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Passage:
For decades, oceanographers assumed the deep ocean floor was a biological desert, devoid of light and thus of life. This belief persisted until geophysicists noticed anomalous temperature spikes in the deep water of the Galapagos Rift. Seeking to map these thermal variations, researchers first deployed unmanned deep-tow camera sleds. The resulting photographs revealed unexpected clusters of giant clam shells littering the basaltic seabed, a finding that puzzled biologists who could not conceive of an energy source that could sustain them. Intrigued by these photographs, a team of scientists boarded the submersible Alvin to inspect the site firsthand. Descending into the abyss, they witnessed shimmering, superheated water billowing from chimney-like mineral structures. Surrounding these vents was a thriving, alien ecosystem of tubeworms and crabs. Only after collecting samples of the vent water did microbiologists identify the chemosynthetic bacteria that utilized hydrogen sulfide as an energy source, finally resolving how such a community could flourish in complete darkness.

Based on the passage, in what chronological order did these events occur, from earliest to latest?

Before purchasing the historic theater for municipal use, the preservation committee hired a structural engineer to ensure that the foundation and load-bearing walls were sound. Decades of neglect and exposure to rising moisture had raised significant concerns about the integrity of the wooden support beams, but the subsequent inspection report offered reassurance. Although the interior finishes required extensive cosmetic restoration, the building's underlying framework was deemed completely sound, allowing the costly renovation project to proceed safely. This discovery relieved the committee, who had feared the project would exceed their budget.

In the context of the passage, what does the word *sound* in the phrase 'completely sound' most nearly mean?

Passage

The air in the subterranean vault was kept at a constant four degrees Celsius, a temperature that bit at my fingers even through the wool liners of my work gloves. Dr. Robert Gable sat at the sorting table, his posture as rigid as the steel cabinets surrounding us. For three hours, he had not spoken, his attention entirely consumed by a tray of Astragalus seeds no larger than specks of dust. He moved them one by one with a silver probe, dividing the viable from the desiccated.

I was hired to document the archive’s collection, a task that required cataloging the geographic origins of specimens collected in the late nineteenth century. It was tedious work, but it allowed me to observe Gable’s silent crusade. The public viewed Gable as a radical preservationist, an alarmist warning of ecological collapse. The newspapers often painted him as a man obsessed with the past, standing in the way of agricultural expansion. Yet, watching him work in the dim light of the vault, I saw no grand political passion. There was only a quiet, meticulous dedication to the physical reality of the seeds themselves. To Gable, the seeds were not symbols of a lost wilderness or political bargaining chips; they were simply structures of potential, requiring order and survival.

My own role felt increasingly ornamental. While I typed descriptions of locations that had long since been paved over, Gable was actively keeping the future alive, one tiny grain at a time. I wondered if he knew that I was writing about him in my daily logs, framing his silence not as coldness, but as a form of reverence. When he finally looked up, his eyes were bloodshot. 'A century of soil,' he murmured, holding up a single dark seed. He was not speaking to me, but to the silence we shared.

***

Which of the following statements best describes the narrator's point of view regarding Dr. Gable and his work?

The passage below explores the intellectual reception of early photography in the nineteenth century.

[1] When Louis Daguerre first demonstrated the daguerreotype process in 1839, art critics found themselves at a loss regarding how to classify the new invention. Much of the early commentary attempted to categorize photography within the familiar parameters of classical painting, relegating it to an industrious 'handmaiden' to the established fine arts. Critics maintained that although the camera could record physical details with unmatched accuracy, it lacked the subjective synthesis, selective eye, and moral refinement that characterized true art. Consequently, early practitioners were labeled as mere operators of machinery, and their work was dismissed as a technical curiosity rather than a genuine aesthetic achievement.

[2] In subsequent decades, however, a new cohort of theorists began to locate photography's value in its departure from, rather than conformity to, classical painting. Instead of viewing the camera's objective replication as a deficit, writers such as Charles Baudelaire argued that this technological impartiality forced a radical reevaluation of realism. By capturing the fleeting, transient fragments of modern life, photography did not merely document the world; it introduced a novel mode of perception. This framework repositioned photography from an auxiliary craft to a disruptive medium that actively renegotiated the boundaries of visual representation.

