Inferences Flashcards
Volunteering, or giving time for a community service for free, is a valuable form of civic engagement because helping in acommunity is also good for society as a whole. In a survey of youths in the United States, most young people said that theybelieve volunteering is a way to help people on an individual level. Meanwhile, only 6% of the youths said that they thinkvolunteering is a way to help fi x problems in society overall. These replies suggest that ______
Which choice most logically completes the text?
A.
many young people think they can volunteer only within their own communities.
B.
volunteering may be even more helpful than many young people think it is.
C.
volunteering can help society overall more than it can help individual people.
D.
many young people may not know how to fi nd ways to volunteer their time.
B
Mosses can struggle in harsh desert conditions because these plants require enough sunlight for photosynthesis but not somuch that they risk drying out. Researchers Jenna Ekwealor and Kirsten M. Fisher found several species of
Syntrichiacaninervis
, a type of desert moss, growing under quartz crystals in California’s Mojave Desert. To evaluate whether thesesemitransparent rocks benefi ted the moss, the researchers compared the shoot tissue, a measure of plant growth, of
S.caninervis
when growing on the soil surface versus when the moss was growing under the quartz rocks. They found thatthe shoot tissue was 62% longer for moss growing under the quartz as compared to moss on the soil surface, suggestingthat ______
Which choice most logically completes the text?
A.
S. caninervis
is one of the few types of moss that can survive under semitransparent rocks.
B.
quartz crystals do not transmit the necessary sunlight for photosynthesis in
S. caninervis
.
C.
S. caninervis
growing under quartz crystals experience lower light intensity and are thus able to retain more moisture.
D.
quartz crystals are capable of supporting
S. caninervis
growth if the crystals are not too thin.
C
Scientists studying Mars long thought the history of its crust was relatively simple. One reason for this is that geologic andclimate data collected by a spacecraft showed that the crust was largely composed of basalt, likely as a result of intensevolcanic activity that brought about a magma ocean, which then cooled to form the planet’s surface. A study led by ValeriePayré focused on additional information—further analysis of data collected by the spacecraft and infrared wavelengthsdetected from Mars’s surface—that revealed the presence of surprisingly high concentrations of silica in certain regions onMars. Since a planetary surface that formed in a mostly basaltic environment would be unlikely to contain large amounts ofsilica, Payré concluded that ______
Which choice most logically completes the text?
A.
the information about silica concentrations collected by the spacecraft is likely more reliable than the silica informationgleaned from infrared wavelengths detected from Mars’s surface.
B.
high silica concentrations on Mars likely formed from a different process than that which formed the crusts of otherplanets.
C.
having a clearer understanding of the composition of Mars’s crust and the processes by which it formed will providemore insight into how Earth’s crust formed.
D.
Mars’s crust likely formed as a result of other major geological events in addition to the cooling of a magma ocean.
D
If some artifacts recovered from excavations of the settlement of Kuulo Kataa, in modern Ghana, date from the thirteenthcentury CE, that may lend credence to claims that the settlement was founded before or around that time. There is otherevidence, however, strongly supporting a fourteenth century CE founding date for Kuulo Kataa. If both the artifact dates andthe fourteenth century CE founding date are correct, that would imply that ______
Which choice most logically completes the text?
A.
artifacts from the fourteenth century CE are more commonly recovered than are artifacts from the thirteenth centuryCE.
B.
the artifacts originated elsewhere and eventually reached Kuulo Kataa through trade or migration.
C.
Kuulo Kataa was founded by people from a different region than had previously been assumed.
D.
excavations at Kuulo Kataa may have inadvertently damaged some artifacts dating to the fourteenth century CE
B
Geoglyphs are large-scale designs of lines or shapes created in a natural landscape. The Nazca Lines were created in theNazca Desert in Peru by several Indigenous civilizations over a period of many centuries. Peruvian archaeologist Johny Islaspecializes in these geoglyphs. At a German exhibit about the Nazca Lines, he saw an old photograph of a large geoglyph ofa whalelike fi gure and was surprised that he didn’t recognize it. Isla returned to Peru and used a drone to search a widearea, looking for the fi gure from the air. This approach suggests that Isla thought that if he hadn’t already seen it, thewhalelike geoglyph ______
Which choice most logically completes the text?
A.
must represent a species of whale that went extinct before there were any people in Peru.
