Largely unrecognized during his lifetime, Blake is now considered a seminal figure in the history of both the poetry and visual arts of the Romantic Age. All around him, Blake saw tendencies to attempt to restrict human capacity and the freedom of the imagination, all of which strengthened his commitment to man`s basic right to social, political, religious and sexual equality. Along with the Romantic poets, Blake sought out a spiritual truth, a truth that could only be achieved by the use of feelings and the imagination. He believed that man originated from a spiritual realm, and was born as a free spirit, but that as a result of the deeply negative influence from the earth itself, man became trapped in the confines of his physical body and the five senses, which limited his capacity for perception. The only way to be freed from this confinement was by what he called "Imagination," the capacity to apprehend realities beyond the prison of the physical world.

When considering the totality of Blake`s work, it has been suggested that he worked on two levels; a commercial or worldly level, and a spiritual level. On the one hand he worked as a commercial engraver, undertaking engraving and printing jobs for his customers. On the other hand he produced his personal, spiritual work, and it was this part of Blake`s work that inspired his development of illuminated printing and prophetic books, written "so that the spirits could see them." The poems in Blake`s Prophetic Books were exciting texts of a mystical nature, and very few people could understand them, not even Blake`s closest friends. Today they are considered to be masterpieces, expressing Blake`s belief in a spiritual world and his hope that man can overcome all limitations by means of the spirit within himself.

Blake was above all a great religious thinker who used both art and words to express mental and spiritual truths that had been forgotten by an increasingly materialistic society. Blake`s great achievement was to uphold the image of the spiritual man in a world dominated by material forces. This he was able to do because he felt himself part of a vast spiritual world, a world that had been revealed to him in his visions. Some regarded him as not clearly in his right mind, but others were convinced that what he saw was true. It is a question of what kind of world you believed in. And to Blake, reality was spirituality.

With globalization, "sustainable development" is concerned not only with economic development but also with the development and resolution of social and environmental problems. Despite different interpretations, the number of companies in the world that are realizing the economic benefits of CSR (Corporate Social Responsibility) policies has been on the rise in the past decade. CSR commitments go beyond the desire for higher profit and show that businesses are fully aware of their responsibilities to employees, customers, community and the environment. Many companies use CSR as a new business approach when they realize that it can help enhance the role of managers, improve financial situations, strengthen the motivation of staff, inspire customer loyalty, and bolster corporate reputation in society.

The challenges facing world companies from the application of CSR are clear. The CSR awareness of a company may be considered an index proportional to the success of that company on the path of development. Multinational corporations or powerful companies apply a set of rules outlining responsibilities or proper practices (called a code of conduct or code of ethics) and standards like SA8000, WRAP, ISO 14000 and GRI, and regard them as their commitments to the world. Titans are paying highly for an ideal business model with a highly competitive system, sustainable development and more social responsibility. For example, Best Buy — the international retailer of consumer electronics and entertainment software — is famous for applying a product recycling program. Starbucks has shared hands in many community activities. The world's largest Internet search provider, Google, treats its employees as "gold." In addition to guaranteeing the quality of life of employees, protecting the environment, and developing products that benefit both consumers and the environment, companies also set up funds and donate to charity to contribute to the development of the society and community. Oil group Royal Dutch Shell established charity foundations, including the Early Learning Centre in South Africa to educate children and teach skills for adults. The World Bank (WB) and pharmaceutical company Merck launched an initiative to develop a $50 million foundation that includes donating Mectizan products to help 28 African countries cure diseases. Billionaires like Bill Gates and Warren Buffett and their companies' foundations contribute significantly to the eradication of disease through their donations.

In developed countries, social responsibility expenses used for research and development are more than those for charity purposes although philanthropic money is not insignificant. In conclusion, corporate social responsibility is playing an increasingly important role in fostering sustainable practices and economic development as well as the observance of laws and ethics throughout the world.

