|
The author suggests that during the eighteenth century, the practice of making handicrafts
|
|
The author quotes Ruskin primarily in order to
|
|
The primary purpose of the passage is to
|
|
It can be inferred that the author would be most likely to agree with which of the following claims about handicraft during the nineteenth century?
|
The theory of motivated reasoning suggests that, in legal decisions, different judges will assess the same information differently, depending on their backgrounds and fundamental values. Attitudinalists [theorists who contend that judges' decisions are driven by their own policy preferences] have concurred that their findings on ideological decision making could be explained by the "human reflex" to "convince oneself of the propriety of what one prefers to believe"--motivated reasoning.
Motivated reasoning, however, is subject to "reasonableness constraints". For example, the accuracy of decision making is enhanced when the stakes for the decision are higher, when the decision must be justified, and when the decision will be made public. Such circumstances often apply to judicial decisions. The presence of stronger arguments contrary to preferences reduces the influence of motivations. The limitations of the power of motivated reasoning are apparent from the numerous unanimous opinions of the United States Supreme Court [whose members generally represent a range of ideological predispositions] and other cases in which justices appear to vote contrary to their ideological preferences. One would anticipate that the influence of such motivated reasoning is at its apex when the law is relatively less determinate, which is consistent with the findings of empirical research.
|
|
The author suggests which of the following about motivated reasoning?
|
|
It can be inferred that the author uses the United States Supreme Court to illustrate the argument because of a belief that the
|
|
The author suggests which of the following about the “circumstances" mentioned in the passage?
|
|
The distinction between the nutritional quality and quantity of prey is one component of the hypotheses that attempt to explain the declining populations of Steller sea lions in the Gulf of Alaska beginning in the 1970s. One view holds that the quantity of prey available was high overall, but because of the species composition of available prey (primarily non-fatty fish of the gadid family), the diet was nutritionally inferior-the junk food hypothesis. An alternative view is that gadids are nutritionally adequate but were not available in sufficient numbers because of fishing or some other factor. In either case, juvenile sea lions would be affected more than mature individuals because of the younger animals' higher energy requirements and relative inexperience at foraging.
|
|
The passage indicates that proponents of the junk food hypothesis assert which of the following about non- fatty fish of the gadid family?
|
|
The highlighted sentence performs which of the following functions in the passage?
|
Recent archaeological excavations of the massive warehouses of Huanuco Pampa-an important city in the Incan empire of the twelfth to sixteenth centuries一initially led archaeologists to believe that the city was a center for the distribution of food and goods to settlements in the surrounding region. However, excavations in those settlements have yielded few traces of the pottery containers used to store goods in Huanuco Pampa's warehouses. This absence of pottery traces is inconclusive, since goods may have been distributed in containers other than those belonging to the warehouses.
One sixteenth-century Spanish document may inadvertently reveal the answer: while detailing countless instances of goods being brought to the warehouses from the surrounding region, the document says nothing about goods being distributed throughout the surrounding region from the warehouses. Thus initial suggestions about the city s role as a distribution center may be incorrect: Huanuco Pampa's reason for maintaining these huge warehouses may have been simply to ensure its own well-being during periods of hardship.
|
|
The passage is primarily concerned with
|
|
The author suggests which of the following about the sixteenth-century Spanish document discussed in the passage?
|
|
Which of the following, if true, would cast the most doubt on the author's reasoning about the probable purpose of the Huanuco Pampa warehouses?
|
|
Simulations indicate, and observations confirm, that the particles constituting Saturn's rings are giving up angular momentum to moons of the planet. The simulations predict that over just a few hundred million years, the related energy transfer will cause the rings' collapse. An analogous process occurs around young stars in the disks of matter from which planets emerge, and these protoplanetary disks do vanish that quickly, computer models show. Yet if Saturn's rings are so short-lived, a large comet or moon―the rings' presumed source一must have broken apart in Saturn's vicinity within the past several hundred million years. That is quite unlikely. It would have been much more probable in the young solar system-4 billion years ago or more.
|
|
It can be inferred that the author of the passage mentions protoplanetary disks because
|
|
The passage suggests which of the following about the "energy transfer"?
|
The seemingly unrelated aims of functional strength and aesthetic appeal had been not only successfully integrated in many of the classic suspension bridges of the past two centuries but also commonly achieved by engineers alone or leading teams. Thomas Telford was in fact both engineer and architect of his Menai Suspension Bridge, and John Roebling was both engineer and architect of his Brooklyn Bridge. That these engineering structures especially have come to be regarded as architectural icons demonstrates the aesthetic heights that an engineer can achieve.
Engineers less artistically confident than Telford and Roebling have engaged consulting architects to advise them on the design of everything from the facades placed on massive anchorages and skyscraper-high towers to the finishing details like deck railings and lampposts. Othmar Ammann, the chief engineer of the George Washington and many other New York City bridges, often sought the help of famous architects. When the George Washington was but an idea on paper, Ammann engaged Cass Gilbert, the architect of the Woolworth Building and other landmarks, to depict how the towers might be finished in stone. Since money was tight when the bridge was being completed, however, the steel-framed towers were left bare一a look that the Swiss architect Le Corbusier found extremely appealing-and bare steel became the new aesthetic standard for monumental bridge towers.
|
|
The primary purpose of the passage is to
|