[3] This conceptual evolution ultimately had a transformative impact on painting, though not the destructive one that traditionalists feared. Liberated from the historical expectation of mimetic accuracy, painters no longer had to serve as objective recorders of portraiture, landscapes, or historical events. This freedom catalyzed the emergence of Impressionism and subsequent modernist movements, where the personal expression and subjective vision of the artist supplanted the requirement of literal imitation.

Based on the passage, which of the following best describes the relationship between Paragraph 2 and Paragraph 1?

During the nineteenth century, rapid industrialization transformed cities into crowded, soot-covered hubs of factory labor. In response to these harsh urban conditions, civic reformers began advocating for the creation of public parks. Reformers believed that access to nature was essential for the physical and mental well-being of city dwellers, particularly the working class who lived in cramped tenements. These parks were envisioned not merely as places of recreation, but as democratic spaces where citizens of all social classes could mingle and find respite from the relentless pace of urban life. Central Park in New York City, designed by Frederick Law Olmsted and Calvert Vaux, became the premier model of this movement. By integrating sweeping lawns, quiet woodlands, and winding paths, the designers sought to recreate the healing power of the rural landscape within the heart of the metropolis. Ultimately, the establishment of public parks represented a growing recognition that urban planning must prioritize human health and community alongside industrial growth.

Based on the passage, which of the following best states the primary purpose of the text?

### Passage

The Synoptic Wire: How the Telegraph Built Modern Meteorology

For centuries before the dawn of the nineteenth century, weather forecasting remained an isolated, highly localized endeavor. A farmer scanning the morning sky for signs of rain or a mariner monitoring the shifting winds in a harbor relied on centuries of accumulated folklore, local wisdom, and immediate sensory observations. While these methods could occasionally predict short-term atmospheric shifts in the immediate vicinity, they were utterly powerless against larger, fast-moving weather systems. The fundamental barrier to understanding atmospheric dynamics was not a lack of scientific curiosity or observational diligence, but a physical limitation of speed; storm systems traveled across continents far faster than any physical messenger on horseback could ride to warn communities in their path. Consequently, the study of weather remained a descriptive, historical archive of past events rather than an active, predictive science.

The invention of the electric telegraph in the 1840s dissolved this spatial barrier almost overnight. By allowing information to travel instantly along copper wires, the telegraph made it possible to assemble a simultaneous picture of atmospheric conditions across vast distances. For the first time, scientists could construct what became known as "synoptic" weather charts—maps that offered a comprehensive view of the weather as it existed at a single, unified moment over an entire continent. The introduction of the electric telegraph in the mid-nineteenth century fundamentally revolutionized meteorology by enabling the real-time collection of widespread atmospheric data, thereby shifting weather forecasting from localized speculation to a rigorous, interconnected science.

Initially, the primary advocates for this new technology were not academic scientists, but commercial and agricultural interests who recognized the enormous economic stakes of weather prediction. In the United States, Joseph Henry, the first secretary of the Smithsonian Institution, organized a network of volunteer telegraph operators in 1849. Every morning, these operators would transmit local meteorological conditions—temperature, wind direction, barometric pressure, and precipitation—to the Smithsonian in Washington, D.C. There, Henry’s staff would display the incoming data on a large wall map using colored flags to indicate different weather patterns. This public map did more than just satisfy curiosity; it proved to a skeptical public that weather was not a series of chaotic, random events, but rather a set of orderly, moving systems governed by physical laws that could be tracked and anticipated.

Across the Atlantic, a similar realization was taking shape. In 1854, a severe storm in the Black Sea destroyed dozens of French and British warships during the Crimean War. The French astronomer Urbain Le Verrier was commissioned to investigate whether the disaster could have been avoided. By gathering records from observatories across Europe, Le Verrier demonstrated that the storm had formed in the west and moved eastward across the continent. Had a telegraphic network been utilized to relay warnings ahead of the storm's path, the fleets could have sought safe harbor. This study provided the catalyst for the establishment of the first national storm-warning service in France, soon followed by a similar system in Great Britain under the direction of Robert FitzRoy.

