How are cells different from viruses?

To understand how cells are different from viruses, one must first understand what a virus is and how it functions. A virus is a small particle that exists as a capsid, which is generally defined as a protein coating that contains and protects the genetic material located inside. Viruses can only function inside a host cell, and while outside of a cell they lack the ability to generate the metabolic activity necessary for protein production and replication. Once a virus infects a host cell, it inserts its own genetic material, in the form of DNA or RNA, into the host cells genetic material, causing the host cell to create many copies of the virus, instead of the necessary proteins for healthy cell function and survival. These new viruses then leave the host cell, causing it to die, and go on to infect more cells. 

The main difference between a cell and a virus is that a cell, whether it is prokaryotic or eukaryotic, is metabolically active, and maintains all the necessary functions for self-replication. This is not possible in viruses. Cells are also different from viruses due to the presence of ribosomes, which are responsible for the process of protein synthesis. Various cell types can also contain many other organelles that are not present in viruses. Also, cells contain a cell membrane to hold in the cytoplasm and all of the components of the cell contained within it, while viruses, other than their external capsid protein coat, lack this feature. From an anatomical stand point cells are also much larger than viruses. 

Hope this helps!

Why is the outcome of Rikki-Tikki's fight with Nag uncertain?

Nag is a very large cobra, and Rikki is a very young mongoose. Nag was "five feet long from tongue to tail," but Rikki was such a young mongoose that he had never even "met a live cobra before." Nevertheless, when Rikki learns that Nag intends to kill the man, woman, and child, he is tingling with rage despite being afraid of the size of the snake. As Rikki surveys the sleeping cobra, he realizes that if he does not break Nag's back the first time he jumps on him, and if Nag is able to fight, his chances will not be good. The very thickness of the snake's neck under its hood is beyond the ability of Rikki's young teeth to effectively pierce, and biting the snake near the tail will only make the cobra violent. Rikki realizes he must bite the snake on the head above the hood, and that when he does so, he must not let go, no matter how hard the snake thrashes. 

This is exactly what Rikki does, and Nag whirls him "round in great circles." For a time it seems as though Rikki will be bashed to death by the snake's thrashing. Rikki determines to hang on even in death in order to bring honor to his species, so he clamps down even harder, despite the pain and dizziness he experiences. Thankfully the noise awakens the man and he comes with his shotgun. Rikki believes he is dead, but the man credits the mongoose with saving their lives. Rikki goes to sleep that night after "shaking himself tenderly to find out whether he really was broken into forty pieces, as he fancied." 

Because of the cobra's large size and Rikki's inexperience and youth, the battle between Nag and Rikki is not at all certain to go Rikki's way. But between the mongoose and the man, the snake met his match. 

In Louis Sachar's novel, Holes, why did Kate Barlow shoot the sheriff?

To answer the question, one needs to scrutinise the context in which the event occurred.

Kate was the local school teacher and much loved by the children. She fell in love with Sam, 'the onion man', so called because he grew onions across the lake which he would come to sell in town. His onions were very popular since they were believed to have healing properties. He regularly did favours for Miss Katherine (as she was called then) and fixed up the schoolhouse. Whatever task she gave him, he would always assert, 'I can fix that.'

Charles Walker (aka Trout), Sam's competition, had an eye on Miss Katherine and would attend her evening classes just to get her attention, but she was not interested in him even though he was the son of the richest man in the county. Trout was loud, arrogant and stupid.

When one of the residents in the town (Hettie Parker) saw Miss Katherine and Sam kiss, the news spread like wildfire through the town. The townspeople did not allow their children to attend school the next morning. In its place was a lynch mob led by Trout Walker. They came to destroy the schoolhouse. The townspeople were clearly racist and found it unacceptable that Ms Katherine should have a relationship with someone of a different racial persuasion.

Ms Katherine ran to the sheriff, begging for help: "They're destroying the schoolhouse," she said, gasping for breath. "They'll burn it to the ground if someone doesn't stop them!"
"Just calm your pretty self down a second," the sheriff said in a slow drawl. "And tell me what you're talking about."
He got up from his desk and walked over to her.
"Trout Walker has— "
"Now don't go saying nothing bad about Charles Walker," said the sheriff.
"We don't have much time!" urged Katherine. "You've got to stop them."
"You're sure pretty," said the sheriff.
Miss Katherine stared at him in horror.
"Kiss me," said the sheriff.
She slapped him across the face.
He laughed. "You kissed the onion picker. Why won't you kiss me?"
She tried to slap him again, but he caught her by the hand.
She tried to wriggle free. "You're drunk!" she yelled.
I always get drunk before a hanging."
"A hanging? Who— "
"It's against the law for a Negro to kiss a white woman."
"Well, then you'll have to hang me, too," said Katherine. "Because I kissed him back."
"It ain't against the law for you to kiss him," the sheriff explained. "Just for him to kiss you."
"We're all equal under the eyes of God," she declared.
The sheriff laughed. "Then if Sam and I are equal, why won't you kiss me?"
He laughed again. "I'll make you a deal. One sweet kiss, and I won't hang your boyfriend.
I'll just run him out of town."
Miss Katherine jerked her hand free. As she hurried to the door, she heard the sheriff say, "The law will punish Sam. And God will punish you."
She stepped back into the street and saw smoke rising from the schoolhouse.

