[Q]: Two neighboring countries with similar economies, followed different political and economical agendas. Niger developed its infrastructure and communications technology, while Nigeria didn't. Which country experiences shorter commuting times? Hint: Distance decay is a geographical term which describes the effect of distance on cultural or spatial interactions. The distance decay effect states that the interaction between two locales declines as the distance between them increases. Once the distance is outside of the two locales' activity space, their interactions begin to decrease. With the advent of faster travel, distance has less effect than it did in the past, except where places previously connected by now-abandoned railways, for example, have fallen off the beaten path. Advances in communications technology, such as telegraphs, telephones, broadcasting, and internet, have further decreased the effects of distance.[1]
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[A]: Niger

[Q]: There is a long history of martial arts competition in Fujian Province of China. Interestingly, one can also place bets on competitors. David is a martial arts enthusiast, watching every martial arts movie he can find. This year David and his friend John is visiting the Fujian Province to see the martial arts competition. There are two rounds of competition, round A and round B. Round A competitors would display southern Chinese martial arts while round B competitors would display northern Chinese martial arts. In which round competitors would be closer to their opponents, round A or round B? Hint: Some Chinese martial arts instructors focus more on their qinna techniques than others. This is one of the many reasons why the qinna of one school may differ from that of another.[2] All martial arts contain qinna techniques in some degree. The southern Chinese martial arts have more developed qinna techniques than northern Chinese martial systems. The southern martial arts have much more prevalent reliance on hand techniques which causes the practitioner to be in closer range to their opponent. There are over 700 qinna traditional techniques found in all martial arts. In the Non-Temple White Crane style there are 150-200 qinna techniques alone. Along with Fujian White Crane, styles such as Northern Eagle Claw (Ying Jow Pai) and Tiger Claw (Fu Jow Pai) have qinna as their martial focus and tend to rely on these advanced techniques.
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[A]: round A

[Q]: The government of Ecuador has been actively pushing to increase biodiversity. They have been quite successful in their pursuit. Moreover, the citizens of Ecuador are receptive about the idea of increased biodiversity. On the contrary, the Government of Oman was not very active in increasing the biodiversity of their country. As a result, Oman, at present, is not very biodiverse. Which place would have more stable ecosystem functions, Ecuador or Oman? Hint: "There is now unequivocal evidence that biodiversity loss reduces the efficiency by which ecological communities capture biologically essential resources, produce biomass, decompose and recycle biologically essential nutrients... There is mounting evidence that biodiversity increases the stability of ecosystem functions through time... Diverse communities are more productive because they contain key species that have a large influence on productivity and differences in functional traits among organisms increase total resource capture... The impacts of diversity loss on ecological processes might be sufficiently large to rival the impacts of many other global drivers of environmental change... Maintaining multiple ecosystem processes at multiple places and times requires higher levels of biodiversity than does a single process at a single place and time."
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[A]: Ecuador

[Q]: Two colleagues studied at the same university. Nick studied the brains of birds, while Joe studied the brains of mammals. Which colleague studied less about the smooth neocortex of rats? Hint: The brains of all mammals have a unique layer of nerve cells covering the cerebrum. This layer is called the neocortex (the pink region of the brains in Figure above ). The neocortex plays an important role in many complex brain functions. In some mammals, such as rats, the neocortex is relatively smooth. In other mammals, especially humans, the neocortex has many folds. The folds increase the surface area of the neocortex. The larger this area is, the greater the mental abilities of an animal.
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[A]:
Nick