Test practice 5

Question 1

In editor Lisa Yaszek’s introduction to her anthology The Future Is Female! More Classic Science Fiction Stories by Women, Yaszek identifies an increasing sense of ______blank feminist mode of writing in the 1970s, in contrast to many woman-authored science fiction stories of the 1920s to 1960s whose politics were less deliberately signaled.

Question 3 Answers

Which choice completes the text with the most logical and precise word or phrase?

A. a prudently
B. an overtly
C. a cordially
D. an inadvertently

Answer 1

Choice B is the best answer because it most logically completes the text’s discussion of Yaszek’s introduction to her science fiction anthology. In this context “overtly” means openly or without concealment.

Question 2

K.D. Leka and colleagues found that the Sun’s corona provides an advance indication of solar flares—intense eruptions of electromagnetic radiation that emanate from active regions in the Sun’s photosphere and can interfere with telecommunications on Earth. Preceding a flare, the corona temporarily exhibits increased brightness above the region where the flare is ______blank.

Question 4 Answers

Which choice completes the text with the most logical and precise word or phrase?

A.antecedent
B.impending
C.innocuous
D.perpetual

Answer 2

Choice B is the best answer because it most logically completes the text’s discussion of advance indications of solar flares. In this context the word “impending” means imminent or approaching.

Question 3

To understand how Paleolithic artists navigated dark caves, archaeologist Mª Ángeles Medina-Alcaide and her team tested different lighting methods in a cave in Spain using replicas of artifacts found in European caves with art. They used three different Paleolithic light sources—torches, animal-fat lamps, and fireplaces—determining that each likely had a specific purpose. For instance, the team learned that the animal-fat lamps were less useful than torches while walking because the lamps didn’t illuminate the cave floor.

Question 9 Answers

Which choice best states the main idea of the text?

A.
Medina-Alcaide and her team’s study demonstrated that fireplaces were essential to the creators of Paleolithic cave art.

B.
Medina-Alcaide and her team discovered that Paleolithic cave artists in Spain used animal-fat lamps more often than they used torches.

C.
Medina-Alcaide and her team were reluctant to draw many conclusions from their study because of the difficulty they had replicating light sources based on known artifacts.

D.
Medina-Alcaide and her team tested Paleolithic light sources and learned some details about how Paleolithic artists traveled within dark caves.

Answer 3

Choice D is the best answer because it most accurately states the main idea of the text.

Question 4

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, ______blank

Question 13 Answers

Which choice most logically completes the text?

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

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

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

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

Answer 4

Choice D is the best answer because it presents the conclusion that most logically follows from the text’s discussion of the means authors use to write and revise their novels.

Question 5

Behavioral ecologists Will Wiggins, Sarah Bounds, and Shawn Wilder recently examined the behavior of field-collected and laboratory-reared bold jumping spiders (Phidippus audax). They found a positive association between experimental high-protein diets and aggressive behavior in field-collected males and a similar association between experimental high-lipid diets and aggressive behavior in lab-reared males; additionally, field-collected spiders showed a preference for flowers manipulated to display ultraviolet fluorescence, whereas lab-reared spiders showed a preference for flowers dyed with red food coloring that was not fluorescent. Wiggins, Bounds, and Wilder therefore concluded that ______blank

Question 14 Answers

Which choice most logically completes the text?

A.
rearing conditions likely affect the responses of bold jumping spiders to experimental stimuli.

B.
being raised in a laboratory setting reduces aggression among male bold jumping spiders.

C.
laboratory settings are more suitable for studying bold jumping spiders’ diets than their flower preferences.

D.
experiments involving bold jumping spiders should make use of lab-reared individuals.

Answer 5

Choice A is the best answer because it most logically completes the text’s discussion of the behavior observed in field-collected and laboratory-reared bold jumping spiders when the spiders are exposed to certain experimental stimuli.

Question 6

In the 1880s, inventor Lewis Latimer improved upon Thomas Edison’s design for the electric light bulb. ______blank Latimer made the light bulb more durable by placing cardboard around its carbon filament. With this innovation, Latimer became the first Black inventor to contribute to the electrification of the world.

Question 23 Answers

Which choice completes the text with the most logical transition?

