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The primary purpose of the passage is to
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This passage is adapted from an essay published in 2010.
As I write, the Large Hadron Collider, the worid' s biggest atom-smasher at CERN in Geneva, has switched on with almost unprecedented media jamboree. Asked about the practical value of it all, Stephen Hawking has said that "modern society is based on advances in pure science that were not foreseen to have practical
applications." It's a common claim, and it subtly reinforces the hierarchy that Medawar identified: technology and engineering are the humble offspring of pure science, the casual cast-offs of a more elevated pursuit.
I don't believe that such pronouncements are intended to denigrate applied science as an intellectual activity; they merely speak into a culture in which that has already happened. Pure science undoubtedly does lead to applied spin-offs, but this is not the norm. Rather, most of our technology has come from explicit and
painstaking efforts to develop it. And this is simply a part of the scientific enterprise. A dividing line between pure and applied science makes no sense at all, running as it does in a convoluted path through disciplines, departments,even individual scientific papers and careers. Research aimed at applications fills the pages of
the leading journals in physics, chemistry, and the life and Earth sciences; curiosity-driven research with no real practical value is abundant in the “applied" literature of the materials, biotechnological, and engineering sciences. The fact that "pure" and "applied" science are useful and meaningful terms seduces us sometimes into thinking that they are real, absolute, and distinct categories.
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In the context of the passage, the mention of the Large Hadron Collider primarily serves to
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According to the passage,the “explicit and painstaking efforts” are
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The passage implies that the statement made by Stephen Hawking has which shortcoming?
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Until recently, study of motor control in amphibian feeding was limited to a few model taxa (taxonomic groups), for example, toads (genus Bufo), frogs ( Rana), and salamanders(Ambystoma). Studies of these taxa suggested that amphibian feeding in general is highly stereotyped, that is, performed in much the same way every time, with little variation in the timing or extent of movements. However, recent studies of a great variety of salamanders, frogs, and caecilians (tropical amphibians) have revealed that the model taxa are probably exceptions among amphibians, and were unfortunate models on which to base generalizations about amphibian feeding. Indeed, Bufo is now known to be one of the most stereotyped amphibians in its feeding movements,and Ambysfoma lies at the low end of variation for salamanders.
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The primary purpose of the passage is to
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In the context in which it appears, "unfortunate” most nearly means
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Blues music speaks histories that, from the conventional perspective, originate in the experiences of African Americans. But invariably, the blues exceed rigid cultural boundaries. Ralph Ellison's definition of the blues suggests an expansive vista, limited only by a speaker's capacity to lyrically express an
"autobiographical chronicle of personal catastrophe". As an idiom, the blues record histories, yet Ellison' s definition privileges the personal and leaves uncertain the role of national histories, the stories that speak our collective experiences. Locating the collective histories in the personal has proved a pivotal problem for readers in the written use of the blues both in Ellison's fiction and in works by Toni Morrison, Gayl Jones, and others.
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The passage suggests that which of the following is an accurate characterization of the blues as defined by Ralph Ellison?
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Select the sentence in the passage that describes a particular alternative to the conventional perspective on the blues.
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Many herbivorous insects utilize plant resources during small windows of development or during short periods when plants are of suitable quality. Such temporal associations have been documented in numerous systems, where temporal constraints limit insect abundance and affect insect feeding strategy. Classic studies of winter moths, for example, suggest that the synchrony of larvae with leaf emergence is a primary determinant of larval success. Because many insect-plant associations have a temporal component, they may be negatively affected by environmental changes; some scientists fear, for example, that global warming may decouple insect-plant synchrony Hellman, however, notes that the timing of insect-plant synchrony is affected by many factors, including insects behavioral and physiological ability to adapt to changing host plant quality and the availability of alternative host resources.
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The "classic studies of winter moths" provide direct support for which of the following propositions
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The author discusses Hellman in the last sentence of the passage primarily in order to
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The large amount of methane in the atmosphere of Saturn's giant moon Titan puzzles astronomers. Because methane is converted into heavier hydrocarbons by the Sun's ultraviolet light, all the methane in Titan's atmosphere should, at the present conversion rate, have disappeared in a few million years, long ago in Titan's 4.5 billion years of existence. Something must be continuously feeding methane into Titan's atmosphere. One possibility is that the methane comes from volcanic eruptions, but unless the supply rate were somehow precisely calibrated at a moderate level, either the methane would have run out by now or excess methane would have started to accumulate as a liquid ocean on the Surface. However, data indicate that the atmosphere just above the surface is not humid, as would be expected above a pure methane ocean. A possible explanation was suggested by Lunine: when sunlight breaks down methane, the main product is ethane. Lunine noted that at Titan's surface temperature, ethane is also a liquid. A liquid mixture of methane and ethane would produce low Humidity. Such an ocean would slowly become richer in ethane while keeping the atmosphere supplied with methane.
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According to the passage,a mixture of liquid ethane and liquid methane on Titan could account for which of the following?
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The passage suggests that if the "possible explanation" is
correct, then which of the following would be true?
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The author of the passage introducas Lunine's hypothesis most likely in order to
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In seventeenth-century Venice, the invention of the opera house as a public institution altered the relationship of the audience to the operatic performance on the stage and to each other. The stage performance was now separated from the audience both by the proscenium arch, which framed the action, and by the orchestra. The occupants of the boxes faced one another across the auditorium as well as the stage. Seeing and being seen was as much a function of the opera house as seeing and hearing what took place on the stage. American visitors to Italy were routinely shocked at the casual ways of the boxholders and at the little attention they seemed to pay to the opera. There was incessant talk in the boxes, banging of doors, a restless to-and-fro.
Public display was only half the story. The public nature of Venice's social life was balanced by a passion for disguise. Much of its political activity was conducted in secrecy. Masks were usually worn during carnival, attracting the crowned heads of Europe, who could play there incognito. The Venetian opera box was the equivalent of the mask. With its door shut, with shutters
pulled across the front, the box became a place of privacy, an association that still exists in our time.
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The primary purpose of the passage is to
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