What is gas chromatography and describe it. In connection with this discuss the sampling, detection limit, precision, and error sources. Regarding...

Gas chromatography (also commonly called GC) is a method of analyzing chemical samples for purity.  Different chemical components within a sample injected onto a GC will separate and read as separate compounds by a detector.  A sophisticated system can not only separate different chemical components but it can quantify them as well.  So one very useful application of GC is detecting for the presence of illegal chemicals in samples in crime and drug labs.  Assay performance on a sophisticated system is very high.

The principle and equipment used are as follows.  The chemical sample is dissolved and diluted in a volatile chemical solvent like methanol or acetone.  The sample is injected using a syringe into an injector assembly.  The injector assembly is very hot (>200 degrees C) and vaporizes the solvent and atomizes the chemical sample into gaseous form.  The gaseous sample is picked up by the carrier gas (usually helium or hydrogen) and then carried through the GC column.  The column is a long (~25 meters) and thin (<1 millimeter) flexible tube coiled inside an oven.  The sample travels through the stationary phase in the column tube where the individual chemical entities are separated according to their affinity for the column.  The temperature in the oven can be varied to help larger compounds travel faster.  The gas then exits the column and enters a detector, which is usually a flame ionization detector (FID).  The output of the detector is plotted over time to give a graph of the sample being analyzed.

The sampling for GC is very easy.  The chemical sample needs to be dissolved in any number of basic chemical solvents.  Only microgram levels of material are required for an effective GC trace so the detection limit is down to parts per billion levels (ppb).  Precision of analysis can be very high when using an autosampler to inject the samples since it can measure and replicate injection volumes with a high degree of precision.  Error sources include sample preparation and potential gas leaks with the system (it should be gas tight).  Probably the biggest drawback to GC is that the chemicals injected need to be a low enough molecular weight to effectively atomize and exist in the gaseous state.  Compounds that are too large will not travel through the column effectively and can damage the column with regard to future analysis.

When Odysseus goes to the Underworld, the blind prophet Tiresias tells him to act with restraint and control. Find two examples after this visit,...

When Odysseus visits the Underworld and Tiresias warns Odysseus not to do certain things, Odysseus promises to heed his words, but later on, he does not obey the warning.

In Book 11, Tiresias says to Odysseus,

"...if you will curb your spirit and your comrades.

As soon as you’ve escaped the dark blue sea                     

and reached the island of Thrinacia

in your sturdy ship, you’ll find grazing there

the cattle and rich flocks of Helios,

who hears and watches over everything.

If you leave them unharmed and keep your mind                  

on your return, you may reach Ithaca,

though you’ll have trouble. But if you touch them,

then I foresee destruction for your crew,

for you, and for your ship."

Firstly, Tiresias warns Odysseus to restrain his men. After the men successfully get through the dangers of the Sirens and Scylla and Charybdis, Odysseus' crew wants to stop on the island of Helios, but Odysseus explains that they can't, he was warned against it. The men argue, and Odysseus gives in, making the men promise not to kill the cattle and flocks of Helios. Odysseus does not show restraint by allowing his crew to stop and rest on this island.

Then, the men are forced to spend a month on the island because of the winds. Odysseus goes off to pray and sleep and while he is gone he is unable to prevent the men from killing some of the cattle. Homer writes,

"They quickly rounded up the finest beasts

from Helios’ herd, which was close by,

sleek, broad-faced animals with curving horns grazing near the

dark-prowed ship. My comrades

…cut the creature’s throats,

flayed them, and cut out portions of the thighs."  

So the men kill the cattle, and have to face the wrath of the god Helios.

These two examples, of when Odysseus doesn't restrain his men and stops at the island, and then when he doesn't stop them from killing the cattle, are two examples where Odysseus does not show restraint and control according to the warnings of Tiresias.

How can I write a thesis statement on the role of Big Brother within 1984? What effect does he have on Winston, and how is Winston's obsession...