B.
is actually located in Germany, not Peru, and isn’t part of the Nazca Lines at all.
C.
is probably in a location Isla hadn’t ever come across while on the ground.
D.
was almost certainly created a long time after the other Nazca Lines geoglyphs were created
C
During the Bourbon Restoration in France (1814–1830), the right to vote required in part that a person paid at least 300francs in direct taxes to the government. The four most common taxes (the
quatre vieilles
) were levied on real estate (bothland and buildings); the doors and windows in taxpayer homes; the rental values of homes; and the businesses of artisansand merchants. (Foreign investments were either exempt from taxation or taxed lightly.) Although relatively few people paidthe tax on real estate, it was the main means of voter qualifi cation and accounted for over two-thirds of governmentreceipts during this period, suggesting that during the Bourbon Restoration ______
Which choice most logically completes the text?
A.
those people who had the right to vote most likely had substantial holdings of French real estate.
B.
the voting habits of French artisans and merchants were effective in reducing tax burdens on businesses.
C.
the number of doors and windows in French residences was kept to a minimum but increased after 1830.
D.
French people with signifi cant foreign investments were unlikely to have the right to vote.
A
The domestic sweet potato (
Ipomoea batatas
) descends from a wild plant native to South America. It also populates thePolynesian Islands, where evidence confi rms that Native Hawaiians and other Indigenous peoples were cultivating the plantcenturies before seafaring fi rst occurred over the thousands of miles of ocean separating them from South America. Toexplain how the sweet potato was fi rst introduced in Polynesia, botanist Pablo Muñoz-Rodríguez and colleagues analyzedthe DNA of numerous varieties of the plant, concluding that Polynesian varieties diverged from South American ones over100,000 years ago. Given that Polynesia was peopled only in the last three thousand years, the team concluded that ______
Which choice most logically completes the text?
A.
the cultivation of the sweet potato
in Polynesia likely predates its cultivation in South America.
B.
Polynesian peoples likely acquired the sweet potato from South American peoples only within the last three thousandyears.
C.
human activity likely played no role in the introduction of the sweet potato in Polynesia.
D.
Polynesian sweet potato varieties likely descend from a single South American variety that was domesticated, not wild.
C
Ratifi ed by more than 90 countries, the Nagoya Protocol is an international agreement ensuring that Indigenouscommunities are compensated when their agricultural resources and knowledge of wild plants and animals are utilized byagricultural corporations. However, the protocol has shortcomings. For example, it allows corporations to insist that theiragreements with communities to conduct research on the commercial uses of the communities’ resources and knowledgeremain confi dential. Therefore, some Indigenous advocates express concern that the protocol may have the unintendedeffect of ______
Which choice most logically completes the text?
A.
diminishing the monetary reward that corporations might derive from their agreements with Indigenous communities.
B.
limiting the research that corporations conduct on the resources of the Indigenous communities with which they havesigned agreements.
C.
preventing independent observers from determining whether the agreements guarantee equitable compensation forIndigenous communities.
D.
discouraging Indigenous communities from learning new methods for harvesting plants and animals from theircorporate partners.
C
Some
Astyanax mexicanus
, a river-dwelling fi sh found in northeast Mexico, have colonized caves in the region. Althoughthere is little genetic difference between river and cave
A. mexicanus
and all members of the species can emit the samesounds, biologist Carole Hyacinthe and colleagues found that the context and signifi cance of those sounds vary by location—e.g., the click that river-dwelling
A. mexicanus
use to signal aggression is used by cave dwellers when foraging—and theacoustic properties of cave fi sh sounds show some cave-specifi c variations as well. Hyacinthe and colleagues note thatdifferences in sonic communication could accumulate to the point of inhibiting interbreeding among fi sh from differentlocations, suggesting that ______
Which choice most logically completes the text?
A.
although
A. mexicanus
living in rivers are genetically similar to those living in caves, river fi sh rely on soniccommunication less than cave fi sh do.
B.
although
A. mexicanus
is a single species at present, it could be in the process of splitting into distinct populations withdifferent characteristics.
C.
although all
A. mexicanus
emit sounds, the fi sh living in rivers produce some sounds that the fi sh living in caves do not,and vice versa.
D.
although
A. mexicanus
from different locations can interbreed currently, river fi sh and cave fi sh are suffi cientlygenetically distinct that they can be considered separate species.
