SAT: Reading & Writing - Information and Ideas: Inferences

Posljednje ažuriranje 4 months ago

100

SAT: Reading & Writing - Information and Ideas: Inferences

Posljednje ažuriranje 4 months ago

100

Marta Coll and colleagues’ 2010 Mediterranean Sea biodiversity census reported approximately 17,000 species, nearly double the number reported in Carlo Bianchi and Carla Morri’s 2000 census—a difference only partly attributable to the description of new invertebrate species in the interim. Another factor is that the morphological variability of microorganisms is poorly understood compared to that of vertebrates, invertebrates, plants, and algae, creating uncertainty about how to evaluate microorganisms as species. Researchers’ decisions on such matters therefore can be highly consequential. Indeed, the two censuses reported similar counts of vertebrate, plant, and algal species, suggesting that _____
Which choice most logically completes the text?

Coll and colleagues reported a much higher number of species than Bianchi and Morri did largely due to the inclusion of invertebrate species that had not been described at the time of Bianchi and Morri’s census.

some differences observed in microorganisms may have been treated as variations within species by Bianchi and Morri but treated as indicative of distinct species by Coll and colleagues.

Bianchi and Morri may have been less sensitive to the degree of morphological variation displayed within a typical species of microorganism than Coll and colleagues were.

the absence of clarity regarding how to differentiate among species of microorganisms may have resulted in Coll and colleagues underestimating the number of microorganism species.

In her 2021 article “Throwaway History: Towards a Historiography of Ephemera,” scholar Anne Garner discusses John Johnson (1882–1956), a devoted collector of items intended to be discarded, including bus tickets and campaign pamphlets. Johnson recognized that scholarly institutions considered his expansive collection of ephemera to be worthless—indeed, it wasn’t until 1968, after Johnson’s death, that Oxford University’s Bodleian Library acquired the collection, having grasped the items’ potential value to historians and other researchers. Hence, the example of Johnson serves to _____
Which choice most logically completes the text?

demonstrate the difficulties faced by contemporary historians in conducting research at the Bodleian Library without access to ephemera.

represent the challenge of incorporating examples of ephemera into the collections of libraries and other scholarly institutions.

lend support to arguments by historians and other researchers who continue to assert that ephemera holds no value for scholars.

illustrate both the relatively low scholarly regard in which ephemera was once held and the later recognition of ephemera’s possible utility.

One recognized social norm of gift giving is that the time spent obtaining a gift will be viewed as a reflection of the gift’s thoughtfulness. Marketing experts Farnoush Reshadi, Julian Givi, and Gopal Das addressed this view in their studies of norms specifically surrounding the giving of gift cards, noting that while recipients tend to view digital gift cards (which can be purchased online from anywhere and often can be redeemed online as well) as superior to physical gift cards (which sometimes must be purchased in person and may only be redeemable in person) in terms of usage, 94.8 percent of participants surveyed indicated that it is more socially acceptable to give a physical gift card to a recipient. This finding suggests that _____
Which choice most logically completes the text?

gift givers likely overestimate the amount of effort required to use digital gift cards and thus mistakenly assume gift recipients will view them as less desirable than physical gift cards.

physical gift cards are likely preferred by gift recipients because the tangible nature of those cards offers a greater psychological sense of ownership than digital gift cards do.

physical gift cards are likely less desirable to gift recipients than digital gift cards are because of the perception that physical gift cards require unnecessary effort to obtain.

gift givers likely perceive digital gift cards as requiring relatively low effort to obtain and thus wrongly assume gift recipients will appreciate them less than they do physical gift cards.

The practice of logging (cutting down trees for commercial and other uses) is often thought to be at odds with forest conservation (the work of preserving forests). However, a massive study in forest management and preservation spanning 700,000 hectares in Oregon’s Malheur National Forest calls that view into question. So far, results of the study suggest that forest plots that have undergone limited logging (the careful removal of a controlled number of trees) may be more robust than plots that haven’t been logged at all. These results, in turn, suggest that ______
Which choice most logically completes the text?

logging may be useful for maintaining healthy forests, provided it is limited.

other forest management strategies are more effective than limited logging.

as time passes, it will be difficult to know whether limited logging has any benefits.

the best way to support forest health may be to leave large forests entirely untouched.

Researchers recently found that disruptions to an enjoyable experience, like a short series of advertisements during a television show, often increase viewers’ reported enjoyment. Suspecting that disruptions to an unpleasant experience would have the opposite effect, the researchers had participants listen to construction noise for 30 minutes and anticipated that those whose listening experience was frequently interrupted with short breaks of silence would thus _____
Which choice most logically completes the text?

find the disruptions more irritating as time went on.

rate the listening experience as more negative than those whose listening experience was uninterrupted.

rate the experience of listening to construction noise as lasting for less time than it actually lasted.

perceive the volume of the construction noise as growing softer over time.

Many of William Shakespeare’s tragedies address broad themes that still appeal to today’s audiences. For instance, Romeo and Juliet, which is set in the Italy of Shakespeare’s time, tackles the themes of parents versus children and love versus hate, and the play continues to be read and produced widely around the world. But understanding Shakespeare’s so-called history plays can require a knowledge of several centuries of English history. Consequently, _____
Which choice most logically completes the text?

many theatergoers and readers today are likely to find Shakespeare’s history plays less engaging than the tragedies.

some of Shakespeare’s tragedies are more relevant to today’s audiences than twentieth-century plays.

Romeo and Juliet is the most thematically accessible of all Shakespeare’s tragedies.

experts in English history tend to prefer Shakespeare’s history plays to his other works.

The Mammillaria cactus M. boolii occurs naturally only in the state of Sonora in Mexico, and the smallness of its range makes it especially vulnerable to extinction. The traditional single-species approach to conservation emphasizes the need to focus on individual species most at risk, like M. boolii, but recently, conservationists have argued that an ecosystem-based approach that incorporates the many interactions between the climate, terrain, and various species of a given geographical area may lead to better outcomes for all the species in a given location. If this view is correct, the single-species approach to the conservation of M. boolii could thus _____
Which choice most logically completes the text?

lead to a better understanding of how the distribution of Mammillaria species throughout Mexico has affected their survival.

allow conservationists to better consider how climatic changes affecting Sonora may reduce the number of species competing with M. boolii.

erroneously shift the focus of conservation efforts away from M. boolii itself.

fail to consider the ways in which the survival of M. boolii may be influenced by changes in the populations of other species that inhabit Sonora.

In the early nineteenth century, some Euro-American farmers in the northeastern United States used agricultural techniques developed by the Haudenosaunee (Iroquois) people centuries earlier, but it seems that few of those farmers had actually seen Haudenosaunee farms firsthand. Barring the possibility of several farmers of the same era independently developing techniques that the Haudenosaunee people had already invented, these facts most strongly suggest that _____
Which choice most logically completes the text?

those farmers learned the techniques from other people who were more directly influenced by Haudenosaunee practices.

the crops typically cultivated by Euro-American farmers in the northeastern United States were not well suited to Haudenosaunee farming techniques.

Haudenosaunee farming techniques were widely used in regions outside the northeastern United States.

Euro-American farmers only began to recognize the benefits of Haudenosaunee farming techniques late in the nineteenth century.

Some businesses believe that when employees are interrupted while doing their work, they experience a decrease in energy and productivity. However, a team led by Harshad Puranik, who studies management, has found that interruptions by colleagues can have a social component that increases employees’ sense of belonging, resulting in greater job satisfaction that benefits employees and employers. Therefore, businesses should recognize that ______
Which choice most logically completes the text?

the interpersonal benefits of some interruptions in the workplace may offset the perceived negative effects.

in order to maximize productivity, employers should be willing to interrupt employees frequently throughout the day.

most employees avoid interrupting colleagues because they don’t appreciate being interrupted themselves.

in order to cultivate an ideal workplace environment, interruptions of work should be discouraged.

The domestic sweet potato (Ipomoea batatas) descends from a wild plant native to South America. It also populates the Polynesian Islands, where evidence confirms that Native Hawaiians and other Indigenous peoples were cultivating the plant centuries before seafaring first occurred over the thousands of miles of ocean separating them from South America. To explain how the sweet potato was first introduced in Polynesia, botanist Pablo Muñoz-Rodríguez and colleagues analyzed the DNA of numerous varieties of the plant, concluding that Polynesian varieties diverged from South American ones over 100,000 years ago. Given that Polynesia was peopled only in the last three thousand years, the team concluded that ______.
Which choice most logically completes the text?

the cultivation of the sweet potato in Polynesia likely predates its cultivation in South America.

Polynesian peoples likely acquired the sweet potato from South American peoples only within the last three thousand years.

human activity likely played no role in the introduction of the sweet potato in Polynesia.

Polynesian sweet potato varieties likely descend from a single South American variety that was domesticated, not wild.

Microbes that live in shallow lakes and ponds produce methane, a harmful greenhouse gas. Ecologist Ralf Aben and his team wanted to see how different types of shallow-water plants might affect the amount of methane that escapes into the atmosphere. Aben’s team set up some water tanks with soil and microbes from local ponds. Some tanks had a type of underwater plant that grows in the soil called watermilfoil. Other tanks had either duckweed, a type of plant that floats on the water’s surface, or algae. Aben and his team found that tanks with duckweed and algae released higher levels of methane than tanks with watermilfoil did. This finding suggests that _____
Which choice most logically completes the text?

the presence of some kinds of underwater plants like watermilfoil helps prevent methane from escaping shallow lakes and ponds.

shallow lakes and ponds release more methane than deeper bodies of water because shallow bodies of water usually have more plants than deep bodies of water do.

shallow lakes and ponds are more likely to contain algae than to contain either watermilfoil or duckweed.

having a mix of algae, underwater plants, and floating plants is the best way to reduce the amount of methane in shallow lakes and ponds.

Scholars have noted that F. Scott Fitzgerald’s writings were likely influenced in part by his marriage to Zelda Fitzgerald, but many don’t recognize Zelda as a writer in her own right. Indeed, Zelda authored several works herself, such as the novel Save Me the Waltz and numerous short stories. Thus, those who primarily view Zelda as an inspiration for F. Scott’s writings _____
Which choice most logically completes the text?

overlook the many other factors that motivated F. Scott to write.

risk misrepresenting the full range of Zelda’s contributions to literature.

may draw inaccurate conclusions about how F. Scott and Zelda viewed each other’s works.

tend to read the works of F. Scott and Zelda in an overly autobiographical light.

