Craft and Structure
Within baleen whale species, some individuals develop an accessory spleen—a seemingly functionless formation of splenetic tissue outside the normal spleen. Given the formation’s greater prevalence among whales known to make deeper dives, some researchers hypothesize that its role isn’t ; rather, the accessory spleen may actively support diving mechanisms.______
Which choice completes the text with the most logical and precise word or phrase?
D. latent
Laura Mulvey has theorized that in narrative film, shots issuing from a protagonist’s point of view compel viewers to identify withthe character. Such identification is heightened by “invisible editing,” or editing so inconspicuous that it renders cuts betweenshots almost unnoticeable. Conversely, Mulvey proposes that conspicuous editing or an absence of point-of-view shots wouldinduce a more critical stance toward a protagonist. Consider, for example, the attic scene in Alfred Hitchcock’s The Birds, aconspicuously edited sequence of tens of shots, few of which correspond to the protagonist’s point of view. According to Mulvey’slogic, this scene should affect viewers by
Which choice most logically completes the text?______
B. lessening their identification with the protagonist, if not alienating them from the character altogether.
Upon first approaching artist Kurt Wenner’s Dies Irae, a colorful scene painted on the surface of a cobblestone street in Mantua,Italy, one might assume a deep hole filled with life-sized, classically styled sculptures had opened up in the street. byexpertly applying the principles of perspective, Wenner created merely the illusion of depth.______
Which choice completes the text with the most logical transition?
B. On the contrary,
In 1453, English King Henry VI became unfit to rule after falling gravely ill. As a result, Parliament appointed Richard, Third Duke ofYork, who had a strong claim to the English throne, to rule as Lord Protector. Upon recovering two years later, forcing an angered Richard from the royal court and precipitating a series of battles later known as the Wars of the Roses.______
Which choice completes the text so that it conforms to the conventions of Standard English?
A. Henry resumed his reign,
That the geographic center of North America lay in the state of North Dakota was conceded by all ______ establishing its precise coordinates proved more divisive.Which choice completes the text so that it conforms to the conventions of Standard English?
D. involved;
The province of Xoconochco was situated on the Pacific coast, hundreds of kilometers southeast of Tenochtitlan, the capital ofthe Aztec Empire. Because Xoconochco’s location within the empire was so , cacao and other trade goods produced therecould reach the capital only after a long overland journey.______
Which choice completes the text with the most logical and precise word or phrase?
D. peripheral
Perovskite solar cells convert light into electricity more efficiently than earlier kinds of solar cells, and manufacturing advanceshave recently made them commercially attractive. One limitation of the cells, however, has to do with their electron transport layer(ETL), through which absorbed electrons must pass. Often the ETL is applied through a process called spin coating, but such ETLsare fairly inefficient at converting input power to output power. André Taylor and colleagues tested a novel spray coating methodfor applying the ETL. The team produced ETLs of various thicknesses and concluded that spray coating holds promise forimproving the power conversion efficiency of ETLs in perovskite solar cells.
Which choice best describes data from the graph that support Taylor and colleagues’ conclusion?
B. The lowest performing ETL applied through spray coating had a higher power conversion efficiency than the highest performing ETL applied through spin coating.
The Sun and other stars are powered by nuclear fusion reactions, in which two atoms collide to form a single heavier atom,releasing energy. Scientists have long believed that fusion has the potential to meet humanity’s clean energy needs. prior toDecember 2022, no fusion reaction in a laboratory setting had ever generated a net energy gain.______
Which choice completes the text with the most logical transition?
D. That said,
Paintings by the renowned twentieth-century US were featured in Artist to Artist, an exhibition at the Smithsonian ArtMuseum that paired the works of artists whose career trajectories intersected in meaningful ways.______
Which choice completes the text so that it conforms to the conventions of Standard English?
B. artists Thomas Hart Benton and Jackson Pollock
While researching a topic, a student has taken the following notes:
Cambodia’s Angkor Wat was built in the 1100s to honor the Hindu god Vishnu.
It has been a Buddhist temple since the sixteenth century.
Decorrelation stretch analysis is a novel digital imaging technique that enhances the contrast between colors in a photograph.
Archaeologist Noel Hidalgo Tan applied decorrelation stretch analysis to photographs he had taken of Angkor Wat’s plaster walls.
Tan’s analysis revealed hundreds of images unknown to researchers.
The student wants to present Tan’s research to an audience unfamiliar with Angkor Wat. Which choice most effectively uses relevant information from the notes to accomplish this goal?