     The diversity of species in bacterial communities is often studied by phenotypic characterization. A problem with this method is that phenotypic methods can be used only on bacteria which can be isolated and cultured, and most soil bacteria that have been observed by fluorescence microscope cannot be isolated and cultured.     DNA can be isolated from bacteria in soil to obtain genetic information about the nonculturable bacteria therein. The heterogeneity of this DNA is a measure of the total number of genetically different bacteria, or the number of species. DNA heterogeneity can be determined by thermal denaturation and reassociation. In general, renaturation of homologous single-stranded DNA follows second-order reaction kinetics. In other words, the fraction of DNA that has renatured within a given time period is proportional to the genome size or the complexity of DNA, defined as the number of nucleotides in the DNA of a haploid cell, without repetitive DNA. The genetic diversity of a bacterial community can be inferred in a similar manner.     Vigdis Torsvik, Jostein Goksyr, and Frida Lise Daae used this process to analyze soil samples taken from the soil from a beech forest north of Bergen, Norway. The reassociation curves for the main DNA fraction did not follow ideal second-order reaction kinetics, so the half-life values gave only approximate, underestimated values for the number of genomes present. Nevertheless, the soil bacterium DNA was very heterogeneous; the diversity corresponded to about 4,000 distinct genomes of a size typical of standard soil bacteria. This diversity was about 200 times as many species as could have been isolated and cultured.     Various procedures for isolating DNA from river sediments and seawater are known. This opens up the possibility of applying the thermal denaturation method to systems other than soil. The results of the Norway study indicated that the genetic diversity of the total bacterial community in a deciduous-forest soil is so high that heterogeneity can be determined only approximately. In environments with pollution or extreme conditions, the genetic diversity might be easier to determine precisely.  

     A prototypical nanoparticle is produced by chemical synthesis, then coated with polymers, drugs, fluorophores, peptides, proteins, or oligonucleotides, and eventually administered into cell cultures. Nanoparticles were conceived of as benign carriers, but multiple studies have demonstrated that their design influences cell uptake, gene expression, and toxicity.      More specifically, interactions between nanoparticle-bound ligands (the molecules that bind to nanoparticles) and cellular receptors depend on the engineered geometry and the ligand density of a nanomaterial. The nanoparticle acts as a scaffold whose design dictates the number of ligands that interact with the receptor target. A multivalent effect occurs when multiple ligands on the nanoparticle interact with multiple receptors on the cell. The binding strength of complexed ligands is more than the sum of individual affinities; the accumulated effect of multiple affinities is known as the avidity for the entire complex.      This phenomenon is illustrated by the binding affinity of the antibody trastuzumab to the ErbB2 receptor, a protein whose overexpression has been shown to play an important role in the development and progression of certain aggressive types of breast cancer. Trastuzumab's binding affinity to ErbB2 when liganded to a nanoparticle increases proportionally with the size of a nanoparticle, owing to a higher density of the ligand on the nanoparticle surface. However, when viewed in terms of the downstream signaling via the ErbB2 receptor, mid-sized gold nanoparticles induced the strongest effect, suggesting that factors beyond binding affinity must be considered.      Furthermore, several studies have shown that nanoparticle design can generate effects not obtained simply by a free ligand in solution. For example, the aforementioned mid-sized trastuzumab-coated gold nanoparticles altered cellular apoptosis, the process of programmed cell death, by influencing the activation of the so-called "executioner" caspase enzymes. Similarly, receptor-specific peptides improved their ability to induce angiogenesis, the physiological process through which new blood vessels form from preexisting vessels, when these peptides are conjugated to a nanoparticle surface. Specifically, presentation of the peptide on a structured scaffold increased angiogenesis, which is dependent on receptor-mediated signaling. These findings highlight the advantages of a ligand bound to a nanoparticle over one free in solution. The nanoparticle surface creates a region of highly concentrated ligand, which increases avidity and, potentially, alters cell signaling.