In their book Smart Pricing, Jagmohan Raju and Z. John Zhang consider musicians’ use of the nontraditional “pay as you wish” pricing model. This model generally offers listeners the choice to pay more or less than a suggested price for a song or album—or even to pay nothing at all. As the authors note, that’s the option most listeners chose for an album by the band Harvey Danger. Only about 1% opted to pay for the album, resulting in earnings below the band’s expectations. But the authors also discuss musician Jane Siberry, who saw significant earnings from her “pay as you wish” online music store as a result of many listeners choosing to pay more than the store’s suggested prices. Hence, the “pay as you wish” model may _____
Which choice most logically completes the text?

prove financially successful for some musicians but disappointing for others.

hold greater financial appeal for bands than for individual musicians.

cause most musicians who use the model to lower the suggested prices of their songs and albums over time.

more strongly reflect differences in certain musicians’ popularity than traditional pricing models do.

The morphological novelty of echinoderms—marine invertebrates with radial symmetry, usually starlike, around a central point—impedes comparisons with most other animals, in which bilateral symmetry on an anterior-posterior (head to tail) axis through a trunk is typical. Particularly puzzling are sea stars, thought to have evolved a headless layout from a known bilateral origin. Applying genomic knowledge of Saccoglossus kowalevskii acorn worms (close relatives of sea stars, and thus expected to have similar markers for corresponding anatomical regions) to the body patterning genes of Patiria miniata sea stars, Laurent Formery et al. observed activity only in anterior genes across $P. miniata$’s entire body and some posterior genes limited to the edges, suggesting that _____

Which choice most logically completes the text?

despite the greater prevalence of anterior genes in sea stars’ genetic makeup, posterior genes active at the body’s perimeter are primarily responsible for the starlike layout that distinguishes sea stars’ radial symmetry from that of other echinoderms.

contrary to the belief that they evolved from early ancestors with the bilateral form typical of many other animals, sea stars instead originated with an atypical body layout that was neither bilaterally nor radially symmetrical.

although the two species are closely related, there is only minimal correspondence in the genetic markers for head, tail, and trunk region development in $P. miniata$ sea stars and $S. kowalevskii$ acorn worms.

rather than undergoing changes resulting in the eventual elimination of a head region in their radial body plan, as previously assumed, sea stars’ morphology evolved to completely lack a trunk and consist primarily of a head region.

One theory behind human bipedalism speculates that it originated in a mostly ground-based ancestor that practiced four-legged “knuckle-walking,” like chimpanzees and gorillas do today, and eventually evolved into moving upright on two legs. But recently, researchers observed orangutans, another relative of humans, standing on two legs on tree branches and using their arms for balance while they reached for fruits. These observations may suggest that _____
Which choice most logically completes the text?

bipedalism evolved because it was advantageous to a tree-dwelling ancestor of humans.

bipedalism must have evolved simultaneously with knuckle-walking and tree-climbing.

moving between the ground and the trees would have been difficult without bipedalism.

a knuckle-walking human ancestor could have easily moved bipedally in trees.

Arthur Conan Doyle’s stories about detective Sherlock Holmes were published between 1887 and 1927. They have inspired countless successful adaptations, including comic strips, movies, and a television series Sherlock Hound, directed by Hayao Miyazaki, who is celebrated for his animated movies. Until 2014, these stories were copyrighted. The right to adapt was only available to those who could afford the copyright fee and gain approval from the strict copyright holders of Doyle’s estate. Some journalists predict that the number of Sherlock Holmes adaptations is likely to increase since the end of copyright means that _____
Which choice most logically completes the text?

Doyle’s original stories will become hard to find.

people will become more interested in detective stories than they were in the 1800s.

producing adaptations will become easier and less expensive.

the former copyright holders of Doyle’s estate will return fees they collected.

Songbirds learn to respond to and imitate their species’ songs from an early age. With each generation, small differences are introduced that result in distinct variations—called dialects—among geographically isolated populations of the same species. A research study examined whether twelve-day-old Ficedula hypoleuca (pied flycatcher) nestlings prefer local dialects over the unfamiliar dialects of nonlocal F. hypoleuca populations: the more begging calls the nestlings made in response to a song, the stronger their preference. The researchers found that nestlings produced more begging calls in response to their own dialect than to nonlocal dialects. Since song preference plays a role in songbird mate selection, the finding suggests that _____
Which choice most logically completes the text?

F. hypoleuca nestlings’ preference for their own dialect likely disappears as they mature to promote socialization between different F. hypoleuca populations.

F. hypoleuca nestlings who show an early preference for their own dialect are likely to receive more food from their caretakers than nestlings who show no preferences among any F. hypoleuca dialects.

F. hypoleuca nestlings’ preference for their own dialect likely drives them when they mature to reproduce with other F. hypoleuca from local rather than nonlocal populations.

F. hypoleuca nestlings show a preference for both local F. hypoleuca dialects and the songs of other local songbirds over the songs of nonlocal birds of any species.

One challenge when researching whether holding elected office changes a person’s behavior is the problem of ensuring that the experiment has an appropriate control group. To reveal the effect of holding office, researchers must compare people who hold elected office with people who do not hold office but who are otherwise similar to the office-holders. Since researchers are unable to control which politicians win elections, they therefore _____
Which choice most logically completes the text?

struggle to find valid data about the behavior of politicians who do not currently hold office.

can only conduct valid studies with people who have previously held office rather than people who presently hold office.

div>should select a control group of people who differ from office-holders in several significant ways.

will find it difficult to identify a group of people who can function as an appropriate control group for their studies.

One aspect of in-person shopping that online shopping can’t replicate is the opportunity to touch a product before buying it. Does this difference matter? In an experiment, researchers asked one group of participants to touch a mug and a toy, while another group was prohibited from touching the two items. The participants were then asked how much money they’d pay for the items. People who got to touch the items were willing to pay much more money for them than were people who weren’t allowed to touch the items. This finding suggests that _____
Which choice most logically completes the text?

people who mainly shop online probably spend more money every month than people who mainly shop in person do.

in-person shopping may make products seem more valuable than they seem if only viewed online.

retailers with in-person and online stores should charge the same price for a given product in both places.

online retailers may be able to raise the prices they charge for products that are only available online.

German theater practitioner Bertolt Brecht (1898–1956) believed that theater should elicit an intellectual rather than an emotional response from audiences, provoking them to consider social and political realities that extend beyond the characters and events depicted onstage. Brecht’s influence can be seen in English playwright Caryl Churchill’s 1979 play Cloud 9: although the play sometimes invites empathetic reactions, it primarily works to engage audiences in an interrogation of patriarchy and colonialism, which it does by placing audiences at a distance, thereby encouraging them to ______.
Which choice most logically completes the text?

focus on the characters’ beliefs about social and political issues as revealed by the characters’ actions.

reflect on social and political phenomena not directly related to patriarchy and colonialism.

recognize pertinent social and political parallels between Germany during Brecht’s time and England at the time when Churchill was writing Cloud 9.

be dispassionate as they think critically about the social and political questions raised by the play.

Archaeologists and historians used to believe that the Maya civilization during its Classic period (roughly 250–900) lacked agricultural marketplaces. One reason for this belief was that these scholars misunderstood the ecology of the regions the Maya inhabited. Marketplaces typically emerge because different individuals or groups want to trade resources they control for resources they don’t control. Scholars seriously underestimated the ecological diversity of the Maya landscape and thus assumed that ______
Which choice most logically completes the text?

marketplaces likely would not have attracted many traders from outside the regions controlled by the Maya.

farming practices would have been largely the same throughout Maya lands even if the crops people produced varied significantly.

marketplaces would not have enabled Maya people to acquire many products different from those they already produced.

farmers would trade agricultural products only if they had already produced enough to meet their own needs.

The alpaca was domesticated by Indigenous peoples in the Andes about 7,000 years ago. But which wild species did it descend from, the vicuña or guanaco? A research team led by Ruiwen Fan may have solved the mystery, concluding that the alpaca is the domesticated form of the vicuña but that the modern alpaca gets only 64 percent of its genetic material from its wild ancestor. The rest comes from the domesticated llama. The llama, meanwhile, gets 95.5 percent of its genetic material from its own wild ancestor, the guanaco, and the rest from the alpaca. The llama and alpaca apparently interbred widely for only a handful of generations between 400 and 600 years ago. Assuming that the findings of Fan’s team are valid, it can be inferred that _____
Which choice most logically completes the text?

modern llama populations have a greater degree of genetic diversity, on average, than modern alpaca populations do.

the domestication process of the alpaca may have involved some introduction of genetic material from the llama.

the period of interbreeding resulted in a greater genetic difference between alpacas and their wild ancestors than between llamas and their wild ancestors.

if they were subjected to genetic testing, modern populations of guanacos and vicuñas would likely show traces of ancient interbreeding as well.

ID: 3cc2eacc In a study of the mechanisms underlying associative memory—or the ability to learn and remember connections between inherently unrelated things—neuroscientists Kei Igarashi, Jasmine Chavez, and others presented mice with memory tests. The team discovered that fan cells, a type of cell found in the medial temporal lobe of the brain, are necessary for the acquisition of new associative memories. They also found that fan cell activity requires dopamine, a chemical the brain produces in response to pleasure and rewards. Consequently, receiving a reward should likely help to _____
Which choice most logically completes the text?

decrease an individual's capacity to utilize dopamine.

increase an individual's capacity to recognize differences between unrelated things.

increase an individual's capacity to form associative memories.

decrease an individual's capacity to create fan cells.

Although military veterans make up a small proportion of the total population of the United States, they occupy a significantly higher proportion of the jobs in the civilian government. One possible explanation for this disproportionate representation is that military service familiarizes people with certain organizational structures that are also reflected in the civilian government bureaucracy, and this familiarity thus _____
Which choice most logically completes the text?

makes civilian government jobs especially appealing to military veterans.

alters the typical relationship between military service and subsequent career preferences.

encourages nonveterans applying for civilian government jobs to consider military service instead.

increases the number of civilian government jobs that require some amount of military experience to perform.