Despite these dramatic successes, the transition to telegraphic meteorology was not without significant institutional and practical friction. Telegraph companies, which were private enterprises driven by commercial profit, were often extremely reluctant to dedicate precious wire time to non-revenue-producing scientific data. To resolve this conflict, governments eventually had to step in, either by heavily subsidizing the daily scientific transmissions or by establishing dedicated, state-run meteorological bureaus designed for public safety. Moreover, the sheer volume of data generated by the daily reports threatened to overwhelm the early practitioners. Translating raw numbers from dozens of far-flung stations into timely, accurate forecasts required the development of entirely new visual languages, including standardized weather symbols, wind vectors, and isobar lines to connect points of equal atmospheric pressure.

Ultimately, the telegraph network did more than just accelerate the speed of communication; it reshaped the human perception of time and space in relation to the natural world. Weather was no longer experienced as a succession of local, vertical events falling from the sky, but as a horizontal, dynamic flow crossing geographic borders. The static observer was replaced by the synoptic analyst, who looked down upon the globe from a conceptual height. By linking distant communities through a web of instantaneous communication, the telegraph laid the structural and intellectual foundations for the global weather monitoring systems that define modern atmospheric science today.

***

Based on the passage, the introduction of the electric telegraph in the mid-nineteenth century fundamentally revolutionized meteorology by enabling the real-time collection of widespread atmospheric data, thereby shifting weather forecasting from localized speculation to a rigorous, interconnected science.

Passage

For centuries, the production of indigo dye was inextricably linked to agricultural cultivation. Derived primarily from the leaves of the plant *Indigofera tinctoria*, natural indigo was a highly prized global commodity. Known as "blue gold," it supported vast plantation economies, particularly in India under British colonial rule, where indigo farming was a cornerstone of colonial wealth. The cultivation process, however, was highly labor-intensive, environmentally taxing, and susceptible to the vagaries of weather and crop disease. Despite these drawbacks, the global textile industry remained entirely dependent on this agricultural source for its deep, fast blue color.

This dependency began to shift in the late nineteenth century with the birth of synthetic organic chemistry. In 1880, German chemist Adolf von Baeyer succeeded in synthesizing indigo in his laboratory from petrochemical starting materials. Recognizing the commercial potential of this discovery, the chemical conglomerate BASF spent nearly two decades and millions of marks refining Baeyer's process for mass production. By 1897, BASF launched synthetic indigo under the brand name "Indigo Pure."

The synthetic alternative possessed several clear advantages over natural indigo. It was chemically identical but lacked the organic impurities found in plant extracts, yielding a more consistent and reliable dye. More importantly, industrial factories could produce synthetic indigo year-round at a fraction of the cost of cultivation, unaffected by droughts or pest infestations. Within a single decade, the market for natural indigo collapsed. By 1914, synthetic indigo had captured over ninety-five percent of the global market, and the vast indigo fields of Bengal were largely converted to food crops.

While industrial chemists celebrated this transition as a triumph of scientific progress and technological efficiency, the human consequences were complex and uneven. In Europe, the success of synthetic indigo catalyzed the rapid growth of the chemical industry, positioning Germany as a scientific superpower and paving the way for modern industrial research and development. In India, however, the sudden drop in demand for natural indigo brought economic devastation to rural areas, bankrupting landowners and displacing thousands of agricultural laborers who had depended on the indigo economy. Though it alleviated the harsh conditions under which many tenant farmers had been forced by colonial landlords to cultivate indigo, it also left a severe economic vacuum.

Furthermore, the replacement of natural indigo marked a fundamental transition in how humans interact with material culture. For the first time, a color that had once defined geography, trade routes, and international relations was decoupled from the land. Color became a product of the laboratory rather than the soil, initiating a modern era where synthetic materials increasingly replaced agricultural resources. This shift not only reshaped the global textile industry but also fundamentally altered the relationship between chemistry, commerce, and colonial empires.

Which of the following best describes the primary purpose of the passage as a whole?

In the final decades of the nineteenth century, American residential architecture was dominated by the Victorian style. Characterized by towering multi-story frames, steep asymmetrical roofs, wrap-around porches, and elaborate wooden trim known as "gingerbread" ornamentation, Victorian homes were designed to impress. These structures reflected the prosperity of the Industrial Revolution, utilizing cheap, factory-made decorative elements that could be shipped across the country via the expanding railroad network. Inside, Victorian homes were heavily partitioned into specialized, formal spaces: distinct parlors for receiving guests, formal dining rooms, and separate quarters for domestic help. This layout mirrored the rigid social hierarchies of the era, prioritizing public display and formal entertaining over practical, daily living.