     The controversial Canadian media intellectual Marshall McLuhan first began to garner public attention with his book The Mechanical Bridge in 1951, precisely during the time when North America was first gripped by and attempting to come to grips with the influence of television programming and advertising on society. One of McLuhan's core theses was that every communication medium, including the television, has inherent effects apart from those that any artist or businessperson willfully creates through it and that these effects are not always positive.      McLuhan achieved the height of public attention in part by emulating the advertisers he studied, inventing memorable phrases to convey his points (such as "the medium is the message," "turn on, tune in, drop out," and "global village"). Arguably, however, he never expected or even hoped to deflect substantially the tide of the technological and social forces in play at the time. He likened the successful reader of his works to the sailor in Edgar Allan Poe's story "A Descent into the Maelstrom," who saves himself by studying a whirlpool and by moving with, not against, its current.      The media thinker's legacy is in equal parts inevitable and inconsequential. The advent of the internet, which he had predicted thirty years prior, and of subsequent technologies would force society to broaden its perspective of media channels and examine their impact more closely. On the other hand, in the present milieu, where media professionals and advertisers tend to speak of "channels" and "content" as well-defined and non-overlapping components of communication, McLuhan's primary message appears to been lost among all the new mediums.

     Yawning is a reflex consisting of the simultaneous intake of air and reflexive stretching of the eardrums, followed by an exhalation of breath. There are two leading theories of the purpose of yawning, both in humans and other animals. Because yawning is common to most vertebrates, biologists assume that it plays an important role in survival. Two competing theories, dubbed “A” and “B,” seek to explain how.      Supporters of theory A argue that the primary purpose of yawning is to keep the brain cool. The human brain is quite sensitive to even small temperature increases: our reaction times increase and our recall is diminished when the temperature of the brain differs a few tenths of a degree from the perfect temperature of 98.6° F. The proponents of theory A point out that, in terms of escaping from a predator, these tiny temperature changes in the brain could easily be the difference between life and death.      However, critics of theory A argue that yawning is not more common in warmer climates, and that the body has much more sophisticated methods of maintaining the optimal temperature in the brain—the circulatory system, for one example, and sweating, for another. They advocate theory B, which claims that yawning plays a primarily social role based on the fact that yawning is “contagious.”      Because yawning is so demonstrative and affects the body so little, say supporters of theory B, the reflex is most likely a social mode of communication that happens to have some slight physiological effects. The contagiousness of yawning has been shown to be stronger among group members who feel closer to each other, implying that it has a major social component. Based on this information, theory B claims that the primary purpose of yawning is to communicate an increased need for alertness throughout a group. This alertness, according to theory B, is only slightly encouraged by the yawning itself; the real benefit of the contagious yawn is that the yawning animal is reminded to stay alert to the other members of the group and to the surroundings.

Many corporations, educational institutions, and publishers have made efforts in recent years to shift from paper-based reading to electronic and online reading in order to save paper. According to this logic, paper is gleaned from trees, which must be replenished, and the energy required to recycle paper waste is another blow to the environment as well as to organizations' finances. However, researcher Emma Gardsdale sees more gray area in the issue. First, in order for e-reading to be practical, tablets and e-readers are required. Because these devices have a limited lifespan of one to four years, they create e-waste which puts poisons such as arsenic, lead, and poly-brominated flame retardants into landfills, where they can leach into water supplies and soil. Second, e-reading has a hidden cost: the electricity required to power servers, computers and mobile devices. Gardsdale also points out that the ecological balance between paper reading and e-reading depends significantly on the amount of reading that one does. An e-reader, for example, will have a smaller carbon footprint than paper only if it is used for at least a certain volume of reading. Gardsdale argues that the current all-encompassing enthusiasm for the ecological promise of electronic reading isn't the quick ecological fix it may seem to be. Over the long term, she says, both paper and electronic reading will likely have a place in our lives. Each method's role will depend on the energy-saving and waste-minimizing technologies that become available in the coming years, and on whether corporations that manufacture mobile reading devices are willing to take responsibility for the impact of their devices' life cycles.