Scientists studying Mars long thought the history of its crust was relatively simple. One reason for this is that geologic and climate data collected by a spacecraft showed that the crust was largely composed of basalt, likely as a result of intense volcanic activity that brought about a magma ocean, which then cooled to form the planet’s surface. A study led by Valerie Payré focused on additional information—further analysis of data collected by the spacecraft and infrared wavelengths detected from Mars’s surface—that revealed the presence of surprisingly high concentrations of silica in certain regions on Mars. Since a planetary surface that formed in a mostly basaltic environment would be unlikely to contain large amounts of silica, Payré concluded that _____
Which choice most logically completes the text?

the information about silica concentrations collected by the spacecraft is likely more reliable than the silica information gleaned from infrared wavelengths detected from Mars’s surface.

high silica concentrations on Mars likely formed from a different process than that which formed the crusts of other planets.

having a clearer understanding of the composition of Mars’s crust and the processes by which it formed will provide more insight into how Earth’s crust formed.

Mars’s crust likely formed as a result of other major geological events in addition to the cooling of a magma ocean.

Archaeologists have been debating the origin of a rare form of lead found in Shang dynasty (1766–1046 BCE) bronze artifacts since its presence was discovered in China in the 1990s. Different researchers have proposed theories on which regions of the world would have had the raw materials containing the specific lead in these artifacts, but no conclusive evidence has been presented. What is intriguing is that bronze artifacts from China dated after the Shang dynasty do not contain this form of lead, suggesting that _____
Which choice most logically completes the text?

Shang dynasty bronze pieces are rare and therefore more valuable than those from other time periods.

the source of some of the raw materials used to make bronze was exploited only until the end of the Shang dynasty.

bronze was used for a short time during the Shang dynasty before different metals were used to make artifacts.

methods used to analyze bronze artifacts are not useful on pieces that are dated after the Shang dynasty.

Herbivorous sauropod dinosaurs could grow more than 100 feet long and weigh up to 80 tons, and some researchers have attributed the evolution of sauropods to such massive sizes to increased plant production resulting from high levels of atmospheric carbon dioxide during the Mesozoic era. However, there is no evidence of significant spikes in carbon dioxide levels coinciding with relevant periods in sauropod evolution, such as when the first large sauropods appeared, when several sauropod lineages underwent further evolution toward gigantism, or when sauropods reached their maximum known sizes, suggesting that _____
Which choice most logically completes the text?

fluctuations in atmospheric carbon dioxide affected different sauropod lineages differently.

the evolution of larger body sizes in sauropods did not depend on increased atmospheric carbon dioxide.

atmospheric carbon dioxide was higher when the largest known sauropods lived than it was when the first sauropods appeared.

sauropods probably would not have evolved to such immense sizes if atmospheric carbon dioxide had been even slightly higher.

The Hubble Space Telescope (HST) is projected to maintain operation until at least 2030, but it has already revolutionized high-resolution imaging of solar-system bodies in visible and ultraviolet (UV) light wavelengths, notwithstanding that only about 6% of the bodies imaged by the HST are within the solar system. NASA researcher Cindy L. Young and colleagues assert that a new space telescope dedicated exclusively to solar-system observations would permit an extensive survey of minor solar-system bodies and long-term UV observation to discern how solar-system bodies change over time. Young and colleagues’ recommendation therefore implies that the HST _____
Which choice most logically completes the text?

will likely continue to be used primarily to observe objects outside the solar system.

will no longer be used to observe solar system objects if the telescope recommended by Young and colleagues is deployed.

can be modified to observe the features of solar system objects that are of interest to Young and colleagues.

lacks the sensors to observe the wavelengths of light needed to discern how solar system bodies change over time.

In 2022, Crystal Reeck and colleagues studied whether the decision-making modes that guide consumers influence their choice between nonenvironmentally friendly standard electricity plans and environmentally friendly green plans that cap electricity usage. Study participants who self-reported using either an Affect Mode or Role Mode—which prioritize choices that have a stronger positive emotional or social impact, respectively—were more likely to select a green plan. Conversely, participants using a Calculation Mode—which aims to minimize both financial cost and personal inconvenience—were more likely to select a standard plan, even when the green option was cheaper. This finding suggests that participants using a Calculation Mode _____
Which choice most logically completes the text?

were equally unlikely to factor the financial savings of the green plan into their decision-making as were participants using either the Affect or Role Modes.

may have been less strongly motivated to appear socially responsible with their choice of plan than they realized.

may have determined that the green plan imposed additional burdens on them that were not sufficiently offset by the potential financial savings.

were less likely to believe that the green plan was truly cost-effective than were participants using either the Affect or Role Modes.

Geoglyphs are large-scale designs of lines or shapes created in a natural landscape. The Nazca Lines were created in the Nazca Desert in Peru by several Indigenous civilizations over a period of many centuries. Peruvian archaeologist Johny Isla specializes in these geoglyphs. At a German exhibit about the Nazca Lines, he saw an old photograph of a large geoglyph of a whalelike figure and was surprised that he didn’t recognize it. Isla returned to Peru and used a drone to search a wide area, looking for the figure from the air. This approach suggests that Isla thought that if he hadn’t already seen it, the whalelike geoglyph ______
Which choice most logically completes the text?

must represent a species of whale that went extinct before there were any people in Peru.

is actually located in Germany, not Peru, and isn’t part of the Nazca Lines at all.

is probably in a location Isla hadn’t ever come across while on the ground.

was almost certainly created a long time after the other Nazca Lines geoglyphs were created.

Some Astyanax mexicanus, a river-dwelling fish found in northeast Mexico, have colonized caves in the region. Although there is little genetic difference between river and cave A. mexicanus and all members of the species can emit the same sounds, biologist Carole Hyacinthe and colleagues found that the context and significance of those sounds vary by location—e.g., the click that river-dwelling A. mexicanus use to signal aggression is used by cave dwellers when foraging—and the acoustic properties of cave fish sounds show some cave-specific variations as well. Hyacinthe and colleagues note that differences in sonic communication could accumulate to the point of inhibiting interbreeding among fish from different locations, suggesting that _____

Which choice most logically completes the text?

although A. mexicanus living in rivers are genetically similar to those living in caves, river fish rely on sonic communication less than cave fish do.

although A. mexicanus is a single species at present, it could be in the process of splitting into distinct populations with different characteristics.

although all A. mexicanus emit sounds, the fish living in rivers produce some sounds that the fish living in caves do not, and vice versa.

although A. mexicanus from different locations can interbreed currently, river fish and cave fish are sufficiently genetically distinct that they can be considered separate species.

To address the susceptibility of materials used in components of high-performance machinery, such as aircraft engines, to creep (deformation that is induced by persistent mechanical stress and that often occurs at elevated temperatures), materials researchers have developed silicon carbide (SiC) fibers for producing aerospace composites. Testing the thermomechanical properties of several commercially available SiC fibers, Ramakrishna T. Bhatt et al. found that in comparison with two polymer-derived SiC fibers, a nitrogen-treated SiC fiber exhibited a lower minimum creep rate, a measure of the rate at which a stress-exposed material deforms at a constant temperature and uniaxial load. The finding suggests that _____

Which choice most logically completes the text?

unlike the two polymer-derived SiC fibers, the nitrogen-treated SiC fiber can substantially inhibit creep, provided that temperatures and loads are consistent.

the two polymer-derived SiC fibers likely hold similar potential for reducing the creep resistance of materials exposed to stress and elevated temperatures, thus prolonging the life span of aerospace machinery.

composites based on the two polymer-derived SiC fibers have chemical properties that may improve the mechanical and thermal stability of aerospace equipment to a greater extent than do composites based on the nitrogen-treated SiC fiber.

aerospace composites containing the nitrogen-treated SiC fiber may have the ability to withstand mechanical stress for a longer period of time than can aerospace composites containing either of the two polymer-derived SiC fibers.

The Cretaceous pterosaur $Tupandactylus navigans$ is known for having an anomalously oversized head crest. Until an almost complete fossil skeleton was found in Brazil, paleontologists had been able to study only skull specimens from $T. navigans$, though it was presumed that, like other pterosaurs, the species’s primary form of locomotion was powered flight. Examining the fuller skeleton in 2016, Victor Beccari and his team determined that $T. navigans$ had long hind legs, short wings, and an unusually long neck—characteristics that, combined with the creature’s large-crested head, would have made sustained flight difficult and walking upright relatively comfortable. Based on these findings the team suggests that $T. navigans$ likely ______.

Which choice most logically completes the text?

flew for longer distances than did other pterosaur species that had oversized head crests.

had longer wings than other pterosaur species considered to have been comfortable walking.

had a smaller head than researchers expected based on the earlier $T. navigans$ skull specimens.

flew for shorter distances and spent more time walking than researchers previously thought.

For its 1974 work Instant Mural, the Chicano art collective Asco taped members Patssi Valdez and Humberto Sandoval to an outdoor wall in East Los Angeles. The work is manifestly a commentary on constraint, but many critics focus on Valdez and the social constraints women faced at the time, which is understandable but leaves the presence of Valdez’s male collaborator Sandoval unexplained. We should instead consider that in 1974, the art establishment’s recognition of Chicano artists was (and had long been) restricted to sociohistorical muralists, leaving nonmuralist Chicano artists—like Asco’s members—struggling to even exhibit their work; attending to this context opens an interpretation that accounts for all the evidence, allowing us to conclude that _____

Which choice most logically completes the text?

while Valdez’s presence in Instant Mural represents the social constraints placed on women at the time, Sandoval’s presence represents Chicano muralists’ frustration at their lack of recognition by the art establishment.

the main subject of Instant Mural is female Chicano artists’ experience of being doubly constrained by gender-role expectations and the marginalization of certain types of art.

Instant Mural is a reflection on the constraining aesthetic expectations placed on Chicano artists in general rather than on the social constraints placed on women specifically.

Instant Mural is best understood not as a critique of the social constraints placed on women but rather as a critique of sociohistorical muralists’ depictions of Chicano culture.

Dutch painters in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries often showed tables filled with large wheels of cheese or carved shards of butter. Some art historians, noting that dairy products were a major component of the Dutch diet, interpret these depictions as reflections of everyday Dutch eating habits. However, a group of researchers recently reviewed hundreds of food-related paintings and found that lemons—which could only be acquired in the Netherlands at great cost, since they had to be imported from warmer climates—feature in Dutch paintings of the period more than three times as frequently as dairy products do, thereby casting doubt on the idea that _____

Which choice most logically completes the text?

dairy products were a more significant component of the Dutch diet of the period than lemons were.

food was a more popular subject among Dutch painters than it was among painters from other countries at the time.

depictions of food in Dutch paintings of the period should be taken as realistic representations of Dutch eating habits.