A.Soon,
B.Regardless,
C.However,
D.Specifically,

Answer 6

Choice D is the best answer. “Specifically” logically signals that the information in this sentence—Latimer making the light bulb more durable—provides a specific detail elaborating on the more general claim in the previous sentence that Latimer improved the light bulb.

Question 7

Jeffrey Gibson’s sculptural object KNOW YOUR MAGIC, BABY, an Everlast-brand exercise bag embroidered with multicolored beads and a fringe associated with the dances of the Ojibwe people, stitches together—literally and figuratively—recognizable symbols from both Native and non-Native cultures. ______blank Gibson’s piece also blurs the distinction between contemporary art and traditional crafts.

Question 24 Answers

Which choice completes the text with the most logical transition?

A.Conversely,
B.In so doing,
C.For instance,
D.In particular,

Answer 7

Choice B is the best answer. “In so doing” logically signals that the information in this sentence about Gibson’s piece—that it blurs the distinction between contemporary art and traditional crafts—is a result or consequence of the piece’s blending of particular Native and non-Native cultural symbols.

Question 8

Mary Engle Pennington, a chemist who helped advance home refrigeration, undoubtedly made a substantial impact on society, but her place in our historical memory is perhaps more ______blank than that of Stephanie Kwolek, who invented the incredibly strong material known as Kevlar, an accomplishment for which she will long be remembered.

Question 1 Answers

Which choice completes the text with the most logical and precise word or phrase?

A.permanent
B.tentative
C.warranted
D.prominent

Answer 8

Choice B is the best answer because it most logically completes the text’s discussion of Mary Engle Pennington and Stephanie Kwolek. In this context, “tentative” means unsettled or not definite.

Question 9

To demonstrate that the integrity of underground metal pipes can be assessed without unearthing the pipes, engineer Aroba Saleem and colleagues ______blank the tendency of some metals’ internal magnetic fields to alter under stress: the team showed that such alterations can be measured from a distance and can reveal concentrations of stress in the pipes.

Question 2 Answers

Which choice completes the text with the most logical and precise word or phrase?

A.hypothesized
B.discounted
C.redefined
D.exploited

Answer 9

Choice D is the best answer because it most logically completes the text’s discussion of using magnetism to detect stress in buried metal pipes. In this context, “exploited” means made productive use of.

Question 10

Despite the generalizations about human behavior they have produced, many studies of behavioral psychology have used highly unrepresentative subject pools: students at the colleges and universities where the researchers are employed. To ______blank this situation, it is necessary to actively recruit subjects from diverse backgrounds and locations.

Question 3 Answers

Which choice completes the text with the most logical and precise word or phrase?

A.sanction
B.ameliorate
C.rationalize
D.postulate

Answer 10

Choice B is the best answer because it most logically completes the text’s discussion of behavioral psychology studies. In this context, “ameliorate” means to help remedy or improve.

Question 11

While recent scholarship has undermined claims that the works of twelfth-century Islamic philosopher Ibn Rushd were ______blank other Muslim philosophers of his time, it is indisputable that his location in the Muslim-ruled area of what is now Spain meant that his works were primarily available thousands of miles west of the era’s center of Islamic thought.

Question 5 Answers

Which choice completes the text with the most logical and precise word or phrase?

A.controversial among
B.antagonistic toward
C.imitated by
D.inconsequential to

Answer 11

Choice D is the best answer because it most logically completes the text’s discussion of the twelfth-century Islamic philosopher Ibn Rushd. As used in this context, “inconsequential to” means not significant to.

Question 12

The following text is adapted from Herman Melville’s 1855 novel Israel Potter. Israel is a young man wandering through New England during the late eighteenth century.

He hired himself out for three months; at the end of that time to receive for his wages two hundred acres of land lying in New Hampshire. […] His employer proving false to the contract in the matter of the land, and there being no law in the country to force him to fulfil it, Israel—who, however brave-hearted, and even much of a dare-devil upon a pinch, seems nevertheless to have evinced, throughout many parts of his career, a singular patience and mildness—was obliged to look round for other means of livelihood than clearing out a farm for himself in the wilderness.

Question 6 Answers

Which choice best describes the function of the underlined portion in the text as a whole?

A.
It implies that Israel treasures a particular characteristic of his personality when that characteristic should usually be regarded as a flaw.

B.
It suggests that if not for a certain aspect of his character, Israel might not have been as easily thwarted in his ambition to establish a farm.