     Fishing is a profession that faces two major problems. First, it is extremely difficult to make a decent living as a fisherman. Fluctuating market prices and unpredictable weather conditions, not to mention climate change, make the occupation inherently unstable. Yet some protected marine animals, most notably sharks, are worth massive sums in certain markets. The fishermen who are willing to illegally catch these animals are some of the only fishermen with relative financial stability.     I would like to make an outrageous suggestion that would in one fell swoop increase financial stability for many fishermen and severely cut into the black market in shark cartilage and meat. I would propose that the government sponsor a project to find a shark species that is suitable to farming, and then train fishermen to open and operate farms that raise those sharks for their lucrative commodities. This scheme would give struggling fishermen a stable, profitable alternative to trawling for ever-lessening schools of commonly sold fish like cod and salmon. At the same time, the unregulated black market would lose its monopoly on shark products.      You might object that fishermen aren't farmers or that the international black market in a given commodity is not our concern. I agree. We should not ask fishermen to do this work if they don't care to, and we should not try to farm sharks solely to eliminate a black market in their products. But, you might argue, fish farming has many inherent issues and, by providing shark products, we are condoning the capture of wild sharks. And here, we part ways. Fish farming is only problematic when it is undertaken irresponsibly, and there is a marked difference between farmed marine commodities and those that are obtained by poaching.      Our current thinking about sharks is limited to (often endangered) wild sharks, because no species has been found that is suitable for farming. The image that comes to mind when we think about shark products is one of a poacher slicing off a shark's fins and dumping the helpless animal back in the water to die. This limits our ability to think creatively about the animal itself and its value to the world economy. If we could farm sharks to relatively large sizes, say, five or six feet, then (in addition to, of course, not hunting wild sharks) we could generate a significant amount of income for struggling fishermen: sharks' fins, jaws, meat and skin are all worth significant amounts in markets around the world.     It would be unrealistic to suggest that shark poaching would end entirely if this plan were undertaken. But the demand for the illicit product would be significantly reduced. Who would want a fin torn from a wild shark in an unknown state of health and under inhumane conditions when another was available from a healthy, safe, well-documented stable of sustainably harvested animals?

     A new discovery adds another element to the complex relationship between humans and felines in the prehistoric Americas. Archaeologists recently realized that a skeleton discovered at the Illinois Hopewell Burial Mounds had been misidentified as a dog. The bones actually belonged to a bobcat, probably between four and seven months old when it perished almost two thousand years ago. The bobcat burial was striking in its similarity to human interments, and is possibly the first decorated wildcat burial ever discovered.

     In considering the implications of this discovery, the researchers dismissed the possibility that the bobcat had been sacrificed, because the skeleton did not show signs of any trauma. They decided it was not an intrusive burial because it so closely mirrored the style of Hopewell human burials. They also do not believe the cat was venerated as a wild predator, because its grave did not contain the ceremonial adornments present in coyote burial sites. The conclusion the researchers have drawn is that the bobcat had a much closer relationship to the humans who buried it—that is to say, it may have been domesticated, occupying a place within the residential sphere. Such a conclusion, according to the researchers, is further supported by two Hopewellian artifacts, an effigy pipe and a ceramic figurine, adorned with human-bobcat imagery.

     In eighteenth-century Britain, industrial production and domestic consumption of cheap goods rose precipitously. To understand both the cultural causes and impacts of this trend, historians have increasingly turned to analysis of its incipience in the seventeenth century. According to this method, evidence from material culture—the mass of objects that makes up the setting and the tools of a people's everyday lives—demonstrates that seemingly smaller, slower changes to people's goods and their attitudes about them laid the groundwork for the rapid and sweeping change that followed. The availability of extremely cheap tobacco pipes and sewing thimbles, for example, made these the first truly disposable goods to be widely consumed in Britain. Moreover, households began to change shape as fireplaces and cookware came to accomodate the warmer, more convenient coal that began to replace wood as fuel.

     However, there were new additions to British material culture that can be properly assigned to the eighteenth century. In one example, the widespread acceptance of conspicuous consumption outside of London was slow to materialize. Prior to the Industrial Revolution, excessive material wealth and especially gaudy displays of it were considered to be not only uncouth but also immoral; as average household wealth increased and goods became more widely available throughout the country, consumption for its own sake became normalized in every region.

