Cheerleaders for futuristic cars, which can navigate roads with zero input from humans, have for years drummed up interest by focusing on these cars’ safety as well as their ability to reduce traffic jams. Now, a new study suggests that there may be another reason to embrace the new technology: substantial reductions in greenhouse gas emissions. (https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/robocabs-might-make-big-cut-in-pollution/)

As it is used in the passage, “embrace” most nearly means

 

“Weakest” is rarely a superlative worth celebrating, but experiments began this summer in a room with the weakest magnetic field in our solar system—and scientists are excited. Built by physicists at the Technical University of Munich, the room achieves a millionfold reduction in the intensity of ambient magnetic fields, a 10-fold improvement on any previous man-made structure, registering even less such activity than the vast, empty space between planets. The facility’s shielding consists of layers of a highly magnetizable metal that ensnare fields so they do not pass through to the structure's interior. Within, ultraprecise experiments can take place with only minute interference from the results-mucking effects of Earth, electronics, living bodies, and more. The room's special type of silence therefore offers a unique opportunity to probe important questions in physics, biology and medicine. (https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/the-room-with-the-weakest-magnetic-field-on-earth/)

As it is used in the passage, “registering” most nearly means

 

“Weakest” is rarely a superlative worth celebrating, but experiments began this summer in a room with the weakest magnetic field in our solar system—and scientists are excited. Built by physicists at the Technical University of Munich, the room achieves a millionfold reduction in the intensity of ambient magnetic fields, a 10-fold improvement on any previous man-made structure, registering even less such activity than the vast, empty space between planets. The facility’s shielding consists of layers of a highly magnetizable metal that ensnare fields so they do not pass through to the structure's interior. Within, ultraprecise experiments can take place with only minute interference from the results-mucking effects of Earth, electronics, living bodies, and more. The room's special type of silence therefore offers a unique opportunity to probe important questions in physics, biology and medicine. (https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/the-room-with-the-weakest-magnetic-field-on-earth/)

As it is used in the passage, “probe” most nearly means

 

In one month, three Google Street View cars clocked 750 hours of drive time in Denver. But the cars weren’t just taking pictures of houses and stores. They were fitted with air pollutions sensors, built by environmental monitoring startup Aclima, and they were taking a reading of ambient air pollution every second. The mobile sensors monitor a host of environmental pollutants: nitrogen dioxide, nitric oxide, ozone, carbon monoxide, carbon dioxide, methane, black carbon, particulate matter and volatile organic compounds. The goal is to track the density of these pollutants and how they change during the day, so that city residents have a sense of what they’re inhaling and can adapt their habits. (https://www.smithsonianmag.com/innovation/google-street-view-cars-mapping-city-air-pollution-180956205/)

As it is used in the passage, “host” most nearly means

 

In one month, three Google Street View cars clocked 750 hours of drive time in Denver. But the cars weren’t just taking pictures of houses and stores. They were fitted with air pollutions sensors, built by environmental monitoring startup Aclima, and they were taking a reading of ambient air pollution every second. The mobile sensors monitor a host of environmental pollutants: nitrogen dioxide, nitric oxide, ozone, carbon monoxide, carbon dioxide, methane, black carbon, particulate matter and volatile organic compounds. The goal is to track the density of these pollutants and how they change during the day, so that city residents have a sense of what they’re inhaling and can adapt their habits. (https://www.smithsonianmag.com/innovation/google-street-view-cars-mapping-city-air-pollution-180956205/)

As it is used in the passage, “track” most nearly means

 

The indigenous Quechua communities, descendants of the ancient Inca, have been building and rebuilding twisted-rope bridges, or Q’eswachakas, in the same way for more than 500 years. They’re a legacy and living link to an ancient past – not only capable of bearing some 5,000 pounds but also empowered by profound spiritual strength. (Adapted from https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smithsonian-institution/how-inca-empire-engineered-road-would-endure-centuries-180955709/)

As it is used in the passage, “bearing” most nearly means

 

The eye-catching checkerboard belly of the corn snake… resembles an ear of maize, which is likely what inspired the snake’s name. But “patterns are not very common on snake bellies," says Kate Jackson of Whitman College in Washington State. Instead, the reptiles typically display solid colors that are paler or brighter than their topsides. This contrast is called countershading, a type of camouflage that "occurs across the majority of animal groups," says Whit Gibbons, author and herpetologist at the University of Georgia’s Savannah River Ecology Laboratory. One example is the smooth green snake. Sunlight makes the dark green on its back appear lighter, so that it blends with the pale green on the lower part of its body. The result is a uniform color that is harder to see, especially against green grass. (https://news.nationalgeographic.com/2015/09/150919-animal-reptile-snakes-camouflage-science-biology-color/)

As it is used in the passage, “uniform” most nearly means

 

We live today in a world in which each week, seemingly, a new form of new media—from Fitbit to Facebook, electronic medical records to smartphone apps—promises to revolutionize the ways we experience health and illness. But we often forget that our current practices have been shaped by media that were once new. By studying the medical history of television when it was still considered a cutting-edge medical technology, we can better understand how we conceive and implement new technologies in medicine. (adapted from https://www.neh.gov/humanities/2017/spring/feature/when-television-was-medical-device)

