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OG15 OG16 OG17 The following appeared in the editorial section of a local newspaper:"Commuter use of the new subway train is exceeding the transit company's projections. However, commuter use of the shuttle buses that transport people to the subway stations is below the projected volume. If the transit company expects commuters to ride the shuttle buses to the subway rather than drive there, it must either reduce the shuttle bus fares or increase the price of parking at the subway stations."Discuss how well reasoned you find this argument. In your discussion be sure to analyze the line of reasoning and the use of evidence in the argument. For example, you may need to consider what questionable assumptions underlie the thinking and what alternative explanations or counterexamples might weaken the conclusion. You can also discuss what sort of evidence would strengthen or refute the argument, what changes in the argument would make it more logically sound, and what, if anything, would help you better evaluate its conclusion.
The following appeared in a letter from a part-owner of a small retail clothing chain to her business partner:"Commercial real estate prices have been rising steadily in the Sandida Heights neighborhood for several years, while the prices in the adjacent neighborhood of Palm Grove have remained the same. It seems obvious, then, that a retail space in Sandida Heights must now be much more expensive than a similar space in Palm Grove, which was not the case several years ago. So, it appears that retail spaces in Sandida Heights are now overpriced relative to those in Palm Grove. Therefore, it would be in our financial interest to purchase a retail space in Palm Grove rather than in Sandida Heights."Discuss how well reasoned you find this argument. In your discussion be sure to analyze the line of reasoning and the use of evidence in the argument. For example, you may need to consider what questionable assumptions underlie the thinking and what alternative explanations or counterexamples might weaken the conclusion. You can also discuss what sort of evidence would strengthen or refute the argument, what changes in the argument would make it more logically sound, and what, if anything, would help you better evaluate its conclusion.
The most common metal in the Earth's crust, aluminum (or aluminium) was not discovered until 1825 because its isolated state is so reactive that free nuggets or flakes of the metal are never found in nature; rather, the metal is typically found as part of an amalgam, most commonly bauxite ore. Moreover, elemental aluminum is extremely difficult—and expensive—to separate from its ores by traditional chemical means. Indeed, the extreme reactivity of aluminum helps protect its modern, ubiquitous manifestations, such as aluminum foil. The surface of pure aluminum instantly combines with atmospheric oxygen to form a thin but robust “passivization” seal of aluminum oxide that prevents further corrosion. Many other metals, such as iron, are less reactive than aluminum, but their superficial oxides do not form as swiftly, completely, or impermeably.For several decades after its discovery, aluminum was considered a precious metal and was more costly than gold or platinum, not because of any fundamental scarcity, but because of its elevated cost of production. The price of aluminum suddenly plummeted in 1886, however, when two 23-year-old inventors independently developed an electrolytic process of separating pure aluminum from a bath of molten aluminum salts, primarily cryolite. Cryolite itself is rare enough that synthetic salts eventually replaced it as the solution medium.
PREP07 Test 2 United Lumber will use trees from its forests for two products. The tree trunks will be used for lumber and the branches converted into wood chips to make fiberboard. The cost of this conversion would be the same whether done at the logging site, where the trees are debranched, or at United's factory. However, wood chips occupy less than half the volume of the branches from which they are made.The information given, if accurate, most strongly supports which of the following?
OG15 OG16 OG17 The following appeared in a memorandum sent by a vice-president of the Nadir Company to the company's human resources department:"Nadir does not need to adopt the costly 'family-friendly' programs that have been proposed, such as part-time work, work at home, and jobsharing. When these programs were made available at the Summit Company, the leader in its industry, only a small percentage of employees participated in them. Rather than adversely affecting our profitability by offering these programs, we should concentrate on offering extensive training that will enable employees to increase their productivity."Discuss how well reasoned you find this argument. In your discussion be sure to analyze the line of reasoning and the use of evidence in the argument. For example, you may need to consider what questionable assumptions underlie the thinking and what alternative explanations or counterexamples might weaken the conclusion. You can also discuss what sort of evidence would strengthen or refute the argument, what changes in the argument would make it more logically sound, and what, if anything, would help you better evaluate its conclusion.
