ShowPer Page

The following text is adapted from William Shakespeare's 1609 poem "Sonnet 27." The poem is addressed to a close friend as if he were physically present.<br/><br/>Weary with toil, I [hurry] to my bed,<br/><br/>The dear repose for limbs with travel tired;<br/><br/>But then begins a journey in my head<br/><br/>To work my mind, when body's work's expired:<br/><br/>For then my thoughts--from far where I abide--<br/><br/>[Begin] a zealous pilgrimage to thee,<br/><br/>And keep my drooping eyelids open wide,<br/><br/>What is the main idea of the text?

Reading and WritingInformation and Ideas

In 2022, researchers rediscovered ancient indigenous glyphs, or drawings, on the walls of a cave in Alabama. The cave's ceiling was only a few feet high, affording no position from which the glyphs, being as wide as ten feet, could be viewed or photographed in their entirety. However, the researchers used a technique called photogrammetry to assemble numerous photos of the walls into a 3D model. They then worked with representatives of tribes originally from the region, including the Chickasaw Nation, to understand the significance of the animal and humanoid figures adorning the cave.<br/><br/>According to the text, what challenge did the researchers have to overcome to examine the glyphs?

Reading and WritingInformation and Ideas

_Euphoria 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<br/><br/>Which choice most logically completes the text?

Reading and WritingInformation and Ideas

In many of his sculptures, artist Richard Hunt uses broad forms rather than extreme accuracy to hint at specific people or ideas. In his first major work, Archne (1956), Hunt constructed the mythical character Arachne, a weaver who was changed into a spider, by welding bits of steel together into something that, although vaguely human, is strange and machine-like. And his large bronze sculpture The Light of Truth (2021) commemorates activist and journalist Ida B. Wells using mainly flowing, curved pieces of metal that create stylized flame.<br/><br/>Which choice best states the text's main idea about Hunt?

Reading and WritingInformation and Ideas

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,<br/><br/>Which choice most logically completes the text?

Reading and WritingInformation and Ideas

Many intellectual histories of the Black Power movement of the 1960s and 1970s rely heavily on essays and other explicitly ideological works as primary sources, a tendency that can overrepresent the perspectives of a small number of thinkers, most of whom were male. Historian Ashley D. Farmer has shown that expanding the array of primary sources to encompass more types of print material--including political cartoons, advertisements, and artwork--leads to a much better understanding of the movement and the crucial and diverse roles that Black women played in shaping it.<br/><br/>Which choice best describes the main idea of the text?

Reading and WritingInformation and Ideas

"Odalie" is an 1899 short story by Alice Dunbar-Nelson. In the story, a young woman named Odalie attends the annual Mardi Gras carnival in New Orleans, where she lives with her guardian Tante Louise. Dunbar-Nelson portrays Odalie as a eager to escape the monotony of her everyday life:<br/><br/>Which quotation from "Odalie" most effectively illustrates the claim?

Reading and WritingInformation and Ideas

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<br/><br/>Which choice most logically completes the text?

Reading and WritingInformation and Ideas

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<br/><br/>Which choice most logically completes the text?

Reading and WritingInformation and Ideas

A researcher conducted an experiment inspired by studies suggesting that people may benefit from feeling frightened in certain circumstances, such as when watching scary movies or visiting haunted attractions. The researcher recruited several participants and had them walk through a local haunted house attraction. Immediately after exiting the attraction, each participant completed a survey about their experience. Based on the survey responses, the researcher claims that feeling frightened in controlled situations can boost a person's mood and confidence.<br/><br/>Which quotation from a participant would best illustrate the researcher's claim?

Reading and WritingInformation and Ideas

John of God, the Water-Carrier" is a 1913 short story by Maria Cristina Mena. In the story, the narrator presents John as being a hard worker who is fully dedicated to his job as water carrier, or aguador_:<br/><br/>Which quotation from "John of God, the Water-Carrier" most effectively illustrates the claim?

Reading and WritingInformation and Ideas

"When Dawn Comes to the City" is a 1922 poem by Claude McKay, who immigrated to the United States from the island, nation of Jamaica as an adult. The poem conveys McKay's contrasting feelings about New York City--his adopted home in the US--and his home country:<br/><br/>Which quotation from "When Dawn Comes to the City" most effectively illustrates the claim?

Reading and WritingInformation and Ideas

NASA's Aspera mission, led by Carlos Vargas, will investigate the circumgalactic medium (CGM), the huge swaths of low-density gas that fill and surround galaxies. Specifically, the team will focus on portions of the gas that exist in a "warm-hot" phase: these portions haven't previously been observable but are thought to fuel new star formation and hold most of the mass that makes up a galaxy. Using a telescope capable of revealing these parts of the CGM, the Aspera mission should help answer long-standing questions about how galaxies emerge, change, and even interact.<br/><br/>Which choice best states the main idea of the text?

