Module I: Reading and Writing

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Lady Grant and colleagues ______ pots of sterilized soil with slurries of live microbes collected from soil in five sites across Colorado, including areas of sagebrush and dry pasture. Grant and team then grew mustard plants in the pots to see if the different microbial slurries affected levels of spicy glucosinolates like indole in the plants’ seeds.
Which choice completes the text with the most logical and precise word or phrase?
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populated
sanitized
precluded
estimated
The collectibles market is one of the most difficult segments of the consumer economy to ______. Few economists would have predicted, for example, that the prices of collectible gold and silver coins would soar in the early 1980s, but soar they did.
Which choice completes the text with the most logical and precise word or phrase?
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monitor
exchange
avoid
forecast
Derived from research conducted with factory workers from 1924 to 1933, the Hawthorne effect suggests that participants’ awareness that they are being studied alters their behavior and influences study outcomes. Since then, several researchers have claimed to invalidate this phenomenon, positing that the Hawthorne effect cannot be ______ because attempts to detect it invariably involve faulty research methods.
Which choice completes the text with the most logical and precise word or phrase?
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substantiated
inculcated
rectified
hypothesized
Paleontologists think that Dsungaripterus, Sauroposeidon, and other long-extinct pterosaurs and sauropods may have breathed using air sacs connected to tubelike extensions inside the animals’ bones. Such structures are found in modern birds, which is why some paleontologists treat the respiratory systems of birds as ______ those of Dsungaripterus, Sauroposeidon, and other pterosaurs and sauropods.
Which choice completes the text with the most logical and precise word or phrase?
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emissaries for
proxies for
subordinates of
harbingers of
Advancements like the emergence of copper smelting in south central Europe circa 5000 BCE are overemphasized in innovation studies, contributing to the idea that technological change always brings greater complexity. Research by Nathaniel Erb-SatuIlo reveals an important exception: gold metallurgy flourished in the Caucasus in the Bronze Age, but a steep drop during that time (circa 1500 BCE) in objects featuring gold filigree (in which fine threads of gold are arranged in intricate patterns) and other sophisticated goldsmithing techniques suggests that simpler processes supplanted more advanced methods.
Which choice best describes the overall structure of the text?
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It summarizes the findings of several studies into the origins of a particular invention and then presents additional evidence from a more recent study that contradicts those findings.
It explains that a particular interpretation of technological development has been perpetuated in an academic field and then provides a counterexample demonstrating that the interpretation isn’t always accurate.
It advances a claim made by researchers in one academic field about the nature of technological change and then critiques a contrasting claim presented by a researcher from a related academic field.
It details the near-consensus among researchers in a particular field of study regarding how the perceived complexity of technological change has shifted over time and why that consensus has developed.
In their study of the steering muscles regulating sclerites (minute hardened structures) in the Drosophila (fruit fly) wing hinge, Johan M. Melis et al. used machine learning to devise a convolutional neural network (CNN) model capable of predicting the pattern of wing motion produced by the maximum activity of the muscles. The CNN model’s output aligned with results of prior studies by other researchers measuring muscle activity patterns directly—one of several indications, said Melis et al., that the model accurately represents important biomechanical processes underlying wing motion.
Which choice best states the main purpose of the text?
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To account for Melis et al.’s reliance in their study on a CNN model in lieu of direct measurement
To compare results obtained by Melis et al. using their CNN model to prior results obtained from other researchers’ models
To provide an overview of how Melis et al. honed the accuracy of their CNN model
To present evidence from Melis et al.’s study in support of the efficacy of their CNN model
The following text is from Julia Alvarez’s 2000 novel In the Name of Salomé. The narrator and her sister, daughters of a famous poet, are being tutored by Alejandro Román.
Our tutor, Alejandro Román, brought his younger brother, Miguel, to class one day. By now I was eighteen and had learned everything Alejandro had to teach me, so I was glad for a new face. Miguel was an aspiring poet, and he had heard from his brother that the Ureña girls were none other than the daughters of Nicolás Ureña, and they were smart as clockwork. Miguel was hoping not only to meet us but to make the acquaintance of the poet himself at Mamá’s house.
Based on the text, why does Miguel accompany his brother to the sisters’ house one day?
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Miguel hopes to read his poetry to the sisters and ask them to critique his work.
Miguel anticipates having the opportunity to be introduced to both the sisters and their father.
Miguel has absorbed all the information he can from his brother and wants the sisters to teach him instead.
Miguel has not received formal instruction in poetry and wants to ask the sisters’ famous father to be his mentor.
Motivated to sell as many paintings as possible, Alfred Hair, an influential figure among the landscape artists known as the Florida Highwaymen, pioneered “fast painting,” which in part involved slashing in elements with a palette knife. That many of Hair’s acolytes, including Al Black, imitated the technique accounts in part for the impressionistic qualities that are now synonymous with the group’s shared aesthetic. But not all Highwaymen fully embraced this approach; for instance, though Harold Newton was also prolific, his paintings were executed with greater attention to detail.
What does the text most strongly suggest about paintings by Black?
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The lack of precision with which they were executed suggests that they are inferior to works by either Hair or Newton.
Although it is evident that Black adopted some of Hair’s preferred techniques, Black’s works are less derivative of works by Hair than is typically acknowledged.
Because of the manner in which they were created, they likely have visual qualities that are regarded as more typical of Florida Highwaymen paintings than the qualities in works by Newton are.
Black’s reliance on the technique of fast painting likely accounts for his works being more aesthetically interesting than works by Newton are.