In an unfinished but highly suggestive series of essays, the late Sarah Eisenstein has focused attention on the evolution of working women's values from the turn of the century to the First World War. Eisenstein argues that turn-of-the-century women neither wholly accepted nor rejected what she calls the dominant "ideology of domesticity," but rather took this and other available ideologies-feminism, socialism, trade unionism-and modified or adapted them in light of their own experiences and needs. In thus maintaining that wages-work helped to produce a new "consciousness" among women, Eisenstein to some extent challenges the recent, controversial proposal by Leslie Tentler that for women the work experience only served to reinforce the attractiveness of the dominant ideology. According to the Tentler, the degrading conditions under which many female wage earners worked made them view the family as a source of power and esteem available nowhere else in their social world. In contrast, Eisenstein's study insists that wage-work had other implications for women's identities and consciousness. Most importantly,her work aims to demonstrate that wage-work enabled women to become aware of themselves as a distinct social group capable of defining their collective circumstance. Eisenstein insists that as a group working-class women were not able to come to collective consciousness of their situation until they began entering the labor force, because domestic work tended to isolate them from one another.Unfortunately, Eisenstein's unfinished study does not develop these ideas in sufficient depth or detail, offering tantalizing hints rather than an exhaustive analysis. Whatever Eisenstein's overall plan may have been, in its current form her study suffers from the limited nature of the sources she depended on. She use the speeches and writings of reformers and labor organizers, who she acknowledges were far from representative, as the voice of the typical woman worker. And there is less than adequate attention given to the differing values of immigrant groups that made up a significant proportion of the population under investigation. While raising important questions, Eisenstein's essays do not provide definitive answer, and it remains for others to take up the challenges they offer.
Ready4

By far the most common cause of hair loss in men is androgenetic alopecia, also referred to as “male pattern” or “common” baldness. It is caused by the effects of the male hormone dihydrotestosterone (DHT) on genetically susceptible scalp hair follicles. This sensitivity to DHT is present mainly in hair follicles that reside in the front, top, and crown of the scalp (rather than the back and sides), producing a characteristic and easily identifiable pattern.

It is frequently stated that “hair loss comes from the mother's side of the family.” The truth is that baldness can be inherited from either parent. However, recent research suggests that the reasons for hair loss and balding may be a bit more complex than originally thought. Factors on the X-chromosome have been shown to influence hair loss, making the inheritance from the maternal side of the family slightly more important than the paternal one. The identification of an androgen receptor gene (AR) on the X-chromosome helps to explain why the hair loss pattern of a man resembles his maternal grandfather more often than his father. However, this is clearly not the whole story since a direct inheritance of baldness from the father is observed as well. An autosomal (non-sex) linked gene would explain this type of transmission — but this gene has not yet been found.

DHT is formed by the action of the enzyme 5-alpha reductase on testosterone, the hormone that causes sex characteristics in men. DHT causes male hair loss by shortening the growth, or the anagen, phase of the hair cycle, causing miniaturization of the follicles, and producing progressively shorter, finer hairs. Eventually these hairs totally disappear.
OG15 OG16 OG17 The following appeared as a memorandum from the vice-president of the Dolci candy company:"Given the success of our premium and most expensive line of chocolate candies in a recent taste test and the consequent increase in sales, we should shift our business focus to producing additional lines of premium candy rather than our lower-priced, ordinary candies. When the current economic boom ends and consumers can no longer buy major luxury items, such as cars, they will still want to indulge in small luxuries, such as expensive candies."Discuss how well reasoned you find this argument. In your discussion be sure to analyze the line of reasoning and the use of evidence in the argument. For example, you may need to consider what questionable assumptions underlie the thinking and what alternative explanations or counterexamples might weaken the conclusion. You can also discuss what sort of evidence would strengthen or refute the argument, what changes in the argument would make it more logically sound, and what, if anything, would help you better evaluate its conclusion.