Dutch painters of the period may have depicted foods for symbolic reasons rather than to show what Dutch people typically ate.

In a three-year study of parasitic infections by Anomotaenia brevis tapeworms in Temnothorax nylanderi ants, entomologist Susanne Foitzik and colleagues found something unexpected: rather than reducing its host’s fitness, as is typical of parasites, A. brevis greatly extends the lifespan of a T. nylanderi worker ant and seems to halt the effects of aging. Furthermore, those infected receive special treatment, ceasing their share of labor to sustain the colony and remaining in the nest as uninfected workers feed, groom, and transport them. By contrast, the researchers observed that uninfected workers in parasitized colonies have shortened lifespans, most likely because the ______.

Which choice most logically completes the text?

uninfected workers are at high risk for direct exposure to A. brevis in the course of providing social care to the infected workers in the nest.

need to compensate for reduced contributions within the colony while also caring for infected workers is burdensome to the uninfected workers.

high level of activity maintained by the uninfected workers makes them better able than infected workers to quickly disperse when the nest is attacked by a predator.

average lifespan of T. nylanderi worker ants in colonies without parasitic activity typically falls well below three years, the range covered by the study.

Colonized by Spain in the 1600s, New Mexico is home to a dialect of Spanish that differs significantly from dialects spoken in Spain’s other former colonies in the Americas. Most notably, the New Mexican dialect retains older features of the language that other dialects lost in later centuries. But why would it have done so? New Mexico was so distant from population centers in Spain’s other colonies that it attracted few colonists after its initial colonization. Geographical isolation in turn would have limited the exposure of New Mexican colonists to changes occurring to Spanish grammar and vocabulary elsewhere in the empire. Thus, the present-day uniqueness of the New Mexican dialect suggests the extent to which _____

Which choice most logically completes the text?

a language can protect itself from being influenced by other languages.

the grammar and vocabulary of any given language change from one generation to the next.

geographical isolation can influence how a language develops.

speakers of one dialect of a language can understand speakers of another dialect of that language.

Off-off-Broadway theaters emerged in the late 1950s as a rebellion against mainstream Broadway theaters in New York, freeing artists to create productions that were more experimental than typical Broadway shows. One such artist was playwright María Irene Fornés. Working with off-off Broadway theaters enabled Fornés not only to direct her own plays but also to direct them exactly as she intended them to be staged, regardless of how strange the results might have seemed to audiences accustomed to Broadway shows. In this way, Fornés _____

Which choice most logically completes the text?

wrote plays that would have been too expensive to produce if someone else had directed the production.

recognized that staging an off-off-Broadway play was more complicated than staging a Broadway play.

would have been more famous if she had created plays that were mainstream instead of experimental.

illustrates the artistic opportunity offered by off-off Broadway theaters.

The Household, Income and Labour Dynamics in Australia Survey (HILDA) examines trends in economic well-being among 25,000 people in Australia unfolding over many years. As is true of most longitudinal studies, this need for years of data collection results in high costs. By contrast, a relatively straightforward fitness study, such as one that is merely trying to identify the percentage of regular exercisers in a city who do weight training, may not need a large budget because _____

Which choice most logically completes the text?

longitudinal methods are probably suitable for the fitness study.

it would be easy for HILDA researchers to add questions to their economic well-being study.

25,000 people is more than enough for HILDA to find trends in economic well-being.

the fitness study can be done well without years of data collection.

North American gray wolves usually have mixed gray and white fur, but some members of the species have a version of a gene, or gene variant, that gives them a mostly black coat instead. Sarah Cubaynes and her team studied twelve populations of North American gray wolves. They found that the black-furred wolves are more common in areas where outbreaks of distemper virus happen regularly. The team also discovered that the black-furred wolves are more likely to be immune to distemper than the gray-furred wolves are. Taken together, these findings suggest that _____

Which choice most logically completes the text?

North American gray wolves experience more outbreaks of distemper virus than other wolf species do.

the gene variant that results in black fur may be linked to immunity to the distemper virus.

the average life span of gray wolves is likely to increase over time because of a particular gene variant.

gray-furred wolves will soon replace black-furred wolves across North America.

In the 1950s and ’60s, plant breeders created shorter varieties of wheat and rice plants with improved yields. Kelly Gillespie, Rex Bernardo, and other plant specialists are building on that work by exploring the development of shorter corn varieties. Greater height can allow individual plants to produce more ears of corn. However, greater height also makes the stalks more likely to snap or be uprooted in strong winds before the corn can be harvested. Because of this trade-off, some plant specialists suggest that shorter corn varieties will actually _____

Which choice most logically completes the text?

help improve yields of harvested corn by being more likely to survive in severe winds.

be more likely to be uprooted due to the weight of the corn on the stalks.

require more land for planting than short varieties of wheat and rice typically do.

begin developing more ears of corn on each plant than the tallest variety of corn currently does.

If some artifacts recovered from excavations of the settlement of Kuulo Kataa, in modern Ghana, date from the thirteenth century CE, that may lend credence to claims that the settlement was founded before or around that time. There is other evidence, however, strongly supporting a fourteenth century CE founding date for Kuulo Kataa. If both the artifact dates and the fourteenth century CE founding date are correct, that would imply that _____

Which choice most logically completes the text?

artifacts from the fourteenth century CE are more commonly recovered than are artifacts from the thirteenth century CE.

the artifacts originated elsewhere and eventually reached Kuulo Kataa through trade or migration.

Kuulo Kataa was founded by people from a different region than had previously been assumed.

excavations at Kuulo Kataa may have inadvertently damaged some artifacts dating to the fourteenth century CE.

Indigenous cultures possess unique knowledge of the medicinal uses of plants. According to a 2021 study, 73 percent of the medicinal uses of plants native to North America are reflected in the vocabulary of a single Indigenous language. However, as more and more Indigenous people exclusively speak a globally dominant language, such as English, their ancestral languages fade from daily use. These facts lend added importance to tribal nations’ efforts to preserve their languages. By ensuring the continued use of Cherokee, Ojibwe, and the hundreds of other Indigenous languages in what is now the United States, tribal nations are also _____.

Which choice most logically completes the text?

increasing the number of medicinal plants represented in the vocabularies of Indigenous languages.

transmitting terms for medicinal plants from Indigenous languages to globally dominant languages.

preserving knowledge about the medicinal value of plants native to the tribal nations’ lands.

ensuring that citizens of tribal nations have physical access to medicinal plants.

When the Vinland Map, a map of the world purported to date to the mid-1400s, surfaced in 1957, some scholars believed it demonstrated that European knowledge of the eastern coast of present-day North America predated Christopher Columbus’s 1492 arrival. In 2021, a team including conservators Marie-France Lemay and Paula Zyats and materials scientist Anikó Bezur performed an extensive analysis of the map and the ink used. They found that the ink contains titanium dioxide, a compound that was first introduced in ink manufacturing in the early 1900s. Therefore, the team concluded that _____

Which choice most logically completes the text?

mid-1400s Europeans could not have known about the eastern coast of present-day North America.

the Vinland Map could not have been drawn by mid-1400s mapmakers.

mapmakers must have used titanium compounds in their ink in the 1400s.

there isn’t enough information to determine when the ink was created.

It’s common for jazz musicians and fans to refer to certain songs as having “swing,” indicating that the songs provoke a strong feeling, like the impulse to tap one’s foot or dance. The exact acoustic properties that give a song swing, however, have long been thought to be undefinable. To investigate swing, a team led by physicist Corentin Nelias delayed the downbeats and synchronized the offbeats in jazz piano solos and asked jazz musicians to compare the intensity of swing in each modified piece with the intensity of swing in the original piece. They found that participants were more than seven times likelier to characterize the modified songs as having swing than to characterize the original versions as having swing, suggesting that ______

Which choice most logically completes the text?

synchronized offbeats tend to give a song swing regardless of whether downbeats are delayed.

the acoustic properties that give a song swing are not easy for jazz musicians to manipulate.

jazz songs that feature the piano are more likely to have swing than are jazz songs that do not feature the piano.

the timing of downbeats and offbeats may play a crucial role in giving a song swing.

The Indus River valley civilization flourished in South Asia from 3300 BCE to 1300 BCE. Many examples of the civilization’s writing system exist, but researchers haven’t yet deciphered it or identified which ancient language it represents. Nevertheless, archaeologists have found historical artifacts, such as clay figures and jewelry, that provide information about the civilization’s customs and how its communities were organized. The archaeologists’ findings therefore suggest that ____.

Which choice most logically completes the text?

investigating an ancient civilization is easier without knowledge of the civilization’s language.

knowing an ancient civilization’s language isn’t necessary in order to learn details about the civilization.

archaeological research should focus on finding additional artifacts rather than deciphering ancient languages.

examining the civilization’s historical artifacts has resolved the debate about this civilization’s language.

To investigate the history of plate subduction—when one of Earth’s tectonic plates slides beneath another—Sarah M. Aarons and colleagues compared ancient rocks from the Acasta Gneiss Complex in Canada to modern rocks. Using isotope analysis, the researchers found that Acasta rocks dating to about 4.02 billion years ago (bya) most strongly resemble modern rocks formed in a plume setting (an area in which hot rocks from Earth’s mantle flow upward into the crust). By contrast, they found that Acasta rocks dating to about 3.75 bya and 3.6 bya have an isotope composition that is similar to that of modern rocks formed in a subduction setting. Aarons’s team therefore concluded that ______

Which choice most logically completes the text?

subduction-like processes began occurring in some locations no later than 3.75 bya.

subduction replaced mantle plume formation as the most common geological process by about 4.02 bya.

the majority of the rocks in the Acasta Gneiss Complex formed through subduction.

the rocks in the Acasta Gneiss Complex are of a more recent origin than scientists previously thought.

Ratified by more than 90 countries, the Nagoya Protocol is an international agreement ensuring that Indigenous communities are compensated when their agricultural resources and knowledge of wild plants and animals are utilized by agricultural corporations. However, the protocol has shortcomings. For example, it allows corporations to insist that their agreements with communities to conduct research on the commercial uses of the communities’ resources and knowledge remain confidential. Therefore, some Indigenous advocates express concern that the protocol may have the unintended effect of ______

Which choice most logically completes the text?

diminishing the monetary reward that corporations might derive from their agreements with Indigenous communities.

limiting the research that corporations conduct on the resources of the Indigenous communities with which they have signed agreements.

preventing independent observers from determining whether the agreements guarantee equitable compensation for Indigenous communities.

discouraging Indigenous communities from learning new methods for harvesting plants and animals from their corporate partners.