B
German theater practitioner Bertolt Brecht (1898–1956) believed that theater should elicit an intellectual rather than anemotional response from audiences, provoking them to consider social and political realities that extend beyond thecharacters and events depicted onstage. Brecht’s infl uence can be seen in English playwright Caryl Churchill’s 1979 play
Cloud 9
: although the play sometimes invites empathetic reactions, it primarily works to engage audiences in aninterrogation of patriarchy and colonialism, which it does by placing audiences at a distance, thereby encouraging them to
______
Which choice most logically completes the text?
A.
focus on the characters’ beliefs about social and political issues as revealed by the characters’ actions.
B.
refl ect on social and political phenomena not directly related to patriarchy and colonialism.
C.
recognize pertinent social and political parallels between Germany during Brecht’s time and England at the time whenChurchill was writing
Cloud 9
.
D.
be dispassionate as they think critically about the social and political questions raised by the play.
D
One challenge when researching whether holding elected offi ce changes a person’s behavior is the problem of ensuring thatthe experiment has an appropriate control group. To reveal the effect of holding offi ce, researchers must compare peoplewho hold elected offi ce with people who do not hold offi ce but who are otherwise similar to the offi ce-holders. Sinceresearchers are unable to control which politicians win elections, they therefore ______
Which choice most logically completes the text?
A.
struggle to fi nd valid data about the behavior of politicians who do not currently hold offi ce.
B.
can only conduct valid studies with people who have previously held offi ce rather than people who presently hold offi ce.
C.
should select a control group of people who differ from offi ce holders in several signifi cant ways.
D.
will fi nd it diffi cult to identify a group of people who can function as an appropriate control group for their studies.
D
Archaeologists and historians used to believe that the Maya civilization during its Classic period (roughly 250–900) lackedagricultural marketplaces. One reason for this belief was that these scholars misunderstood the ecology of the regions theMaya inhabited. Marketplaces typically emerge because different individuals or groups want to trade resources they controlfor resources they don’t control. Scholars seriously underestimated the ecological diversity of the Maya landscape and thusassumed that ______
Which choice most logically completes the text?
A.
marketplaces likely would not have attracted many traders from outside the regions controlled by the Maya.
B.
farming practices would have been largely the same throughout Maya lands even if the crops people produced variedsignifi cantly.
C.
marketplaces would not have enabled Maya people to acquire many products different from those they alreadyproduced.
D.
farmers would trade agricultural products only if they had already produced enough to meet their own needs.
C
In a study of the cognitive abilities of white-faced capuchin monkeys (
Cebus imitator
), researchers neglected to control forthe physical diffi culty of the tasks they used to evaluate the monkeys. The cognitive abilities of monkeys given problemsrequiring little dexterity, such as sliding a panel to retrieve food, were judged by the same criteria as were those of monkeysgiven physically demanding problems, such as unscrewing a bottle and inserting a straw. The results of the study, therefore,
______
Which choice most logically completes the text?
A.
could suggest that there are differences in cognitive ability among the monkeys even though such differences may notactually exist.
B.
are useful for identifying tasks that the monkeys lack the cognitive capacity to perform but not for identifying tasks thatthe monkeys can perform.
C.
should not be taken as indicative of the cognitive abilities of any monkey species other than
C. imitator
.
D.
reveal more about the monkeys’ cognitive abilities when solving artifi cial problems than when solving problemsencountered in the wild.
A
One theory behind human bipedalism speculates that it originated in a mostly ground-based ancestor that practiced four-legged “knuckle-walking,” like chimpanzees and gorillas do today, and eventually evolved into moving upright on two legs.But recently, researchers observed orangutans, another relative of humans, standing on two legs on tree branches andusing their arms for balance while they reached for fruits. These observations may suggest that ______
Which choice most logically completes the text?
A.
bipedalism evolved because it was advantageous to a tree-dwelling ancestor of humans.
B.
bipedalism must have evolved simultaneously with knuckle-walking and tree-climbing.
C.
moving between the ground and the trees would have been diffi cult without bipedalism.
D.
a knuckle-walking human ancestor could have easily moved bipedally in trees.