One [hl:2]proposal[/hl:2] for preserving rain forests is to promote the adoption of new agricultural technologies, such as improved plant varieties and use of chemical herbicides, which would increase productivity and slow deforestation by reducing demand for new cropland. Studies have shown that farmers in developing countries who have achieved certain levels of education, wealth, and security of land tenure are more likely to adopt such technologies. But these studies have focused on villages with limited land that are tied to a market economy rather than on the relatively isolated, self-sufficient communities with ample land characteristic of rain-forest regions. A recent [hl:4][hl:3]study[/hl:3][/hl:4] of the Tawahka people of the Honduran rain forest found that farmers with some formal education were more likely to adopt improved plant varieties but less likely to use chemical herbicides and that those who spoke Spanish (the language of the market economy) were more likely to adopt both technologies. Nonland wealth was also associated with more adoption of both technologies, but availability of uncultivated land reduced the incentive to employ the productivity-enhancing tech nologies. Researchers also measured land-tenure security: in Tawahka society, kinship ties are a more important indicator of this than are legal property rights, so researchers measured it by a household's duration of residence in its village. They found that longer residence correlated with more adoption of improved plant varieties but less adoption of chemical herbicides.
OG15 OG16 OG17 The following appeared in a memorandum from the director of marketing for a pharmaceutical company:"According to a survey of 5,000 urban residents, the prevalence of stress headaches increases with educational level, so that stress headaches occur most often among people with graduate-school degrees. It is well established that, nationally, higher educational levels usually correspond with higher levels of income. Therefore, in marketing our new pain remedy, Omnilixir, we should send free samples primarily to graduate students and to people with graduate degrees, and we should concentrate on advertising in professional journals rather than in general interest magazines."Discuss how well reasoned you find this argument. In your discussion be sure to analyze the line of reasoning and the use of evidence in the argument. For example, you may need to consider what questionable assumptions underlie the thinking and what alternative explanations or counterexamples might weaken the conclusion. You can also discuss what sort of evidence would strengthen or refute the argument, what changes in the argument would make it more logically sound, and what, if anything, would help you better evaluate its conclusion.
One [hl:2]proposal[/hl:2] for preserving rain forests is to promote the adoption of new agricultural technologies, such as improved plant varieties and use of chemical herbicides, which would increase productivity and slow deforestation by reducing demand for new cropland. Studies have shown that farmers in developing countries who have achieved certain levels of education, wealth, and security of land tenure are more likely to adopt such technologies. But these studies have focused on villages with limited land that are tied to a market economy rather than on the relatively isolated, self‐sufficient communities with ample land characteristic of rain-forest regions. A recent [hl:1]study[/hl:1] of the Tawahka people of the Honduran rain forest found that farmers with some formal education were more likely to adopt improved plant varieties but less likely to use chemical herbicides and that those who spoke Spanish (the language of the market economy) were more likely to adopt both technologies. Nonland wealth was also associated with more adoption of both technologies, but availability of uncultivated land reduced the incentive to employ the productivity‐enhancing technologies. Researchers also measured land-tenure security: in Tawahka society, kinship ties are a more important indicator of this than are legal property rights, so researchers measured it by a household`s duration of residence in its village. They found that longer residence correlated with more adoption of improved plant varieties but less adoption of chemical herbicides.
Ready4

An online retailer that makes its deliveries through a private shipping company has determined that, unlike before, now it can profitably begin making deliveries seven days a week, not just six days a week. Delivering a given number of shipments within a narrower window of time tends to be more cost effective, because, on average, delivery trucks will be able to exploit economies in their driving routes and will incur lower average shipping costs per dollar of delivered goods per hour. Nevertheless, the retailer expects profits to rise with the change.

Which of the following, if true, provides the best reason for the expectation?