Archaeologist Christiana Kohler and her team excavated the Egyptian tomb of Queen Merneith, the wife of a First Dynasty pharaoh. Some scholars claim that she also ruled Egypt on her own and was actually the first female pharaoh. The team found a tablet in Merneith’s tomb with writing suggesting that she was in charge of the country’s treasury and other central offices. Whether Merneith was a pharaoh or not, this discovery supports the idea that Merneith likely _____

Which choice most logically completes the text?

had an important role in Egypt’s government.

lived after rather than before the First Dynasty of Egypt.

traveled beyond Egypt’s borders often.

created a new form of writing in Egypt.

In 2016 biological anthropologist Heather F. Smith and her team investigated the evolution of the appendix, an intestinal organ that is present in some mammals, including humans, but is generally thought to have no function. Studying 533 mammal species, the team found that the appendix has emerged independently across multiple lineages in separate instances and, significantly, hasn’t disappeared after emerging in specific lineages. Moreover, the team determined that species with the organ tend to have higher concentrations of lymphoid tissue, which supports immune responses, in the cecum, the organ the appendix is attached to. Therefore, the team hypothesized that the appendix likely _____

Which choice most logically completes the text?

was once present in many nonmammal species but has since disappeared from those lineages.

has been preserved in certain mammal species because it benefits their immune systems.

will emerge in a greater number of mammal species because it may serve a necessary function in the immune system.

produced higher concentrations of lymphoid tissue in mammals in the past than it does currently.

Laura Mulvey has theorized that in narrative film, shots issuing from a protagonist’s point of view compel viewers to identify with the character. Such identification is heightened by “invisible editing,” or editing so inconspicuous that it renders cuts between shots almost unnoticeable. Conversely, Mulvey proposes that conspicuous editing or an absence of point-of-view shots would induce a more critical stance toward a protagonist. Consider, for example, the attic scene in Alfred Hitchcock’s The Birds, a conspicuously edited sequence of tens of shots, few of which correspond to the protagonist’s point of view. According to Mulvey’s logic, this scene should affect viewers by _____

Which choice most logically completes the text?

obscuring their awareness of the high degree of artifice involved in constructing the montage.

lessening their identification with the protagonist, if not alienating them from the character altogether.

compelling them to identify with the film’s director, whose proxy is the camera, and not with the protagonist.

diverting their attention away from the film’s content and toward its stylistic attributes.

Scholars are increasingly exploring the communication and preservation of ecological knowledge through Indigenous songs (e.g., Sakha songs about local ecosystems and those of the Kaluli people about rainforest sounds). In one study, ethnobiologist Dana Lepofsky et al. received insight from Kwaxsistalla Wathl’hla, a song keeper for the Kwakwaka’wakw people in Canada, into songs referencing the people’s use of terraced gardens in intertidal zones along the Pacific Northwest coast for the cultivation of clams for consumption. Archaeological evidence of significant increases in clam size and abundance in that area concurrent with the documented past implementation of the method described in the songs supports the conclusion that _____

Which choice most logically completes the text?

the practice used by ancestors of modern Kwakwaka’wakw people not only effectively maintained a food source but also promoted its robustness.

non-Indigenous people around the Pacific Northwest coast adopted the practice developed by the Kwakwaka’wakw people after observing its efficacy.

there is greater corroboration in the archaeological record of ecological practices described in Kwakwaka’wakw songs than of those described in Sakha and Kaluli songs.

although contemporary Kwakwaka’wakw people have a deep understanding of and appreciation for the fishing and farming practices used by their ancestors, they no longer implement those methods.

Even with the widespread adoption of personal computers, many authors still choose to write and revise their novels by hand and only then transcribe the final version on a computer. It may be tempting to speculate about how a novel written this way would be affected if it had been exclusively typed instead, but each novel is a unique entity resulting from a specific set of circumstances. Therefore, ______

Which choice most logically completes the text?

in order to increase their efficiency, authors who currently write their novels largely by hand should instead work only on a computer.

authors who do most of their drafting and revising by hand likely have more success than those who work entirely on a computer.

novels written by hand take less time to produce, on average, than novels written on a computer do.

there is no way to reasonably evaluate how a work would be different if it had been written by other means.

The increased integration of digital technologies throughout the process of book creation in the late 20th and early 21st centuries lowered the costs of book production, but those decreased costs have been most significant in the manufacturing and distribution process, which occurs after the authoring, editing, and design of the book are complete. This suggests that in the late 20th and early 21st centuries, _____

Which choice most logically completes the text?

digital technologies made it easier than it had been previously for authors to write very long works and get them published.

customers generally expected the cost of books to decline relative to the cost of other consumer goods.

div>publishers increased the variety of their offerings by printing more unique titles but also printed fewer copies of each title.

the costs of writing, editing, and designing a book were less affected by the technologies used than were the costs of manufacturing and distributing a book.

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?

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.

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.

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.

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.

Many animals, including humans, must sleep, and sleep is known to have a role in everything from healing injuries to encoding information in long-term memory. But some scientists claim that, from an evolutionary standpoint, deep sleep for hours at a time leaves an animal so vulnerable that the known benefits of sleeping seem insufficient to explain why it became so widespread in the animal kingdom. These scientists therefore imply that _____

Which choice most logically completes the text?

prolonged deep sleep is likely advantageous in ways that have yet to be discovered.

most traits perform functions that are hard to understand from an evolutionary standpoint.

it is more important to understand how widespread prolonged deep sleep is than to understand its function.

many traits that provide significant benefits for an animal also likely pose risks to that animal.

The Haitian Declaration of Independence was issued in 1804, bringing to an end the revolution against colonial France that began in 1791. Written in French, which was not the first language of most Haitians but which was used throughout Europe as the language of international diplomacy, the declaration notes that Haiti will not bring rebellion to other Caribbean nations, promises to respect the sovereignty of its neighbors—widely understood as a reassurance to the United States—and sets up Haiti as an example for future struggles against colonizers (an implicit reference to the many colonies then found in the Americas). So even though the declaration is explicitly addressed to the Haitian people, it’s reasonable to conclude that ______.

Which choice most logically completes the text?

aspects of the declaration were modeled on similar documents from other countries.

the French government may have been surprised by the declaration.

many Haitian people opposed the revolution and the declaration.

the declaration actually had several intended audiences.

Researchers Suchithra Rajendran and Maximilian Popfinger modeled varying levels of passenger redistribution from short-haul flights (flights of 50 to 210 minutes, from takeoff to landing) to high-speed rail trips. Planes travel faster than trains, but air travel typically requires 3 hours of lead time for security, baggage handling, and boarding that rail travel doesn’t, so short-haul routes take similar amounts of time by air and by rail. However, the model suggests that as rail passenger volumes approach current capacity limits, long lead times emerge. Therefore, for rail to remain a viable alternative to short-haul flights, _____

Which choice most logically completes the text?

rail systems should offer fewer long-haul routes and airlines should offer more long-haul routes.

rail systems may need to schedule additional trains for these routes.

security, baggage handling, and boarding procedures used by airlines may need to be implemented for rail systems.

passengers who travel by rail for these routes will need to accept that lead times will be similar to those for air travel.

Euphorbia esula (leafy spurge) is a Eurasian plant that has become invasive in North America, where it displaces native vegetation and sickens cattle. E. esula can be controlled with chemical herbicides, but that approach can also kill harmless plants nearby. Recent research on introducing engineered DNA into plant species to inhibit their reproduction may offer a path toward exclusively targeting E. esula, consequently _____

Which choice most logically completes the text?

making individual E. esula plants more susceptible to existing chemical herbicides.

enhancing the ecological benefits of E. esula in North America.

enabling cattle to consume E. esula without becoming sick.

reducing invasive E. esula numbers without harming other organisms.

An analysis by Alain Elayi and colleagues of coins minted in Sidon in the fifth and fourth centuries BCE reveals a change in their composition over time: while a coin from circa 450 BCE contains about 98% silver and 1% copper, a coin from 367 BCE (the end of Ba’alšillem II’s reign) contains 74.2% silver and 24.7% copper, giving it a relatively yellowish appearance that traders would have noticed. Because coins with a silver content below 80% were widely considered unsuitable for trade, Elayi et al. speculate that a crisis in confidence in the currency occurred in Sidon around 367 BCE, which was likely relieved—despite Sidon’s persistent oppressive financial obligations—as a result of Ba’alšillem II’s successor Abd’astart I’s decision to ______.

Which choice most logically completes the text?

proclaim that the percentage of silver in coins suitable for trade would be raised to a threshold higher than 80%.

keep the amount of silver in Sidonian coins consistent with that in coins minted in 367 BCE but decrease their weight.

begin minting heavier coins with a proportion of silver to copper similar to that in coins minted in 367 BCE.

fund the mining of some copper deposits that were not available to Ba’alšillem II.

The Nacional tree is a rare variety of cacao. Nacionals were thought to have gone extinct by the twentieth century due to a fungus. This fungus can spread from tree to nearby tree through the air and causes disease. But around 2013, cacao expert Servio Pachard located some of these Nacional trees. The trees were in the Piedra de Plata coastal forest, within a hard-to-reach valley in Ecuador. Conservationists inferred that the Nacional trees in Piedra de Plata might have avoided the diseases that wiped out the other Nacionals because _____

Which choice most logically completes the text?

early twentieth-century scientists did not know why so many Nacionals were becoming infected.

the ability of the fungus to travel through the air was only recently discovered.

they were too far from the other Nacional trees infected by the fungus to become infected themselves.

the chocolate made from their pods was highly valued.

