What compelled Nicholas to enter the lumber room?

Nicholas was being punished for placing a frog in his bread and milk in the morning.  He was not to go to the beach with the other children, and he was not to play in the gooseberry garden.  His aunt was sure he would try to get into the gooseberry garden, so she set herself up as a guard to dissuade him.  Nicholas made some half-hearted attempts to go into the front garden and caught...

Nicholas was being punished for placing a frog in his bread and milk in the morning.  He was not to go to the beach with the other children, and he was not to play in the gooseberry garden.  His aunt was sure he would try to get into the gooseberry garden, so she set herself up as a guard to dissuade him.  Nicholas made some half-hearted attempts to go into the front garden and caught his aunt’s eye; however, he had no intention of entering the gooseberry garden.  He wanted to go into the lumber room and had been planning it for a while.  Nicholas wanted to enter the lumber room basically because he was told that room was forbidden to children. 

“Often and often Nicholas had pictured to himself what the lumber-room might be like, that region that was so carefully sealed from youthful eyes and concerning which no questions were ever answered.” (pg 4)

What child wouldn’t want to go into such a forbidden place? He knew where the key was located and had practiced using the key for the schoolroom door for a few days.  So when his aunt was suitably occupied, he stole the key and opened the door to the forbidden room.  What he found inside was totally delightful.

My copy of the story comes off the internet. However, the page number should be relatively close. 

A carrier for red-green colorblindness

A "carrier" of a gene is someone who has a copy of a gene for a recessive condition, but does not show the trait. Color blindness is a sex-linked trait. This means it is determined by information on the 23rd set of chromosomes--the XX or XY chromosomes that determine the sex of an individual. The gene for color blindness is carried on the X chromosome. If the gene is present on the X chromosome of...

A "carrier" of a gene is someone who has a copy of a gene for a recessive condition, but does not show the trait. Color blindness is a sex-linked trait. This means it is determined by information on the 23rd set of chromosomes--the XX or XY chromosomes that determine the sex of an individual. The gene for color blindness is carried on the X chromosome. If the gene is present on the X chromosome of a male, there is no "good" gene for color vision to block it; that would have to be on another X chromosome, and he has a Y. The male is then color blind as a result of receiving the gene for color blindness on the X chromosome he got from his mother--who is the carrier.

Because women have two X chromosomes, they are far less likely to actually be color blind themselves. They are therefore carriers of the trait if they have a gene for color blindness on one of their X chromosomes. There are women who are color blind but they are far more rare. These women have received the gene for color blindness on the X chromosome from their mother, and also on the X chromosome from their father. This means that a color blind woman must have a color blind father, as he only has one X chromosome--which has the gene for color blindness.

What is the difference between a lawmaker and a representative?

The answer to this depends on how, exactly, you are using these terms.  In general, however, the terms are interchangeable.

“Lawmaker” is a term that we can use in a democracy to refer to anyone who is part of the legislative branch.  In a democracy, the legislative branch makes the laws.  For this reason, we can call each person in that branch a lawmaker, even though they do not personally make the laws.

A “representative”...

The answer to this depends on how, exactly, you are using these terms.  In general, however, the terms are interchangeable.

“Lawmaker” is a term that we can use in a democracy to refer to anyone who is part of the legislative branch.  In a democracy, the legislative branch makes the laws.  For this reason, we can call each person in that branch a lawmaker, even though they do not personally make the laws.

A “representative” is someone who represents other people.  We generally use this term to describe members of the legislative branch.  We elect these people to go and represent us in Congress or in our state legislatures.  They act for us since we cannot all go and participate in making laws.  Thus, a lawmaker and a representative are the same thing.

However, you may be thinking of a Representative, meaning a member of the House of Representatives.  If this is what you are thinking about, the difference is that all Representatives are lawmakers, but not all lawmakers are representatives.  The House of Representatives is one part of Congress.  All of the people in it are called Representatives and are lawmakers.  However, the members of the Senate are also members of Congress and are lawmakers.  While they are lawmakers, they are not Representatives because they do not belong to the House of Representatives.

So, these terms can be interchangeable.  However, there can also be a difference if you are using the term “Representative” to refer specifically to a member of the House of Representatives.

Where does the exposition end and the movement toward the story's climax begin? Where does the resolution stage begin?

Since you haven't provided a piece of literature to analyze I've chosen a very well written and easily understood short story by Gary Soto which is often anthologized in high school literature textbooks. In "The No-Guitar Blues" the reader can easily identify the traditional elements of a short story. 

Edgar Allan Poe was one of the first writers to define and practice the art of the modern short story. Short stories can usually be charted on a diagram which looks similar to a pyramid (see example in link below). The key elements include the conflict which is often one of four types (person vs. person, person vs. nature, person vs. society and person vs. himself or herself), the exposition, which introduces the setting, the situation and the main characters, the rising action, events which propel the plot toward its climax, the climax, the highest point of interest in the story and finally, the resolution (sometimes called the denouement), the point at which the conflict is resolved.

In Soto's story of a Mexican-American boy named Fausto the exposition, which takes up most of the first two pages, tells us that Fausto wants a guitar, yet he has no money and his mother cannot afford such a luxury since the family, while not poor, is not affluent enough to afford everything a child may want. The exposition also tells us that Fausto lives in Fresno, California in a lower middle class neighborhood.

