Bernard Winkler`s analysis of the effect of the industrialization of England on the conduct of British foreign policy through the course of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries is a major contribution to a scholarly debate pitting two separate schools of historical thought against each other: the school of economic determinism and the school of ideological determinism.

     Winkler makes the assertion that economic and technological developments play a decisive role in military mobilization and logistical organization. Stated more simply, economic development makes extensive foreign interventions inevitable by making them simpler. Winkler implies this phenomenon has been obfuscated by a recent fondness on the part of historians for ideological explanations, of which George Nguyen`s is a representative example. For Nguyen, the economic possibility of a foreign action is insignificant compared to ethnic, religious, or socio-political motivations for pursuing a course of action abroad. Economic development is construed as a mere facilitator of extant international grievances and desires such as border disputes, enmity between competing religious sects, and long-term foreign policy goals. This contention represents a significant trend in academic historiography, and it is known as ideological determinism.

     Ideological determinists entrench themselves by embracing a mistaken interpretation of economic determinism: for example, economic determinists are supposed to contend that economic development is responsible for all the various subtleties of foreign policy implementation. The alternative to ideological determinism, to say it another way, is to see economics as coextensive with society, as being responsible for even the most minor variations in social phenomena.

     Winkler undermines the misrepresentations of the ideological determinists by means both conceptual and concrete. Conceptually, he defines "economic causes" according to the interactions of industrialization with extant political and sociological realities. Descriptions of sociological and political phenomena as wholly divorced from economic factors are untenable because a state can hardly feed its armies on ideas alone. On a more concrete level, Winkler shows that rapid advances in economic production opened new vistas for political interpretation, religious expression, international relations, and the organization of armies. Some developments Winkler attributes to the ways politicians and bodies politic reacted to the new realities of industrialization, whereas others are attributed to industrialization itself. Therefore, Winkler responds to the question: "When are economic causes decisive and when are the interpretations of changing economic realities more significant?"

     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.

     It is a counterintuitive but well-documented historical truth that the economies of the classical cultures typically seen as the progenitors of western liberalism and political freedom were all founded on the development and perpetuation of agrarian slavery. Because the cultures of antiquity are often associated with Periclean democracy and Roman republicanism-both oligarchical political systems at least nominally dedicated to principled and representative rule-students of history are often confused to learn that the populations of these societies contained large numbers of disenfranchised individuals who were often indentured to members of the middle and upper classes for a lifetime of brutal servitude.

     Many historians attribute this confusion to the triumphalist mythmaking of previous generations of scholars of classical history; indeed, most interpretations of classical literature and history have been distorted, but one would nonetheless expect modern revisionism and understanding of the concept of presentism to provide balance.

     Historians note that there is little discussion of slavery or its moral significance within classical sources, seemingly because individuals in the classical period saw it as both an economic necessity and inherent to the world`s natural order. They cite the example of the writer Heraclitus (535 B.C.E.–475 B.C.E.), a pre-Socratic philosopher. Heraclitus is known as the "Weeping Philosopher," and he was among the most incisive thinkers working in antiquity but, even so, the omnipresent institution of slavery struck him as an immutable element of human affairs; he wrote that "War is the father of all, the king of all - he turns some into slaves and sets others free," implying that slavery is beyond the power of political determination-and beyond intellectual moralizing. Heraclitus is not alone in his failure to question the moral underpinnings of a slave society. Aristotle, too, suggested that the taking and keeping of slaves was a component of natural law, a fundamental consequence of military activity rather than a conscious policy that could be actively perpetuated or proscribed by the laws of man. In promoting this view, though, Aristotle demonstrates an unusual degree of circumspection, wondering whether the taking of slaves could be justified if the war in which they were acquired was itself "unjust." The figures of early modernity saw themselves as heirs to the classical tradition and inherited the Greek and Roman attitudes toward slavery and citizenship as well as their commitments to democracy and rational inquiry, and modern historians have, in their studies of these times, endeavored to avoid the interpretive trap of imposing their modern ethics on the people of ancient times.

