What is menopause?

Menopause is a biological condition in women and, in simplest terms, defines the life period after the last menstrual period. It is typically defined as the period starting an year (12 months) after the last menstrual period and continues for the rest of the life. Menopause means that women can no longer get pregnant, although they will still be healthy and sexually active. Menopause means that women will no longer have to worry about using protection during intercourse. The age at which a women undergoes menopause is not fixed and varies from case to case. However, the women in U.S. generally experiences menopause at the age of 51 years. Some of the symptoms of menopause may include (and these could vary from woman to woman), hot flashes, inability to get good night's sleep, night sweats and irritability.

Hope this helps. 

What character development occurs in The Wizard of Oz?

In the beginning of the Wizard of Oz, Dorothy is a farm girl from Kansas who has mostly led her life fairly sheltered. Though unafraid and bold, she doesn't like being in a new strange land and at first she just wants to go home, but along the way as she meets and speaks with people and makes friends (the good witch, the lion, the tin man, the scarecrow) she grows to appreciate her journey and learn from her new friends. She learns the value of the people in her life, including her family back home.

The tinman, lacking a heart, believes he is incapable of love. After a serials of tribulations with Dorothy and their new friends, and their subsequent bonding, the tinman realizes he was capable of love all along even if he doesn't have a physical heart.

The scarecrow lacks a brain and wants one so he can be smart. However, throughout their journey he learns from experience, and grows into an intelligent creature without one.

The cowardly lion lacks courage. He goes to the wizard to get courage, but along the way experiences adventure and thrill with his friends and proves that he does have courage after all.

Appreciate, through genetic crosses, that science is linked to nature.

It would be hard to imagine a more accurate analogy.  The mechanisms that occur in nature in and of themselves involve science in one of it's purest forms, genetics.  A species must be able to reproduce to ensure it's lineage, otherwise extinction is inevitable.  Genetic crossings is one mechanism in place to observe the bond between science and nature.  From Mendel's observations of purebred characteristics and experimentation of crossing those characteristics we see a small, controlled scientific experimentation of what occurs naturally on a grander scale.  All the examples of traits we observe in nature are the results of the breeding of this trait versus that trait.  The final count is off the charts, in terms of total trait accountability.  There is an old saying, "Don't fool with Mother Nature."  Another way of interpreting that old saying would be Mother Nature has been doing what she has been doing for a very long time.  Some traits that were produced were good for the organisms that inherited them, while others were not.  The ones that were not were summarily dismissed from the great progression of life.

In the time of Corneille's CINNA, incidental music was often performed between the acts of plays. If there are just 5 movements of incidental...

Generally speaking, incidental music would have been played before each act. Therefore, the five separate movements of incidental music would have been played before the five acts of Corneille's puppet-play Cinna: one movement before the first act, one before the second act, one before the third act, one before the fourth act, and the fifth movement before the fifth act.

Given that Corneille's Cinna is in 5 acts, the performance would likely have started with Harrison's first movement.  Herein Harrison set a "mood" for the entirety of the play and set up the introduction of motivations, as illustrated by Harrison's first movement dynamical notes, which start with "medium fast, medium soft" and move to "grow louder" then jump to "suddenly soft."

This procedure of playing music before each act is still used today. The second, third, fourth and fifth movements build organically out of the first in such a way that the first gives a foretaste of what the other movements of the incidental music will hold while the listener is given a hint as to the various moods of the entirety of the piece.

Is Jane a reliable narrator or not in Pride and Prejudice?

This is an interesting question because in Austen's Pride and Prejudice, Jane is the heroine of the romantic subplot and Elizabeth's elder, more beautiful, more kindly dispositioned sister (universally portrayed in film versions incorrectly). Elizabeth, of course, is the flawed heroine who winds up seeing herself and Mr. Darcy through new eyes, through a new perspective (not to mention seeing wicked Mr. Wickham through new eyes as well). The narrator of the story is a third person narrator that resides outside the relationships and events of the story but that has full knowledge of them and relates them to the reader. Since there is no "Jane" who is a narrator, neither Jane Austen nor Jane Bennet, and since there is only an unnamed third person narrator, your question must be aiming at something different from "narrator." (With an author like Jane Austen, it is tempting to think of the third person narrator as "who" since we all hear Austen's voice in the narration, but, technically, third person narrators are generally spoken of as "that" and generally dealt with as though not having personalities.)

