Why did George Washington say Americans should be worried about political parties?

The answer to this question can be found in Washington's Farewell Address, issued in 1796 as he prepared to leave office. Washington was clearly concerned by the development of emerging political factions--so-called Republicans and Federalists--that coalesced in response to many of the serious political issues of the day. Washington feared what he called the "baneful effects of the spirit of party." He warned that some Americans had come to view the interests of their section (i.e. the South and Northeast) as preeminent over loyalty to nation, and sought to organize political factions around these interests. He worried as well that loyalty to one European nation (i.e. France or Great Britain) in the conflict raging in Europe could cause political division and strife. He summed up these effects in one of the most memorable passages from the Address:

It [the spirit of party] serves always to distract the public councils and enfeeble the public administration. It agitates the community with ill-founded jealousies and false alarms, kindles the animosity of one part against another, foments occasionally riot and insurrection. It opens the door to foreign influence and corruption...

Washington's real fear was that political parties and factions always resulted in disorder and chaos. He feared that, in response to the chaos created by parties, Americans would look to strong leaders, "cunning, ambitious, and unprincipled men," who would exploit people's fear of social disorder to emerge as despots. In this way, Washington thought, political parties represented a real threat to the republican government he had devoted his life to establishing.

How does a star like the sun become a red giant?

The sun, like other stars, is dependent on nuclear reactions for its energy. The particular type of nuclear reaction that powers the stars is nuclear fusion, in which smaller nuclei combine to form larger nuclei. Specifically, for a star in the main sequence (just like our sun), hydrogen is being converted to helium during the nuclear fusion process. Over time, the hydrogen at the core will be used up. When this happens, the core contracts as the fusion of hydrogen to helium stops and the fusion of helium to carbon starts. However, the outer portions of the star still contain hydrogen and the fusion of hydrogen to helium goes on in there. This causes an expansion of the outer portions of the star and the star grows in size. This also causes a cooling of the star and it turns red (and that is why it is called a red giant). 

All stars become a red giant at some point in their lifecycle.

Hope this helps. 

Who is the the protagonist in "Killings," and what are the two opposing forces that are pulling at him?

The protagonist in Dubus's "Killings" is Matt Fowler. He is the father of Frank who is killed by Richard Strout; and, Richard kills him because he was dating his estranged wife Mary Ann. The two opposing forces facing Matt Fowler are his and his wife's grief for the loss of their son and his sense of justice. First, Matt and his wife's grief for their murdered son is antagonized by the fact that the murderer is out on bail and walking around town as if he were free and clear of any responsibility. He even gets a job at a bar in the next town over; but Ruth, Matt's wife, doesn't feel comfortable even going to the store because she's afraid to run into the man who killed her son. The author describes Matt's grief as follows:

". . . and then he lost Frank in a way no father expected to lose his son, and he felt that all the fears he had borne while they were growing up, and all the grief he had been afraid of, had backed up like a huge wave and struck him on the beach and swept him out to sea."

Matt and Ruth's daily lives are filled with grief and pain for the loss of their son; and, Matt wants to relieve that grief no matter what it takes.

Then, when Matt articulates his concerns about his grieving wife to his friend, Willis helps to tug at Matt's sense of justice by reminding him of a woman who shot her husband and got away with it. Willis bets that Richard will only get five years in prison for Frank's murder. Not only is that an unsatisfactory number of years to serve for murder, if Ruth can't handle seeing Richard in town now, what would it be like in five years after he's served his sentence and allowed to roam free? In addition to the injustice discussed by the men about the justice system, Willis says that he will help Matt plan a way to take care of Richard.  

Other thoughts that trigger Matt's sense of justice center around the fact that Richard shot Frank in front of his two young son's, Mary Ann seemed painfully troubled while dating Frank, and so many people's lives have been hurt because of Richard. And to Matt, no one will receive justice for all of the pain that he has inflicted on them.

What were four causes of the Scientific Revolution?

The Scientific Revolution occurred in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, leading to the Enlightenment. 

In the sixteenth century, Copernicus stated that the earth revolved around the sun. This was the beginning of the “heliocentric” view of the universe. This was a shocker for just about everybody. It shook the religious world to its roots. Previously, it had been assumed that everything revolved around the Earth, and that it did so because God wanted it to. To say that the Earth instead revolved around the sun was considered heresy by some. Once this barrier was broken, scientific progress continued to be made. Galileo confirmed Copernicus' theories in 1610 and added more new information about the planets.