Overgrazing by purple sea urchins has caused many kelp forests along North America’s west coast to be replaced by urchin barrens—areas stripped of vegetation and covered in purple sea urchins. Urchins in barrens persist in a state of starvation that lessens their nutritional value—and thus their appeal—to many predators. Sarah Gravem and colleagues placed sunflower sea stars, a once-abundant predator species suffering massive population declines in recent years, in aquariums that each contained a nutritionally poor and a nutritionally rich purple sea urchin. The researchers found that the sea stars selected the nutritionally rich urchin in 42.7% of trials and the nutritionally poor urchin in 37.5% of trials, suggesting that ______.
Which choice most logically completes the text?

sunflower sea stars are willing to hunt sea urchins, but if given a choice, they will prey on other more nutritious marine animals instead.

sunflower sea stars are reluctant to feed on both nutritionally poor and nutritionally rich sea urchins and are therefore unlikely to thrive in kelp forests.

sunflower sea stars are less likely to consume sea urchins in barrens than other species of sea stars are, putting sunflower sea stars at a high risk of extinction.

sunflower sea stars do not always avoid foraging on nutritionally poor sea urchins, making sunflower sea star population recovery a potentially important tool for controlling urchin barrens.

Henry Ossawa Tanner’s 1893 painting The Banjo Lesson, which depicts an elderly man teaching a boy to play the banjo, is regarded as a landmark in the history of works by Black artists in the United States. Scholars should be cautious when ascribing political or ideological values to the painting, however: beliefs and assumptions that are commonly held now may have been unfamiliar to Tanner and his contemporaries, and vice versa. Scholars who forget this fact when discussing The Banjo Lesson therefore _____
Which choice most logically completes the text?

risk judging Tanner’s painting by standards that may not be historically appropriate.

tend to conflate Tanner’s political views with those of his contemporaries.

forgo analyzing Tanner’s painting in favor of analyzing his political activity.

wrongly assume that Tanner’s painting was intended as a critique of his fellow artists.

In many cultures, a handshake can create trust between people. Engineer João Avelino and his team are designing a robot to shake hands with a human in order to improve human-robot interactions. The robot hand adjusts its movements and pressure to better imitate the feel of a human hand. The researchers want the robot’s handshake to feel realistic because _____
Which choice most logically completes the text?

lifelike handshakes may make people more comfortable interacting with robots.

it’s easier to program a robot to perform handshakes than it is to program a robot to perform some other types of greetings.

people are less likely to interact with robots that don’t look like humans.

the robot in the researchers’ study may have uses other than interacting with humans.

In a study of the cognitive abilities of white-faced capuchin monkeys (Cebus imitator), researchers neglected to control for the physical difficulty of the tasks they used to evaluate the monkeys. The cognitive abilities of monkeys given problems requiring little dexterity, such as sliding a panel to retrieve food, were judged by the same criteria as were those of monkeys given physically demanding problems, such as unscrewing a bottle and inserting a straw. The results of the study, therefore, _____
Which choice most logically completes the text?

could suggest that there are differences in cognitive ability among the monkeys even though such differences may not actually exist.

are useful for identifying tasks that the monkeys lack the cognitive capacity to perform but not for identifying tasks that the monkeys can perform.

should not be taken as indicative of the cognitive abilities of any monkey species other than $C.\ imitator$.

reveal more about the monkeys’ cognitive abilities when solving artificial problems than when solving problems encountered in the wild.

Parthenogenesis is a form of reproduction in which a female reproduces without mating. She produces an egg containing a single offspring whose DNA, or genetic material, comes entirely from its mother. Among birds, parthenogenesis has been found in a handful of species, including pigeons and turkeys. When scientists at the San Diego Zoo analyzed the DNA of the zoo’s California condors (a species of vulture), they discovered that two individuals weren’t genetically similar enough to any of the males in the condor enclosure to be their offspring. However, both had hatched from eggs laid by females in the enclosure. Thus, the scientists concluded that _____
Which choice most logically completes the text?

at least one of those individuals’ mothers was born as a result of parthenogenesis.

California condors may reproduce through parthenogenesis in zoos but not in the wild.

the mothers of the two individuals probably reproduced through parthenogenesis.

California condors reproduce through parthenogenesis only if females lack sufficient access to males.

A team of biologists led by Jae-Hoon Jung, Antonio D. Barbosa, and Stephanie Hutin investigated the mechanism that allows Arabidopsis thaliana (thale cress) plants to accelerate flowering at high temperatures. They replaced the protein ELF3 in the plants with a similar protein found in another species (stiff brome) that, unlike A. thaliana, displays no acceleration in flowering with increased temperature. A comparison of unmodified A. thaliana plants with the altered plants showed no difference in flowering at 22° Celsius, but at 27° Celsius, the unmodified plants exhibited accelerated flowering while the altered ones did not, which suggests that _____
Which choice most logically completes the text?

temperature-sensitive accelerated flowering is unique to A. thaliana.

A. thaliana increases ELF3 production as temperatures rise.

ELF3 enables A. thaliana to respond to increased temperatures.

temperatures of at least 22° Celsius are required for A. thaliana to flower.

A heliograph is a semaphore device used for sending optical communications—usually in the form of Morse code—by reflecting flashes of sunlight off a mirror. Heliographs were used for rapid communication across expansive distances for military, surveying, and forestry purposes during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, but they were largely effective only during the daytime, and the range of the device depended on factors such as the opacity of the air and line of sight. Therefore, heliographs were eventually replaced by technology that _____
Which choice most logically completes the text?

worked on similar principles but was easier to produce and maintain.

was not so constrained by environmental circumstances.

could be used for more than military, surveying, or forestry purposes.

enabled communication that didn’t require knowledge of Morse code.

The widespread use of social media enables linguists to study changes in language usage in real time. A notable recent example is the proliferation of the affix meng- among speakers of Bahasa Indonesia, the official language of Indonesia. Linguists observed meng- originate as an onomatopoetic tag that social-media users applied to images of cats they posted; over time, users increasingly applied it as a prefix to existing words (e.g., mengsedih affixes meng- to the word for sad) in text that they posted. From there, it has begun to move into spoken Bahasa Indonesia. Linguists have noted many similar examples of this phenomenon occurring in other languages, suggesting that social media ______
Which choice most logically completes the text?

is more useful for studying informal language than for studying formal or official language.

appears to be exerting an exceptionally strong influence on the evolution of Bahasa Indonesia.

may give linguists a somewhat misleading sense of how languages are changing.

does not merely register changes in language usage but can facilitate such changes.

Martin Dančák, Wewin Tjiasmanto, and colleagues have identified a new carnivorous plant species (Nepenthes pudica) in Indonesia. Like other carnivorous plants, $N.\ pudica$ has pitfall traps, or pitchers, that capture prey, but unlike others, the pitchers of $N.\ pudica$ are located underground. The researchers unearthed the new species on fairly dry ridges with surfaces that host few other plants and animals. Therefore, the researchers hypothesize that the $N.\ pudica$ species likely _____
Which choice most logically completes the text?

represents one of many undiscovered carnivorous plant species in the region.

formed pitchers early in development to absorb more moisture.

is buried by nearby animals as they forage along the ridges for food.

evolved to have underground traps to access more prey than would surface traps.

By running computer simulations of the development of our solar system, André Izidoro, Rajdeep Dasgupta, and colleagues concluded that the Sun may have been surrounded by three giant dust rings before the planets started to form. The researchers suggest that the materials in the innermost ring became the four planets closest to the Sun, the materials in the middle ring produced the rest of the planets, and the materials in the outermost ring created the asteroids and other small bodies in the region beyond Neptune. In one simulation, the researchers delayed the initial formation of the middle ring, causing oversized super-Earths to begin developing from the innermost ring. The researchers therefore hypothesize that _____
Which choice most logically completes the text?

the middle ring formed earlier in the solar system’s development than the initial simulations suggested.

the timing of the initial formation of the middle ring played an important role in determining the eventual size of Earth.

if the formation of the outermost ring had occurred earlier in a simulation, all the planets would have become super-Earths.

the innermost ring actually formed into all the planets in our solar system, not just the four closest to the Sun.

The Uto-Aztecan language family is divided into a northern branch, which includes the Shoshone language of present-day Idaho and Utah, and a southern one, whose best-known representative is Nahuatl, the language of the Aztec Empire in Mexico. Lexical similarities across the family, including of botanical terms, confirm descent from a single language spoken millennia ago, and the family’s geographical distribution suggests an origin in what is now the US Southwest. However, vocabulary pertaining to maize isn’t shared between northern and southern branches, despite the crop’s universal cultivation among Uto-Aztecan tribes. Given archaeological evidence that maize originated in Mexico and diffused northward into what became the US Southwest, some linguists reason that _____
Which choice most logically completes the text?

northern Uto-Aztecan tribes likely obtained the crop directly from a southern Uto-Aztecan tribe rather than from a non-Uto-Aztecan tribe.

variation in maize-related vocabulary within each branch of the Uto-Aztecan family likely reflects regionally specific methods for cultivating the crop.

southern Uto-Aztecan tribes likely acquired maize at roughly the same time as northern Uto-Aztecan tribes did, though from different sources.

the family’s division into northern and southern branches likely preceded the acquisition of the crop by the Uto-Aztecan tribes.

Tatiana R. Feuerborn and colleagues analyzed the genomes of more than a hundred domesticated dogs from sites in Siberia dating from 11,000 years ago to the present. They found that the dogs constituted a genetically isolated population of Arctic breeds until approximately 2,000 years ago, at which point there was substantial interbreeding with Near Eastern dog breeds. Furthermore, beginning around 2,000 years ago, some sites contain artifacts consistent with a Near East origin, like glass beads, but the people show no evidence of having traveled extensively outside Siberia. From this, Feuerborn and colleagues concluded that around 2,000 years ago _____
Which choice most logically completes the text?

dogs and artifacts like glass beads began to be transported from the Near East to Siberia.

people from Siberia began to reach the Near East, where they acquired dogs and artifacts such as glass beads.

glass beads and other artifacts from the Near East began to be exchanged for dogs from Siberia.

dogs from the Near East began to be exchanged for glass beads and other artifacts from Siberia.

Ancestral Puebloans, the civilization from which present-day Pueblo tribes descended, emerged as early as 1500 B.C.E. in an area of what is now the southwestern United States and dispersed suddenly in the late 1200s C.E., abandoning established villages with systems for farming crops and turkeys. Recent analysis comparing turkey remains at Mesa Verde, one such village in southern Colorado, to samples from modern turkey populations in the Rio Grande Valley of north central New Mexico determined that the latter birds descended in part from turkeys cultivated at Mesa Verde, with shared genetic markers appearing only after 1280. Thus, researchers concluded that _____
Which choice most logically completes the text?

conditions of the terrains in the Rio Grande Valley and Mesa Verde had greater similarities in the past than they do today.

some Ancestral Puebloans migrated to the Rio Grande Valley in the late 1200s and carried farming practices with them.

