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Weight loss programs that guarantee results mislead their customers. No program can ensure that someone who follows it will lose weight. These programs prey upon unhappy and insecure people who are often driven more by emotion than by reason. Moreover, many people who lose weight while on a program eventually regain the weight within a year. So while the programs' claims may be true for a short period, customers will be disappointed in the long run.The two portions in boldface play which of the following roles?
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Items that seem unremarkable today might once have altered the course of history. For centuries, the nutmeg tree grew only in the Banda Islands, a small chain in the southwest Pacific. Locals harvested the aromatic nuts of the tree and sold them to traders. Eventually, a spice made from these nuts became a luxury item in the European market, via Venetian merchants. Seeking a monopoly over this valuable spice, the Dutch attacked the Banda Islands, subjugating the native people in a mostly successful attempt to control the trade.However, one island in the Banda chain remained in the hands of the British and was the object of much conflict between the Netherlands and England. After many battles, the British offered to cede control of the island in exchange for New Amsterdam, a Dutch outpost on the east coast of North America. Inveterate traders, the Dutch were more interested in the spice trade than in the small outpost of New Amsterdam. In 1667, the Treaty of Breda gave the Dutch complete control of the Banda Islands, and thus of the nutmeg trade, and gave the British New Amsterdam, which they promptly renamed New York. Today, nutmeg trees can be found in many countries and no one company or country has a monopoly on the trade.
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For what purpose does the author include the second paragraph?
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Using a small camera through an incision in the knee, a procedure called a menisectomy allows an orthopedic surgeon to remove torn cartilage.
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The passage is primarily concerned with
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The second paragraph serves what function in the context of the overall passage?
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The immigration of Europeans and the importation of West African slaves to America resulted in a convergence of cultures, traditions, and art forms, including music. Jazz, first played in New Orleans in the early 1900s, borrowed heavily from the European musical scale and harmonic system. Jazz ensembles were built predominantly on European instruments, such as the trumpet, trombone, saxophone, and piano. The West African influence on jazz was manifested primarily in its performance. Scatting, a technique used by jazz vocalists to mimic the sounds of instruments, had its origin in West African vocal traditions. The emphasis on improvisation in jazz music, in addition to group participation, also came from West African music.Some musicologists argue that jazz is a purely American form of music. Others, however, contend that jazz is rooted in a history similar to that of America itself, a history of confluence. Proponents of the argument that jazz is purely American often point to its genesis in New Orleans as evidence for this perspective. The irony, however, is that the essence of America lies in the plurality of its roots. To deny the rich and complex history of jazz, and the true origins of the art form, is to deny the very aspects of the art form that make it undeniably American.
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If a person wants to ascend up the corporate ladder, they have to know the rules of the game.
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The mountain cornfloss, native to the Rocky Mountains from Colorado to Canada and thought of as being the most beautiful of all wildflowers, grow on steep ledges and in deep cracks on remote mountaintops.
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The golden toad of Costa Rica, whose beauty and rarity inspired an unusual degree of human interest from a public generally unconcerned about amphibians, may nevertheless have been driven to extinction by human activity. In the United States, a public relations campaign raised money to protect the toad's habitat in Costa Rica, establishing the Monteverde Cloud Forest Preserve in 1972. However, setting aside habitat was not enough to save the species. The toad's demise in the late 1980s was a harbinger of further species extinction in Costa Rica. Since that time, another twenty of the fifty species of frogs and toads known to once inhabit a 30 square kilometer area near Monteverde have disappeared.Between one third and one half of the world's amphibian species—including frogs, toads, and salamanders—have declined or disappeared. Scientists hypothesize that the more subtle effects of human activities on the world's ecosystems, such as the accretion of pollutants, the decrease in atmospheric ozone, and changing weather patterns due to global warming, are beginning to take their toll. Perhaps amphibians - whose permeable skin makes them unusually sensitive to environmental changes - are the biological harbingers of the natural world, giving humans early notification of the deterioration, if not destruction, of our ecosystem.
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In the second paragraph, the author notes that amphibians have permeable skin in order to
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The primary purpose of the passage is to
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Although amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, or ALS, typically causes death within 3 to 5 years of the onset of symptoms, on average, the famous physicist Stephen Hawking has defied the odds, in contrast, by living more than 40 years after his initial diagnosis.
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Human activity on the continent of Antarctica is regulated by the Antarctic Treaty, which was signed in 1959 by 12 countries and prohibits any military activity, supports scientific research, and is giving protection to the continent's ecozone.
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Commercially available chemical fertilizers contain the same nutrients and micronutrients as organic fertilizers such as manure and composted garden clippings. Plants have tiny root hairs that absorb nutrients, and whether the source of the nutrients is organic or chemical is irrelevant to the plant's ability to take in the nutrients. Nevertheless, organic fertilizers are better for the health of the plant than are chemical fertilizers alone.Which of the following, if true, would most strongly support the position above?
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What is the value of a? (1) -(a + b) = 2a – b + 9 (2) a + b = 6
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What was Bill's average speed on his trip of 250 miles from New York City to Boston? (1) The trip took Bill 5 hours.(2) At the midpoint of his trip, Bill was going exactly 50 miles per hour.
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Symptoms of Parkinson's Disease, such as tremors, are thought to be caused by low dopamine levels in the brain. Current treatments of Parkinson's disease are primarily reactionary, aiming to replenish dopamine levels after dopamine-producing neurons in the brain have died. Without a more detailed understanding of the behavior of dopamine-producing neurons, it has been impossible to develop treatments that would prevent the destruction of these neurons in Parkinson's patients.Recent research provides insight into the inner workings of dopamine-producing neurons, and may lead to a new drug treatment that would proactively protect the neurons from decay. By examining the alpha-synuclein protein in yeast cells, scientists have determined that toxic levels of the protein have a detrimental effect on protein transfer within the cell. More specifically, high levels of alpha-synuclein disrupt the flow of proteins from the endoplasmic reticulum, the site of protein production in the cell, to the Golgi apparatus, the component of the cell that modifies and sorts the proteins before sending them to their final destinations within the cell. When the smooth transfer of proteins from the endoplasmic reticulum to the Golgi apparatus is interrupted, the cell dies.With this in mind, researchers conducted a genetic screen in yeast cells in order to identify any gene that works to reverse the toxic levels of alpha-synuclein in the cell. Researchers discovered that such a gene does in fact exist, and have located the genetic counterpart in mammalian nerve cells, or neurons. This discovery has led to new hopes that drug therapy could potentially activate this gene, thereby suppressing the toxicity of alpha-synuclein in dopamine-producing neurons.While drug therapy to suppress alpha-synuclein has been examined in yeast, fruitflies, roundworms, and cultures of rat neurons, researchers are hesitant to conclude that such therapies will prove successful on human patients. Alpha-synuclein toxicity seems to be one cause for the death of dopamine-producing neurons in Parkinson's patients, but other causes may exist. Most scientists involved with Parkinson's research do agree, however, that such promising early results provide a basis for further testing.
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What percent of x is $$\frac{3}{4}$$?(1) x = 5y(2) y = 10
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What is the area of a circle with circumference 14$$\pi$$?
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