C. Using a novel digital imaging technique, Tan revealed hundreds of images hidden on the walls of Angkor Wat, a Cambodian temple.
The following text is from John Dryden’s 1697 translation of Virgil’s poem the Aeneid, written in the first century BCE. Queen Didohas just heard the Trojan hero Aeneas recount a sad tale.
But anxious cares already seiz’d the queen:
She fed within her veins a flame unseen;
The hero’s valor, acts, and birth inspire
Her soul with love, and fan the secret fire.
His words, his looks, imprinted in her heart,
Improve the passion, and increase the smart.
Which choice best states the main purpose of the text?
B. To emphasize that Dido has been deeply affected by Aeneas’s story
Disco remains one of the most ridiculed popular music genres of the late twentieth century. But as scholars have argued, the genre is far less superficial than many people believe. Take the case of disco icon Donna Summer: she may have been associated with popular songs about love and heartbreak (subjects hardly unique to disco, by the way), but like many Black women singers beforeher, much of her music also reflects concerns about community and identity. These concerns are present in many of the genre’s greatest songs, and they generally don’t require much digging to reveal.
What does the text most strongly suggest about the disco genre?
C. It has been unfairly dismissed for the inclusion of subject matter that is also found in other musical genres.
While researching a topic, a student has taken the following notes:
Political scientist Graham Allison is known for his Thucydides trap theory.
Allison’s theory states that whenever “a rising power is threatening to displace a ruling power,” conflict is likely.
The theory is based on Thucydides’s explanation of the conflict between Athens and Sparta.
Thucydides wrote that “the rise of Athens and the fear this instilled in Sparta” made conflict “inevitable.”
History professor Edmund Stewart recently challenged the historical basis of the theory.
Stewart claimed that Athens was not a rising power and that the rivals experienced a “clash of cultures” instead.
The student wants to use a quotation to challenge Thucydides’s explanation of the conflict between Athens and Sparta. Which choice most effectively uses relevant information from the notes to accomplish this goal?
C. According to Stewart, a “clash of cultures” between Athens and Sparta caused the conflict, not Athens’s rise.
The relationship between genomes and epigenomes reveals how cells with identical DNA develop different whereas the genome in each cell contains a complete DNA sequence, the epigenome consists of chemical compounds that determine which traits in the sequence will be expressed.______
Which choice completes the text so that it conforms to the conventions of Standard English?
D. functions:
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 orideological 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?
A. risk judging Tanner’s painting by standards that may not be historically appropriate.
Text 1
Dominique Potvin and colleagues captured five Australian magpies (Gymnorhina tibicen) to test a new design for attaching tracking devices to birds. As the researchers fitted each magpie with a tracker attached by a small harness, they noticed some magpies without trackers pecking at another magpie’s tracker until it broke off. The researchers suggest that this behavior could be evidence of magpies attempting to help another magpie without benefiting themselves.
Text 2
It can be tempting to think that animals are deliberately providing help when we see them removing trackers and other equipment from one another, especially when a species is known to exhibit other cooperative behaviors. At the same time, it can be difficult to exclude the possibility that individuals are simply interested in the equipment because of its novelty, curiously pawing or pecking at it until it detaches.
Based on the texts, how would the author of Text 2 most likely respond to the researchers’ perspective in Text 1 on the behavior of the magpies without trackers?
D. That behavior might be adequately explained without suggesting that the magpies were attempting to assist the other magpie.
Many animals, including humans, must sleep, and sleep is known to have a role in everything from healing injuries to encodinginformation in long-term memory. But some scientists claim that, from an evolutionary standpoint, deep sleep for hours at a timeleaves an animal so vulnerable that the known benefits of sleeping seem insufficient to explain why it became so widespread inthe animal kingdom. These scientists therefore imply that
Which choice most logically completes the text?______
A. prolonged deep sleep is likely advantageous in ways that have yet to be discovered.
While researching a topic, a student has taken the following notes:
The factors that affect clutch size (the number of eggs laid at one time) have been well studied in birds but not in lizards.
A team led by Shai Meiri of Tel Aviv University investigated which factors influence lizard clutch size.
Meiri’s team obtained clutch-size and habitat data for over 3,900 lizard species and analyzed the data with statisticalmodels.
Larger clutch size was associated with environments in higher latitudes that have more seasonal change.
Lizards in higher-latitude environments may lay larger clutches to take advantage of shorter windows of favorableconditions.