Reading and WritingInformation and Ideas

Xin Wang and colleagues have discovered the earliest known example of a flower bud in a 164-million-year-old plant fossil in China. The researchers have named the new species Florigerminis jurassica. They believe that the discovery pushes the emergence of flowering plants, or angiosperms, back to the Jurassic period, which occurred between 145 million and 201 million years ago.<br/><br/>According to the text, how old was the fossil that Wang and colleagues discovered?

Reading and WritingInformation and Ideas

Biological Valentina Gomez-Bahamon and her team have investigated two subspecies of the fork-tailed flycatcher bird that live in the same region in Colombia, but one subspecies migrates south for part of the year, and the other doesn't. The researchers found that, due to slight differences in feather shape, the feathers of migratory forked-tailed flycatcher males make a sound during flight that is higher pitched than that made by the feathers of nonmigratory males. The researchers hypothesize that fork-tailed flycatcher females are attracted to the specific sound made by the males of their own subspecies, and that over time the females' preference will drive further genetic and anatomical divergence between the subspecies.<br/><br/>Which finding, if true, would most directly support Gomez-Bahamon and her team's hypothesis?

Reading and WritingInformation and Ideas

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,<br/><br/>Which choice most logically completes the text?

Reading and WritingInformation and Ideas

In vertical inheritance, parents pass genes to their offspring, but in horizontal transfer (HT), one species, often bacteria, passes genetic material to an unrelated species. In a 2022 study, herpetologist Atsushi Kurabayashi and his team investigated HT in multicellular organisms--namely, snakes and frogs in Madagascar. The team detected BovB_--a gene transmitted vertically in snakes--in many frog species. The apparent direction of gene transfer seems counterintuitive because frogs usually don't survive encounters with snakes and so wouldn't be able to transmit the newly acquired gene to offspring, but the team concluded that BovB is indeed transmitted from snakes to frogs, either directly or indirectly, via HT.<br/><br/>Which finding, if true, would most directly support the team's conclusion?

Reading and WritingInformation and Ideas

Which choice most effectively uses data from the table to complete the statement?

Reading and WritingInformation and Ideas

Which choice most effectively uses data from the table to complete the statement?

Reading and WritingInformation and Ideas

Choctaw/Cherokee artist Jeffrey Gibson turns punching bags used by boxers into art by decorating them with beadwork and elements of Native dressmaking. These elements include leather fringe and jingles, the metal cones that cover the dresses worn in the jingle dance, a women's dance of the Ojibwe people. Thus, Gibson combines an object commonly associated with masculinity (a punching bag) with art forms traditionally practiced by women in most Native communities (beadwork and dressmaking). In this way, he rejects the division of male and female gender roles.<br/><br/>Which choice best describes Gibson's approach to art, as presented in the text?

Reading and WritingInformation and Ideas

Ablation Rates for Three Elements in<br/><br/>Cosmic Dust, by Dust Source<br/><br/>**Element** **SPEC** **AST** **HTC** **OCC**<br/><br/>**iron** **20%** **28%** **90%** **98%**<br/><br/>**potassium** **44%** **74%** **97%** **100%**<br/><br/>**sodium** **45%** **75%** **99%** **100%**<br/><br/>Earth's atmosphere is bombarded by cosmic dust originating from several sources: short-period comets (SPCs), particles from the asteroid belt (ASTs), Halley-type comets (HTCs), and Oort cloud comets (OCCs). Some of the dust's material vaporizes in the atmosphere in a process called ablation, and the faster the particles move, the higher the rate of ablation. Astrophysicist Juan Diego Carrillo-Sanchez led a team that calculated average ablation rates for elements in the dust (such as iron and potassium) and showed that material in slower-moving SPC or AST dust has a lower rate than the same material in faster-moving HTC or OCC dust. For example, whereas the average ablation rate for iron from AST dust is 28%, the average rate for<br/><br/>Which choice most effectively uses data from the table to complete the example?

Reading and WritingInformation and Ideas

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 title 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<br/><br/>Which choice most logically completes the text?

Reading and WritingInformation and Ideas

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 before her, 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.<br/><br/>What does the text most strongly suggest about the disco genre?

Reading and WritingInformation and Ideas

In a paper about p-i-n planar perovskite solar cells (one of several perovskite cell architectures designed to collect and store solar power), Lyndsey McMillon-Brown et al. describe a method for fabricating the cell's electronic transport layer (ETL) using a spray coating. Conventional ETL fabrication is accomplished using a solution of nanoparticles. The process can result in a loss of up to 80% of the solution, increasing the cost of manufacturing at scale--an issue that may be obviated by spray coating fabrication, which the researchers describe as "highly reproducible, concise, and practical."<br/><br/>What does the text most strongly suggest about conventional ETL fabrication?

Reading and WritingInformation and Ideas

"On Virtue" is a 1766 poem by Phillips Wheatley. Wheatley addresses the poem directly to the quality of virtue, imploring it to assist her in reaching a future goal:<br/><br/>Which quotation from "On Virtue" most effectively illustrates the claim?

Reading and WritingInformation and Ideas