The Protestant Reformation broke the hold of the Catholic church in some places. It began in 1517 with Martin Luther's 95 Theses. Some credit this religious change with making some degree of scientific progress more likely than would have been possible under Catholicism, although this viewpoint is debated. Martin Luther himself was not particularly supportive of any scientific ideas that were not supported by the Bible. 

The Renaissance brought back ancient scientific texts that had been more or less “lost.” These texts generated more interest in science and also gave scientists a better starting point than would have been possible without the revived texts.

The invention of the printing press in 1448 greatly facilitated the flow of information. Now scientists could learn of each other's experiments and observations much more quickly than they could have previously, when everything had to be handwritten, a slow and expensive process.

Later, of course, the Scientific Revolution was crowned by Newton's Laws, which provided a new way of looking at the universe, as a place that followed strict scientific laws that could be discovered and described.

What is the relationship between gods and mortals in Homer's Iliad?

The Iliad came out of a pagan warrior culture in which the gods were conceived of as very similar to mortals, only bigger and better.  They may have special powers and live in a different realm, but their behavior, emotions, loyalties, and so on are very similar to those of the people of the day.  That is why we often find the gods doing things that we would find objectionable, such as rape.  This is very different from the Judeo/Christian conception of God as holy, sinless and completely "other" than people.

The Iliad was written in an aristocratic culture.  There were kings (landowners/warlords), warriors, commoners, and slaves.  So, you find the gods behaving like a bunch of aristocrats relative to the mortals.  For example, they take people under their patronage, and then will protect and help that person and seek to harm his or her enemies.  You will even find a god becoming the patron of an entire city and fighting for it.  In return for their patronage, the gods expect respect, honor, and various gifts and sacrifices.

You also find the gods fighting among themselves (like petty kings), and also pouting and taking petty revenge, as when Apollo cursed Cassandra because she wouldn't sleep with him. 

The gods are very directly involved in the Trojan War in the Iliad.  You can find examples of them deflecting spear points and so on during battles.  However, because there are many gods and they are actually fighting against each other, the gods' involvement does not improve the lives of people as a whole but, if anything, contributes to the chaos, danger, and uncertainty of the world of the Iliad. 

In fact, you could argue that it's a major theme of the Iliad that the involvement of the gods and of fate tends to make people's lives tragic. 

What does Mr. Nathan Radley know about the intruders in the garden?

In chapter six of Harper Lee's To Kill a Mockingbird, Jem, Dill, and Scout venture into the backyard of the Radley home to get a peek at Arthur through a broken shutter. Dill and Scout wait near the fence as Jem sneaks up onto the back porch, but when he steps on the bottom step, it squeaks. This must have alerted Nathan Radley, because the kids see shadows moving from within the house. Suddenly, Scout sees someone on the porch with Jem.

"At first I thought it was a tree, but there was no wind blowing, and tree-trunks never walked. The back porch was bathed in moonlight, and the shadow, crisp as toast, moved across the porch toward Jem" (53).

Nathan Radley is on the back porch with Jem, but he doesn't seem him. In an effort to get away as soon as possible, Jem jumps off the porch and makes a run for it. Nathan Radley sees Jem, but because of the darkness, doesn't really know who the intruder is. He shoots his gun, which alerts all the neighbors, and Nathan Radley tells Stephanie Crawford that he "shot at a Negro in his collard patch" (54). This proves that Nathan Radley didn't know exactly who was in his yard because he blames it on a black man. It's obvious, too, that Nathan Radley did not see Scout and Dill because he probably would have told the  neighbors that a whole crew of black men had been in his yard.

What are natural treatments for alcoholic hepatitis?

Introduction

The liver is a sophisticated chemical laboratory, capable of
carrying out thousands of chemical transformations on which the body depends. The
liver produces some important chemicals from scratch and modifies others to allow
the body to use them better. In addition, the liver neutralizes an enormous range
of toxins.

A number of influences can severely damage the liver, of which alcohol is
the most common. This powerful liver toxin harms the liver in three stages:
alcoholic fatty liver, alcoholic hepatitis, and cirrhosis. Although the first two
stages of injury are usually reversible, cirrhosis is not. Generally, liver
cirrhosis is a result of more than ten years of heavy
alcohol
abuse.

