In the recently concluded parliamentary session, the finance minister has decided that the distressed financial companies need a second, larger infusion of government bailout loans to stay afloat.

Stark News Network broadcasted talk shows criticizing the actions of the government at a time when it was unusual to do it.

At the international level, Phil Simmons is an unknown name, but in Denmark he is the most decorated football star in living memory.

Smith bought a bicycle for $200. After 1 month, the price of the bicycle fell by $10, and after 2 months, a discount of 10% was offered on the reduced price. What percent of $200 would Smith have saved had he waited for 2 months to buy the bicycle?

Smartphones have allowed users to remain connected to the Internet, but they have also been blamed for distracting drivers, causing hundreds of accidents, and creating an increase in highway fatalities.

How many factors of 60 are even?

If z = xy, then does z = 1?

(1) x(y − x) = 0

(2) y(x − y) = 0

There are four cards in a box, each with a different number written on it -- either 1, 3, 4 or 5. What is the probability that the difference between the numbers on two randomly selected cards is not greater than 3?

Z is a positive integer. Is Z even?

(1) Z^Z+1 is even

(2) (Z + 1)^Z is odd

A client seeking to sue his lawyer for unethical practices will find it difficult to press charges if there is a lack of some other lawyer to advise on ethical legal procedures.

A mayor has proposed a fee of five dollars per day for private vehicles entering the city, claiming that the fee will alleviate the city’s traffic congestion. The mayor reasons that, since the fee will exceed the cost of round-trip bus fare from many nearby points, many people will switch from using their cars to using the bus. Which of the following statements, if true, provides the best evidence that the mayor’s plan will fail to accomplish its goal?  

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?

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     The general theory of relativity posits that major events in the universe, such as the creation of a black hole, create ripples in the space-time continuum, also known as gravitational waves, which were recently detected for the first time by the Laser Interferometer Gravitational Observatory (LIGO). Though the interferometer was invented in 1887, not until 2002 was one used in an attempt to detect gravitational waves. The instrument splits a laser beam so that the two resulting beams travel down perpendicular arms-perfectly identical tubes that are four kilometers long-then hit mirrors and return to their shared origin point. This allows the instrument to detect extremely minute changes in the lengths of the arms. In the absence of a gravitational wave, the wavelengths of the two beams match up perfectly. However, if something interferes with the beams` paths, their peaks and valleys no longer align, and the instrument registers the interference.

     Gravitational waves cause space to shrink in one direction and expand in a perpendicular direction. If the interferometer is hit by a gravitational wave, one arm will grow and the other will shrink by normally imperceptible amounts, but the differing distances traveled by the laser beams are registered by the instrument. The LIGO actually consists of two interferometers, thousands of kilometers apart, which compare data in order to rule out localized vibrations and flickers. In September 2015 it detected its first gravitational wave, which was determined to have been generated by the collision of two black holes between one and two billion years ago. Another gravitational wave was detected in December 2015.

     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.

     As the end of World War II brought about a housing boom, the market for consumer home lending expanded significantly, and the financial institutions that had traditionally provided mortgages to working-class Americans faced new competitive pressures. Although the United States League of Local Buildings and Loans in America (USLLBLA), an association of institutions focused on savings accounts and homeowner lending, did not oppose the entry of other lenders into the market, it did lobby to retain the privilege of offering higher interest rates on savings accounts than banks were allowed to give.

     These efforts were spurred in part by the expansion of the Federal Housing Administration (FHA), a federal agency that began to insure mortgages with increasingly consumer-friendly terms. The FHA rules, like USLLBLA, allowed people to afford homes who otherwise could not have done so. It did this in part by relaxing the regulations governing the maximum length of a mortgage and the minimum down payment required, making the loans available to those who accrued capital more slowly than the typical homeowner previously had. In response, the USLLBLA also formed the Voluntary Home Mortgage Credit Program (VHMCP), taking advantage of the new regulations to offer the more affordable loans to people in rural areas in hopes of forestalling further expansion of federal agencies into the mortgage business.

     The works of two nineteenth century thinkers promote conflicting theories of the locus of responsibility for the course of historical events. Thomas Carlyle, in his 1841 treatise On Heroes, Hero-Worship, and the Heroic in History, places little emphasis on the events or conditions that produce major figures or the environments that allow them to rise to prominence. Instead, Carlyle posits that the extraordinary charisma, intelligence, wisdom, or political skill of individual "great" figures, invariably men, are the primary means by which social progress is effected. Herbert Spencer (1820–1903), though, writes not only that social environments are responsible for any great figures societies produce, but that Carlyle`s approach is puerile and "unscientific" in the vein of many popular sociological works of the era. Although both thinkers promote a theory attempting to isolate the "mechanisms" of history vis-à-vis individual figures, only Spencer`s has survived recent criticism largely intact. He emphasizes the lesser-understood contingencies of progress that comprise the immense majority of sociohistorical phenomena. He concludes that while major figures often take credit for the causal chain of significant events, the individuals themselves are less directly responsible for them than is commonly believed. This generality demonstrates how Spencer laid the foundation for twentieth-century historical scholarship, which holds to the belief that historical events, even those led by "heroes," follow from multitudinous and sometimes untraceable social preconditions.

     Koltsov predicted in 1927 that an organism`s inherited traits are determined by gradual changes in a "giant hereditary molecule," later known as DNA, that is the building block of the genome that determines an organism`s genetic makeup. This hypothesis was unproven, for a time, because of limitations in experimental methodology and an inability to do much more than observe qualities of an organism`s DNA compared to the traits it expressed.

     To determine the nature of the connection between DNA and heritable characteristics, scientists needed to be able to bring about changes in the genome and observe whether they corresponded to physical changes in the organism. An experiment conducted by Zimmer in 1935 indicated that this was possible: radiation applied to living tissue can change the structures of DNA and another nucleic acid, RNA, that are found in the cells of every organism. Most of the exposed molecules go unchanged in this experiment, but some of them respond to experimental pressures. When X-rays are applied to cells, the nucleic acids warp and rearrange themselves, sometimes dramatically altering the traits they cause the organism to express. Because the changes induced by radiation exposure are more rapid and intense than those brought about by natural selection, significantly altered heritable traits can be observed in a single generation.

    As a proof of the connection between DNA and heritable characteristics, radiation experiments have two advantages. First, they are universally applicable: the genome of any organism responds to radiation exposure in a way comparable to any other organism. Second, it is a more direct means of genetic intervention than other methods like selective breeding. These advantages mean that radiation experiments can be used to isolate the hereditary influence of DNA from other confounding variables. The results of these experiments demonstrate that DNA exerts a substantial influence on the hereditary characteristics organisms express: DNA is the way that organisms transfer heritable traits between generations. These experiments have established an unassailable connection between intergenerational biological change and the information contained within the building blocks of the genome.

    However, it is important to note that there are other biological mechanisms, such as epigenetics and certain environmental pressures, that also affect the expression of inherited characteristics. The advantage of the Koltsov theory is its broad applicability; DNA is present in every organism on earth, which is not true of the various other factors that might have a role to play in determining the expression of heritable characteristics. That said, the comparative immeasurability of these other potential influences does not make them unworthy of study.