the Thai solar calendar
• Bahá'í Era, the date notation of the Bahá'í calendar
• "Be, and it is", phrase in the Qurán about God's creation
• Bloco de Esquerda (Portuguese "Left Bloc"), a Portuguese political party
• Bishop Eustace Prep, a high school in New Jersey
• Bishop England High School, a Catholic High School in Charleston, South Carolina
• %BE is the URL Encoded version of the three-quarters (¾) Symbol.
• Blood Elf, a race in the game World of Warcraft

Linguistics

• Be (Cyrillic), a letter of the Cyrillic alphabet
• British English
• Belarusian language, ISO 639 alpha-2 language code "be"
• Black English, see African American Vernacular English
• Business English

Science

• Beryllium, symbol "Be", chemical element
• Bejan number, used in thermodynamics and fluid mechanics
• Bladder exstrophy, a congenital urological condition
• Branchial Efferent nerve fibers
• Base excess, a blood chemistry measure in human physiology
• Be star, a B-type star with prominent forbidden emission lines of hydrogen in its spectrum

Businesses

• Be Unlimited, a broadband Internet Service Provider in the United Kingdom
• Be Inc., the software company that developed the BeOS operating system
• Beriev Aircraft Company, a Russian aircraft manufacturer which uses the design office prefix "Be"
• flybe, a UK-based airline with IATA airline code "BE"
• BearingPoint, One of the world’s largest providers of management and technology consulting services to Global 2000 companies and government organizations in 60 countries. BE is the stock symbol.

Places

• Belgium, ISO 3166 and obsolete NATO 2-letter country code "BE"
• .be, the country code top-level domain for Belgium
• Bermuda, World Meteorological Organization territory code "BE"
• Canton of Berne, Switzerland

Sports and entertainment

• BE (Pain of Salvation album), an album by Swedish band Pain of Salvation
• Be (Common album), an album by Common
• "Be", a song by Jessica Simpson from her 2003 album In This Skin
• "Be", an off-Broadway play, also known as Be by Mayumana
• British Eventing, the British governing body for the equestrian sport of eventing
• Badminton Europe, the governing body of badminton in Europe
• Breast expansion
• Battleground Europe, a World-War 2 massively multi-player computer game.

See also

• bee (a type of insect)