Tax Penalties Assessed on Private Foundations That Filed Form 4720, by Reason, 2003–2005

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While US public charities, like Howard Hughes Medical Institute, must file Form 990 yearly with the IRS, private foundations, such as the David and Lucile Packard Foundation, must file a different form, 990–PF. In addition, foundations that engage in certain prohibited activities must also file Form 4720.
Which choice most effectively uses data from the graph to complete the assertion?
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those that also filed Form 4720 paid a larger penalty for failing to meet a minimum charitable distribution requirement than those organizations that filed Form 990 but also filed Form 4720 for the same reason.
A smaller percentage of those that also filed Form 4720 did so because they made taxable expenditures than the percentage of those that filed Form 4720 because they did not meet the minimum charitable distribution requirement.
those that were also required to file Form 4720 because they had excess holdings in a business enterprise paid, on average, a larger penalty than those organizations that filed Form 4720 because they made taxable expenditures.
those that also filed Form 4720 collectively paid larger penalties for failing to meet the minimum charitable-distribution requirement than those organizations that filed Form 990 but also filed Form 4720 for the same reason.
Blandine Courel and her colleagues analyzed pottery fragments from thirty-five sites across the Volga and Don river basins to determine whether the ways in which hunter-gatherer societies used pottery in these regions around 6,500–8,000 years ago were influenced primarily by local food availability or primarily by cultural factors. Analysis of organic residues on the pottery fragments showed different prevailing uses for pottery in these locations—cooking and storing terrestrial animal protein at Volga sites and cooking and storing aquatic animal protein at Don sites—which Courel and colleagues attribute to cultural differences.
Assuming that the Volga and Don basins supported similarly sized hunter-gatherer populations 6,500–8,000 years ago, which finding, if true, would most directly support Courel and colleagues’ explanation?
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In both the Volga and Don basins, most of the sites from which pottery has been recovered appear to have been seasonal fishing and hunting encampments rather than year-round settlements.
The people of the Volga basin acquired the techniques used to create pottery for cooking and storing food from the people of the Don basin.
There were many more bodies of water in a comparably sized area in the Don basin than in the Volga basin.
Across the Volga and Don basins, people had broadly similar access to the same terrestrial and aquatic animal resources.
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