In the argument given below, the part that is in boldface functions as which of the following?

The country of Boralia is among the world's largest exporters of timber. Fearing that excessive logging is accelerating deforestation, the Boralian government plans to severely restrict logging operations. Job retraining will be provided for former loggers. Nevertheless, many of them will undoubtedly remain unemployed as a result of the restrictions, since a large drop in export revenue would weaken the Boralian economy to the point where there would be no jobs for retrained workers.

The system used in the United States for allocating investment capital has many strengths: flexibility, responsiveness, and high rates of corporate profitability. It does not, however, direct capital effectively within the economy to those companies that can deploy it most productively, nor within companies to the most productive investment projects. In fact, the external capital market-the system by which outside investors allocate their capital to particular companies-is, if anything, too responsive to immediate stock-market pressures. This is because publicly owned United States companies increasingly rely on institutional investors who invest in a large, diversified portfolio of stocks that they hold for a relatively short time. In contrast, German investors invest for the long term in a few selected companies, and thus are able to gather extensive information about a company's ongoing prospects. United States investors, with small stakes in many companies, are generally unable to do this kind of thorough research. Therefore, when making investment decisions, they simply try to anticipate short-term movements in stock prices by using easily measurable company attributes, such as current profits, to serve as proxies of a company's value. This short-term outlook is often disruptive for companies because their stock prices, which reflect investor interest, can fluctuate dramatically in response to variations in quarterly profits. Moreover, the system as a whole results in overinvestment in rapid-growth sectors of the economy, computer technology for instance, and underinvestment in slow-growth sectors.

The United States internal capital market-the system by which individual companies allocate their own investment capital-can be just as myopic, largely because it uses the same valuation methods that outside investors use. Capital allocation in the United States takes place largely through "by the numbers" exercises that require managers to justify projects quantitatively. Thus, to keep costs low and profits high, many United States companies underinvest in those intangible assets required for long-term competitiveness-research and development, employee training, and organizational development. These areas, where returns are difficult to measure, are usually treated as costs rather than investments during the budgeting process. Thus, a company concerned about its current stock price may decide to sacrifice an employee training program to maintain its current level of profitability.

Research directed toward recovering ancient DNA began in 1984, when pieces of DNA were extracted from museum specimens of an animal extinct for about a century. Most such genetic material recovered from biological relics consists of tiny fragments, rather than the strings of thousands of molecules typically found in living organisms, but these fragments may contain sufficient information to identify a species through comparison with modern DNA from descendant species. However, the need to verify whether particular fragments actually come from ancient organisms or whether they come from modern contaminants, such as the sweat of people who have handled the specimens, is crucial. For example, some scientists claim to have extracted DNA fragments from 17-million-year-old magnolia leaves found in an unusual fossil deposit in Idaho. But other scientists suggest that this DNA is a modern contaminant; they argue that even under the most favorable conditions, the rate of degradation of DNA is such that useful genetic material could not be recovered from fossils that old and that since the leaves were trapped in wet deposits, it is particularly unlikely that any DNA would have survived so long. A solution to this debate lies in the fact that any ancient DNA should differ from that of related modern species. If the DNA extracted from the fossil leaves were actually a modern contaminant, this fact would be apparent from the information contained in the DNA.

By the early 1970s, historian Gabriel Kolko and economist George Stigler had independently reached compatible conclusions about the interests served by the United States government's regulation of business during the Progressive era (1890-1915). Kolko argued that big business led the struggle for federal regulation and that regulatory legislation was motivated primarily by legislators' desire to benefit business, not, as the view dominant up until that time had held, by the desire to protect the public interest. As Stigler explained, the federal government's ability to subsidize business, to control the entry of foreign goods, and to fix prices could be used by businesses to their advantage, just as campaign contributions from businesses could be used to advantage by legislators.

There is no denying Kolko's and Stigler's basic claims. Nevertheless, businesses within an industry did not always welcome being regulated, nor did industries necessarily respond uniformly to legislators' efforts to enact regulations affecting them. All but one major railroad in 1905 opposed an expansion of the regulatory power of the Interstate Commerce Committee (ICC) of the United States Senate, and though the Hepburn Act, which granted the ICC rate-making power in the railroad industry, was passed the following year, commercial users of the railroads were divided about the passage of the act: the coal industry opposed it, the agricultural industry favored it, and the lumber industry was split.

Karin: Every time I go to the park, I notice that there are lizards. Usually when I see one, it is a Lacerta viridis, so there are probably a large number of lizards of that species in the park.

Lina: There might be a lot of lizards of that species in the park, but your experiences don't give much evidence that there are.

Select for Supports Karin's inference the statement that, if true, most strongly supports the inference that Karin draws, and select for Supports Lina's position the statement that, if true, most strongly supports the position that Lina expresses. Make only two selections, one in each column.

Both restaurants in downtown Rosemond—Sam's Diner and the Main Street Café—offer a lunch special consisting of a sandwich, a dessert, and a drink for a set price. Which restaurant offers customers more choices for the lunch special?

(1) The Main Street Café offers twice as many sandwich choices as Sam's Diner.

(2) Sam's Diner has 2 more drink choices and 2 more dessert choices than the Main Street Café.

A drugstore chain can return empty lipsticks that it originally sold to the supplier for recycling. To encourage customers to return their empty lipsticks to its stores rather than throw them in the trash, the drugstore chain has instituted a new policy allowing customers to bring empty lipsticks to a store and exchange them for a new, full lipstick, as shown in the diagram.

Select from each drop-down menu the option that creates the most accurate statement based on the information provided.

Dara has 11 empty lipsticks originally purchased from this drugstore chain. If Dara exchanges these for new lipsticks under the store policy, wears the new lipsticks until they run out, and then repeats these actions (with the lipsticks that are now empty) to the fullest extent possible—without acquiring any additional lipsticks outside of the exchange program—then Dara will be able to acquire and wear

new lipsticks, and will have  upon reaching “End”.

For each year from 2011 through 2015, the graph shows the number of employees of a certain company during that year, together with the total amount paid by the company in compensation to its employees during that year.

Select from each drop-down menu the option that completes the statement so that it has the most support from the information provided.

The year in which the average (arithmetic mean) annual compensation per employee was GREATEST was

The year in which the average (arithmetic mean) annual compensation per employee was LEAST was

A store purchased coats from a manufacturer at $40 each and then sold all of the coats. The store's gross profit on the sale of the coats was what percent of the store's revenue from the sale of the coats?

(1) The store sold 20 percent of the coats at $80 each and the rest of the coats at $60 each.

(2) The store's total revenue from the sale of the coats was $6,400.

West River Glen is deciding which network architecture should replace its old copper telephone lines. The town will replace 300 miles of Outside Plant (OSP) cable that will serve approximately 2,500 homes.

The first option is to install a Fiber to the Home (FTTH) system architecture that uses fiber-optic cable to transmit signals from the source to each home. The advantages of this architecture include greater bandwidth capabilities, less signal loss, and slightly lower new-cable deployment

costs than the second option, Hybrid Fiber-Coax (HFC).

An HFC network integrates fiber-optic cables and devices with coaxial cables. This will cost the town substantially less money for internal equipment and for customer installations. However, the coaxial cable does not last as long as fiber-optic cable and will thus need to be replaced more frequently, resulting in higher long-term maintenance expenses.

The town believes that either the FTTH or HFC architectures will be capable of serving the communities' data and television needs for the next 30 years.