The follow passage describes how a catalytic converter in a car works. The catalytic converter mostly likely was developed in response to? A) the demand for more energy-efficient cars
B) the demand for increased car engine power
C) a need for lower-priced cars
D) a need to reduce air pollution

The prebisch–singer hypothesis concludes that: a. technology lowers the cost of manufactured products, so developing countries should see an increase in their terms of trade. b. developing countries experience a long-run decline in their terms of trade, as the demand for primary products in higher-income countries declines relative to their demand for manufactured goods. c. because of unfair trading practices, labor in developing countries is exploited. d. opec has been responsible for a slowdown in the world's standard of living.

Aproduction line has three machines a, b, and c, with reliabilities of .96, .86, and .85, respectively. the machines are arranged so that if one breaks down, the others must shut down. engineers are weighing two alternative designs for increasing the line’s reliability. plan 1 involves adding an identical backup line, and plan 2 involves providing a backup for each machine. in either case, three machines (a, b, and c) would be used with reliabilities equal to the original three. a. compute overall system reliability under plan 1. (round your intermediate calculations and final answer to 4 decimal places.) reliability b. compute overall system reliability under plan 2. (round your intermediate calculations and final answer to 4 decimal places.) reliability c. which plan will provide the higher reliability? plan2plan1

Blue computers, a major pc manufacturer in the united states, currently has plants in kentucky and pennsylvania. the kentucky plant has a capacity of 1 million units a year and the pennsylvania plant has a capacity of 1.5 million units a year. the firm divides the united states into five markets: northeast, southeast, midwest, south, and west. each pc sells for $1,000. the firm anticipates a 50 perc~nt growth in demand (in each region) this year (after which demand will stabilize) and wants to build a plant with a capacity of 1.5 million units per year to accommodate the growth. potential sites being considered are in north carolina and california. currently the firm pays federal, state, and local taxes on the income from each plant. federal taxes are 20 percent of income, and all state and local taxes are 7 percent of income in each state. north carolina has offered to reduce taxes for the next 10 years from 7 percent to 2 percent. blue computers would like to take the tax break into consideration when planning its network. consider income over the next 10 years in your analysis. assume that all costs remain unchanged over the 10 years. use a discount factor of 0.1 for your analysis. annual fixed costs, production and shipping costs per unit, and current regional demand (before the 50 percent growth) are shown in table 5-13. (a) if blue computers sets an objective of minimizing total fixed and variable costs, where should they build the new plant? how should the network be structured? (b) if blue computers sets an objective of maximizing after-tax profits, where should they build the new plant? how should the network be structured? variable production and shipping cost ($/unit) annual fixed cost northeast southeast midwest south west (million$) kentucky 185 180 175 175 200 150 pennsylvania 170 190 180 200 220 200 n. carolina 180 180 185 185 215 150 california 220 220 195 195 175 150 demand ('000 units/month) 700 400 400 300 600