     In 1905 Max Weber published The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism, one of the foundational texts of modern sociology and of economic sociology, in particular, and also one of the first to take an interpretive approach to human participation in social and economic systems. His treatise documents the approaches that peoples of various religious beliefs have taken to labor, leisure, wages, and the moral significance of worldly professions since the advent of the industrial revolution and the development of global capitalism. Weber`s work theorizes that the development of novel economic systems is contingent on the Protestant, as opposed to the Catholic, conception of work as inherently virtuous (wherein labor is seen as a theological and an economic imperative).

     Weber`s work can be seen as an early criticism of Karl Marx`s entirely materialistic conception of sociological progress, in that he suggests that religious conviction contributed to the development of economic systems and not the other way around. Moreover, Weber was admirably modest in his claims, acknowledging that his was not the definitive understanding of economic development. However, because of the ways social science has developed in the intervening century, Weber`s work is more notable as a spur to further inquiry than as an enduring source of scientific truth. Additionally, Weber`s thinking was hamstrung by the immaturity of sociological methodology in his time: statistical analysis, data collection, and mathematical economics were all in their theoretical infancy at the time of his writing. Given The Protestant Ethic`s scientific obsolescence, it serves as an enduring example of how sociological analysis has changed since its inception and how it continues to do so.

     In Lemon v. Kurtzman (1971), the Supreme Court ruled that the state of Pennsylvania could not subsidize religious private schools through its Nonpublic Elementary and Secondary Education Act. Although the funds allocated in the Act were limited to the purpose of reimbursing the schools for textbooks, instructional materials, and the salaries of teachers who did not teach religion, the Court held that since the Act had the result of benefiting primarily Roman Catholic schools, it overextended the government`s power on behalf of a religious organization. Later cases have referred to the benchmark three-part test established by Lemon, which states that a U.S. law violates the Establishment Clause of the Constitution if (1) the purpose of the law is not a secular purpose, (2) the law`s primary effect is to inhibit or further the practice of religion, or (3) the law creates "excessive entanglement" between government and religious authority.

     Other states have also faced questions concerning whether or not a government policy or activity violates the Constitution`s prohibition on the establishment of religion. For example, in Pawtucket, Rhode Island, the inclusion of a religious symbol among secular holiday decorations in a display sponsored and maintained by the city, at minimal expense, was declared constitutionally permissible. Although the religious symbol was erected on government property, it was both a longstanding tradition in the town and appeared among other, purely secular, symbols of the holiday season; it had gone unchallenged in the courts for more than 40 years. This, however, did not prevent application of the "Lemon test." Indeed, as the Supreme Court has interpreted it, the question of establishment of religion is often a matter of perception and context as much as it is of clear divisions. This flexible approach is illustrated by Lynch v. Donnelly (1984), in which the Court demonstrated that differing circumstances could indeed lead to different results of application of the "Lemon test." Therefore, the Court ruled that, in Pawtucket`s context, the appearance of a religious symbol amid various secular ones in a government-sponsored display did not violate the Constitution.

     Among the axioms mistaken for fact by the revenue managers of most airlines is the idea that changes in fuel prices affect all competitors in a given market equally. In fact, prices-and therefore profits-fluctuate unpredictably, offering competitive advantages for some airlines and disadvantages for others. For example, a more well-established airline with an aging fleet will experience lower fuel efficiency per mile than a newer company that has invested in the latest technology, meaning fuel represents a larger percentage of the established airline`s operating costs. Moreover, airlines that negotiate and lock in fuel prices with suppliers in advance enjoy stabilized expenses and efficient planning; at the same time, they may lose cost savings when market rates drop unexpectedly during the contract period. In addition, the advantages of low fuel prices are greater for those airlines whose business models focus on minimizing costs than for those with high operating budgets and higher prices for consumers. Carriers with highly efficient logistics and operations, for example, may find that falling fuel costs allow them to profitably fly routes that were previously not cost-effective, such as short routes between small cities, generating low profit margins but also increasing the size of their markets. By understanding that they have multiple options and that not all airlines experience the same effects of the volatile fuel market, airline revenue managers can offer their companies an optimized operating strategy by familiarizing themselves with the fuel market and adapting their fuel procurement plans to their business models.