As it is used in the passage, “shaped” most nearly means

 

The underlying concept of using quirks in human perception to learn about how the mind works is an old one. Visual, auditory and multisensory illusions, in which people’s perceptions contradict the physical properties of the stimuli, have long been used by psychologists to study the mechanisms of sensory processing. Magicians use such sensory illusions in their tricks, but they also heavily use cognitive illusions, manipulating people’s attention, trains of logic, and even memory. (https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/magic-neuroscience-cognition-illusions/)

As it is used in the passage, “properties” most nearly means

 

The underlying concept of using quirks in human perception to learn about how the mind works is an old one. Visual, auditory and multisensory illusions, in which people’s perceptions contradict the physical properties of the stimuli, have long been used by psychologists to study the mechanisms of sensory processing. Magicians use such sensory illusions in their tricks, but they also heavily use cognitive illusions, manipulating people’s attention, trains of logic, and even memory. (https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/magic-neuroscience-cognition-illusions/)

As it is used in the passage, “trains” most nearly means

 

Whatever the old adage might warn, there is a bit of merit to judging a book by its cover — if only in one respect. Consider the blurb, one of the most pervasive, longest-running — and, at times, controversial — tools in the publishing industry. For such a curious word, the term “blurb” has amassed a number of meanings in the decades since it worked its way into our vocabulary, but lately it has referred to just one thing: a bylined endorsement from a fellow writer — or celebrity — that sings the praises of a book's author right on the cover of their book. (https://www.npr.org/2015/09/27/429723002/forget-the-book-have-you-read-this-irresistible-story-on-blurbs)

The passage indicates that blurbs have provoked

 

For millennia, we’ve made decisions about what to grow or not grow—and what to eat or not eat. That’s what agriculture is: a series of decisions we, and our ancestors, have made about what we want our food and food system to look and taste like. But our ability to make these decisions—and indulge in our pleasures—is being compromised in ways that are unprecedented.

While some places in the world are experiencing an increase of diversity in certain parts of their diet, the general trend is the same one we see in phones and fashion: standardization. Every place looks and tastes more similar—and the country that sets this trend is America. The refined carbohydrates, animal proteins and added fats and sugars that make up the majority of our diets have also become the template diet for the world.(https://www.smithsonianmag.com/arts-culture/globalization-climate-change-foods-180957355/#A0OYcthsogtTeH0v.99)


The passage indicates that decisions about food consumption have become

 

Experiments in mice and rats suggest that certain microbes living in your body as part of the gut microbiome have ways of letting the brain know when they've received enough nutrients to reach their goal—creating a billion more of their kind. Those signals seem to turn hunger on and off in their hosts.

The findings build on a bounty of evidence that microbes play a key role in the physiology of appetite—and perhaps could help people with eating disorders.

"We have long known that after eating we get a feeling of fullness. Most have assumed that it is because our stomach or intestines are stretched," says Martin Blaser, director of NYU's Human Microbiome Program and author of Missing Microbes. "We never thought that the bacteria we were carrying could be part of that signal, but this new work provides evidence that that is what is occurring.”(https://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/gut-bacteria-may-be-controlling-your-appetite-180957389/)

The passage suggests that a “feeling of fullness” results from

 

At present physicists have two separate rulebooks explaining how nature works. There is general relativity, which beautifully accounts for gravity and all of the things it dominates: orbiting planets, colliding galaxies, the dynamics of the expanding universe as a whole. That’s big. Then there is quantum mechanics, which handles the other three forces—electromagnetism and the two nuclear forces. Quantum theory is extremely adept at describing what happens when a uranium atom decays, or when individual particles of light hit a solar cell. That’s small.(https://nautil.us/issue/29/scaling/will-quantum-mechanics-swallow-relativity)

The primary purpose of the passage is to

 

It began among children. In the village minister’s house, two little girls crawled under the furniture, made silly noises, spread their arms out like wings and tried to fly. The strangest thing—to any person who has spent more than 10 minutes on a grade-school playground—is that it was strange at all.

But standards of behavior for young girls were more exacting in 17th-century New England than they are today. The primary sources adopt a tone of perplexity. Nine-year-old Betty Parris, the parson’s daughter, and her 11-year-old cousin, Abigail Williams, had always been model children, “well Educated and of good Behaviour,” according to one chronicle. Soon, word spread through Salem: They had been bewitched. Clergymen came, then constables. (https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2015/11/how-satan-came-to-salem/407866/)

An underlying assumption of the passage is that

 

While it is true that Thoreau did not live so simple a life at Walden as he claimed, he was no paranoid hoarder. He offered legitimate reasons to oppose government actions and among them was not a desire for the dissolution of the body politic but for its improvement. He never sought accumulation, the hallmark of the prepper, who is so mistrustful of the civilization around him, yet so embedded in its political economy, that he can only escape it by owning and patrolling as much of it as possible. All Thoreau wanted was time, and he was willing to give up most goods to obtain it. (adapted from https://bostonreview.net/blog/thoreau-walden-simon-waxman)

