Reading & Writing
K.D. Leka and colleagues found that the Sun’s corona provides an advance indication of solar flares—intense eruptions of electromagnetic radiation that emanate from active regions in the Sun’s photosphere and can interfere with telecommunications on Earth. Preceding a flare, the corona temporarily exhibits increased brightness above the region where the flare is ______.
Which choice completes the text with the most logical and precise word or phrase?
A. antecedent
B. impending
C. innocuous
D. perpetual
Behavioral ecologists Will Wiggins, Sarah Bounds, and Shawn Wilder recently examined the behavior of field-collected and laboratory-reared bold jumping spiders (Phidippus audax). They found a positive association between experimental high-protein diets and aggressive behavior in field-collected males and a similar association between experimental high-lipid diets and aggressive behavior in lab-reared males; additionally, field-collected spiders showed a preference for flowers manipulated to display ultraviolet fluorescence, whereas lab-reared spiders showed a preference for flowers dyed with red food coloring that was not fluorescent. Wiggins, Bounds, and Wilder therefore concluded that ______
Which choice most logically completes the text?
A. rearing conditions likely affect the responses of bold jumping spiders to experimental stimuli.
B. being raised in a laboratory setting reduces aggression among male bold jumping spiders.
C. laboratory settings are more suitable for studying bold jumping spiders’ diets than their flower preferences.
D. experiments involving bold jumping spiders should make use of lab-reared individuals.
On March 23, 2021, a gust of wind wreaked havoc on global trade. Ever Given, an international shipping container vessel, became lodged in Egypt’s Suez Canal, a major shipping route between Europe and Asia. The vessel took six days to ______ it’s as heavy as two thousand blue whales when fully loaded.
Which choice completes the text so that it conforms to the conventions of Standard English?
A. dislodge in part due to its sheer size,
B. dislodge, in part due to its sheer size:
C. dislodge, in part due to its sheer size,
D. dislodge, in part, due to its sheer size
Woven from recycled yarn and hand tufted using a carpet weaving technique passed down by the artist’s Turkish grandmother, ______ so lush and tactilely inviting that you are tempted to reach out and touch them.
Which choice completes the text so that it conforms to the conventions of Standard English?
A. the topological tapestries of Argentine textile artist Alexandra Kehayoglou are
B. the Argentine textile artist Alexandra Kehayoglou creates topological tapestries that are
C. when she creates her topological tapestries, Argentine textile artist Alexandra Kehayoglou makes them
D. Alexandra Kehayoglou is an Argentine textile artist whose topological tapestries are
After appropriate permissions are granted, a typical archaeological dig begins with a surveyor making a detailed grid of the excavation site. Then, the site is carefully dug, and any artifacts found are recorded and mapped onto the site grid. ______ the artifacts are removed, cataloged, and analyzed in a laboratory.
Which choice completes the text with the most logical transition?
A. For instance,
B. On the contrary,
C. Earlier,
D. Finally,
Mary Engle Pennington, a chemist who helped advance home refrigeration, undoubtedly made a substantial impact on society, but her place in our historical memory is perhaps more ______ than that of Stephanie Kwolek, who invented the incredibly strong material known as Kevlar, an accomplishment for which she will long be remembered.
Which choice completes the text with the most logical and precise word or phrase?
A. permanent
B. tentative
C. warranted
D. prominent
Despite the generalizations about human behavior they have produced, many studies of behavioral psychology have used highly unrepresentative subject pools: students at the colleges and universities where the researchers are employed. To ______ this situation, it is necessary to actively recruit subjects from diverse backgrounds and locations.
Which choice completes the text with the most logical and precise word or phrase?
A. sanction
B. ameliorate
C. rationalize
D. postulate
While recent scholarship has undermined claims that the works of twelfth-century Islamic philosopher Ibn Rushd were ______ other Muslim philosophers of his time, it is indisputable that his location in the Muslim-ruled area of what is now Spain meant that his works were primarily available thousands of miles west of the era’s center of Islamic thought.
Which choice completes the text with the most logical and precise word or phrase?
A. controversial among
B. antagonistic toward
C. imitated by
D. inconsequential to
The following text is adapted from Herman Melville’s 1855 novel Israel Potter. Israel is a young man wandering through New England during the late eighteenth century.
He hired himself out for three months; at the end of that time to receive for his wages two hundred acres of land lying in New Hampshire. [...] His employer proving false to the contract in the matter of the land, and there being no law in the country to force him to fulfil it, Israel—who, however brave-hearted, and even much of a dare-devil upon a pinch, seems nevertheless to have evinced, throughout many parts of his career, a singular patience and mildness—was obliged to look round for other means of livelihood than clearing out a farm for himself in the wilderness.