One thing Jane Austen is most noted for is the present, proximal, intrusive narratorial voice she develops in all her stories. What is meant by a present, proximal, intrusive narrator is that the third person narrator is not distanced from the action and characters: the narrator is not reporting from a distant, uninvolved perspective on what occurs in the characters' minds, feelings and relationships and in the action. In the narratorial mode Austen develops, the narrator is present with the characters as things occur; the narrator is in close proximity to characters as they think, feel and participate; the narrator interjects comments and evaluations pertaining to characters' thoughts, feelings, actions, relationships. Austen most often intrudes with comments and evaluations that are wrapped in that famous and delightfully engaging irony of hers (though she carefully never descends into hurtful sarcasm).

Now, if you're not actually asking about a "narrator"--because there is no narrator called "Jane"--you must be asking about this present, proximal, intrusive narrator created by the writer, Jane Austen, that intrudes into the narrative with comments and evaluations. Your question, then, may be rewritten as: "Does Jane Austen develop a reliable present, proximal, intrusive third person narrator or not?" The three options for answering this are:

1. Yes, and the narratorial comments, evaluations and irony can be trusted as drawing a correct representation of the characters and their social order and as giving correct ironic insight into their lives, minds, feelings, motives, interactions and cultural constraints.


2. No, and the narratorial comments, evaluations and irony give a distorted view, an idiosyncratic view of the lives, society and culture being represented: the view given is Jane Austen's view and no others would describe the lives, society or culture (if they had the talent or ability to) in the same way Austen does.


3. A little of each, sometimes the narratorial intrusions and irony are trustworthy but other times they are not because Austen lets her own idiosyncratic perceptions get the better of her depiction of the characters she is developing though it is our own perceptions that will arbitrarily select which are reliable and which aren't.

Fortunately, we are not left to our own devices for deciding whether Austen's narratorial mode results in a reliable narrator who is trustworthy or not because notable people of her day made comments as to the reliability of Austen's narratorial comments, evaluations and ironic insights. Perhaps the most notable was Sir Walter Scott who said of Jane Austen in his review of Emma that she has a talent for:

copying from nature as she [nature] really exists in the common walks of life, and presenting to the reader, instead of the splendid scenes of an imaginary world, a correct and striking representation of that which is daily taking place around him [the reader]. 

This confirmation (one among several from Austen's era) of the reliable trustworthiness of Austen's intrusive narrator can confirm our own assessment of Jane Austen's narrator as reliable and trustworthy: we can trust that the present, proximal, ironic commentary is not idiosyncratically biased or ... prejudiced ... but that the narratorial vision and perception is reliable and as clear as that which Elizabeth and Darcy each learned to attain, indeed perhaps it is right to say not "as clear as" but more clear than.  

What is an example of chemical weathering?

Chemical weathering is the breakdown of rocks by chemical reactions. Chemical weathering involves changes in the chemical composition of the existing rock to form new rock. Some examples of chemical weathering are hydrolysis, oxidation, carbonation, dissolution, etc.

Limestone dissolves by action of acidic water and causes weathering of statues, grave stones, etc. Dissolution of limestone also forms pathways for acidic water, which may result in sink holes. Another example of chemical weathering is rusting of iron objects. In this oxidation process, ferrous ion gets converted to ferric ion (ferric oxide). Hydrolysis of feldspar converts it to clay, such as potassium feldspar converting over to kaolinite and quartz. 

The amount of chemical weathering is a function of available surface area, temperature, climate, chemical composition of the rock, etc. 

Hope this helps. 

Why does Lyddie not sign the petition in Lyddie?

The petition that your question references is a petition to improve working conditions in the factories.  While the girls are paid to work in the factories, they are worked extremely hard in conditions that are not always safe for the girls.  These difficult working conditions often result in injuries to the factory girls.  

While Lyddie might agree with the petition in concept, she doesn't sign the petition for two reasons. Fear and selfishness.  

Her fear is a legitimate fear.  Girls that have signed the petition are blacklisted from the factories.  That means that they are fired, and other factory owners will refuse to hire them.  Signing the petition basically guarantees job loss and loss of income.  Throughout the novel, Lyddie is motivated to be financially independent and pay off her family's debt.  She simply cannot bear the thought of being fired.  

Selfishly, Lyddie doesn't sign the petition, because as more and more girls get blacklisted, Lyddie gets more and more work.  That increased work load translates to increased income for Lyddie.