A
Tides can deposit large quantities of dead vegetation within a salt marsh, smothering healthy plants and leaving a saltpanne—a depression devoid of plants that tends to trap standing water—in the marsh’s interior. Ecologist Kathryn Beheshtiand colleagues found that burrowing crabs living within these pannes improve drainage by loosening the soil, leading thepannes to shrink as marsh plants move back in. At salt marsh edges, however, crab-induced soil loosening can promotemarsh loss by accelerating erosion, suggesting that the burrowing action of crabs ______
Which choice most logically completes the text?
A.
can be benefi cial to marshes with small pannes but can be harmful to marshes with large pannes.
B.
may promote increases in marsh plants or decreases in marsh plants, depending on the crabs’ location.
C.
tends to be more heavily concentrated in areas of marsh interiors with standing water than at marsh edges.
D.
varies in intensity depending on the size of the panne relative to the size of the surrounding marsh.
B
Many of William Shakespeare’s tragedies address broad themes that still appeal to today’s audiences. For instance,
Romeoand Juliet
, which is set in the Italy of Shakespeare’s time, tackles the themes of parents versus children and love versushate, and the play continues to be read and produced widely around the world. But understanding Shakespeare’s so-calledhistory plays can require a knowledge of several centuries of English history. Consequently, ______
Which choice most logically completes the text?
A.
many theatergoers and readers today are likely to fi nd Shakespeare’s history plays less engaging than the tragedies.
B.
some of Shakespeare’s tragedies are more relevant to today’s audiences than twentieth-century plays.
C.
Romeo and Juliet
is the most thematically accessible of all Shakespeare’s tragedies.
D.
experts in English history tend to prefer Shakespeare’s history plays to his other works.
A
Researchers Suchithra Rajendran and Maximilian Popfi nger modeled varying levels of passenger redistribution from short-haul fl ights (fl ights of 50 to 210 minutes, from takeoff to landing) to high-speed rail trips. Planes travel faster than trains, butair 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 volumesapproach current capacity limits, long lead times emerge. Therefore, for rail to remain a viable alternative to short-haulfl ights, ______
Which choice most logically completes the text?
A.
rail systems should offer fewer long-haul routes and airlines should offer more long-haul routes.
B.
rail systems may need to schedule additional trains for these routes.
C.
security, baggage handling, and boarding procedures used by airlines may need to be implemented for rail systems.
D.
passengers who travel by rail for these routes will need to accept that lead times will be similar to those for air travel.
B
In the early nineteenth century, some Euro-American farmers in the northeastern United States used agricultural techniquesdeveloped by the Haudenosaunee (Iroquois) people centuries earlier, but it seems that few of those farmers had actuallyseen Haudenosaunee farms fi rsthand. Barring the possibility of several farmers of the same era independently developingtechniques that the Haudenosaunee people had already invented, these facts most strongly suggest that ______
Which choice most logically completes the text?
A.
those farmers learned the techniques from other people who were more directly infl uenced by Haudenosauneepractices.
B.
the crops typically cultivated by Euro-American farmers in the northeastern United States were not well suited toHaudenosaunee farming techniques.
C.
Haudenosaunee farming techniques were widely used in regions outside the northeastern United States.
D.
Euro-American farmers only began to recognize the benefi ts of Haudenosaunee farming techniques late in thenineteenth century.
A
Laura Mulvey has theorized that in narrative fi lm, shots issuing from a protagonist’s point of view compel viewers to identifywith the character. Such identifi cation is heightened by “invisible editing,” or editing so inconspicuous that it renders cutsbetween shots almost unnoticeable. Conversely, Mulvey proposes that conspicuous editing or an absence of point-of-viewshots would induce a more critical stance toward a protagonist. Consider, for example, the attic 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 ______
Which choice most logically completes the text?
A.
obscuring their awareness of the high degree of artifi ce involved in constructing the montage.
B.
lessening their identifi cation with the protagonist, if not alienating them from the character altogether.
C.
compelling them to identify with the fi lm’s director, whose proxy is the camera, and not with the protagonist.
D.
diverting their attention away from the fi lm’s content and toward its stylistic attributes.
B
Compiled in the late 1500s largely through the efforts of Indigenous scribes,
Cantares Mexicanos
is the most importantcollection of poetry in Classical Nahuatl, the principal language of the Aztec Empire. The poems portray Aztec societybefore the occupation of the empire by the army of Spain, and marginal notes in
Cantares Mexicanos
indicate that much ofthe collection’s content predates the initial invasion. Nonetheless, some of the poems contain inarguable references tobeliefs and customs common in Spain during this era. Thus, some scholars have concluded that ______
Which choice most logically completes the text?
