Problem: The term financial innovation refers to the ongoing development of financial products designed to achieve particular client objectives, such as offsetting a particular risk exposure (such as the default of a borrower) or to assist with obtaining financing. Examples pertinent to this crisis included: the adjustable-rate mortgage; the bundling of subprime mortgages into mortgage-backed securities (MBS) or collateralized debt obligations (CDO) for sale to investors, a type of securitization; and a form of credit insurance called credit default swaps (CDS). The usage of these products expanded dramatically in the years leading up to the crisis. These products vary in complexity and the ease with which they can be valued on the books of financial institutions.
What happened to the usage of financial innovation products in the years leading up the financial crisis?
---
Answer: expanded dramatically

Problem: Medieval writers divided history into periods such as the "Six Ages" or the "Four Empires", and considered their time to be the last before the end of the world. When referring to their own times, they spoke of them as being "modern". In the 1330s, the humanist and poet Petrarch referred to pre-Christian times as antiqua (or "ancient") and to the Christian period as nova (or "new"). Leonardo Bruni was the first historian to use tripartite periodisation in his History of the Florentine People (1442). Bruni and later historians argued that Italy had recovered since Petrarch's time, and therefore added a third period to Petrarch's two. The "Middle Ages" first appears in Latin in 1469 as media tempestas or "middle season". In early usage, there were many variants, including medium aevum, or "middle age", first recorded in 1604, and media saecula, or "middle ages", first recorded in 1625. The alternative term "medieval" (or occasionally "mediaeval") derives from medium aevum. Tripartite periodisation became standard after the German 17th century historian Christoph Cellarius divided history into three periods: Ancient, Medieval, and Modern.
Along with the Six Ages, what other scheme did writers in the Middle Ages use to divide history?
---
Answer: Four Empires

Problem: Two of the earliest dialectal divisions among Iranian indeed happen to not follow the later division into Western and Eastern blocks. These concern the fate of the Proto-Indo-Iranian first-series palatal consonants, *c and *dz:
What elements of Proto-Indo-Iranian did not diverge according to the ensuing split between eastern and western variants?
---
Answer:
*c and *dz