     Linguists have offered two explanations describing the origins of language among human populations. Because the use of language is universal among ethno-cultural groups and distinct from any communicative capacity developed elsewhere in the animal kingdom, both explanations assert that the biological evolution of the human organism has exerted some influence on the development of language.

     Proponents of explanation A, or the “continuity theory,” take issue with the suggestion that the development of language occurred fairly suddenly in the course of human evolution. Observations have shown that non-human animals communicate, even in surprisingly complex ways, within kin groups and across species. Human language is incredibly complex and it is difficult to assert that such a complex system could have developed without a long series of evolutionary iterations. Thus it is useful to consider the communication methods of other organisms as analogues to the possible stages of human linguistic development. Scientists have also suggested that human communicative capacities are evolutionary adaptations similar to echolocation among bats or stereopsis among lesser primates: unique abilities particular to the human organism but nonetheless the product of long-form evolutionary processes.

     However, explanation A is not uncontroversial. Critics point out that human language far outstrips the complexity of any known animal communication mechanism and that, therefore, any hypothesis emphasizing iterative development is of limited explanatory utility. They argue that any evolutionary development as unprecedented as human language must have a comparably unprecedented explanation. They support explanation B, “the discontinuity theory,” which can be understood in multiple ways.

     Language, some proponents of explanation B argue, requires an advanced cognitive capacity that pre-human primates (hominids) did not possess. Modern humans achieved language function through the relatively abrupt development of advanced brain anatomy, the “language organ.” This development is supposedly the result of a significant mutation within the human genome. Sudden mutations often have negative effects, making this instance all the more peculiar. Another understanding of the “discontinuity theory” suggests the sudden development of language among human populations is due to a social revolution among early human communities. Even if early human populations had already developed the capacity for language, it went undeveloped until social and cultural factors demanded otherwise. Early human communities can be compared to naturally talented basketball players whose skills go unrecognized until they're scouted by a perceptive coach.

     Everest and Jengish Chokusu, two of the tallest mountains on earth, are both products of collisions between continental plates and other tectonic forces. Ojos del Salado and Llullaillaco are somewhat shorter and the product of volcanic forces. The formation of these mountains can be compared to that of the planets in our solar system, in which the original stellar material congealed to form multiple celestial bodies with wildly varying sizes, compositions, and physical characteristics. The mountains of Earth are, however, more identifiable than the materials from which they originally formed: mountains are formed from the same rocks and minerals that have existed on Earth for billions of years. Everest, for example, is largely composed of limestone and marble, Jengish Chokusu consists primarily of crystalline and sedimentary rocks, and though Ojos del Salado and Llullaillaco are both different types of volcanic peak, both have similar metamorphic compositions.

     The distinction between volcanic and tectonically formed peaks has behavioral ramifications. Ojos de Salado remains an active volcano, and Llullaillaco is dormant at present but has been active in the past. Everest and Jengish Chokusu were formed from a tectonic plate collision millions of years ago, so they exhibit no volcanic activity. Because of that, the appearances of Everest and Jengish Chokusu are permanent, more or less; tectonic changes occur more slowly than volcanic changes and those two mountains will change but very gradually. On the other hand, the appearances of Ojos del Salado and Llullaillaco might change rapidly and with little warning, as dormant volcanoes have been known to become active and volcanic eruptions can radically reshape mountains in a matter of moments.

     Finzer predicts that the possibilities for medical research could be expanded through a strategic deployment of the data-gathering and -analysis technologies now becoming available. Currently, huge amounts of data are already being generated for each patient—raising hopes for the possibility of highly personalized medicine—as well as by clinical studies and other methods that promise to allow comparison across populations. Although data storage and access present security and privacy concerns, Finzer points out that the benefits far outweigh the risks, which can be mitigated. Both local and internet-based storage solutions have been proposed for minimizing the possibility of patient data theft.

