The drug heparin is frequently administered intravenously in order to prevent blood clots. But some doctors point out that thousands of patients undergoing treatment with heparin have suffered adverse reactions in just the last year. Since there are no plans to make any modifications to the drug, adverse reactions in patients being treated with heparin will only increase if use of the drug becomes more widespread.

Which of the following, if true, most seriously weakens the argument?

A likely challenger to Mayor Stephenson in next year’s election has recently stated that the city’s budget is in shambles, citing as evidence the city’s overspending on transportation this year. Portraying the current state of things as intolerable is always in the interest of a challenger to an incumbent, but it is particularly unwarranted in this case. It is true that overspending is generally undesirable, but in this case it was both unavoidable and ultimately advantageous. Failure by past mayors to attend to transportation-infrastructure maintenance forced this administration to make emergency repairs that will lower maintenance and repair costs for the city’s transportation budgets for years to come.

In the argument given, the two boldfaced portions play which of the following roles?

Dolomedes is one representative species of a number of the world’s semiaquatic spiders, spiders hunting in a thoroughly specialized and unusual environment where it feeds almost exclusively on drowning insects—arthropods without adaptations to liquid environments.

The construction of Foxboro Stadium, which was officially known as Schaefer Stadium, started in 1970, during the governorship of Francis Sargent, was completed a year later, during the same administration.

Because there are stipulations of the new corporate policy that mandate that even basic transactions can be the catalyst for legal claims to restitution or reimbursement, they have already caused a radical reevaluation of the methods sales staff use to do business.

Once extremely expensive and used primarily for ornamental or decorative purposes, a metal now known as aluminum, which can be effective in an ever-expanding suite of production applications for a relatively low cost, is now used in food packaging, structural engineering, and bicycle manufacture.

Physicists, using extremely sophisticated instruments, have documented that the component particles of atoms—protons, neutrons, and electrons—comprise many smaller units called hadrons that are themselves composed of quarks, particles whose radii are 2,000 times smaller than a proton.

Both students and professors will come to depend on digitized archives of historical documents for such invaluable research tools as electronic copies, typed transcriptions, and searchable versions, in which even similar terms are recognized as distinct rather than interchangeable.

The ideals that Julie Todaro works toward in her policies is forward-thinking, spurring libraries to increase digital relevance while simultaneously she addresses any challenges to accessibility.

The human resources department of a company is considering policies that would encourage all employees to implement healthier eating habits at home and at work, adhere to a more regular sleep schedule, and to participate in a fitness program to include cardiovascular, strength training, and flexibility elements.

Patented by Edmund Cartwright in 1785, the power loom, with using the power of water to perform the shedding, picking, and battening actions of weaving and it made possible all use of spun threads so as to increase overall cloth production.

Protein, like other nutrients, performs several functions for an organism, such as providing energy, repairing and to maintain tissues throughout the body, and assisting in the transport of numerous molecules.

According to the passage, Evans’s work differs from that of the scholars mentioned in in which of the following ways?

It can be inferred that both Durkhart and Moore have been criticized by the scholars mentioned in for which of the following?

The author of the passage suggests that Evans’ scholarship corrects the error other scholars make when they assume that

The author of the passage implies that Evans’s methods are unusual in which of the following ways?

Which of the following statements about the first attempts to detect gravitational waves with an interferometer can be inferred from the passage?

A new drug to lower cholesterol has entered the market that, when used in combination with existing drugs called statins, can reduce the risk of heart disease more effectively than statins alone. Patients who tried the new drug in a clinical trial were able to lessen their daily dose of statins without a corresponding increase in blood cholesterol levels. Statins alone, however, cost less, and the money patients saved on statins rarely surpassed the added cost of the new drug. Therefore, for most patients with high cholesterol, adding the new drug to their treatment regimen would be unlikely to lower healthcare costs.

Which of the following would it be most helpful to know in order to analyze the argument?

Analyst: The average amount of work-related travel per year for an employee in the sales department of the Syndek Corporation is 45 days. Most members of the Syndek Corporation work in the sales department. Moreover, the work-related travel time for a given employee of the corporation generally does not vary significantly from year to year. Therefore, each year, most employees of the Syndek Corporation travel for work at least some days.

The analyst’s argument is most vulnerable to criticism based on which of the following claims?

Community representative: Paper bags are substantially less expensive than plastic bags. And plastic is not biodegradable, which means that using plastic bags clutters up landfills and pollutes the environment. Customers can preserve the environment by making exclusive use of paper bags, and we can encourage them to do so by informing them that this is the case. Thus, we can save money on shopping bags by drawing attention to this advantage paper bags have over plastic.

Which of the following, if true, would most indicate a vulnerability of the community representative’s argument?