To write a clear thesis statement about Big Brother, you need to understand the role Big Brother plays in the novel. George Orwell's 1984 never answers the question of whether or not Big Brother is a real person, or just a symbol created by the Party. No matter the truth, Big Brother plays a large role in the lives of Oceania's citizens, including Winston Smith. To the masses Big Brother is the head of state and government. Countless posters proclaiming 'Big Brother Is Watching You' cover walls across Airstrip One. They are a reminder that the government is always watching, not through the posters themselves but through surveillance devices employed by the Thought Police.

For Winston Smith, his obsession with Big Brother begins with curiosity about the past, the hazy memories from his childhood when Big Brother did not exist. This search for information influences his decision to actively oppose Big Brother and the Party.

Winston's obsession with Big Brother leads to his obsession with O'Brien. Winston suspects that O'Brien is part of a resistance group against Big Brother. Believing his suspicions confirmed, Winston tells O'Brien that he wants to bring down Big Brother. In this way Winston's obsessions with Big Brother and O'Brien are similar because they influence Winston's key decisions in the novel.

Write an expository paragraph of 5-7 sentences explaining why Sylvia does not (or cannot) speak in "A White Heron." Use at least 4 supporting...

Sylvia has difficult speaking to strangers especially because she is somewhat "'"Afraid of folks,"'" as her grandmother was told when she chose Sylvia to help her on the farm from among her daughter's many children.  The little girl seems to realize that the best way to hear the sounds of nature is by being quiet herself: she could listen "to the thrushes with a heart that beat fast with pleasure," and she hears the "stirring in the great boughs overhead" which are full of "little birds and beasts" that chatter and twitter away like friends.  

However, when she hears the hunter's whistle, she is "horror-stricken," attempting to hide in silence, and perceives of him as an "enemy."  When he mentions the reward of $10 that he's willing to give anyone who helps him find the heron's nest, Sylvia gets lost in reveries about the "many wished-for treasures" that she could purchase with so much money (as it seems like a vast fortune to her).  Even as she grows more and more comfortable in the hunter's presence, she is still "troubled [and] afraid" when he shoots and kills some "unsuspecting singing creature" from its perch in the trees.

In short, Sylvia seems to speak little (or not at all) for various reasons: there is her general discomfort around people; silence it allows her to hear nature's sounds better; she's imaginative and can get wrapped up in her fantasies; and she intuitively understands that the hunter is ultimately harming, not preserving, the birds that she loves so very much.

How does the writer bring out the sadness of the boy's death in the poem "Out, Out—?" Discuss the time and setting, the cause of the fatal...

The poem recounts a day when the men and boys are working in the yard cutting firewood with a buzz saw. The setting is in Vermont, where five mountain ranges can be seen in the background. It is just about dusk, and the men have been working all day. The boy is operating the buzz saw, cutting larger logs into "stove-length sticks of wood," when his sister comes to announce that supper is ready. At this the boy becomes distracted, and the whirling blade of the saw meets the flesh of his wrist, severing it nearly completely. The doctor arrives and administers an anesthetic, but as he is doing so, the boy dies, presumably from shock and loss of blood.

The poet conveys sadness by the narrator, known only as "I" in the poem, saying, "Call it a day, I wish they might have said." If the work had been called off an hour sooner, giving the boy a half hour to go and play, the accident would never have occurred. The exclamation, "But the hand!" and the description of the boy's "rueful laugh" brings a horrifying sadness. The poet puts the reader in the boy's mind, saying that as he held up his dangling hand, he "saw all— / Since he was old enough to know, big boy / Doing a man’s work, though a child at heart." The reader feels sadness knowing the boy had been working so hard, yet he really was just a child. One can't help thinking at the same time that the parents and all the adults there would be blaming themselves for allowing so young and inexperienced a person to run such dangerous equipment.

When the boy pleads with his sister to not let the doctor cut his hand off, it is almost unbearable to imagine the scene. The pronouncement that "the hand was gone already" is somber, but then comes the stunning description of the boy's life slipping away before the reader's eyes: "Little—less—nothing!—and that ended it." With agonizing understatement, the poet sums up the finality of death: "No more to build on there." Though the last line seems cruel, describing how those who were not the one who was dead "turned to their affairs," it is a numbing commentary on the fact that life goes on for the living even after unspeakable tragedy.