     Finzer hopes not only that data will be gathered and stored but also that the medical community will recognize the need for more medically-trained data scientists to analyze the data. Often medical researchers simply employ a computer scientist with little medical knowledge to perform specific analysis-related tasks. Results produced using this method are likely to overlook important factors, correlations, or anomalies in the data. A closer collaboration between medical and data science, Finzer says, would allow researchers to fully exploit the possibilities the vast amounts of available data present by increasing understanding in the medical and data science fields of how data is organized and what it implies, respectively, allowing better collaboration on projects where the two are strongly intertwined. For example, computer modeling could speed or improve clinical trials of treatments in humans. The field of genetics also routinely employs computer models.

     A reliable, noninvasive test for mild traumatic brain injury (TBI) has long proved elusive. In a recent experiment, however, we have shown that processing and identification of speech sound frequencies is measurably impaired in concussion victims and that neural responses to speech-frequency sounds can be sufficiently tracked using electrodes to warrant a clinical assessment of an injury.

     Investigations into the neurological effects of closed head trauma have previously determined that the auditory system is negatively impacted by physiological changes such as demyelination, or damage to nerve coverings, and reduced levels of neurotransmitters, chemicals that transmit neural signals. However, the incidence of these impacts among patients with less severe trauma may be difficult to detect, making most auditory neurological measures unreliable as indicators of mild TBI. Our decision to test the neural response to speech-frequency sounds was based on the complexity of the brain activity involved: the demyelination, axonal injury, and tauopathy potentially resulting from brain injury would affect speech-frequency auditory responses even if they presented as very mild. Moreover, lags in speech-frequency sound processing as low as a fraction of a millisecond have been shown to be indicative of abnormality.

     We measured the neural responses of a group of people diagnosed with mild TBI to speech-frequency sounds amid background noise and those of a control group of healthy people. As we expected, the injured brains exhibited both smaller and slower neural responses to speech-frequency sounds than the brains of the control group.

     Importantly, moreover, a second test performed after an interval of a few weeks revealed that the neural processing of speech-frequency sounds improved for all of the injured subjects. Since all of these subjects reported diminished symptom loads at the time of the retest, it is reasonable to believe that the test could serve as a reliable indicator not only for initial diagnoses of brain injury but for tracking recovery and offering prognoses. It is likely that complex auditory processing could improve proportionately to the degree to which brain physiology has returned to normal.

     The more severe a brain injury is, the more likely it is that a victim will exhibit diminished neural processing due to demyelination and diminished levels of the neurotransmitter glutamate, both of which are primary contributors to the functioning of the auditory midbrain. Thus the more severe a brain injury, the less aptly the brain can execute complex sound-processing functions.

     More government action is necessary to maintain the affordability of higher education than subsidizing loans. It is true to say that as the costs of education rise, the necessity of government subsidized student loans increases, where the size of each loan is determined by the financial needs of a student, the price of a desired institution, and the student's likelihood to succeed in a college environment. However, subsidized loans are unsustainable unless a reasonable degree of educational “value” (an increase in income as a result of a bachelor's degree) is received by the student. The value necessary to repay the loans is difficult to ascertain when students vary wildly as to the costs of the institutions they attend, the financial circumstances of their families, and their chosen academic specializations. If the value of a student's education is ever less than the amount of money she was given through government loans, repayment drops sharply and the government is left with a lending deficit. Net government deficits (in this instance the relevant expense is money loaned to students) do not increase when more students apply to, attend, and graduate from institutions of higher learning. Indeed, government reaps the benefits of expanded education in the form of taxes collected from incomes increased as a result of college graduation—that is, value added by the attainment of a degree—but the value added by education is not increasing at the same rate as the costs of that education—students are being charged more and receiving fewer benefits.

     The necessity of introducing more stringent regulations on educational costs is obvious if one understands the benefits government enjoys from high rates of scholastic attainment. The prices colleges set for themselves are dictated not by the costs of operation, but by the prices students and the organizations supporting them are willing to pay. Once this high price of education is established, college administrations have little incentive to lower costs. Governments must circumscribe educational costs within reasonable bounds to ensure their subsidization programs remain effective. Governments must ensure that students procure substantial value from the educations they receive. And governments must make it so the individuals to whom they lend money will reliably pay it back at reasonable intervals.