Indigenous peoples living in the Rio Grande Valley primarily planted crops and did not cultivate turkeys before 1280.

the Ancestral Puebloans of Mesa Verde likely adopted the farming practices of Indigenous peoples living in other regions.

Birds of many species ingest foods containing carotenoids, pigmented molecules that are converted into feather coloration. Coloration tends to be especially saturated in male birds’ feathers, and because carotenoids also confer health benefits, the deeply saturated colors generally serve to communicate what is known as an honest signal of a bird’s overall fitness to potential mates. However, ornithologist Allison J. Shultz and others have found that males in several species of the tanager genus $Ramphocelus$ use microstructures in their feathers to manipulate light, creating the appearance of deeper saturation without the birds necessarily having to maintain a carotenoid-rich diet. These findings suggest that _____
Which choice most logically completes the text?

individual male tanagers can engage in honest signaling without relying on carotenoid consumption.

feather microstructures may be less effective than deeply saturated feathers for signaling overall fitness.

scientists have yet to determine why tanagers have a preference for mates with colorful appearances.

a male tanager’s appearance may function as a dishonest signal of the individual’s overall fitness.

Among social animals that care for their young, such as chickens, macaque monkeys, and humans, newborns appear to show an innate attraction to faces and face-like stimuli. Elisabetta Versace and her colleagues used an image of three black dots arranged in the shape of eyes and a nose or mouth to test whether this trait also occurs in $Testudo$ tortoises, which live alone and do not engage in parental care. They found that tortoise hatchlings showed a significant preference for the image, suggesting that _____
Which choice most logically completes the text?

face-like stimuli are likely perceived as harmless by newborns of social species that practice parental care but as threatening by newborns of solitary species without parental care.

researchers should not assume that an innate attraction to face-like stimuli is necessarily an adaptation related to social interaction or parental care.

researchers can assume that the attraction to face-like stimuli that is seen in social species that practice parental care is learned rather than innate.

newly hatched $Testudo$ tortoises show a stronger preference for face-like stimuli than adult $Testudo$ tortoises do.

Aerogels are highly porous foams consisting mainly of tiny air pockets within a solidified gel. These lightweight materials are often applied to spacecraft and other equipment required to withstand extreme conditions, as they provide excellent insulation despite typically being brittle and eventually fracturing due to degradation from repeated exposure to high heat. Now, Xiangfeng Duan of the University of California, Los Angeles, and colleagues have developed an aerogel with uniquely flexible properties. Unlike earlier aerogels, Duan’s team’s material contracts rather than expands when heated and fully recovers after compressing to just 5% of its original volume, suggesting that _____
Which choice most logically completes the text?

the aerogel’s remarkable flexibility results from its higher proportion of air pockets to solidified gel as compared to other aerogels.

the aerogel’s overall strength is greater than that of other insulators but its ability to withstand exposure to intense heat is lower.

the aerogel will be more effective as an insulator for uses that involve gradual temperature shifts than for those that involve rapid heat increases.

the aerogel will be less prone to the structural weakness that ultimately causes most other aerogels to break down with use.

In the South Pacific, New Caledonian crows use two different kinds of stick tools. One tool is complex. The crows shape a stick from a rare plant into a hook. The other tool is basic. The crows find a stick without a hook on the ground. The hooked tool is harder to get but is much better than the basic tool at removing prey from holes. When studying New Caledonian crows, ecologist Barbara Klump found that they hold the hooked tools in their claws when not using them, or they carefully put them in a safe place. The crows don’t do the same with the basic tools. This suggests to Klump that the ______
Which choice most logically completes the text?

hooked stick tools are more valuable to the crows than the stick tools without hooks.

hooked stick tools are easier for most of the crows to hold than the stick tools without hooks.

crows prefer to share their hooked stick tools but don’t share the stick tools without hooks.

crows realize that both kinds of stick tools are less effective than their claws are at removing prey from holes.

The Younger Dryas was a period of extreme cooling from 11,700 to 12,900 years ago in the Northern Hemisphere. Some scientists argue that a comet fragment hitting Earth brought about the cooling. Others disagree, partly because there is no known crater from such an impact that dates to the beginning of the period. In 2015, a team led by Kurt Kjær detected a 19-mile-wide crater beneath a glacier in Greenland. The scientists who believe an impact caused the Younger Dryas claim that this discovery supports their view. However, Kjær’s team hasn’t yet been able to determine the age of the crater. Therefore, the team suggests that _____
Which choice most logically completes the text?

it can’t be concluded that the impact that made the crater was connected to the beginning of the Younger Dryas.

it can’t be determined whether a comet fragment could make a crater as large as 19 miles wide.

scientists have ignored the possibility that something other than a comet fragment could have made the crater.

the scientists who believe an impact caused the Younger Dryas have made incorrect assumptions about when the period began.

In documents called judicial opinions, judges explain the reasoning behind their legal rulings, and in those explanations they sometimes cite and discuss historical and contemporary philosophers. Legal scholar and philosopher Anita L. Allen argues that while judges are naturally inclined to mention philosophers whose views align with their own positions, the strongest judicial opinions consider and rebut potential objections; discussing philosophers whose views conflict with judges’ views could therefore _____
Which choice most logically completes the text?

allow judges to craft judicial opinions without needing to consult philosophical works.

help judges improve the arguments they put forward in their judicial opinions.

make judicial opinions more comprehensible to readers without legal or philosophical training.

bring judicial opinions in line with views that are broadly held among philosophers.

Georgia Douglas Johnson wrote many plays in the 1920s and 1930s. At the time, professional theater companies rarely put on plays by Black women, so few of Johnson’s plays made it to the stage. Only a small number of her plays were published in her lifetime. But that doesn’t mean that Johnson never learned what other people thought of her plays. Johnson hosted weekly get-togethers for fellow Black writers and artists in her Washington, D.C., home. Attendees would read and discuss one another’s work, including Johnson’s own. These gatherings could therefore serve as ____
Which choice most logically completes the text?

an occasion for professional theater companies to put on plays.

an opportunity for Johnson to get feedback on her plays.

a way for Johnson to learn about plays that were produced in other cities.

subject matter for future plays by Johnson.

Many mosquito repellents contain natural components that work by activating multiple odor receptors on mosquitoes’ antennae. As the insects develop resistance, new repellents are needed. Ke Dong and her team found that EBF, a molecular component of a chrysanthemum-flower extract, can repel mosquitoes by activating just one odor receptor—and this receptor, Or31, is present in all mosquito species known to carry diseases. Therefore, the researchers suggest that in developing new repellents, it would be most useful to ______
Which choice most logically completes the text?

identify molecular components similar to EBF that target the activation of Or31 receptors.

investigate alternative methods for extracting EBF molecules from chrysanthemums.

verify the precise locations of Or31 and other odor receptors on mosquitoes’ antennae.

determine the maximum number of different odor receptors that can be activated by a single molecule.

During their larval phase, numerous species of coral reef fish are drawn toward areas where light is present. To better understand how artificial light at night (ALAN) might affect some coral reef fish, researchers explored the effect of exposure to low levels of ALAN on the reproductive success of the common clownfish (Amphiprion ocellaris). While exposure to low levels of ALAN had no significant effect on spawning frequency and egg fertilization in A. ocellaris, incubation in the presence of ALAN completely inhibited hatching. These findings suggest that _____
Which choice most logically completes the text?

A. ocellaris that settle in areas with low levels of ALAN have significantly higher rates of successful egg fertilization than A. ocellaris that settle in areas without ALAN do.

the reproductive success of A. ocellaris would be at risk if they were to selectively settle in regions that are regularly exposed to low levels of ALAN.

the reproductive success of A. ocellaris is more greatly affected by the presence of low levels of ALAN during incubation than the reproductive success of other species of coral reef fish is.

the spawning frequency of A. ocellaris was more strongly affected by the presence of low levels of ALAN than egg fertilization was, though both were less affected than incubation.

Silicon-based photovoltaic cells account for 95% of the cells used in solar panels worldwide despite converting an average of only 18–22% of the sunlight that reaches them. In a study addressing this relative inefficiency, a team led by Laura Miranda-Pérez demonstrated that the addition of a thin layer of the mineral perovskite—which captures the blue range of light in the solar spectrum, whereas silicon captures the red range—allows the cells to convert 29.5% or more of the Sun’s energy into usable electricity. Cells made with only perovskite, however, are no more efficient than silicon-based ones. It’s reasonable to conclude, then, that ______
Which choice most logically completes the text?

photovoltaic cells with both silicon and perovskite are more efficient because they make use of more of the solar spectrum.

photovoltaic cells with only perovskite and no silicon would likely convert more than 29.5% of the Sun’s energy.

solar power will remain elusive until photovoltaic cells are replaced with a more practical technology.

researchers need to evaluate whether other minerals like perovskite are as effective as perovskite seems to be.

Marine archaeologists have found much of the wooden hull of a sixteenth-century ship in a flooded quarry in southeast England. When it is exposed to air and water, wood rots quickly unless it is protected by sediment that shields it from oxygen. Therefore, the discovered ship was likely _____
Which choice most logically completes the text?

covered by a protective sediment layer in the quarry.

one of several other ships buried in the same quarry.

a confirmation of previous theories about the type of wood that was used in sixteenth-century ships.

first constructed much earlier than previously thought.

Pigments give paints and dyes their color. Ocher is a mineral-based pigment used to make several colors, including red. Red ocher gets its color from iron oxide. Pigments can also be plant-based; plant-based pigments contain a high level of carbon. In a 2023 study, archaeologists tested the red pigment on decorated beads made by members of the Natufian culture approximately 15,000 years ago. The test showed that the pigment found on several beads contained no iron but had a high level of carbon. This finding led the researchers to conclude that _____
Which choice most logically completes the text?

the Natufian beads examined in the study are the oldest surviving examples of the use of plant-based pigments for decorating beads.

the Natufian beadmakers used plant-based pigments rather than ocher to decorate some of the beads examined in the study.

the Natufian beadmakers preferred to use plant-based pigments because they are much brighter than mineral-based pigments are.

the pigments used by the Natufian beadmakers likely came from plants because ocher was difficult to find.

