Question: Because of less availability and greater demand for scientific research, platinum remains consistently expensive, like gold. Answer Choices: A. Because of less availability and greater demand for scientific research, platinum remains consistently expensive, like gold. B. Because of less a...

The herbicide Oryzalin was still being produced in 1979, three years after the wives of workers producing the chemical in Rensselaer, New York, were found to have borne children with heart defects or miscarriages, and none of their pregnancies was normal. (A) to have borne children with heart defec...

Choice E: 'Deriving' doesn't create a tense problem; it's parallel to 'bringing.' The problem that it DOES create, though, is a complete shift in meaning: choice E says that _the Achaemenid empire itself_ actually derived both of the alphabets in question. This is, of course, at odds with the actual...

Givemeanid is correct about the 'possessive poison' (i.e., pronouns can't refer to a possessive noun) aspect. As always, though, this obscure fact isn't necessary to solve the problem: what's more important is to notice that, in choices C and D, "it" refers to "hydrogen" (the sub...

A: - "Influential on" is bad idiomatic usage. - "That included" can't follow a comma, and, even if you remove the comma, the meaning is absurd (the implication would be that Elvis and Jerry composed part of the anatomy of many different musicians). C: - "Was influential to&q...

A, C, and D are wrong right out of the gate because they all contain "it," which doesn't refer properly to the plural "pulsars." B is plagued by the wording "to be located," which implies some sort of future inevitability (as in "Smith is to be arraigned next week&...

By the way, there's no subjunctive in this problem; you may want to go back and review that. An example of subjunctive: "For astronomers to locate a pulsar, it is imperative that the pulsar emit radio waves." I know it's weird to use imperatives with an inanimate object, but at least you g...

You can't use a phrase starting with "because" as a NOUN. Choices A and C are of the form "NOUN did not mean that...," so A fails this test. "Fact," on the other hand, is clearly a noun, so you're good there. For the same reason, you can't say "the reason for X is ...

There are 2 problems with A. - Major problem is "THE other infections." THE is too definitive here, carrying the connotation of "every single one of the other infections." * THE is also incompatible with "such as": - Correct: I never read this book, but I read the other...

Present perfect would also be acceptable. The use of the past perfect is meant to emphasize the idea that "well, we don't think that way anymore, buddy." So yes, it's primarily idiomatic usage that decides this one: 'immune from' is wrong. Notice that there aren't any present-perfect choic...

What is wrong with choice A ? Between (B) and (C), there are two related issues, one of which is the determinant of the correct answer: 1) modifier choice, and 2) meaning. Choice (C) uses the relative pronoun "which" to introduce the modifying phrase "which were dwindling..." An...

The usage of 'it' in this problem is analogous to the following: It is often difficult for people to act as mediators in their own disputes.

I'm not sure what the formal name is for this usage, but it's common enough to merit your attention.

Re: last 'guest' post: In point 2 you mentioned formal proof. Although it's utterly irrelevant to the GMAT, a formal proof would involve a bijection (1-1 correspondence) between the orders in which F is ahead of J and those in which J is ahead of F. Each arrangement with F in front of J in uniquely ...

Yeah, you should post the entire problem. By the way, your writing of this problem - "1/x-1" - means, by default, the difference between 1/x and 1 (as dictated by the order of operations PEMDAS). If the denominator is supposed to be x - 1, then you should type the expression with parenthes...

There's not much I could do to improve on the solution given here, but here's an item to take away from this problem: * Consider PRIME FACTORIZATIONS of numbers with exponents. In this case, a 'factor tree' of 4^11 would consist of eleven 4's, which would then break down into twenty-two 2's (giving ...