However, as the twentieth century dawned, a significant cultural and aesthetic shift began to take shape. Many critics and young architects grew weary of what they perceived as the ostentatiousness and clutter of Victorian design. They argued that the mass-produced, machine-made ornaments lacked soul and that the tall, imposing structures were disconnected from the natural landscapes surrounding them. Inspired by the British Arts and Crafts movement, which championed hand-crafted quality and simple designs, American reformers sought an architectural style that would promote a more wholesome, modest, and family-oriented way of life.

This counter-movement found its champion in Gustav Stickley, a furniture designer who founded The Craftsman magazine in 1901. Stickley and his contemporaries advocated for a home that was in harmony with nature and built with honesty and utility. The resulting architectural style, which came to be known as the American Craftsman, offered a dramatic contrast to the Victorian aesthetic. Instead of verticality, Craftsman homes emphasized horizontal lines, featuring low-pitched roofs with wide, overhanging eaves and exposed rafters. Rather than using factory-made trim, Craftsman builders utilized local, natural materials such as river stone, hand-cut shingles, and stained oak, celebrating the unique texture of the materials and the visible labor of the artisan.

The layout of the Craftsman home also revolutionized American domestic life. In place of the Victorian maze of dark, closed-off rooms, the Craftsman style introduced the open floor plan. The front door typically opened directly into a spacious living room centered around a prominent fireplace, which was viewed as the heart of the home. Built-in bookcases, window seats, and dining nooks maximized space and eliminated the need for heavy, decorative furniture. This design fostered a more informal, democratic, and collaborative household, where family members could interact freely without the barriers of formal architectural divisions.

Furthermore, the Craftsman bungalow, a smaller and more affordable variation of the style, democratized homeownership. Unlike the grand Victorian mansions that required a fleet of servants to maintain, the modest bungalow was designed for the average middle-class family. Its broad front porch, supported by thick, tapered columns, served as a bridge between the private home and the public neighborhood, encouraging social interaction and a sense of community. By aligning architecture with the practical needs of the modern family, the Craftsman style quickly captured the national imagination.

Ultimately, the transition from Victorian to Craftsman architecture was more than a change in artistic fashion; it was a physical manifestation of shifting societal values. As the nation moved away from the formal, industrial-driven optimism of the Gilded Age and toward the progressive, nature-focused ideals of the early twentieth century, the homes Americans built reflected this evolution. Though the Craftsman style eventually gave way to mid-century modernism, its core principles of functional simplicity and integration with nature continue to influence residential design today.

Which of the following best describes the overall organizational pattern of the passage?

Historically, human communities measured time by the cyclical rhythms of nature—the rising of the sun, the shifting of seasons, and the agricultural calendar. However, the introduction of the mechanical clock in medieval European monasteries during the late thirteenth century initiated a profound shift in human consciousness. Monks, requiring strict schedules to perform their daily prayers at precise hours regardless of weather or season, pioneered the development of weight-driven gear mechanisms. These early clocks did not merely measure time; they redefined it. By dividing the day into twenty-four equal, abstract units, the mechanical clock severed time from its organic connection to the natural world. This new temporal framework soon spread beyond monastery walls into the urban marketplace, where it transformed labor from task-oriented activities into time-oriented commodities. Consequently, the clock paved the way for modern industrial capitalism by training humanity to view time not as a natural flow to be lived through, but as a scarce, quantifiable resource to be managed, spent, or wasted.

Which of the following statements best summarizes the author's central argument regarding the mechanical clock?

Early twentieth-century functionalist architects rejected the ornamental excesses of the Victorian era, proposing instead that form should strictly follow function. While traditionalists decried this stripped-down aesthetic as sterile, the new philosophy began to run counter to prevailing academic design standards, gradually displacing classical symmetry in major municipal commissions. By the 1930s, what had once been dismissed as a radical whim of the avant-garde had successfully established itself as the dominant paradigm of urban development.

As it is used in the passage, the phrase 'run counter to' most nearly means:

Paragraph 1
When the potato was first introduced to northern Europe in the late sixteenth century, it was met with widespread suspicion. Because the plant belongs to the nightshade family, many botanists feared it was toxic, and peasants refused to plant it, believing it caused disease. For decades, it was grown only as a novelty in botanical gardens.