     Researchers have attempted to explain the withdrawal of many healthy adult men from the American workforce through traditional economics frameworks, such as overseas competition and increased automation of traditional blue-collar jobs, which are often cheaper options for companies looking to save money on labor. However, detailed investigation indicates that increased offshoring and automation fail to fully explain this drop in labor participation. Instead, this investigation yields data that suggest only a multiplicity of causes can wholly account for widespread male retreat from the workforce. One cause is criminal records: nearly one in eight American men possesses a criminal history, and that disqualifies candidates in the eyes of most potential employers. Another cause is low educational attainment, which diminishes access to an increasingly technical and information-based economy. In light of this investigation, which indicates that multiple social forces have converged to exclude a major swath of the potential working population of the United States, the government should take action to improve poor outcomes for these "missing men." Legislators should take action to lessen the stigma of criminal convictions, advocate programs proven to reduce recidivism, increase financial support for young people looking to pursue higher education, and provide specialized training for young men who express an interest in the technology-driven fields of the new economy.

     A wide variety of weather phenomena (heat and cold waves, winter storms, hurricanes, tornadoes, and flooding) display more-or-less consistent patterns of frequency and severity-but such patterns have been increasingly inconsistent during recent decades. Though natural variability plays a role in determining the course of weather systems, there is evidence that modern trends observed by scientists are driven by a unified causal factor. Isolating that causal factor, however, has proved remarkably difficult, despite substantial climatological research. The types of evidence analysis that normally yield understandings of broader climate phenomena, like glacial core sampling or the observation of tree rings, have been tricky to apply in analyzing more complex relationships between individual weather events. Moreover, climate scientists and meteorologists have to distinguish weather anomalies from weather events representative of relevant trends. To summarize, available information indicates that the effects of anthropogenic climate change, though significant, are difficult to disentangle from the welter of other variables that interact with weather phenomena.

     Nonetheless, detailed research indicates that the primary causal factor behind weather trends may be anthropogenic climate change. Recent decades have seen increases in the number of days yearly that reached record high temperatures and decreases in the number of days yearly that reached record lows, but instances of record-breaking winter precipitation (snow) have increased as temperatures have risen. This information was once seen as contradicting established models of climate change, but scientists have explained it through a new hypothesis that accounts for the amount of moisture in the atmosphere. Warm periods of increased duration are postulated to cause increased winter precipitation if, evaporating vast quantities of water into the air, they dry some areas while weather systems bring the evaporated moisture to others. Once the moisture reaches colder climates, it condenses, and falls back to earth as rain or snow. As more regions become warmer for longer periods, the amount of airborne water increases, as do instances of extreme rain and snow. Thus, seemingly minor changes in global temperature can have significant effects on the frequency and severity of weather phenomena in every season and environment.

     What most recommends this theory is its ultimate simplicity. Though it may seem that droughts in some areas are unrelated to periods of increased precipitation in others, climate change is responsible for an environmental continuum that produces both. Increasing temperatures worldwide is the one cause that can explain all of these disparate phenomena.

     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.

     Autoethnographic writing, in accounting for the subjectivities through which observers engage with culture, encourages researchers to accept the experiences of engaged participants as contributing to academic epistemology, alongside the use of "impartial" observation, in substantial and meaningful ways. These methods, unlike those of a more traditional or empirical bent, document the lived experiences of researchers as they confront cultural externalities, acknowledge the limitations of so-called objective science, and present the anxieties felt by cultural subjects as meaningful realities, mattering both to the individual and in a broader social context.

