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Which one of the following is an assumption on which the argument depends?
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The idea that all mental functions are derived from the brain originated with Hippocrates, but it was largely neglected until the late 18th century, when Franz Gall attempted to link psychology and brain science. Gall took advantage of what was already known about the cerebral cortex. He was aware that it was bilaterally symmetrical and subdivided into four lobes. However, he found that these four lobes were, by themselves, inadequate to account for the forty-odd distinct psychological functions that psychologists had characterized by 1790. As a result he began to analyze the heads of hundreds of musicians, actors, etc., relating certain bony elevations or depressions under the scalp to the predominant talent or defects of their owners. Based on his skull palpitation, Gall subdivided the cortex into roughly forty regions, each of which served as an organ for a specific mental function.
While Gall`s theory that all mental processes derive from the brain proved to be correct, his methods for localizing specific functions were deeply flawed because they were not based on what we would now consider valid evidence. Gall did not test his ideas empirically by performing autopsies on the brains of patients and correlating damage to specific regions with defects in mental attributes; he distrusted the diseased brain and did not think it could reveal anything about normal behavior. Instead, he developed the notion that as each mental function is used, the particular area of the brain responsible for that function becomes enlarged. Eventually, a given area may become so bulky that it pushes out against the skull and produces a bump on the head.
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The author would agree with all of the following regarding Gall`s work EXCEPT?
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Demotic Greek (language of the people) is the modern vernacular form of the Greek language, and refers particularly to the form of the language that evolved naturally from ancient Greek, in opposition to the artificially archaic Katharevousa, which was the official standard until 1976. The two complemented each other in a typical example of diglossia, or the existence of two forms of a language (usually a "high" and a "low") employed by the same speaker depending on the social context, until the resolution of the Greek language question in favor of Demotic.
Demotic is often thought to be the same as the modern Greek language, but these two terms are not completely synonymous. While Demotic is a term applied to the naturally evolved colloquial language of the Greeks, the modern Greek language of today is more like a fusion of Demotic and Katharevousa; it can be viewed as a variety of Demotic which has been enriched by "educated" elements. Therefore, it is not wrong to call the spoken language of today Demotic, though such a terminology ignores the fact that modern Greek contains - especially in a written or official form - numerous words, grammatical forms and phonetical features that did not exist in colloquial speech and only entered the language through its archaic variety. Additionally, even the most archaic forms of Katharevousa were never thought of as ancient Greek, but were always called "modern Greek" , so that the phrase "modern Greek" applies to Demotic, Standard Modern Greek and even Katharevousa.
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Regarding Demotic Greek, all of the following can be supported by the passage EXCEPT?
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Language acquisition has long been thought of as a process of imitation and reinforcement. Children learn to speak, in the popular view, by copying the utterances heard around them, and by having their response strengthened by the repetitions, corrections, and other reactions that adults provide. In recent years, it has become clear that this principle will not explain all the facts of language development. Children do imitate a great deal, especially in learning sounds and vocabulary; but little of their grammatical ability can be explained in this way. Two kinds of evidence are commonly used in support of this criticism – one based on the kind of language children produce, the other on what they do not produce.
The first piece of evidence derives from the way children handle irregular grammatical patterns. When they encounter such irregular past-tense forms as went and took or such plural forms as mice and sheep, there is a stage when they replace these by forms based on the regular patterns of the language. They say such things as wented, taked, mices, mouses, and sheeps. Evidently, children assume that grammatical usage is regular, and try to work out for themselves what the forms `ought` to be – a reasoning process known as analogy. They could not have learned these forms by a process of imitation. The other kind of evidence is based on the way children seem unable to imitate adult grammatical constructions exactly, even when invited to do so.
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Which of the following casts doubt on the "popular view"?
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People associate global warming with temperature, but the phrase is misleading-it fails to mention the relevance of water. Nearly every significant indicator of hydrological activity-rainfall, snowmelt, glacial melt-is changing at an accelerating pace (one can arbitrarily pick any point of the hydrological cycle and notice a disruption). One analysis pegged the increase in precipitation at 2 percent over the century. In water terms this sounds auspicious, promising increased supply, but the changing timing and composition of the precipitation more than neutralizes the advantage. For one thing, it is likely that more of the precipitation will fall in intense episodes, with flooding a reasonable prospect. In addition, while rainfall will increase, snowfall will decrease. Such an outcome means that in watersheds that depend on snowmelt, like the Indus, Ganges, Colorado river basins, less water will be stored as snow, and more of it will flow in the winter, when it plays no agricultural role; conversely, less of it will flow in the summer, when it is most needed. One computer model showed that on the Animas River an increase in temperature of 3.6 degrees Fahrenheit would cause runoff to rise by 85 percent from January to March, but drop by 40 percent from July to September. The rise in temperature increases the probability and intensity of spring floods and threatens dam safety, which is predicated on lower runoff projections. Dams in arid areas also may face increased sedimentation, since a 10 percent annual increase in precipitation can double the volume of sediment washed into rivers.