Paragraph 2
By the eighteenth century, however, a series of famines forced European governments to promote the potato as a reliable food source. Once farmers overcame their initial fears, they realized that potatoes produced far more calories per acre than wheat or barley. The crop quickly transitioned from a shunned curiosity to the foundational staple that fueled Europe's population boom.

Which of the following best describes the relationship between Paragraph 1 and Paragraph 2?

Passage:
In the early Renaissance, Italian artists relied heavily on egg tempera, a fast-drying paint made by mixing powdered pigments with egg yolk. Because tempera dried almost immediately, it had to be applied in thin, precise brushstrokes, preventing artists from blending colors directly on the panel. Consequently, shading was achieved through meticulous hatching, yielding a flat, linear aesthetic. By contrast, Northern European painters popularized oil paint, which utilized slow-drying linseed oil as a binder. This slow drying rate allowed artists to blend colors seamlessly and apply multiple translucent layers (glazes) over a long period. As a result, oil paintings achieved a depth of color and realistic representation of light and shadow that tempera could not match.

According to the passage, which of the following describes a key difference in how artists blended colors using tempera versus oil paint?

Passage

In the eighteenth century, the inability to accurately determine longitude at sea was the greatest hazard facing maritime navigation, often resulting in devastating shipwrecks and lost cargo. While latitude could be easily calculated by measuring the angle of the sun or stars relative to the horizon, calculating longitude required knowing the precise time at a reference meridian (such as Greenwich) compared to the local time on the ship. Because pendulum clocks of the era were highly sensitive to the motion of ships and changes in temperature, they became inaccurate at sea, leading to dangerous errors in navigation. To solve this, John Harrison developed the marine chronometer, a highly precise timepiece utilizing a spring-driven mechanism that remained unaffected by the ship's rolling motion or temperature fluctuations. By providing sailors with a reliable reference time, the chronometer allowed navigators to calculate their exact longitude, which dramatically reduced navigation errors and ultimately revolutionized transoceanic travel.

According to the passage, John Harrison's marine chronometer succeeded in reducing navigation errors because it resolved which of the following issues?

Read the passage below. Based on the context of the passage, what single word best completes the blank to convey a tone of clinical, emotionless analysis rather than romantic sentimentality?

For years, Dr. Vance observed the nesting habits of the alpine swift with a dedication that bordered on obsession. While his peers published broad surveys of avian migration, Vance confined his focus to a single granite ledge. He cataloged every twig, every shift in plumage, and every fledgling's first tentative flight. To the casual observer, such painstaking labor might seem tedious, but Vance saw it as a necessary devotion. He *nursed* his hypothesis for a decade, not out of a desire for academic fame, but from a quiet, protective reverence for the fragile mountain ecosystem.

Based on the passage, when the author writes that Vance *nursed* his hypothesis, this word choice most nearly suggests which of the following?

Passage

In the centuries following the introduction of the movable-type printing press in Europe, the demand for printed books grew exponentially. This sudden literacy boom, however, encountered a physical bottleneck: papermaking. At the time, paper was manufactured primarily from discarded cotton and linen rags. As printing shops multiplied, the supply of rags could not keep pace with the voracious demands of the presses, leading to severe rag shortages across the continent. To secure raw materials, governments enacted laws restricting rag exports, and paper mills operated far below capacity, driving up the cost of books. The crisis forced scientists and inventors to search for alternative fibers. In 1719, French naturalist René Antoine Ferchault de Réaumur noticed that paper-wasps constructed their nests using wood fibers mixed with saliva, producing a paper-like substance. This observation suggested that wood could serve as a substitute for rags. Although it took over a century of industrial refinement, Réaumur’s insight eventually catalyzed the development of wood-pulp processing. This technological shift resolved the raw material shortage, dramatically lowering paper costs and paving the way for the modern era of mass-circulation newspapers and affordable literature.

Based on the passage, what is the correct chronological sequence of cause-and-effect events that led to the development of wood-pulp papermaking? Arrange the events in order, starting with the earliest cause and ending with the final effect.

Read the following passage about the development of architectural acoustics, and then match each of the selected words or phrases (in bold) to its primary rhetorical function within the passage.