The passage suggests that Thoreau believed government actions

 

Psychologists have tried to weed out the motivations of mountain climbers for decades. Some concluded that high-risk athletes – mountaineers included – are sensation-seekers who thrive off thrill. Yet think for a moment about what climbing a mountain like Everest entails – weeks spent at various camps, allowing the body to adapt to altitude; inching up the mountain, step-by-step; using sheer willpower to push through unrelenting discomfort and exhaustion – and this explanation makes less sense. Sports psychology researcher Matthew Barlow suspected that sensation-seeking theory has long been misapplied to mountaineers. His research suggests that, compared to other athletes, mountaineers tend to possess an exaggerated “expectancy of agency”. In other words, they crave a feeling of control over their lives. Because the complexities of modern life defy such control, they are forced to seek agency elsewhere. (adapted from https://www.bbc.com/future/story/20151008-the-graveyard-in-the-clouds-everests-200-dead-bodies)

In context of the passage, the statement “they crave a feeling of control over their lives” primarily serves to

 

The shark’s long history starts in the late Silurian period, about 450 million years ago. It was a time when sea levels were high and coral reefs began to form. The Earth’s climate was warm and stable. Molluscs, crinoids, and trilobites were some of the only living creatures on the Earth before scorpions and centipedes appeared on land. Around this time, sharks too appeared, evidenced by the oldest known shark scales found in Siberian deposits. (https://www.bbc.com/earth/story/20151003-the-epic-history-of-sharks)

It can be reasonably inferred that during the late Silurian period

 

To some degree, politics has always involved deception. The advent of television intensified this, shrinking attention spans, creating ways to distort and vilify and dramatizing the existential stakes of prosaic debates. Think Lyndon Johnson’s devastating ‘‘Daisy’’ ad in his 1964 re-­election campaign against Barry Goldwater, which showed a little girl picking petals off a daisy and the sudden explosion of a bright, shiny mushroom cloud. (https://www.nytimes.com/2015/09/06/magazine/the-politics-of-distraction.html?_r=0)

The passage indicates that television

 

The latest release in the humpback whale’s haunting sound collection is a track so unusual that scientists hardly know what to make of it. Unlike anything on the hit album Songs of the Humpback Whale (released in 1970, the wildlife recording went multi-platinum), the mysterious new noise has such a low beat it’s scarcely audible.

Near the lower limit of human hearing, the so-called “pulse trains" are deeper than any confirmed humpback vocalization, according to Jim Darling, a research biologist with the Whale Trust Maui in Hawaii.

It's “as if listening to a heartbeat with a stethoscope,” says Darling, whose study on the phenomenon was published November 5 in the Journal of the Acoustical Society of America.

In research partially funded by the National Geographic Society Committee for Research and Exploration, Darling and colleagues recorded the strange sounds near the Hawaiian island of Maui (map), where up to 10,000 humpbacks gather each winter to give birth and mate.

Humpback vocalizations, including the complex and wide-ranging “whale song” performed by males, typically have an audio frequency between 80 and 4,000 hertz (Hz). But the newly described pulse sounds were found to have a significantly lower frequency of around 40 Hz. The low limit for human hearing is 20 hz.

“We are just so used to hearing a certain type of sounds from humpbacks, and this was out of that range,” says Darling. (https://news.nationalgeographic.com/2015/12/151207-humpback-whales-sounds-noises-oceans-animals/)


The passage indicates that humpback whale “songs"

 

Jupiter, whose existence was recognized by astronomers of ancient times, (has/have) long been associated with the mythologies of many cultures.

 

While drivers throughout the United States are required to purchase automobile insurance, coverage levels often (varies/vary) depending on the driver's age and state of residence.

 

In contrast to many other Roman amphitheaters, which (was/were)located in outlying neighborhoods, the Colosseum was constructed in the city center.

 

Formed by ice particles mixed with smaller amounts of rocky debris and dust, the rings of Saturn (contains/contain) several gaps whose origins have not yet been fully explained.

 

Although there (is/are) millions of different types of viruses in existence, only about 5,000 of them have been conclusively identified by scientists.

 

In the eighteenth century, the first public library in the United States and the first fire department in the state of Pennsylvania (was/were) founded by Benjamin Franklin.

 

Tropical waves in the Atlantic basin frequently (develops/develop) from disturbances that begin in East Africa and drift over the continent into the Atlantic Ocean.

 

The wings of a butterfly are sophisticated collectors of solar energy because their elongated rectangular scales (overlaps/overlap) to create a structure resembling shingles on a roof.

 

Gravitation, best known as the force that (gives/give) weight to objects with mass, also causes objects to fall to the ground when dropped.

 

Researchers have hypothesized that whales sing by pumping air into pouches, which then (releases/release) vibrations into the surrounding water.