GMAT

While there is no guarantee that increased investment in achieving energy independence will solve all of America’s unemployment problems, the results so far have demonstrated that it will definitely help the cause.   Under President Obama's watch, such increased investment has so far created 1.5 million jobs and has demonstrated the potential to create many more.

After a four-decade decline in oil production, the U.S. is now producing enough oil to serve more than half of our oil needs. This has the potential to free us from our addiction to foreign-sourced barrels, particularly if we utilize our dramatically larger and cheaper reserves of natural gas, which now costs the equivalent of less than $15 per barrel, versus the $100-plus per barrel of oil we import from the Middle East. The money saved by increased use of natural gas has helped in greater investments and has created more than 75,000 jobs domestically.

 

Moreover, the president’s policies have motivated companies to invest more in clean energy to the extent that American companies make over 75% of all venture investments in clean technologies. Overall, because of U.S. public and private investments in clean energy—including renewables, efficiency, transportation, and infrastructure—the clean economy grew by 8.3% from 2008 to 2009, even during the depths of the recession. Even though several technologies, such as solar power, are still not as cost-competitive as imported oil, expanding these clean-energy investments is good economics as they will help preserve and expand America's middle class, because energy investments are a particularly effective method of "insourcing" manufacturing jobs, which in turn spur jobs in invention, installation, and maintenance.

Q. The author of the passage is primarily concerned with

Eating fish and other foods rich in omega-3 fatty acids could help people maintain healthy brains as they age as well as protect their hearts, new research suggests. Per this research, participants with low levels of omega-3 fatty acids in their blood had slightly smaller brains and scored lower on memory and cognitive tests than people with higher blood levels of omega-3s.

The researchers then looked at and ranked the level of omega-3 fatty acids in the participants' blood. People who scored in the bottom 25% in omega-3 fatty acid levels were compared with the rest of the study participants. Researchers found that those who had the lowest level of omega-3 fatty acid levels in their blood had lower brain gray matter volume compared with those with higher levels.

Gray matter volume is crucial to brain health. When it remains higher, brain health is being maintained. Decrease in gray matter volume indicates that brain cells are shrinking. The findings showed that consumption of baked or broiled fish on a weekly basis was positively associated with retention of gray matter volume in several areas of the brain. In fact the greater hippocampal, posterior cingulate, and orbital frontal cortex volumes obtained by optimal fish consumption led to reduced risk of contracting MCI or Alzheimer’s by almost five-fold.

The most recent U.S. dietary guidelines—released last year—recommend at least two servings of seafood a week. Some doctors and diet experts recommend that patients consume fish three times a week or take fish-oil supplements so they get enough omega-3 fatty acids to obtain health benefits.

The experiment discussed in paragraph 2 suggests

Although the journal Social Text was never at the forefront of publishing articles on feminism and never debated whether capitalism was the source of women’s oppression in 1970s or whether male supremacy was itself a systematic form of domination, it is not clear whether social feminist’s classification of the journal as the one run by “boy’s club” could have been completely justified till recently. There could have been many reasons that the journal’s mission statement as set out in its first prospectus in 1979 did not take notice of the burning issues feminists were then discussing. May be triumvirate of founding editors were too focused on Marxist high theory to consider gender alongside economic class as an important mode of social organization and oppression, or on the other hand they may have simply chosen on purpose to not include feminism specifically in its charter.

The recent paper by Rosa Luxemburg suggests that the first prospectus contained the seeds of its own feminist undoing. The founders demarcated fields of focus for the journal that could hardly be explored without attention to gender, sexuality, and the historical experiences of women. They were rather interested in “everyday life,” “mass culture,” and “consumer society”. Hence, the little feminist work that appears in Social Text is in the realm of cultural analysis not revolutionary praxis and is often buried in the back of the journal in “Unequal Developments,” the section that offers reviews and experimental writing.

 

For example, in the second edition of the journal in the section Unequal Developments, Christine Holmland performs a thorough feminist dissection of the then-current Disney film ‘The North Avenue Irregulars’, showing how this comedy about a group of church ladies who take on the local mafia superficially celebrates, but finally deflates the idea of women’s activism, and along the way reinforces gendered roles at every level of social life.

Why does the author cite Christine Holmland’s example to?

Fast food chains constantly face the problem of low employee retention, to counter which the companies offer high salaries. The companies have come up with the solution of hiring retired people who have a very low attrition rate. However, their time taken to service an order is more and they require going through long training programs at regular intervals. Thus, for most fast food chains the gain in employee retention does not compensate for the increase in time taken to serve each customer. Nevertheless, since the customers continue to be more appreciative when served by retired people, their employment is likely to become an industry-wide feature.

In the argument above, the two portions in boldface play which of the following roles?

TV is the future because it remains king of all media. While handsets get hyped, the typical U.S. consumer watches more than 5 hours of TV a day, according to Nielsen, and even younger adults 18 to 24 years old—the supposed digital generation—spend 3 hours and 30 minutes on televisions daily compared to only 49 minutes on the Web and 20 minutes on mobile. 

The above argument is most vulnerable to which of the following criticisms?

The institute’s lead trainer, whose subject expertise, views on the questions on the test, and problem-solving style were impressive to the students who worked with her, was also acknowledged as a leading strategist by many people outside her firm, including teachers at rival institutes, whose approaches often differed substantially from her own. 

The role of nurturing in determining one’s behavioral traits has been hotly contested. Historically, geneticists believed that behavioral traits are inherited. After all, many properties of the brain are genetically organized and don't depend on information coming in from the senses. Since active genes are essentially inherited, most traditional geneticists believe that nurturing environment plays little role in shaping one’s behavioral traits.

However, a new line of research indicated that methyl groups can activate dormant genes, bringing about a slew of changes much later in a person’s life. The methyl group works like a placeholder in a cookbook, attaching to the DNA within each cell to select only those recipes - er, genes - necessary for that particular cell’s proteins, telling the DNA what kind of cells to form.  The first such observation was in which methyl groups activated by causes ranging from exposure to certain chemicals to changes in diet set off a cascade of cellular changes resulting in cancer. Because methyl groups are attached to the genes, residing beside but separate from the double-helix DNA code, their study is dubbed epigenetics - “epi” referring to Greek for outer or above. 

Behavioral geneticists, encouraged by this discovery proved that traumatic experiences such as child neglect, drug abuse, or other severe stresses also set off epigenetic changes to the DNA inside the neurons of a person’s brain, permanently altering behavior.  Similarly, through multivariate analysis, they proved that identical twins, in scenarios where one twin has gone through a life altering event, can have vastly different reaction to a stressful situation.

The primary purpose of the passage is to

The residents of the city of Tibica are supplied water by two local corporations: TMC (Tibica Municipal Corporation) and TWMC (TibicaWater Management Corporation). Under pressure from the government, TMC recently increased its supply of water to the city. Even though TWMC maintained its supply level, the residents complained that their overall supply of water has reduced. Therefore, it seems likely that

Which of the following statements best completes the above passage?