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Age data from meteorites suggests that, in contrast to the relatively ________ pace of planetary evolution we are witnessing today, the first ten million years or so of our solar system history were extremely eventful.
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The author' s new novel is everything that her first was not: obvious and (i)________ rather than understated and subtly shaded. Instead of quietly revealing themselves through tiny, unexpected gestures, the characters are forced to make (ii)________ statements that announce exactly what they are thinking and serve primarily to underscore the author' s sociological points. There are occasional glimpses of the (iii)________ and emotional wisdom so lavishly demonstrated in the author' s previous novel-gifts, the reader hopes, that will be more fruitfully employed in her next.
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Although seventeenth-century Europeans thought of the blue-and-white porcelain they imported as quintessentially Chinese, the style was a borrowed, or at least adapted, one. When Chinese potters began firing true porcelain in the fourteenth century, both China and Persia were under Mongol rule, facilitating trade between the two regions. Persians had prized imported Chinese ceramics since the 700s. Unable to match the whiteness of the Chinese imports' clay, Persian potters masked gray clay with white glaze decorated with blue figures using local cobalt. Chinese potters adjusted the look of their products to appeal to Persian buyers, incorporating cobalt decoration into their designs. As Chinese cobalt is paler than Persian cobalt, Chinese potters began importing Persian cobalt to produce a color intended to appeal to Persian buyers.
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The author mentions "Mongol rule" primarily in order to
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The passage suggests which of the following about trade between China and Persia? (Consider each of the choices separately and select all that apply.)
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The trader' s dilemma, which typically occurs in peasant villages, arises in two contexts. First, the trader buys agricultural products in his or her village; although these products are often resold outside the village at a market, where laws of supply and demand exist and profit margins are rather limited, the trader nevertheless feels morally obliged to pay fellow villagers a good price for their products or even eventually to share profits with those villagers. Second, in his or her village shop, the trader sells imported products, but because of villagers' constrained finances must do so at reduced price, or even on credit. In both cases, the trader confronts the risk of either losing working capital or losing the respect and moral support of neighbors and kinfolk.
A classical way out of the dilemma, according to Evers, is sociocultural differentiation of peasants and traders into two separate, locally coexisting moral communities. Evers' point is theoretically significant because it implies that such differentiation may be economically rather than politically motivated. Thus, while in many societies traders are strangers, a migrant minority, it may also happen that a resident trading minority itself creates cultural distance in order to find a solution for the trader' s dilemma, which thus may drive sociocultural change.
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Which of the following gives the most accurate definition of the trader' s dilemma, as it is presented in the passage?
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According to the passage, the "sociocultural change" alluded to in the passage would occur as a result of
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It can be inferred that the "way out of the dilemma" described by Evers works by allowing
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Demographic data for Ollene Province indicate that over the next ten years the number of teenagers will decline and the number of children under the age of ten will rise. Most parents whose children are under ten and who want childcare during evening hours hire a babysitter who comes to their home, and virtually all babysitters are teenagers. Therefore, parents who want childcare during evening hours will have an increasingly hard time finding an available babysitter.
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The reasoning in the passage is most strongly supported if the demographic data also indicate that
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At roughly four thousand lines, the second quarto version of Hamlet-the closest surviving version to what Shakespeare first wrote in late 1599-could not have been performed uncut. Though the Elizabethan stage dispensed with time-consuming intermissions and scenery changes, this version would still have taken four hours to perform; even at top speed, actors couldn' t rattle off much more than a thousand lines of verse an hour. With outdoor performances beginning at two in the afternoon and the sun setting at around five o' clock, an uncut Hamlet staged in late fall or winter would have left actors stumbling about on a dark stage. Contemporary references to other plays mention their running time as being closer to two hours.
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Which statement best expresses the author' s main conclusion in the passage?
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Which statement best describes the function of the highlighted sentence?
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The passage implies which of the following about Irish American women in the nineteenth century?
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The author mentions "Irish families" primarily in order to
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This passage is adapted from material published in 2007.
Wilson has suggested that the methodological orientations of the political science discipline might account for political science' s lagging behind history and sociology in the publication of mainstream journal articles on African American topics. He explained these relative disciplinary differences regarding publication as partially resulting from pressure to do large-scale voter studies; this pressure placed those interested in African American politics at a disadvantage, because the relevant empirical data on the Black population were insufficient to render findings that were externally valid and generalizable. Wilson' s second explanation pointed to the discipline' s traditional focus on politics and decision-making processes at levels to which African Americans have historically had limited access—a narrow focus reflected in the types of research articles favored in mainstream political science journals.
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Which of the following can be inferred from the passage about "large-scale voter studies"?
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According to the passage, Wilson has proposed that political science' s "lagging behind" can be explained in part by
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Researchers suspect that meteorites (particles of matter that fall to Earth' s surface from space) are pieces of asteroids, the many minor planets primarily inhabiting the region between Mars and Jupiter called the asteroid belt. The most common meteorites are ordinary chondrites-rocks containing tiny flecks of metal. By analyzing the spectrums of sunlight reflected by asteroids to determine the asteroids' chemical composition, researchers have found that most of the brighter asteroids contain the same silicates and other compounds that dominate chondrites. These silicaceous, or S-type, asteroids are the most abundant type in the inner asteroid belt, the part of the asteroid belt from which objects are most likely to escape and travel to Earth. However, S-type asteroids reflect red and infrared light much better than they reflect green, blue, and violet light, suggesting that they have a higher metal content than do ordinary chondrites. This has led at least one researcher to posit that meteorites come from other types of asteroids that are too small and too dim to be detected. However, S-type asteroids could be ordinary chondrites that have been weathered by the effects of the space environment, making them seem redder and more metallic than they really are.
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