Prior to Wallace Sabine’s pioneering work at the turn of the twentieth century, architectural acoustics was less a science than a repository of architectural folklore. Designers of concert halls relied on a hodgepodge of superstitious remedies—stretching wires across ceilings or placing empty whiskey jugs beneath platforms—in a desperate bid to coax clear sound from recalcitrant spaces. Sabine, however, approached the problem with clinical rigor, transforming the fleeting, subjective sensation of reverberation into a quantifiable equation. By meticulously tracking how long a sound lingered in a room, he demystified the phenomenon of echo, stripping away the romantic mystique that had long shrouded the field. His formulas did not merely correct acoustic defects; they revolutionized the spatial design of public auditoriums, establishing a new paradigm where sound was no longer an unpredictable guest, but a governed inhabitant.

The following passage is adapted from an essay on ancient libraries.

While the Library of Alexandria in Egypt relied primarily on papyrus scrolls for its collection, the Library of Pergamum in Asia Minor famously pioneered the extensive use of parchment, a writing material made from processed animal skins. Alexandria's scrolls were lighter and easier to roll, but they were highly susceptible to dampness and tearing. In contrast, Pergamum’s parchment sheets were far more durable and could be bound into codices, though they required a much more labor-intensive and costly production process. Furthermore, while Alexandria operated under direct royal patronage that aimed to compile all world knowledge, Pergamum’s library functioned largely as a monument to civic prestige and intellectual competition with its Egyptian rival.

According to the passage, what is one way the physical writing materials utilized by the Library of Pergamum differed from those utilized by the Library of Alexandria?

In the early twentieth century, Vienna became the crucible for a fierce debate regarding architectural ornamentation. The dominant Beaux-Arts style, with its heavy reliance on historical pastiche and decorative excess, was increasingly challenged by a vanguard of modernist thinkers. Central to this rebellion was Adolf Loos, whose 1910 essay 'Ornament and Crime' argued that the evolution of culture is synonymous with the removal of ornament from useful objects. Loos did not merely advocate for a new aesthetic; he framed ornamentation as an economic and moral failure. To Loos, decorating a building or object wasted labor and material, effectively enslaving the craftsman in obsolete modes of production while forcing the consumer to pay for superfluous elements that would quickly fall out of fashion.

However, the Viennese Secessionists, led by figures like Josef Hoffmann, offered a counter-perspective. They did not defend the archaic historicism of the academy, but instead sought to elevate craft to the status of high art, integrating unified, geometric decoration into every aspect of daily life. For Hoffmann and his contemporaries, ornamentation was not a regressive relic but a vital means of humanizing the increasingly mechanized urban landscape. Rather than separating utility from art, the Secessionists sought a synthesis—a Gesamtkunstwerk (total work of art)—where structure and decoration coexisted dynamically.

Thus, the conflict was not simply a stylistic disagreement between simplicity and complexity, but a fundamental philosophical dispute over the role of design in a rapidly industrializing society. While Loos viewed the eradication of ornament as a necessary step toward rational modernization and economic liberation, the Secessionists viewed integrated decoration as a crucial defense against the alienating effects of that very modernization.

Which of the following best describes the primary purpose of the passage?

Passage

The brass gear of the great telescope at the Highmount Observatory had begun to slip, a minute click echoing through the dome every four minutes and twelve seconds. Dr. Julian did not look up from his ledger. He was a man who lived in the margins of his calculations, preferring the sterile certainty of numbers to the cold, unpredictable wind that swept across the peak. For three nights, I had watched him record the transit of Jupiter's moons, his pencil moving with a rhythmic scratch that competed with the ticking gear.

To the university board in the city below, Dr. Julian was a stubborn relic, clinging to mechanical lenses in an era increasingly dominated by photographic plates. They saw his refusal to modernize as sentimental vanity. But sitting in the drafty shadows of the dome, wrapping my wool scarf tighter around my throat, I knew it was not sentiment that kept him here. It was a rigorous, almost desperate belief that human eyes must witness the stars directly to validate their existence. When he finally spoke, his voice was dry, matching the parchment beneath his hands: "A photograph only captures what was there, boy. An observer captures what is happening." I nodded, though I knew my role was not to observe the stars, but to ensure that the man who did remained anchored to the earth.

Based on the passage, which of the following best describes the narrator's point of view and relationship to Dr. Julian?