The consequences multiply. Soil moisture will intensify at the highest northern latitudes, where precipitation will grow far more than evaporation and plant transpiration but where agriculture is nonexistent. At the same time, precipitation will drop over northern mid-latitude continents in summer months, when ample soil moisture is an agricultural necessity. Meanwhile the sea level will continue to rise as temperatures warm, accelerating saline contamination of freshwater aquifers and river deltas. The temperature will cause increased evaporation, which in turn will lead to a greater incidence of drought.
Perhaps most disturbing of all, the hydrologic cycle is becoming increasingly unpredictable. This means that the last century`s hydrological cycle-the set of assumptions about water on which modern irrigation is based-has become unreliable. Build a dam too large, and it may not generate its designed power; build it too small, and it may collapse or flood. Release too little dam runoff in the spring and risk flood, as the snowmelt cascades downstream with unexpected volume; release too much and the water will not be available for farmers when they need it. At a time when water scarcity calls out for intensified planning, planning itself may be stymied.
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The second paragraph supports which of the following?
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For anyone claiming to write a history of a science of which reasoning forms the very essence, the question of the logic is of paramount importance. For example, a modern western account of any historical period in mathematics would, as a matter of course, show a detailed proof justifying each and every mathematical result discussed. Despite this obvious fact, general histories of Chinese mathematics rarely show concern for this issue. They insist above all on presenting only the mathematical results, the logical underpinnings of which are unclear, and rarely do they provide the reader with any semblance of a proof. While this approach to the history of mathematics is naturally a result of various causes, one which probably plays an essential role is the fact that most Chinese mathematical works themselves contain no logical justifications: according to this worldview, apparently it was enough to state authoritatively that something was true --- it was completely superfluous to demonstrate why it was true.
There is one major exception to this general pattern, namely a set of Chinese argumentative discourses which has been handed down to us from the first millennium A.D. We are referring to the commentaries and sub-commentaries on the Jiuzhang Suanshu [ "The Nine Chapters on the Mathematical Art" ], the key work which inaugurated Chinese mathematics and served as a reference for it over a long period of its history. This fact, which was long unrecognized, means that we are now in a position to know a lot more about the logical construction of mathematics in China than, for example, in Egypt, Mesopotamia, or India.
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What distinguishes the commentaries on the?Jiuzhang Suanshu?from almost all other works of Chinese mathematical history is that the authors of the former
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Technology Analyst: The programmers at the website Cyberepicuria have recently made a breakthrough, perfecting a special program in which users can enter any foods or any flavors they like, and the website will suggest different foods and food combinations with somewhat different flavors that the users will also like. The website will charge users a modest fee for access. Users of the beta version have reported that, because of the program's suggestions, they have discovered whole new categories of food they have come to enjoy. Because Cyberepicuria is the only website offering this service, anyone who invests in Cyberepicuria right now is likely to double or triple their money in a very short time.
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Which of the following, if true, most seriously weakens the analyst's argument above?
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Dark matter and dark energy have little effect on conventional matter over familiar distances. Instead, they make their presence known through their prodigious gravitational effects. In tracking them down, therefore, astronomers have had to study gigantic assemblages of matter, extending across spans of millions and billions of light-years. Perhaps the first to take that sweeping viewpoint was the Swiss-American astronomer Fritz Zwicky. In the 1930`s, Zwicky traced the motions of individual galaxies within great clusters of galaxies and made a remarkable discovery: the individual galaxies are moving too fast to be held together in a cluster by the force of gravity exerted by the starry matter visible within them. From his measurements, Zwicky concluded that the great clusters of galaxies must be held together by the gravitational effect of some unseen mass, which he dubbed"dark matter."
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It can be inferred from the passage that Zwicky hypothesized the existence of "dark matter" in order to account for
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In?Don Giovanni, what is perhaps Mozart`s best-known opera, there exist two distinct endings, a phenomenon not entirely unknown during the composer`s time, but one that invites the obvious question: Why did Mozart decide to include alternate endings for?Don Giovanni, when he did not do the same with his other famous operas,?Die Zauberfl?te?and?Le Nozze di Figaro. Another question, and one not so obvious, is: Why was Mozart himself uncertain as to which of the two endings to choose, as is evidenced in his correspondence with Lorenzo Da Ponte, the opera`s librettist?