Two divergent definitions have dominated sociologists' discussions of the nature of ethnicity. The first emphasizes the primordial and unchanging character of ethnicity. In this view, people have an essential need for belonging that is satisfied by membership in groups based on shared ancestry and culture. A different conception of ethnicity de-emphasizes the cultural component and defines ethnic groups as interest groups. In this view, ethnicity serves as a way of mobilizing a certain population behind issues relating to its economic position. While both of these definitions are useful, neither fully captures the dynamic and changing aspects of ethnicity in the United States. Rather, ethnicity is more satisfactorily conceived of as aprocess in which preexisting communal bonds and common cultural attributes are adapted for instrumental purposes according to changing real-life situations.One example of this process is the rise of participation by Native American people in the broader United States political system since the Civil Rights movement of the1960's. Besides leading Native Americans to participate more actively in politics (the number of Native American legislative officeholders more than doubled), this movement also evoked increased interest in tribal history and traditional culture. Cultural and instrumental components of ethnicity are not mutually exclusive, but rather reinforce one another.The Civil Rights movement also brought changes in the uses to which ethnicity was put by Mexican American people. In the 1960's, Mexican Americans formed community-based political groups that emphasized ancestral heritage as a way of mobilizing constituents. Such emerging issues as immigration and voting rights gave Mexican American advocacy groups the means by which to promote ethnic solidarity. Like European ethnic groups in the nineteenth-century United States, late-twentieth-century Mexican American leaders combined ethnic with contemporary civic symbols. In 1968 Henry Censors, then mayor of San Antonio, Texas, cited Mexican leader Benito Juarezas a model for Mexican Americans in their fight for contemporary civil rights. And every year, Mexican Americans celebrate Cinco de Mayo as fervently as many Irish American people embrace St. Patrick's Day (both are major holidays in the countries of origin), with both holidays having been reinvented in the context of the United States and linked to ideals, symbols, and heroes of the United States
Critics maintain that the fiction of Herman Melville (1819–1891) has limitations, such as its lack of inventive plots after Moby-Dick (1851) and its occasionally inscrutable style. A more serious, yet problematic, charge is that Melville is a deficient writer because he is not a practitioner of the "art of fiction," as critics have conceived of this art since the late nineteenth- century essays and novels of Henry James. Indeed, most twentieth-century commentators regard Melville not as a novelist but as a writer of romance, since they believe that Melville's fiction lacks the continuity that James viewed as essential to a novel: the continuity between what characters feel or think and what they do, and the continuity between characters` fates and their pasts or original social classes. Critics argue that only Pierre (1852), because of its subject and its characters, is close to being a novel in the Jamesian sense. However, although Melville is not a Jamesian novelist, he is not therefore a deficient writer. A more reasonable position is that Melville is a different kind of writer, who held, and should be judged by, presuppositions about fiction that are quite different from James's. It is true that Melville wrote "romances"; however, these are not the escapist fictions this word often implies, but fictions that range freely among very unusual or intense human experiences. Melville portrayed such experiences because he believed these best enabled him to explore moral questions, an exploration he assumed was the ultimate purpose of fiction. He was content to sacrifice continuity or even credibility as long as he could establish a significant moral situation. Thus Melville's romances do not give the reader a full understanding of the complete feelings and thoughts that motivate actions and events that shape fate. Rather, the romances leave unexplained the sequence of events and either simplify or obscure motives. Again, such simplifications and obscurities exist in order to give prominence to the depiction of sharply delineated moral values, values derived from a character's purely personal sense of honor, rather than, as in a Jamesian novel, from the conventions of society.
The 1920's marked a new independence in political party affiliation amongst Black Americans-they were ready to move in a new political direction. The direction was not, however, to the extreme left, despite the wooing of the socialists and the communists.Because their program revolved around the working person, socialists viewed the problems of society as mainly economic rather than racial; they saw the Black person primarily as a worker and only incidentally as a "Negro". No matter how eloquent, their program was generally viewed by Black Americans as remote from their needs.In contrast to the socialists, the communists sought to more directly address the needs of the Black community. In 1925, the Communist Party organized the American Negro Labor Congress which was designed to bring all Black trade unionists together in order to strengthen the party. They also organized the International Labor Defense, a legal arm that was designed to defend communists in the courts, but that concerned itself particularly with cases involving Black people regardless of their political affiliations. Another part of the communist program was designed to have Black Americans run for high office on the party ticket in state and national elections. However, even with such strenuous efforts, the communists made few Black converts.
Dogs are widely used by the police as biological recognition systems to detect drug smuggling and drug caches. Yet recent evidence suggests that insects, rather than mammals, might be used more effectively in this capacity. In the 1950s, German biologist Dietrich Schneider developed the first method that enabled researchers to record activity in insect olfactory nerves and to identify the compounds or class of compounds that trigger a particular behavioral response. The position of the insect olfactory organs on the surface of its body allows for direct investigation of the system's response. Schneider's technique formed the foundation of an olfactory detection system based upon insects, a system that is at least as effective as the ones based upon mammals.Insects have olfactory systems that are very similar to those of vertebrates. Insects first detect odors via finger-like protuberances on the antenna, called olfactory sensilla. The odorant molecules pass through pores in the outer cuticle of the sensilla and become attached to an odorant-binding protein. This protein carries the hydrophobic molecules through the lymph fluid found inside the cell and attaches them to receptors on the dendritic projections of a sensory nerve cell. Finally, these receptors send signals to the central nervous system, allowing researchers to detect and interpret the responses.