     As understandings of the solar life cycle developed, scientists were confronted by a nagging question: If, early in the history of Earth's planetary formation, the sun was significantly dimmer than it is now, how do we explain evidence for the presence of liquid water on the planet's surface during this period? It is understood that during the early Earth period our sun would have shone at about 70 percent of its current luminosity, significantly below the level necessary to sustain the presence of liquid oceans on the planet's surface. But paleontological and geological records indicate with substantial certainty that liquid water was present on the Earth's surface during this time. If scientific models of solar development and the early geological history of Earth are to be reconciled, there must have been some other, intervening factor affecting surface temperatures during this early period of geologic history.

     Our method of reconciling these two apparently contradictory bodies of evidence has been to analyze the characteristics and chemical composition of Earth's atmosphere during its various periods of geological development. We have known for decades that the presence of certain vapors in the air, commonly known as “greenhouse gases,” increases the amounts of heat retained by an atmosphere to a degree proportionate to the concentration of greenhouse gases within it. If the Earth was warmer in the past than solar luminosity would suggest—and we have strong evidence that it was—then we can expect that the distribution of greenhouse gases in its atmosphere would be of paramount value in explaining that discrepancy. Heightened greenhouse gas levels would trap and magnify the sun's heat as it struck the atmosphere, enabling liquid water to exist on the surface of Earth. However, we have discovered little evidence that greenhouse gases during the early Earth period were present in larger quantities than previously assumed. These surprising findings indicate that the discrepancy between solar-astronomical and geological evidence related to the development of Earth's oceans cannot be explained by the presence of carbon in the atmosphere.

     One likely alternative is that another, non-solar source for atmospheric heat during the early Earth period. Earth and its moon were much closer together in the early geologic history of the planet, and tidal heating caused by the moon's rotation around Earth was likely much greater. While it is unclear how much influence this phenomenon might have exerted over atmospheric temperatures, scientists are increasingly convinced that it could play a part in explaining the unlikely presence of liquid water on our infant planet, perhaps in combination with indeterminate geological activity, solar flares, or irregularities in Earth's magnetic field.

     Felicia Durkhart's assertion that women in ancient Rome “enjoyed relatively equal standing” with ancient Roman men has served as a rallying point for feminist scholars eager to demonstrate that misconceptions about gender in history abound. For instance, Darla Moore's seminal 1981 essay “The Women Who Nurtured an Empire” showed that the ancient Romans might have recognized the necessity of women to the empire's continuance, but habitually treated them with contempt and abuse. More recently, however, feminist scholars have recognized that neither Durkhart's glib assessment of women's situation nor Moore's dour one adequately describes the dynamics of power and gender in ancient Rome. Several recent studies by these scholars give special attention to the ways in which women's rights and status changed over time, injecting much-needed nuance into the discussion.

     The criticism that Durkhart and Moore oversimplify matters is also leveraged against those works that examine women's status with little or no attempt to take into account the quality of evidence available. Since details of the lives of often-oppressed populations are notoriously difficult for historians to ascertain, any description of women's lives in ancient times should be tempered by some acknowledgment that what evidence does exist can only offer limited perspectives. John Evans, among others, attempts to remedy these errors by contextualizing each source used in its immediate setting, as well as describing the larger social and historical forces, from household traditions to wartime conventions and symbols, that his interpretations take into account. Evans is therefore able to integrate studies that have previously been siloed due to the methods and concerns of the subjects' usual scholars and allows the insights of feminist studies and political analysis to be brought to bear on one another, and moreover focuses on the changes to household dynamics and economies over years of war and imperial expansion. Evans does acknowledge that upper-class women's fortunes did, at least, improve as the empire enriched itself, but concludes that the average woman likely faced increasing economic uncertainty and violence in times of war, demonstrating that men's decisions in remote centers of power affected more than just their immediate subordinates.

Six distinct pairs of shoes are in a closet. If three shoes are selected at random from the closet, what is the probability that no two of the chosen shoes make a pair?