A common answer is to treat both these questions as one: Mozart was uncertain as to which ending to provide, so he wrote both endings. Such a reply ignores an important consideration: Why did Mozart decide to provide these specific endings? Libard provides a reasonable answer: The traditional ending-in the sense that it is the one that was popular during the composer`s day, and continues to be so today-is clearly more palatable for audiences. The hero, Don Giovanni, is chided for his libertine ways and then the cast appears in tutti, bellowing a merry chorus as the curtain falls. The audience is left having a light dose of entertainment, which, after all, was the aim of many of the operas of Mozart`s time. Fine, but then what of the tragic ending? Libard-trading the sensible for the pat-offers little more than that such an ending reflects the political climate of the day.
This alternate ending-Don Giovanni is suddenly cast down to Hell, and instead of being redeemed, the hero emerges from the underworld chastened, and the curtain falls-was interpreted by the critics of the day as heavy-handed didacticism. While such a view is not entirely without merit-Mozart ultimately aimed to impart some lesson for his incorrigible Lothario-it still leaves the questioned unanswered as to why two endings, and what exactly did Mozart aim to communicate that could not be housed in a traditional ending.
One answer offered recently by musicologist Gustavo Lucien is that Mozart balked at including a traditional ending, feeling that it was incongruous with the serious tone of most of the opera. Indeed, Don Giovanni falls more under the rubric of opera serie than opera buffo, the latter typically featuring light endings in which the entire cast sings in an upbeat, major key. Da Ponte, however, insisted that forthwith casting Don Giovanni to Hell, and offering him scant opportunity for redemption, would likely leave the audience feeling ambivalent. Such an ending would also suggest that the librettist had been unable to think of a tidy resolution. Da Ponte, then, was not so much against a tragic ending as he was an abrupt tragic ending. Perhaps, even Mozart was unsure of what to do with Don Giovanni once he was in Hell, and may have even been working out a different ending, using the light ending as a stopgap till he achieved such an aim. In that case the fate of Don Giovanni can best be answered by the fact that Mozart-through debts, ill-health, and the composer`s obligation to compose works for his patrons –was unable to return to a work he had tabled.
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In the context in which it is used"tabled"most nearly means
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The `trophic contamination hypothesis` posits that shorebirds accumulate industrial and urban pollution at stopover sites, toxins that are subsequently released in sudden high doses as fat is burned during migratory flights, disrupting the bird`s ability to make migratory decisions. For example, large contaminant doses might hamper refueling by reducing the satiation signal in shorebirds so that they do not accumulate sufficient fat for migration. A recent study found that, out of those shorebirds that were unable to migrate, some weighed as much as 20% less than the average migrating bird of their species. Whether such findings are a result of shorebirds suffering from trophic contamination, or whether such birds simply cut their migrations short by landing in a foreign ecosystem is unlikely to be resolved until further studies are conducted.?
One promising line of research involves organochlorines, toxins deposited on mudflats in the 1970s and 1980s, now buried by sediments but finally close enough to the surface to be of issue to foraging shorebirds. Organochlorines should be more accessible to long-billed shorebirds that probe deeply for prey than to short-billed species that forage at or near the surface. We predict that an increased number of long-billed shorebirds will either be unable to migrate or will be found along an aberrant flight path.
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According to the passage, the author implies that foreign ecosystems have which potential effect on shorebirds?
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Vladimir Nabokov, the scientist and the author have been treated as discrete manifestations of a prodigious and probing mind, until now. In her recent biography on Nabokov, Temoshotka makes the bold assertion that these two apparently disparate realms of Nabokov`s polymorphous genius were not so unrelated after all. While Temoshotka cannot be faulted for the boldness of her thesis-Nabokov`s hobby as a lepidopterist (a butterfly collector) and his experience as a novelist informed each other-she fails to make a convincing case. Surely, with enough ingenuity, one can find parallels, as Temoshotka does, between the creative products of Nabokov the naturalist and Nabokov the writer: the intricate butterfly wings that he pored over in his laboratory and the intricate prose that he crafted with sedulous care. But to say the prose of?Lolita?and?Speak Memory?would not have coalesced into their current incarnations had Nabokov`s hobby been, say, lawn tennis is simply reaching too far.
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