OG15 OG16 OG17 The following was excerpted from the speech of a spokesperson for Synthetic Farm Products, Inc.:"Many farmers who invested in the equipment needed to make the switch from synthetic to organic fertilizers and pesticides feel that it would be too expensive to resume synthetic farming at this point. But studies of farmers who switched to organic farming last year indicate that their current crop yields are lower. Hence their purchase of organic farming equipment, a relatively minor investment compared to the losses that would result from continued lower crop yields, cannot justify persisting on an unwise course. And the choice to farm organically is financially unwise, given that it was motivated by environmental rather than economic concerns."Discuss how well reasoned you find this argument. In your discussion be sure to analyze the line of reasoning and the use of evidence in the argument. For example, you may need to consider what questionable assumptions underlie the thinking and what alternative explanations or counterexamples might weaken the conclusion. You can also discuss what sort of evidence would strengthen or refute the argument, what changes in the argument would make it more logically sound, and what, if anything, would help you better evaluate its conclusion.
The dry mountain ranges of the western United States contain rocks dating back 440 to 510 million years, to the Ordovician period, and teeming with evidence of tropical marine life. This rock record provides clues about one of the most significant radiations (periods when existing life-forms gave rise to variations that would eventually evolve into entirely new species) in the history of marine invertebrates. During this radiation the number of marine biological families increased greatly, and these families included species that would dominate the marine ecosystems of the area for the next 215 million years. Although the radiation spanned tens of millions of years, major changes in many species occurred during a geologically short time span within the radiation and, furthermore, appear to have occurred worldwide, suggesting that external events were major factors in the radiation. In fact, there is evidence of major ecological and geological changes during this period: the sea level dropped drastically and mountain ranges were formed. In this instance, rather than leading to large-scale extinctions, these kinds of environmental changes may have resulted in an enriched pattern of habitats and nutrients, which in turn gave rise to the Ordovician radiation. However, the actual relationship between these environmental factors and the diversification of life-forms is not yet fully understood.
OG15 OG16 OG17 The following appeared as part of an article in a local newspaper:"Over the past three years the tartfish industry has changed markedly: fishing technology has improved significantly, and the demand for tartfish has grown in both domestic and foreign markets. As this trend continues, the tartfish industry on Shrimp Island can expect to experience the same overfishing problems that are already occurring with mainland fishing industries: without restrictions on fishing, fishers see no reason to limit their individual catches. As the catches get bigger, the tartfish population will be dangerously depleted while the surplus of tartfish will devalue the catch for fishers. Government regulation is the only answer: tartfish-fishing should be allowed only during the three-month summer season, when tartfish reproduce and thus are most numerous, rather than throughout the year."Discuss how well reasoned you find this argument. In your discussion be sure to analyze the line of reasoning and the use of evidence in the argument. For example, you may need to consider what questionable assumptions underlie the thinking and what alternative explanations or counterexamples might weaken the conclusion. You can also discuss what sort of evidence would strengthen or refute the argument, what changes in the argument would make it more logically sound, and what, if anything, would help you better evaluate its conclusion.
During the nineteenth century, occupational information about women that was provided by the United States census-a population count conducted each decade-became more detailed and precise in response to social changes. Through 1840, [hl:5]simple[/hl:5] enumeration by household mirrored a home-based agricultural economy and hierarchical social order: the head of the household (presumed male or absent) was specified by name, whereas other household members were only indicated by the total number of persons counted in various categories, including occupational categories. Like farms, most enterprises were family-run, so that the census measured economic activity as an attribute of the entire household, rather than of individuals.The 1850 census, partly responding to antislavery and women's rights movements, initiated the collection of specific information about each individual in a household. Not until 1870 was occupational information analyzed by gender: the census superintendent reported 1.8 million women employed outside the home in "gainful and reputable occupations". In addition, he arbitrarily attributed to each family one woman "keeping house". Overlap between the two groups was not calculated until 1890, when the rapid entry of women into the paid labor force and social issues arising from industrialization were causing [hl:1]women's advocates and women statisticians[/hl:1] to press for more thorough and accurate accounting of women's occupations and wages.