As the exposition suggests, the conflict in the story is simply that Fausto doesn't have enough money for a guitar and sets off into the streets of Fresno to earn money. His travels, which make up the rising action portion of the story, include meeting a dog which, through somewhat nefarious means on Fausto's part, helps him earn $20. The earning of the money makes Fausto feel guilty, which leads the reader from the rising action to the climax. The climax, or highest point of interest, is when Fausto donates the money he earned to the church. Donating the money leaves Fausto with a clear conscience and it is fitting that in the resolution to the story he receives a guitar from his grandfather, thus making his dream come true.

Obviously stories will vary as to when the climax takes place. Sometimes it will be at the very end and sometimes it will be slightly earlier in the story to provide more time for the falling action and the resolution. In some short stories, such as Frank Stockton's "The Lady or the Tiger," we never really get a resolution.

How can I summarize the poem "Then and Now" by Oodgeroo Noonuccal?

Odgeroo Noonuccal was a member of the Noonuccal aboriginal people of North Stradbroke Island (Minjerribah in the Noonuccal language) in Queensland, Australia.  She was born in 1920, and lived most of her life at a time when the European settlers in Australia were very hostile toward the aboriginal peoples, taking their lands and abolishing their customs, forcing them to abandon their native cultures and join the “white” workforce.  Her early life, therefore, was one of integration, though as an aboriginal woman few opportunities were available to her, and often she worked unskilled jobs for meager wages.  In the 1950s she became a poet, and dedicated much of her life afterward to activism and pursuing equality for the indigenous peoples of Australia.

This is the context in which her poem “Then and Now” should be read and understood.  The poem is written from the point of view of an Aboriginal woman, who is lamenting the forceful destruction of her native lands to make room for the settlers’ industrialization.  Dreams of the speaker’s tribe, carefree and happy, are “shattered by rushing car,/by grinding tram and hissing train.”  The imagery in the poem juxtaposes a time when, the speaker says, “I had nothing but happiness,” with the negative transformation of her natural world into the ugly, paved world of smoke-belching factories brought by the Europeans when they claimed the land as their own.

In the second verse the speaker recalls landmarks and memories, places where children played or where crops were grown, and contrasts these locations with what they have become: parking lots and office buildings, totally impersonal structures with no emotional or historical value.  The speaker mourns the loss of the aboriginal culture:  “No more woomera, no more boomerang/No more playabout, no more the old ways.”  The poem is sad and wistful, longing for life before it was complicated by the coming of the Europeans, and the speaker laments her own forced integration among them, mocking the way she is regarded by those around her:  “Isn’t she lucky to have a good job!”  What is luck, when her own history has been splintered and burned down to nothing but memory?  What is luck, when she is forced to live our her life in a foreign world in which she will forever be a stranger?

So in short, the poem is about the loss of the aboriginal culture from the point of view of an indigenous woman, and the speaker laments her forced integration into the European way of life through the juxtaposition of her happy childhood in a natural world with the dreary, impersonal, industrialized environment of a modern city.

What is the difference between Pasteurization and Sterilization?

Pasteurization and sterilization are two methods of prolonging the life of food items by inactivating or killing microbes that would otherwise cause spoilage of food. However, there are a number of differences between the two.

Pasteurization is named after Louis Pasteur and is commonly used for food products, especially liquids. This method does not completely kill all the microorganisms, rather it makes them inactive and thus reduce the microbial load. The liquids, such as milk,...

Pasteurization and sterilization are two methods of prolonging the life of food items by inactivating or killing microbes that would otherwise cause spoilage of food. However, there are a number of differences between the two.

Pasteurization is named after Louis Pasteur and is commonly used for food products, especially liquids. This method does not completely kill all the microorganisms, rather it makes them inactive and thus reduce the microbial load. The liquids, such as milk, are heated to a certain temperature (below the boiling point) and immediately cooled and sealed. 

In comparison, sterilization can be used not only for food items, but also for surfaces, medication, growth medium (for experimentation), etc. This method completely kills all the microorganisms (including bacteria, fungi, viruses, etc.). In this method, the material (to be sterilized) is heated to a high temperature, thereby killing all the microbes. This is a much harsher treatment than pasteurization. Apart from heat, sterilization can also be achieved by use of chemicals, radiation and pressure. 

Hope this helps. 

How have Shakespeare's plays affected our society today?

Aside from the pure enjoyment (or, perhaps from some students' perspective, torment) that Shakespeare's plays provide us today, they have lingering cultural significance. Perhaps the most important contribution of Shakespeare's plays today is that they have contributed hundreds of everyday expressions to modern English. For all of his flowery language, one of Shakespeare's greatest traits was his ability to sum up complex human emotions about the situations and paradoxes that confront us in memorable, pithy...

Aside from the pure enjoyment (or, perhaps from some students' perspective, torment) that Shakespeare's plays provide us today, they have lingering cultural significance. Perhaps the most important contribution of Shakespeare's plays today is that they have contributed hundreds of everyday expressions to modern English. For all of his flowery language, one of Shakespeare's greatest traits was his ability to sum up complex human emotions about the situations and paradoxes that confront us in memorable, pithy phrases that we use today without even thinking about it. "As luck would have it," "be-all, end-all," "for goodness' sake," "full circle," and "foregone conclusion" are just a few of these phrases. So Shakespeare has been indispensable to the development of modern English. This is perhaps his primary impact on today's society. The reason Shakespeare's plays resonate with some modern readers as well as theater and moviegoers (there have been many major motion pictures that were either adaptations or in other ways based on Shakespearean plays) is because they speak in eloquent ways to aspects of the human condition--love, jealousy, hate, fear, revenge, and so on--that are essentially timeless.