C.
It shows why Israel would not have been able to undertake the enormous amount of labor necessary to run a farm even if he had owned the necessary property.

D.
It explains why, when the situation requires it, Israel is able to undertake courageous acts that others would generally avoid.

Answer 12

Choice B is the best answer because it best describes the function of the underlined portion in the text as a whole.

Question 13

Changes to vegetation cover and other human activities influence carbon and nitrogen levels in soil, though how deep these effects extend is unclear. Hypothesizing that differences in land use lead to differences in carbon and nitrogen levels that are not restricted to the topsoil layer (0–30 cm deep), Chukwuebuka Okolo and colleagues sampled soils across multiple land-use types (e.g., grazing land, cropland, forest) within each of several Ethiopian locations. They found, though, that across land-use types, carbon and nitrogen decreased to comparably low levels beyond depths of 30 cm.

Question 7 Answers

Which choice best describes the overall structure of the text?

A.
It describes a phenomenon that scientists do not fully understand, explains a research team’s hypothesis about that phenomenon, and then describes a finding that led the team to refine the hypothesis.

B.
It introduces an unresolved scientific question, presents a research team’s hypothesis pertaining to that question, and then describes an observation made by the team that conflicts with that hypothesis.

C.
It discusses a process that scientists are somewhat unclear about, introduces competing hypotheses about that process, and then explains how a research team concluded that one of those hypotheses is likely correct.

D.
It explains a hypothesis that has been the subject of scientific debate, discusses how a research team tested that hypothesis, and then presents data the team collected that validate the hypothesis.

Answer 13

Choice B is the best answer because it most accurately describes the overall structure of the text.

Question 14

Text 1

** Efforts to automate classification of paintings into different artistic styles have had little success, and we have probably reached the technological limit of this work. ** Furthermore, it’s not obvious that this is even a useful endeavor—as several critics have argued, differences between artistic styles are inherently subjective and often not the best way to understand relationships between works.

Text 2

Baroque painting utilized a very similar color palette as Renaissance painting did to depict largely the same subjects that Renaissance painting depicted. Automated artistic style classifiers often struggle to draw distinctions between these two styles, but Ravneet Singh Arora and Ahmed Elgammal were able to achieve a high degree of accuracy in Baroque/Renaissance comparisons by running one classification model atop another, an approach that demonstrates how much innovation is possible in this realm.

Question 8 Answers

Based on the texts, how would the author of Text 2 most likely respond to the claim in the underlined sentence of Text 1?

A.
By emphasizing that there are still advances being made in automated artistic style classification

B.
By criticizing previous research into automated artistic style classification systems for focusing on a narrow group of styles

C.
By arguing that most people are not able to correctly identify the style of paintings that they are shown

D.
By suggesting that people may eventually develop more uniform and accepted ideas about artistic styles and their boundaries

Answer 14

Choice A is the best answer because it reflects how the author of Text 2 would most likely respond to the claim in the underlined sentence of Text 1.

Question 15

To understand how temperature change affects microorganism-mediated cycling of soil nutrients in alpine ecosystems, Eva Kaštovská et al. collected plant-soil cores in the Tatra Mountains at elevations around 2,100 meters and transplanted them to elevations of 1,700–1,800 meters, where the mean air temperature was warmer by 2°C. Microorganism-mediated nutrient cycling was accelerated in the transplanted cores; crucially, microorganism community composition was unchanged, allowing Kaštovská et al. to attribute the acceleration to temperature-induced increases in microorganism activity.

Question 9 Answers

It can most reasonably be inferred from the text that the finding about the microorganism community composition was important for which reason?

A.
It provided preliminary evidence that microorganism-mediated nutrient cycling was accelerated in the transplanted cores.

B.
It suggested that temperature-induced changes in microorganism activity may be occurring at increasingly high elevations.

C.
It ruled out a potential alternative explanation for the acceleration in microorganism-mediated nutrient cycling.

D.
It clarified that microorganism activity levels in the plant-soil cores varied depending on which microorganisms comprised the community.

Answer 15

Choice C is the best answer because it accurately describes why the finding about the microorganism community composition was important.

Question 16

“Poetry” is a 1919 poem by Marianne Moore. The poem highlights an ambivalence toward poetry as the speaker acknowledges its merits while also expressing a sense of displeasure, writing ______blank

Question 13 Answers

Which quotation from “Poetry” most effectively illustrates the claim?