Which choice best describes the function of the underlined portion in the text as a whole?
A. It implies that Israel treasures a particular characteristic of his personality when that characteristic should usually be regarded as a flaw.
B. It suggests that if not for a certain aspect of his character, Israel might not have been as easily thwarted in his ambition to establish a farm.
C. It shows why Israel would not have been able to undertake the enormous amount of labor necessary to run a farm even if he had owned the necessary property.
D. It explains why, when the situation requires it, Israel is able to undertake courageous acts that others would generally avoid.
Changes to vegetation cover and other human activities influence carbon and nitrogen levels in soil, though how deep these effects extend is unclear. Hypothesizing that differences in land use lead to differences in carbon and nitrogen levels that are not restricted to the topsoil layer (0–30 cm deep), Chukwuebuka Okolo and colleagues sampled soils across multiple land-use types (e.g., grazing land, cropland, forest) within each of several Ethiopian locations. They found, though, that across land-use types, carbon and nitrogen decreased to comparably low levels beyond depths of 30 cm.
Which choice best describes the overall structure of the text?
A. It describes a phenomenon that scientists do not fully understand, explains a research team’s hypothesis about that phenomenon, and then describes a finding that led the team to refine the hypothesis.
B. It introduces an unresolved scientific question, presents a research team’s hypothesis pertaining to that question, and then describes an observation made by the team that conflicts with that hypothesis.
C. It discusses a process that scientists are somewhat unclear about, introduces competing hypotheses about that process, and then explains how a research team concluded that one of those hypotheses is likely correct.
D. It explains a hypothesis that has been the subject of scientific debate, discusses how a research team tested that hypothesis, and then presents data the team collected that validate the hypothesis.
Text 1
Efforts to automate classification of paintings into different artistic styles have had little success, and we have probably reached the technological limit of this work. Furthermore, it’s not obvious that this is even a useful endeavor—as several critics have argued, differences between artistic styles are inherently subjective and often not the best way to understand relationships between works.
Text 2
Baroque painting utilized a very similar color palette as Renaissance painting did to depict largely the same subjects that Renaissance painting depicted. Automated artistic style classifiers often struggle to draw distinctions between these two styles, but Ravneet Singh Arora and Ahmed Elgammal were able to achieve a high degree of accuracy in Baroque/Renaissance comparisons by running one classification model atop another, an approach that demonstrates how much innovation is possible in this realm.
Based on the texts, how would the author of Text 2 most likely respond to the claim in the underlined sentence of Text 1?
A. By emphasizing that there are still advances being made in automated artistic style classification
B. By criticizing previous research into automated artistic style classification systems for focusing on a narrow group of styles
C. By arguing that most people are not able to correctly identify the style of paintings that they are shown
D. By suggesting that people may eventually develop more uniform and accepted ideas about artistic styles and their boundaries
To understand how temperature change affects microorganism-mediated cycling of soil nutrients in alpine ecosystems, Eva Kaštovská et al. collected plant-soil cores in the Tatra Mountains at elevations around 2,100 meters and transplanted them to elevations of 1,700–1,800 meters, where the mean air temperature was warmer by 2°C. Microorganism-mediated nutrient cycling was accelerated in the transplanted cores; crucially, microorganism community composition was unchanged, allowing Kaštovská et al. to attribute the acceleration to temperature-induced increases in microorganism activity.
It can most reasonably be inferred from the text that the finding about the microorganism community composition was important for which reason?
A. It provided preliminary evidence that microorganism-mediated nutrient cycling was accelerated in the transplanted cores.
B. It suggested that temperature-induced changes in microorganism activity may be occurring at increasingly high elevations.
C. It ruled out a potential alternative explanation for the acceleration in microorganism-mediated nutrient cycling.
D. It clarified that microorganism activity levels in the plant-soil cores varied depending on which microorganisms comprised the community.
To investigate potential cognitive benefits of taking leave from work, psychologist Jan Packer and colleagues conducted a six-month study of Australian university staff members who took no leave from work during the study, took 2–4 days of leave, or took 1–5 weeks of leave. Tests of attentiveness were administered to participants three times during the study: at random for the no-leave staff, and for the rest, one week before their leave, one week following their return to work, and one week after the second test administration. After analyzing the results, the researchers concluded that longer leave times might not confer a greater cognitive benefit than shorter leave times do.
Which choice best describes data from the graph that support the researchers’ conclusion?