A.
while its content largely predates the invasion,
Cantares Mexicanos
also contains additions made after the invasion.
B.
although those who compiled
Cantares Mexicanos
were fl uent in Nahuatl, they had limited knowledge of the Spanishlanguage.
C.
before the invasion by Spain, the poets of the Aztec Empire borrowed from the literary traditions of other societies.
D.
the references to beliefs and customs in Spain should be attributed to a coincidental resemblance between the societiesof Spain and the Aztec Empire.
A
Aerogels are highly porous foams consisting mainly of tiny air pockets within a solidifi ed gel. These lightweight materialsare often applied to spacecraft and other equipment required to withstand extreme conditions, as they provide excellentinsulation despite typically being brittle and eventually fracturing due to degradation from repeated exposure to high heat.Now, Xiangfeng Duan of the University of California, Los Angeles, and colleagues have developed an aerogel with uniquelyfl exible properties. Unlike earlier aerogels, Duan’s team’s material contracts rather than expands when heated and fullyrecovers after compressing to just 5% of its original volume, suggesting that ______
Which choice most logically completes the text?
A.
the aerogel’s remarkable fl exibility results from its higher proportion of air pockets to solidifi ed gel as compared to otheraerogels.
B.
the aerogel’s overall strength is greater than that of other insulators but its ability to withstand exposure to intense heatis lower.
C.
the aerogel will be more effective as an insulator for uses that involve gradual temperature shifts than for those thatinvolve rapid heat increases.
D.
the aerogel will be less prone to the structural weakness that ultimately causes most other aerogels to break down withuse.
D
Marta Coll and colleagues’ 2010 Mediterranean Sea biodiversity census reported approximately 17,000 species, nearlydouble the number reported in Carlo Bianchi and Carla Morri’s 2000 census—a difference only partly attributable to thedescription of new invertebrate species in the interim. Another factor is that the morphological variability ofmicroorganisms is poorly understood compared to that of vertebrates, invertebrates, plants, and algae, creating uncertaintyabout how to evaluate microorganisms as species. Researchers’ decisions on such matters therefore can be highlyconsequential. Indeed, the two censuses reported similar counts of vertebrate, plant, and algal species, suggesting that
______
Which choice most logically completes the text?
A.
Coll and colleagues reported a much higher number of species than Bianchi and Morri did largely due to the inclusion ofinvertebrate species that had not been described at the time of Bianchi and Morri’s census.
B.
some differences observed in microorganisms may have been treated as variations within species by Bianchi and Morribut treated as indicative of distinct species by Coll and colleagues.
C.
Bianchi and Morri may have been less sensitive to the degree of morphological variation displayed within a typicalspecies of microorganism than Coll and colleagues were.
D.
the absence of clarity regarding how to differentiate among species of microorganisms may have resulted in Coll andcolleagues underestimating the number of microorganism species.
B
To better understand the burrowing habits of
Alpheus bellulus
(the tiger pistol shrimp), some studies have used resincasting to obtain precise measurements of the shrimps’ burrows. Resin casting involves completely fi lling an empty burrowwith a liquid plastic that hardens to create a three-dimensional model; however, recovering the model inevitably requiresdestroying the burrow. In their 2022 study, Miyu Umehara and colleagues discovered that an x-ray computed tomography(CT) scanner can accurately record a burrow’s measurements both at a moment in time and throughout the entire burrow-building process, something that’s impossible with resin casting because ______
Which choice most logically completes the text?
A.
it can only be used on burrows below a certain size.
B.
it does not allow for multiple castings of the same burrow over time.
C.
the casting process takes more time than
A. bellulus
takes to construct a burrow.
D.
the process of recovering the model distorts the resin’s shape.
B
Many animals, including humans, must sleep, and sleep is known to have a role in everything from healing injuries toencoding information in long-term memory. But some scientists claim that, from an evolutionary standpoint, deep sleep forhours at a time leaves an animal so vulnerable that the known benefi ts of sleeping seem insuffi cient to explain why itbecame so widespread in the 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.
B.
most traits perform functions that are hard to understand from an evolutionary standpoint.
C.
it is more important to understand how widespread prolonged deep sleep is than to understand its function.
D.
many traits that provide signifi cant benefi ts for an animal also likely pose risks to that animal.
A