A.
“nor is it valid / to discriminate against ‘business documents and / school-books’; all these phenomena are important.”

B.
“One must make a distinction / however: when dragged into prominence by half poets, the result is not / poetry”

C.
“when [poems] become so derivative as to become unintelligible, the / same thing may be said for all of us—that we / do not admire what / we cannot understand.”

D.
“Reading [poetry], however, with a perfect contempt for it, one discovers that there is in / it after all, a place for the genuine.”

Answer 16

Choice D is the best answer because it most effectively uses a quotation from “Poetry” to illustrate the claim that the poem highlights an ambivalence, or a conflicted attitude, toward poetry. In the quotation, the speaker suggests that one might read poetry with “contempt,” or disdain, for it, but even with this negative attitude one will find “a place for the genuine.”

Question 17

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 ______blank

Question 14 Answers

Which choice most logically completes the text?

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

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

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

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

Answer 17

Choice D is the best answer because it most logically completes the text’s discussion of the Cretaceous pterosaur Tupandactylus navigans.

Question 18

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 ______blank

Question 15 Answers

Which choice most logically completes the text?

A.
the Aztecs would have disputed the idea that the morality of an individual’s actions can be assessed by appealing to standards of behavior that are independent of the individual’s social circumstances.

B.
the Aztecs would not have accepted the notion that the morality of an individual’s actions can be fairly evaluated by people who do not live in the same society as that individual.

C.
actions by members of Aztec society who contributed a great deal to their community could be judged as morally good even if those actions were inconsistent with behaviors the Aztecs regarded as good in all contexts.

D.
similar actions performed by people in different social roles in Aztec society would have been regarded as morally equivalent unless those actions led to different outcomes for the community.

Answer 18

Choice A is the best answer because it most logically completes the text’s discussion about Aztec (Nahua) ethics.

Question 19

Physical materials can be classified by how much light passes through them. Clear glass, which is classified as transparent, allows all (or almost all) light to pass ______blank wax paper, which is classified as translucent, allows only some light to pass through.

Question 18 Answers

Which choice completes the text so that it conforms to the conventions of Standard English?

A.
through,

B.
through

C.
through;

D.
through and

Answer 19

Choice C is the best answer.

Question 20

In her 1983 book The Managed Heart: Commercialization of Human Feeling, sociologist Arlie Russell Hochschild first explored at length her conception of a “sociology of emotions”—the idea that the various cultural and ideological frameworks a person has internalized (class, gender, political affiliation, etc.) ______blank each emotional reaction that person has within a situation.

Question 19 Answers

Which choice completes the text so that it conforms to the conventions of Standard English?

A.
underlies

B.
is underlying

C.
underlie

D.
has been underlyin

Answer 20

Choice C is the best answer. The convention being tested is subject-verb agreement. The plural verb “underlie” agrees in number with the plural subject “frameworks.”

Question 21

According to Duverger’s law, countries with single-ballot majoritarian elections for single-member districts tend to polarize into two-party systems, wherein dueling political parties consistently dominate the political system. ______blank countries with proportional-representation electoral systems tend to support multi-partyism, under which power gets distributed among many political parties.

Question 23 Answers

Which choice completes the text with the most logical transition?

A.
Subsequently,

B.
Conversely,

C.
For instance,

D.
In other words,

Answer 21

Choice B is the best answer. “Conversely” logically signals that the information in this sentence—that countries with proportional-representation electoral systems tend toward multi-partyism—contrasts with the previous information about countries with single-ballot majoritarian elections, which tend to have two-party systems.

Question 22

In retrospect, one of the lessons of the 2003 Human Genome Project is that a gene is affected by many factors, not the least of which is its interactions with the protein products of other genes. ______blank rather than just focusing on the human genome, efforts to better understand gene mutations related to disease have begun to consider the human proteome, the complete set of proteins expressed by human genes.

Question 25 Answers

Which choice completes the text with the most logical transition?

A.
In other words,

B.
That said,

C.
For example,

D.
Accordingly,

Answer 22

Choice D is the best answer. “Accordingly” logically signals that this sentence states a result or consequence of the previous information about the 2003 Human Genome Project. Taking into account an important lesson of the 2003 project (that a gene is affected by interactions with the protein products of other genes), research has begun to consider the human proteome instead of just the genome.