What is a summary of From the Mines to the Streets: A Bolivian Activist’s Life by Benjamin Kohl and Linda C. Farthing?

In From the Mines to the Streets, authors Benjamin Kohl and Linda C. Farthing jointly translated Felix Muruchi Poma's autobiography titled Minero con poder de dinamita, published in 2009. In From the Mines, Kohl and Farthing detail the life of Muruchi, a social activist in Bolivia during the time of military dictatorship, while also providing historical accounts of the social, economic, and political atmosphere of Bolivia during this time period. Themes in From the Mines include struggles among classes, the importance of ethnic identity, and gender roles in Bolivia.

Muruchi, of indigenous Andean descent, was born in the village of Wila Apacheta in the department of Oruro. When Muruchi was born in 1946, as he phrases it, "a kind of slavery" existed in which landowning Spanish families ruled over the indigenous people. As Muruchi further phrases it, "[The] indigenous people were not allowed to walk freely in the plazas of the cities nor contract their labor independently" (Ch. 1). At the age of 6 or 7, Muruchi helped his family pasture sheep, and during this time, the 1952 Revolution broke out, securing citizenship, suffrage, freedom of mobilization, and education for the indigenous people. At the age of 18, in 1964, Muruchi began his compulsory military service. He recounts standing sentry outside the meeting in which commanders planned the coup d'etat that began 18 years of military dictatorial rule over Bolivia.

Soon, Muruchi joined the Marxist-Leninist Communist Party (PCML), which formed a resistance against the dictatorship. As a member of the PCML and a miner, Muruchi was a victim of the September Massacre of 1965 in which the military occupied the Catavi-Siglo XX mines, killing miners and their families. During this time Muruchi was wounded by a grenade. By 1970, he led a triumphant attack on the police barracks in Uncla and captured their weapons. He also became a labor leader and began making covert trips into Chile to meet with other labor leaders. Though he was imprisoned for a time, he was released and exiled to Chile in 1976 and eventually taken in by the Dutch as a refugee.

By 1981, Bolivia's military government was brought down. By 1982, the Confederation of Bolivian Private Entrepreneurs, the Bolivian Workers Confederation, and the Catholic Church all pushed for the restoration of the democratic government in Bolivia, leading to the election of President Hernán Siles Zuazo. By 1987, Muruchi returned to Bolivia and took residence in El Alto. In 1993, he won the office of the congressional deputy with the Free Bolivia Movement. He also actively fought for the establishment of a university and, by 2009, graduated as an attorney.

"Some believe that Midsummer has strong female characters who make their own decisions and stand up for themselves. Others believe that the play...

The play does not merely reinforce stereotypes. It shows how women can break through stereotypes. I would caution, however, against the false dichotomy of either so-called strong females characters or a sexist narrative. Women in real life are neither strong nor weak in every cause, just as men in real life are neither strong nor weak. Humans have both good and bad qualities and there are some people who are stronger than others. Shakespeare presents a realistic cast of characters with a different array of realistic strengths and weaknesses. I would argue this is actually more of a break from convention than simply preventing a series of women who confirm to the strong/weak binary.

The fairy queen, for instance, is generally a very strong character. She is in a position of power and she disobeys her husband. She becomes a fool, however, when the love spell enamors her with Bottom. This is not a reinforcement of stereotypes. She is still a powerful and strong woman. Shakespeare is merely demonstrating how strong people are often foolish in the face of love, even when that love that is fading and superficial. This is realistic of human beings, whether these humans are male or female. Note that the male characters of the play are also swayed by the spell. No character is immune from the charms of love.

Shakespeare presents many kinds of women: Helena, who has a stereotypical pining for her lover, Titania, a powerful woman in conflict with her husband, Hippolyta, a strong, free woman in love with a man of order, etc... This depiction of women as human beings, with the same flaws and strength as men, is the very sort of force that breaks stereotypes in literature. Strong female characters alone are often as foolish as weak characters alone; both demonstrate that women exist on a binary, unlike the more complex male characters. Complexity breaks convention, not strength.