The student wants to emphasize the aim of the research study. Which choice most effectively uses relevant information from thenotes to accomplish this goal?
A. Researchers wanted to know which factors influence lizard egg clutch size because such factors have been well studied inbirds but not in lizards.
A model created by biologist Luis Valente predicts that the rate of speciation—the rate at which new species form—on an isolatedisland located approximately 5,000 kilometers from the nearest mainland triple the rate of speciation on an island only 500kilometers from the mainland.______
Which choice completes the text so that it conforms to the conventions of Standard English?
D. will be
Despite stated claims of global relevance, much major research on income inequality performed in the 2010s suffered from a myopic focus on a few countries in North America and Western Europe, partly due to limited data availability. Researchers would later ______ this shortcoming after gaining new access to banking records located in nations in Africa, such as Tunisia, and EasternEurope, such as Hungary.
Which choice completes the text with the most logical and precise word or phrase?
C. mitigate
Text 1
Ecologists have long wondered how thousands of microscopic phytoplankton species can live together near ocean surfacescompeting for the same resources. According to conventional wisdom, one species should emerge after outcompeting the rest.So why do so many species remain? Ecologists’ many efforts to explain this phenomenon still haven’t uncovered a satisfactoryexplanation.
Text 2
Ecologist Michael Behrenfeld and colleagues have connected phytoplankton’s diversity to their microscopic size. Because theseorganisms are so tiny, they are spaced relatively far apart from each other in ocean water and, moreover, experience that water asa relatively dense substance. This in turn makes it hard for them to move around and interact with one another. Therefore, saysBehrenfeld’s team, direct competition among phytoplankton probably happens much less than previously thought.
Based on the texts, how would Behrenfeld and colleagues (Text 2) most likely respond to the “conventional wisdom” discussed inText 1?
A. By arguing that it is based on a misconception about phytoplankton species competing with one another
Researchers Suchithra Rajendran and Maximilian Popfinger modeled varying levels of passenger redistribution from short-haulflights (flights of 50 to 210 minutes, from takeoff to landing) to high-speed rail trips. Planes travel faster than trains, but air traveltypically requires 3 hours of lead time for security, baggage handling, and boarding that rail travel doesn’t, so short-haul routes takesimilar amounts of time by air and by rail. However, the model suggests that as rail passenger volumes approach current capacitylimits, long lead times emerge. Therefore, for rail to remain a viable alternative to short-haul flights,
Which choice most logically completes the text?______
B. rail systems may need to schedule additional trains for these routes.
While researching a topic, a student has taken the following notes:
The National Congress of American Indians (NCAI) was founded in 1944 by representatives of fifty tribal governments.
The NCAI was created to protect the sovereignty of Indigenous tribes.
Napoleon B. Johnson (Cherokee) was the NCAI’s first president.
In 1975, the US Congress passed the Indian Self-Determination and Education Assistance Act (Public Law 96-638).
This legislation formally acknowledged tribes’ right to self-governance.
The advocacy of the NCAI was a key factor in the law’s passing.
The student wants to identify an accomplishment of the NCAI. Which choice most effectively uses relevant information from the notes to accomplish this goal?
C. The NCAI’s advocacy was key to the passing of Public Law 96-638, legislation formally acknowledging Indigenous tribes’ rightto self-governance.
Researchers studying the “terra-cotta army,” the thousands of life-size statues of warriors found interred near the tomb of Emperor Qin Shi Huang of China, were shocked to realize that the shape of each statue’s ears, like the shape of each person’s ears, unique,______
Which choice completes the text so that it conforms to the conventions of Standard English?
B. is
Text 1
Virginia Woolf’s 1928 novel Orlando is an oddity within her body of work. Her other major novels consist mainly of scenes of everyday life and describe their characters’ interior states in great detail, whereas Orlando propels itself through a series of fantastical events and considers its characters’ psychology more superficially. Woolf herself sometimes regarded the novel as a minor work, even admitting once that she “began it as a joke.”
Text 2
Like Woolf’s other great novels, Orlando portrays how people’s memories inform their experience of the present. Like those works, it examines how people navigate social interactions shaped by gender and social class. Though it is lighter in tone—more entertaining, even—this literary “joke” nonetheless engages seriously with the themes that motivated the four or five other novels by Woolf that have achieved the status of literary classics.
Based on the texts, how would the author of Text 2 most likely respond to the assessment of Orlando presented in Text 1?
C. By acknowledging that Orlando clearly differs from Woolf’s other major novels but insisting on its centrality to her body of work nonetheless