A. In the second test administration, participants who took 2–4 days of leave had higher average attentiveness scores than did those who took no leave, but in the third test administration, those who took no leave had higher average scores than those who took 1–5 weeks of leave.
B. In the first test administration, participants who took 2–4 days of leave had lower average attentiveness scores than did those who took 1–5 weeks of leave and those who took no leave.
C. In both the second and third test administrations, participants who took 2–4 days of leave had higher average attentiveness scores than did participants who took 1–5 weeks of leave.
D. In the second and third test administrations, participants who took 2–4 days of leave had higher average attentiveness scores than did those who took no leave.
It may seem that the optimal strategy for an animal pursuing prey or escaping predators is to move at maximal speed, but the energy expense of exploiting full speed capacity can disfavor such a strategy even in escape contexts, as evidenced by the fact that ______
Which choice most effectively uses data from the graph to complete the text?
A. most lizard species use about the same percentage of their maximal speed when escaping predation as they do when pursuing prey.
B. multiple lizard species move at an average of less than 90% of their maximal speed while escaping predation.
C. more lizard species use, on average, 90%–100% of their maximal speed while escaping predation than use any other percentage of their maximal speed.
D. at least 4 lizard species use, on average, less than 100% of their maximal speed while pursuing prey.
“Poetry” is a 1919 poem by Marianne Moore. The poem highlights an ambivalence toward poetry as the speaker acknowledges its merits while also expressing a sense of displeasure, writing ______
Which quotation from “Poetry” most effectively illustrates the claim?
A. “nor is it valid / to discriminate against ‘business documents and / school-books’; all these phenomena are important.”
B. “One must make a distinction / however: when dragged into prominence by half poets, the result is not / poetry”
C. “when [poems] become so derivative as to become unintelligible, the / same thing may be said for all of us—that we / do not admire what / we cannot understand.”
D. “Reading [poetry], however, with a perfect contempt for it, one discovers that there is in / it after all, a place for the genuine.”
Some ethicists hold that the moral goodness of an individual’s actions depends solely on whether the actions themselves are good, irrespective of the context in which they are carried out. Philosopher L. Sebastian Purcell has shown that surviving works of Aztec (Nahua) philosophy express a very different view. Purcell reveals that these works posit an ethical system in which an individual’s actions are judged in light of how well they accord with the individual’s role in society and how well they contribute to the community. To the extent that these works are representative of Aztec thought, Purcell’s analysis suggests that ______
Which choice most logically completes the text?
A. the Aztecs would have disputed the idea that the morality of an individual’s actions can be assessed by appealing to standards of behavior that are independent of the individual’s social circumstances.
B. the Aztecs would not have accepted the notion that the morality of an individual’s actions can be fairly evaluated by people who do not live in the same society as that individual.
C. actions by members of Aztec society who contributed a great deal to their community could be judged as morally good even if those actions were inconsistent with behaviors the Aztecs regarded as good in all contexts.
D. similar actions performed by people in different social roles in Aztec society would have been regarded as morally equivalent unless those actions led to different outcomes for the community.
Physical materials can be classified by how much light passes through them. Clear glass, which is classified as transparent, allows all (or almost all) light to pass ______ wax paper, which is classified as translucent, allows only some light to pass through.
Which choice completes the text so that it conforms to the conventions of Standard English?
A. through,
B. through
C. through;
D. through and
In her 1983 book The Managed Heart: Commercialization of Human Feeling, sociologist Arlie Russell Hochschild first explored at length her conception of a “sociology of emotions”—the idea that the various cultural and ideological frameworks a person has internalized (class, gender, political affiliation, etc.) ______ each emotional reaction that person has within a situation.
Which choice completes the text so that it conforms to the conventions of Standard English?
A. underlies
B. is underlying
C. underlie
D. has been underlying
A turtle shell appears external to the animal, protecting its body like armor. ______ the shell is often incorrectly assumed to be an exoskeleton, a rigid outer casing like that of a crustacean or an insect, when in fact it is an endoskeleton, a part of the turtle’s internal bone structure, more akin to a spine or a pair of ribs.
Which choice completes the text with the most logical transition?
A. That being said,
B. However,
C. For instance,
D. Hence,
In retrospect, one of the lessons of the 2003 Human Genome Project is that a gene is affected by many factors, not the least of which is its interactions with the protein products of other genes. ______ rather than just focusing on the human genome, efforts to better understand gene mutations related to disease have begun to consider the human proteome, the complete set of proteins expressed by human genes.
Which choice completes the text with the most logical transition?
A. In other words,
B. That said,
C. For example,
D. Accordingly,