Module I: Reading and Writing

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Mount Saint Helens, a stratovolcano located in Washington State, has erupted periodically with great violence over the last 4,500 years. Despite this history, the mountain's extended period of dormancy prior to the cataclysmic 1980 eruption ____ many to underestimate its potential for destruction.
Which choice completes the text with the most logical and precise word or phrase?
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Mark for Review
assured
hastened
enticed
prompted
In the dense forests of northern California, efforts to maintain biodiversity are deeply intertwined with indigenous environmental philosophy. Embracing the concept of fire as medicine, members of the Karuk Tribe use controlled burns-a deliberate land management technique that involves setting small, contained fires-to manage ecosystem health and promote plant diversity. This application of traditional knowledge contrasts sharply with contemporary forestry practices, which often shun fire, favoring short-term economic gains at the expense of long-term ecological balance and health.
Which choice best describes the function of the underlined sentence in the text as a whole?
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It argues for the adoption of Indigenous practices in contemporary forestry.
It encourages the Karuk to use controlled burns in land-use management.
It explains how traditional land-use strategies differ from modern forestry practices.
It supplies a description of an environmental strategy used by a particular community.
Some E. coli bactería have evolved with adaptations, known as virulence factors, that boost their defenses against antibiotics. Researchers in Nigeria devised a study to examine the impact of these virulence factors on the bacteria's resistance to a variety of antibiotics. They focused on several key virulence factors: colicin formation (COL), haemolysin production (HL), capsule (CAP), and mannose-resistant haemagglutination (MRHA). In their experiments, the scientists grew E. coli samples and tested their resistance against a suite of commonly used antibiotics. The testing process revealed that while a single virulence factor might provide resistance to only two antibiotics, ____
Types of Defenses in E. coli and Their Antibiotic Resistance
# of FactorsVirulence FactorsNumber of E. coli samplesResistant to:
One factorCOL82–10 antibiotics
HL24–10 antibiotics
CAP222–11 antibiotics
MRHA102–11 antibiotics
Total42
Two FactorsCOL + HL29–10 antibiotics
HL + CAP39–10 antibiotics
CAP + MRHA76–11 antibiotics
COL + CAP37–10 antibiotics
Total17
Which choice most effectively uses data from the table to complete the statement?
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a combination of two virulence factors reduced the bacteria's resistance, making them susceptible to fewer than two antibiotics.
a combination of two virulence factors ensured resistance to at least six antibiotics.
mannose-resistant haemagglutination conferred resistance to at least two antibiotics.
having two virulence factors was less effective, conferring resistance to a maximum of ten or eleven antibiotics.
"Rappaccini's Daughter" is an 1844 story by Nathaniel Hawthorne. In the story, the characters of Dr. Rappaccini and his daughter Beatrice care for a garden of poisonous plants. Hawthorne depicts Dr. Rappaccini as obsessing over the strange nature of his plants, writing, ____
Which quotation from "Rappaccini's Daughter" most effectively illustrates the claim?
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"The man's demeanor was that of one walking among malignant influences, such as savage beasts, or deadly snakes, or evil spirits, which would wreak upon him some terrible fatality."
"Nevertheless, in spite of this deep intelligence on his part, there was no approach to intimacy between himself and these vegetable existences."
"It seemed as if he was looking into their inmost nature, making observations in regard to their creative essence, and discovering why one leaf grew in this shape and another in that."
"The distrustful gardener, while plucking > away the dead leaves or pruning the too luxuriant growth of the shrubs, defended his hands with a pair of thick gloves."
Scientists have proposed two theories to explain the pace of evolution within a population: a "hard sweep" or a "soft sweep." The hard sweep theory argues that a heavily beneficial mutation in a single gene often sweeps through an entire population. The soft sweep theory proposes that many small genetic variations determine a single beneficial trait, so the trait usually becomes gradually more pronounced over the course of several generations. To settle this debate, biologists at the University of California, Irvine conducted an experiment on fruit fly populations over 600 generations. In each generation, the researchers bred only the flies that hatched the earliest. Consistent with the soft sweep theory, the results showed that ____
Which choice most logically completes the text?
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Mark for Review
there was a gradual increase in the time it took for subsequent generations of fruit flies to hatch.
the average hatching time of the fruit flies remained unchanged, as early hatching is not a heritable trait
there was an abrupt increase in the average lifespan of the fruit flies, due to the selection for early hatching.
the time it took for subsequent generations of fruit flies to hatch slowly decreased.
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