Although the venerable paradigm of the balance of nature is (i)      scientists studying evolution and ecology, the idea is aesthetically (ii)      , a fact that is largely responsible for its (iii)      through the ages.

Questions 1 and 3 are based on this passage

Like Germany, but unlike other European nations, Norway industrialized rather late in the nineteenth century. Compared to Germany, however, Norway has a comparatively  recent  history of industrially based social classes and a much longer history of rather egalitarian class relations. The origin of Norwegian egalitarian predates industrialism and the rise of the labor movement. The preindustrial economy was based largely on a small independent  peasantry who combined agriculture with fishing (in the north) or with forestry (in the south). Because Norway was under foreign rule for five centuries until 1905, and because the topography is unfavorable for large estates, a strong aristocracy and landowner class did not emerge in most  of Norway. There were some exceptions to this pattern, especially in the southern regions   where a landowner class did exist. Norway’s early social and economic history engendered egalitarianism, although, as has been pointed out by several observers, it was an equality of poverty.

What is the least positive integer b such that the equation $x^2$ +bx +18 =0 has two integer solutions for x?

An architect of Koolhaas’ (i)_____ might plausibly prefer designing on paper to building in concrete. Remaining within the realm of his own imagination, he need not worry about pesky clients who can dilute a project into mediocrity. But in fact, what Koolhaas enjoys most is the opportunity to engage with a client. When asked if he would consider designing a house for himself, he replied that the idea bored him, that it would feel too (ii)_____. For him, the whole point of architecture is the encounter with the other. 

In an attempt to reduce the number of violent crimes committed by juveniles, the city of Fiera imposed a curfew requiring juveniles—everyone younger than eighteen—to be indoors between the hours of 11 P.M. and 6 A M. In the two years since the curfew was imposed, the number of violent crimes committed by juveniles in Fiera has fallen by almost ten percent. Clearly, therefore, the curfew has proven effective at reducing violent juvenile crime.

To understand what accounts for the durability of the Chinese empire, we must first (i)                   of deterministic explanations attributing it to an unusually convenient topographic setting. The empire’s terrain, divided into natural enclaves by mountain ranges and huge rivers, was as (i)                  the emergence of small independent polities as any other part of the world.

During the early years of the United States environmental movement in the 1960s and 1970s, alarmed activists, warning that nature was in danger of being irredeemably destroyed by human activity, demanded a variety of environmental protections, including the preservation of wilderness areas as national parks. But these environmentalists conceptual framework came under scrutiny shortly thereafter as cultural critics-especially those who were part of the theory revolution that transformed and preoccupied literary study into the end of the century-began to spread the postmodern wisdom that these parks musealized nature and that the wilderness they tried to preserve was not the primeval wild but a social construction. A consensus was growing that all areas of human life-from people's personal attitudes to the mediascapes they inhabited to the ideas they formed and the built worlds in which they dwelt-were socially constructed and these attitudes were quickly extended to nature, especially since ecologists and environmental historians had become so clear in demonstrating the determinative effects on nature of human beings, from ancient to modern times.

One important result of this change in thought was that a number of qualities that 1960s and 70s activist ecologists had felt nature self-evidently possessed seemed to be suddenly undercut and in a startling and provocatively contrarian manner. Most important, natures once apparent otherness seemed suddenly to be no more. In fact, it seemed to vanish in a number of different ways. Human beings had so encroached on nature, the apocalypticisms had shown, that nature was no longer independent of people.Supplementing this sense of radical contemporary change were environmental historians insights into how radically the earths ecosystems had been reshaped over the course of human history,from the emergence of mankind to the invention of agriculture to the rise of modern society. Ideas of a timeless or pure nature were thus discredited. Finally, on the level of intellectual history. nature's “otherness” was undermined in an equally decisive manner when cultural theorists began to argue that this supposed attribute was not only a socially constructed ideology, but an ideology of surprisingly recent vintage. The “otherness” of nature was an ideology that had been put in place during the romantic period of the nineteenth century-and put in place so decisively that it seemed to be the nature of nature.

Questions 1 and 2 are based on this passage

At first glance, the nineteenth-century Atlantic halibut fishery fit the typical pattern of fisheries collapse. It followed predictable boom-and-bust cycles of commercial potential, enthusiastic fishing, resource strain, declining productivity and ultimately, collapse. Yet, unlike many other species, halibut was long disdained by fishers and consumers despite its abundance. Lack of commercial value did not entirely protect halibut, since fishers frequently caught halibut along with their target fish, cod, though they discarded halibut as worthless. Between 1840 and 1880, however, consumer demand shifted, elevating halibut to a desirable commodity. The threat to halibut stocks was compounded because fish dealers imposed a selection process based on grading the catch, a system that encouraged fishers to jettison all but the highest-graded, most valuable among the fish they caught.

Because the instructions they have been given are exhaustive and unequivocal, employees are now working without      .

On his trip to the airport, Grant drove a total of 9 miles. His average speed on the trip was x miles

per hour, where 30 ≤ 𝑥 ≤ 35. Which of the following could be the total number of minutes that

Grant took to make the trip? 

Indicate all such numbers of minutes.

For scientists who wish to conduct research in the national parks, the new plan promises a warm welcome in place of the (i)                 , or even resistance, that often greets requests for research permits. The plan says that “parks can and should be centers for broad scientific research and inquiry.” It also maintains that scientific research should be (ii)           in parks where it can be performed without (iii)                other park values.