Usually, alcoholic hepatitis is discovered through blood tests that detect levels of enzymes released from the liver. The blood levels of these enzymes, which are known by acronyms such as SGOT, SGPT, ALT, AST, and GGT, rise as damage to the liver (by any cause) progresses.

If blood tests show that a person has alcoholic hepatitis (or any other form of liver disease), it is essential that the person stop drinking. There is little in the way of specific treatment beyond this.

Principal Proposed Natural Treatments

Several herbs and supplements have shown promise for protecting the liver from alcohol-induced damage. However, none of these has been conclusively proven effective, and cutting down (or eliminating) alcohol consumption is undoubtedly more effective than any other treatment. Following is a discussion of the treatments used specifically to treat early liver damage caused by alcohol.

Milk thistle. Numerous double-blind, placebo-controlled studies
enrolling several hundred people have evaluated whether the herb milk thistle
can successfully counter alcohol-induced liver damage. However, these studies have
yielded inconsistent results. For example, a double-blind, placebo-controlled
study performed in 1981 followed 106 Finnish soldiers with alcoholic liver disease
over a period of four weeks. The treated group showed a significant decrease in
elevated liver enzymes and improvement in liver structure, as evaluated by biopsy
in twenty-nine subjects.

Two similar studies enrolling approximately sixty people also found benefits. However, a three-month, double-blind, placebo-controlled study of 116 people showed little to no additional benefit, perhaps because most participants reduced their alcohol consumption and almost one-half of them stopped drinking entirely. Another study found no benefit in seventy-two persons who were followed for fifteen months.

A 2007 review of published and unpublished studies on milk thistle as a treatment for liver disease concluded that benefits were seen only in low-quality trials, and even in those, milk thistle did not show more than a slight benefit. A subsequent 2008 review of nineteen randomized trials drew a similar conclusion for alcoholic liver disease generally, although it did find a modest reduction in mortality for persons with severe liver cirrhosis.

Other proposed natural treatments. The supplement
S-adenosylmethionine (SAMe) has also shown some promise for
preventing or treating alcoholic hepatitis, but there is no reliable evidence to
support its use for this purpose. The supplement trimethylglycine helps the body create its own SAMe and has
also shown promise in preliminary studies.

Herbs and Supplements to Avoid

High doses of the supplements beta-carotene and vitamin A
might cause alcoholic liver disease to develop more rapidly in people who abuse
alcohol. Nutritional supplementation at the standard daily requirement level
should not cause a problem.

Although one animal study suggests that the herb kava might
aid in alcohol withdrawal, the herb can cause liver damage; therefore, it should
not be used by people with alcoholic liver disease (and probably not by anyone).
Numerous other herbs possess known or suspected liver-toxic properties, including
coltsfoot, comfrey, germander, greater celandine, kombucha, pennyroyal, and
various prepackaged Chinese herbal remedies. For this reason, people with
alcoholic liver disease should use caution before taking any medicinal herbs.

Bibliography

Abittan, C. S., and C. S. Lieber. “Alcoholic Liver Disease.” Current Treatment Options in Gastroenterology 2 (1999): 72-80.

Leo, M. A., and C. S. Lieber. “Alcohol, Vitamin A, and Beta-carotene: Adverse Interactions, Including Hepatotoxicity and Carcinogenicity.” American Journal of Clinical Nutrition 69 (1999): 1071-1085.

McClain, C. J., et al. “S-adenosylmethionine, Cytokines, and Alcoholic Liver Disease.” Alcohol 27 (2002): 185-192.

Ni, R., et al. “Toxicity of Beta-carotene and Its Exacerbation by Acetaldehyde in HepG2 Cells.” Alcohol and Alcoholism 36 (2001): 281-285.

Rambaldi, A., and C. Gluud. “S-adenosyl-l-methionine for Alcoholic Liver Diseases.” Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews (2001): CD002235. Available through EBSCO DynaMed Systematic Literature Surveillance at http://www.ebscohost.com/dynamed.

Rambaldi, A., B. Jacobs, and C. Gluud. “Milk Thistle for Alcoholic and/or Hepatitis B or C Virus Liver Diseases.” Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews (2007): CD003620. Available through EBSCO DynaMed Systematic Literature Surveillance at http://www.ebscohost.com/dynamed.