If an animal has been extinct for a long time, how can scientists learn what color it was? One group of scientists came up with a possible answer. When the scientists examined the fossilized feather of an extinct bird, they found melanosomes in it. Melanosomes produce pigment, or grains of color, inside cells. Because melanosomes are shaped differently depending on which colors they produce, the scientists hypothesized that they could _____
Which choice most logically completes the text?

show how melanosomes can be found in fossils belonging to animals from other extinct species.

determine the colors of the bird based on the appearance of the melanosomes in the feather.

explain why the melanosomes in the feather were so well preserved.

identify the colors of extinct animals whose fossils lack melanosomes.

Alice Guy-Blaché directed hundreds of films between 1896 and 1920. She wanted audiences to feel like they were watching real people on screen. She would encourage actors in her films to behave naturally. Guy-Blaché even hung a large sign reading “Be Natural” in the studio where she made her films. At the time, films lacked sound, so actors needed to rely solely on their bodies and facial expressions to convey emotions. As a result, actors tended to highly exaggerate their actions and expressions. The style of acting in Guy-Blaché’s films was therefore _____
Which choice most logically completes the text?

copied by many of Guy-Blaché’s peers.

familiar to actors who had worked on other directors’ films.

very unusual for the period.

better than film acting today.

Volunteering, or giving time for a community service for free, is a valuable form of civic engagement because helping in a community is also good for society as a whole. In a survey of youths in the United States, most young people said that they believe volunteering is a way to help people on an individual level. Meanwhile, only 6% of the youths said that they think volunteering is a way to help fix problems in society overall. These replies suggest that _____
Which choice most logically completes the text?

many young people think they can volunteer only within their own communities.

volunteering may be even more helpful than many young people think it is.

volunteering can help society overall more than it can help individual people.

many young people may not know how to find ways to volunteer their time.

Tides can deposit large quantities of dead vegetation within a salt marsh, smothering healthy plants and leaving a salt panne—a depression devoid of plants that tends to trap standing water—in the marsh’s interior. Ecologist Kathryn Beheshti and colleagues found that burrowing crabs living within these pannes improve drainage by loosening the soil, leading the pannes to shrink as marsh plants move back in. At salt marsh edges, however, crab-induced soil loosening can promote marsh loss by accelerating erosion, suggesting that the burrowing action of crabs ______
Which choice most logically completes the text?

can be beneficial to marshes with small pannes but can be harmful to marshes with large pannes.

may promote increases in marsh plants or decreases in marsh plants, depending on the crabs’ location.

tends to be more heavily concentrated in areas of marsh interiors with standing water than at marsh edges.

varies in intensity depending on the size of the panne relative to the size of the surrounding marsh.

Zines are small-scale, self-printed magazines. They have been around since the Black literary zine Fire!! was created in the 1920s. Since then, zines have appealed to creators looking for an inexpensive form of expression to share with a select audience. Zine creators often mix art with social commentary and challenge mainstream culture. At first, the internet appeared to replace the zine, but this old form persists. Today, there are enough zines in the United States to support annual zine festivals. This suggests that _____
Which choice most logically completes the text?

creators can reach a larger audience by posting online.

zines are still a meaningful form of expression.

creators can continue to explore new art forms.

zines are good sources of mainstream culture.

To create the poems in her 2017 collection One Last Word, poet Nikki Grimes used a writing method called the golden shovel. This method often involves choosing a line from an existing poem and then using each word from that line as the last word of each line in a new poem. Grimes wanted the poems in One Last Word to honor important Black poets of the past, so she chose lines by poets such as Langston Hughes and Georgia Douglas Johnson. Writing in this way can be challenging and might seem as though it would produce awkward poems. However, reviewers praised One Last Word as a beautiful and powerful tribute to the poets who inspired it. This reaction suggests that _____
Which choice most logically completes the text?

most reviewers didn’t understand Grimes’s goal for One Last Word.

Grimes successfully used the golden shovel method to achieve her goal for One Last Word.

Langston Hughes and Georgia Douglas Johnson are two of Grimes’s favorite poets.

Grimes inspired many other writers to create poems using the golden shovel method.

Astronomers investigated the Arabia Terra region of Mars because it appears to contain irregularly shaped craters that may have been caused by massive volcanic explosions. In their investigations of Arabia Terra, the researchers found remnants of ash deposits in an amount and thickness that would result from a massive volcanic eruption. However, erosion and past resurfacing events could have modified the surface of the planet. Therefore, ______
Which choice most logically completes the text?

the current makeup of the Arabia Terra region might not accurately reflect the volcanic activity of Mars’s past.

eruptions from Mars’s volcanoes were likely not as massive as astronomers previously believed.

ash was most likely expelled from multiple different volcanoes on Mars’s surface.

the craters found in the Arabia Terra region were necessarily created by events other than volcanic eruptions.

The ancient Sumerian civilization formed around 4000 BCE between two large rivers in an area that is now Iraq and Syria. The extremely hot and sunny weather in that area helped crops grow very quickly, but it also made it hard to keep the crops from drying up and dying. So, the Sumerians used water from the rivers in their farming. That method worked so well that they often could harvest even more crops than they needed in a season. As a result, the Sumerians ____.
Which choice most logically completes the text?

harvested crops only on the hottest days of each season.

found ways to shield their crops from the sun.

did not begin farming until long after 4000 BCE.

were able to store extra crops for later use.

Red velvet cake has been a favorite dessert of many for years, but the recipe’s origins are unclear. A bakery in Dallas, Texas, argued that it created the first recipe for the cake when the bakery opened in the 1860s. The Adams Extract Co., which sells baking products, claims to have created the recipe in the 1930s to help market their red dye. A US hotel and a Canadian department store also publicly stated that the red velvet cake sold in each of their establishments in the 1930s was an original creation, each alleging that it was the recipe author. No clear evidence has emerged to favor one of these claims over the others, however. It thus seems that _____

Which choice most logically completes the text?

red velvet cake was first baked sometime before the 1860s.

we cannot say at present who actually baked the first red velvet cake.

none of the supposed inventors of red velvet cake are likely to have invented it.

the bakery in Dallas, Texas, probably invented red velvet cake.

Compiled in the late 1500s largely through the efforts of Indigenous scribes, Cantares Mexicanos is the most important collection of poetry in Classical Nahuatl, the principal language of the Aztec Empire. The poems portray Aztec society before the occupation of the empire by the army of Spain, and marginal notes in Cantares Mexicanos indicate that much of the collection’s content predates the initial invasion. Nonetheless, some of the poems contain inarguable references to beliefs and customs common in Spain during this era. Thus, some scholars have concluded that _____

Which choice most logically completes the text?

while its content largely predates the invasion, Cantares Mexicanos also contains additions made after the invasion.

although those who compiled Cantares Mexicanos were fluent in Nahuatl, they had limited knowledge of the Spanish language.

before the invasion by Spain, the poets of the Aztec Empire borrowed from the literary traditions of other societies.

the references to beliefs and customs in Spain should be attributed to a coincidental resemblance between the societies of Spain and the Aztec Empire.

Aptamers—synthetic DNA or RNA molecules that bind to target molecules—can be used to test for foodborne bacterial pathogens, though their specificity (the probability of returning a negative result in the absence of the focal pathogen) in real-world foods has been unclear. Sandeep Somvanshi et al. fabricated test paper incorporating aptamers targeting strain O157:H7 of the bacteria Escherichia coli; the paper shifts from pink to purple as the aptamers bind to target molecules. Somvanshi et al. tested the paper in store-bought pear juice they treated with E. coli O157:H7, other strains of E. coli, or other bacteria species. Following exposure, the paper from the O157:H7 test was purple while papers from the other tests were pink, suggesting that _____

Which choice most logically completes the text?

aptamer-based tests in real-world foods are more likely to show a high degree of specificity if the focal pathogen is E. coli O157:H7 than if the focal pathogen is another strain of E. coli or another species.

uncertainty about the specificity of aptamer-based tests for pathogens in real-world foods may be due to the similarity between E. coli O157:H7 and other E. coli strains.

the specificity of the tests in a real-world food was unaffected by the aptamers’ tendency to bind to different strains of E. coli.

the aptamers successfully bound to E. coli O157:H7 and the tests displayed a high degree of specificity in a real-world food.

Narwhals are shy whales that live in the remote Arctic Ocean. Some of them have a long tusk, like a unicorn horn, with sensitive nerves. Narwhals are known for this tusk, but many actually don’t have one and its purpose is unknown. One group of scientists came up with a possible purpose in 2014. The scientists suggested that the tusk may help narwhals determine when water around them is likely to start freezing and become dangerous for them. Marine biologist Kristin Laidre disagrees with that idea, though. She reasons that if the narwhal’s tusk serves such an important purpose, then it’s most likely that ______.

Which choice most logically completes the text?

some narwhals would seek a new habitat.

fewer marine animals would also have tusks.

more narwhals would have a tusk.

narwhals would become less shy over time.

“Gestures” in painting are typically thought of as bold, expressive brushstrokes. In the 1970s, American painter Jack Whitten built a 12-foot (3.7-meter) tool he named the “developer” to apply paint to an entire canvas in one motion, resulting in his series of “slab” paintings from that decade. Whitten described this process as making an entire painting in “one gesture,” signaling a clear departure from the prevalence of gestures in his work from the 1960s. Some art historians claim this shift represents “removing gesture” from the process. Therefore, regardless of whether using the developer constitutes a gesture, both Whitten and these art historians likely agree that _____

Which choice most logically completes the text?

any tool that a painter uses to create an artwork is capable of creating gestures.

Whitten’s work from the 1960s exhibits many more gestures than his work from the 1970s does.

Whitten became less interested in exploring the role of gesture in his work as his career progressed.

Whitten’s work from the 1960s is much more realistic than his work from the 1970s is.

In dialects of English spoken in Scotland, the “r” sound is strongly emphasized when it appears at the end of syllables (as in “car”) or before other consonant sounds (as in “bird”). English dialects of the Upland South, a region stretching from Oklahoma to western Virginia, place similar emphasis on “r” at the ends of syllables and before other consonant sounds. Historical records show that the Upland South was colonized largely by people whose ancestors came from Scotland. Thus, linguists have concluded that _____

Which choice most logically completes the text?

the English dialects spoken in the Upland South acquired their emphasis on the “r” sound from dialects spoken in Scotland.

emphasis on the “r” sound will eventually spread from English dialects spoken in the Upland South to dialects spoken elsewhere.

the English dialects spoken in Scotland were influenced by dialects spoken in the Upland South.

people from Scotland abandoned their emphasis on the “r” sound after relocating to the Upland South.