The extract clearly shows that the sheriff was not intent on doing his job. In fact, it seems as if he was in cahoots with the rest of the townsfolk. The eventual outcome was that Miss Katherine warned Sam and the two of them tried to escape in his boat by crossing the river. Unfortunately, they were run down by Trout in his father's much faster boat. Sam was shot and killed in the water and when Miss Katherine returned to the shore, she found that Sam's beloved donkey, Mary Lou, had been shot in the head.

Three days later Miss Katherine shot the sheriff and gave him the kiss he had asked for. She killed him to avenge the murder of her dearest love. The sheriff had been complicit in his killing for he did not lift a finger to help. He had abandoned his duty because of his prejudice and the obviously corrupt relationship he had had with the Walkers.  

In "A Rose for Emily" by William Faulkner, who attended Miss Emily's funeral, and from their perspective, what would they have said as an...

In William Faulkner's short story "A Rose for Emily," the town watches for years for a sign of Miss Emily while she remains closed up in her house with only a servant to tend to her. Finally, she dies and takes them by surprise since the town did not know she was sick. 

The whole town comes to her funeral because the people are curious about her life and her house. The men are dressed in old Confederate uniforms and they sit on the porch and lawn talking about Miss Emily as if they remembered spending time with her in her youth. The women are curious about the inside of her house. Miss Emily's two female cousins come as well.

The story does not give detail about the cousins or the specific people of the town who attend the funeral. The most detail is given about the old men in the Confederate uniforms who imagine, in their confusion of time, that they courted her when she was a young woman. 

Obituaries by the people who attended her funeral might be like this:

1) Miss Emily's two cousins: "Her family loved her so. She was always a Grierson."

2) The women of the town: "We always wondered what Miss Emily kept in her big house, shut off to the world. And now we know that she kept the love of her life, Homer Baron, forever."

3) The old men in their Confederate uniforms (confused by time): "We loved Miss Emily when she was young. She danced like a ballerina... or was that someone else?"

How do you explain cultural, behavioral, and socioeconomic differences between groups differentiated by gender, race/ethnicity, religion, sexual...

This is a very general question and the answers often vary with period, location, and local traditions.

In countries where there are people of many different ethnic groups, at times those groups can become stratified, with the majority group becoming more powerful and systematically discriminating against minority groups.  At other times, ethnic diversity is the result of past conquests, such as in the Americas where descendants of Europeans (Spanish in South America, British and French in North America) imported their own religions and traditions to the regions they were colonizing. In colonial and post-colonial societies, many socioeconomic disparities are the result of colonization, in which the foreign colonizers simply laid claim to lands and resources. 

In primitive societies, much of the differentiation between genders depends on a fundamental biological difference, that women can bear children and nurse infants. In such societies, women tend to cluster in activities which are compatible with the need for child care and the exigencies of pregnancy. Because men and women in such societies share similar tasks with other members of their gender, there is a tendency for genders to develop their own customs, behaviors, and even language variants.

In many societies, homosexuals are a minority, and as such have developed various codes of communication which enable them to connect with other gay people under the radar, as it were, of heterosexual society. As with any oppressed minority, they tend to develop their own counterculture as a mode of resistance to heterosexist norms. 

What was the purpose of the Declaration of Independence?

As the name suggests, the purpose of the Declaration of Independence was to announce to the world, to Great Britain, and to the people of the new United States that the former colonies were asserting their right to "assume among the powers of the earth" the status of a free and independent nation. They had several reasons for doing this at the time they did, however. Let us look at a few:

• They wanted recognition from European nations, especially France, from whom they hoped to receive military and economic aid. These nations were less likely to supply this aid when they perceived the war as an internal struggle within the British Empire.


• They needed to establish state governments. After the royal governments left when war broke out, a sort of power vacuum existed, and revolutionary leaders felt the need to establish new governments was urgent.


• They felt that, after more than a year of war, the relationship between the colonies and Great Britain was beyond saving. The war could no longer simply be about securing the rights of British subjects. The Declaration thus elevated the conflict in the minds of many of the colonists and ensured that no agreement could be reached between the revolutionaries and the British without independence.

For these reasons, the Declaration of Independence was issued.

How was Scout's life back in the 1930's?

Scout describes her life in 1930s Maycomb as slow and pleasant. Although it is the Great Depression and the town poor, Scout's father works as a lawyer and "derived a reasonable income" from it. The family lives in a house on the main residential street in town, meaning they are not poor, though nobody has any money to speak of then. Scout's mother has died, but the household includes a maid, Scout's brother, and their father. Scout describes her father, her hero, in understated terms as "satisfactory: he played with us, read to us, and treated us with courteous detachment." 

Scout remembers a secure, ordinary and happy childhood in a town where time moves slowly. People "ambled" and "shuffled." Days seemed longer than 24 hours, especially in the summer heat. These are the nostalgic recollections of a (fictional) adult looking at her childhood, reaching back in memory to recreate a time when the world seemed safe and innocent, although the idyll would soon be shattered.