     Practitioners of autoethnography should beware, however, of thinking that their experiences are commonplace. Autoethnographic documents come no closer to the establishment of universal truth than more conventional research methods. Moreover, even when some biases are acknowledged, autoethnography is subject to a suite of prejudices and cultural influences, as well as subconscious personal tendencies, of which a researcher may not be fully cognizant. An experience had at a certain age, for example, may condition a researcher to respond to a given circumstance in a highly idiosyncratic way. Thus, an autoethnographer who writes that an adult experience played a major role in her development of ethnic or gendered consciousness might unwittingly disregard earlier experiences that were ultimately more formative.

     By 2014, the economy of China had outpaced that of the United States in terms of Purchasing Power Parity (PPP). But what is "PPP"? Analysts define PPP as the amount of a given currency it takes to purchase goods or services-a meal or a cell phone, for example. One understanding of PPP presents it as an indicator of the relative economic strength of two or more countries. But outside economic circumstances like cost of living confound the use of PPP as a reliable indicator of economic strength. Thus, most analysts complement PPP through the use of a number of other related metrics.

     Gross Domestic Product (GDP) is a more traditional measure of economic strength: the sum of all final goods and services produced in a country during a given period of time. By this metric, the economy of the United States still out-produces that of China by a substantial margin. However, aside from the fact that it doesn`t account for trends over a longer term, this measurement doesn`t address the economic well-being of entities or individuals below a national scale, both important indicators of general economic health. It takes the wealth of a national economy and extrapolates that to represent the wealth of the people it comprises. Thus, the major corporations doing very well in the United States-technology producers, financiers, etc.-are grouped with workers, families, and organizations that have access to substantially less capital. That GDP obscures instances of stark income inequality which suggests that, although a useful measure of the productivity of a national economy, its uses are limited for anyone looking to do comprehensive wealth analysis.

     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.

     While the usual methods for taxonomy rely heavily on phenotype (physical characteristics) as markers distinguishing between species, a polyphyletic group, defined in this paper as a group including species with similar characteristics that were not inherited from a common ancestor, can defy these methods of categorization. But because other characteristics are not easily observed, the identification of polyphyletic groups takes time. Often only vigorous scientific discussion can prompt further investigation into a group`s taxonomy; for instance, lively controversies about the classification of the Felimida complex of nudibranch species have resulted in genetic analyses of several specimens in an attempt to determine their origins. Such investigations may overturn decades of accepted scientific knowledge. Whereas the Felimida group had been classified based on phenotypes of four species, two of the "species" are in fact subgroups of two other species, while another, new species has been established based on the new species` lack of a common ancestor with the rest of Felimida. The usefulness of phenotype as a criterion for classification, then, appears to depend on several factors, including the phenotypic diversity of the genus as well as its interspecies interactions (for example, predator-prey interactions heavily influence phenotypic expression) and its geographic range (since similar phenotypes might evolve independently in similar but distant environments).

Two sides of a triangle have lengths 4 and 6. How many different integer values of the third side are possible?

How many 5-digit multiples of 3 can be formed using only the digits 0, 1, 2, 3, 4, and 5, without repeating any digits?

If P is a real number and list S is defined as {-4, 4, 2, 2, P}, what is the value of x?

(1) x is the mean of list S

(2) x is the median of list S

According to architects, the reason a dome was used in traditional Mughal architecture was not because it was more aesthetic, but because it was structurally stronger.

Carl's pet rabbit finishes a 2-pound bag of feed every 8 days. When Carl's rabbit and guinea pig both share the same bag of feed, they finish it in 5 days. How many days would it take Carl's guinea pig to finish a 2-pound bag by itself?

If a freight train travels at an average speed of 30 mph, it will arrive at its destination 1.5 hours late. If the train instead travels at an average speed of 45 mph, it will arrive 1 hour early. At what average speed, in miles per hour, should the train travel in order to arrive at its destination exactly on time?