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Admission Tests GRE - GRE General Test

Page: 3 / 9
Total 407 questions

The iacl thai ihcre are so many varieties of youthful dissent indicates that there is considerably less_________to this counterculture than has been suggested.

A.

hypocrisy

B.

relevance

C.

spontaneity

D.

deeeneraev

E.

coherence

The book's approach to modern art was hardly_________: it aimed simply to give readers a deeper understanding of prevailing perspectives in the field.

A.

revisionist

B.

conventional

C.

calculated

D.

innocuous

E.

decipherable

As originally formulated, the selfish-herd theory of prey species aggregation assumed that predatory attacks were equally likely to be launched from any position within the environment. In some circumstances (e.g.. avian predators attacking prey from above), such an approach is appropriate. However, as James et al. argue, in many predator-prey associations, attacks are unlikely to occur from positions within the group. For example, it is likely that an ambushing predator waiting in the path of a group would be detected before the group moves over its position. Hence, in many ecological situations, predatory attacks on grouped prey will occur exclusively from outside the group. In such circumstances, there is a strong premium to a group member in being in the interior of the group.

James would most likely describe the original formulation of the selfish-herd theory as

A.

completely untenable in its explanation of predator-prey associations

B.

ill-equipped to explain exceptions to standard predator-prey associations

C.

insufficiently attentive to the diversity of predator-prey associations

D.

excessively concerned with the outcomes of predator-prey associations

E.

problematically neglectful of the cooperative elements of predator-prey associations

Female Australian Dunaiothhps [small, sap-sucking insects] create tent-like structures on the surface of leaves to protect themselves and their eggs and larvae from desiccation in the arid Australian climate. Bono and Crespi compared survival and reproduction of thrips that founded structures alone with those in groups of two or more individuals. They found that although per capita egg production fell with increasing group size, foundresses were more likely to survive and lay eggs in groups than when alone. Several studies of other species of nest-building insects have concluded that foundress associations are beneficial to all parties. It is likely that the relative success of groups is at least in part accounted for by a reduction of energy use in the modification of a shared nest.

The author mentions "desiccation" primarily to

A.

describe an environment suitable for one species* reproduction

B.

characterize a stage in an insect species' developmental cycle

C.

analyze an environmental challenge faced by some insect species

D.

exemplify a changing feature of a particular climate

E.

identify the purpose served by a particular behavior

The relevance of the literary personality—a writer's distinctive attitudes, concerns, and artistic choices—to the analysis of a literary work is being scrutinized by various schools of contemporary criticism. Deconstructionists view the literary personality, like the writer's biographical personality, as irrelevant. The proper focus of literary analysis, they argue, is a work's intertextuality (interrelationship with other texts), subtexts (unspoken, concealed. or repressed discourses), and metatexts (self-referential aspects), not a perception of a writer's verbal and aesthetic "fingerprints." New historicists also devalue the literary personality, since, in their emphasis on a work's historical context, they credit a writer with only those insights and ideas that were generally available when the writer lived. However, to readers interested in literary detective work—say scholars of classical (Greek and Roman) literature who wish to reconstruct damaged texts or deduce a work's authorship— the literary personality sometimes provides vital clues.

Which of the following does the author mention in the passage as a concern of (^constructionists?

A.

A knowledge of the writer's other literary works

B.

A knowledge of the writer's artistic preferences

C.

A cognizance of a work's unarticulated ideas

D.

An appreciation of a work's aesthetic distinctiveness

E.

An awareness of a work's relation to the era in which it was written

The importance of the Bill of Rights in twentieth-century United States law and politics has led some historians to search for the "original meaning" of its most controversial clauses. This approach. known as "originalism." presumes that each right codified in the Bill of Rights had au independent history that can be studied in isolation from the histories of other rights, and its proponents ask how formulations of the Bill of Rights in 1791 reflected developments in specific areas of legal thinking at that time. Legal and constitutional historians, for example, have found originalism especially useful in the study of provisions of the Bill of Rights that were innovative by eighteenth-century standards, such as the Fourth Amendment's broadly termed protection against "unreasonable searches and seizures." Recent calls in the legal and political arena for a return to a "jurisprudence of original intention." however, have made it a matter of much more than purely scholarly interest when originalists insist that a clause's true meaning was fixed at the moment of its adoption, or maintain that only those rights explicitly mentioned in the United States Constitution deserve constitutional recognition and protection. These two claims seemingly lend support to the notion that an interpreter must apply fixed definitions of a fixed number of rights to contemporary issues, for the claims imply that the central problem of rights in the Revolutionary era was to precisely identity, enumerate, and define those rights that Americans felt were crucial to protecting their liberty.

Both claims, however, are questionable from the perspective of a strictly historical inquiry, however sensible they may seem from the vantage point of contemporary jurisprudence. Even though originalists are correct in claiming that the search for original meaning is inherently historical, historians would not normally seek.

The passage suggests that a historian conducting a strictly historical inquiry would make which of the following assumptions when studying the Bill of Rights?

A.

The framers of the Bill of Rights sought to define each right in strict and narrow terms.

B.

The results of historical inquiry into the true meaning of its clauses must be applied to contemporary issues.

C.

Developments in thinking about individual rights ended after the codification of those rights.

D.

It is possible to determine why a particular clause was included in the Bill of Rights.

E.

Legistators of the Revolutionary era were preoccupied with defining and enumerating those rights that were crucial to individual liberty.

Female Australian Duiiatothrip.% (small, sap-sucking insects] create tent-like structures on the surface of leaves to protect themselves and their eggs and larvae from desiccation in the arid Australian climate. Bono and Crespi compared survival and reproduction of tlirips that founded structures alone with those in groups of two or more individuals. They found that although per capita egg production fell with increasing group size, foundresses were more likely to survive and lay eggs in groups than when alone. Several studies of other species of nest-building insects have concluded that foundress associations are beneficial to all parties. It is likely that the relative success of groups is at least in part accounted for by a reduction of energy use in the modification of a shared nest.

The author would most likely agree with which of the following claims about Australian Drmatolhrips ?

A.

Their offspring survival rates increase when larger groups cooperate to modify nests.

B.

Their effect on the leaves used to support their tent-like structures is not necessarily permanent

C.

They expend as much energy to create tent-like structures as they do to produce broods.

D.

They exhibit an effect from collective activity that is also found in certain other insect species.

E.

They modify nests in different ways depending on what other species are present in their vicinity.

The physical act of drinking may seem_________to humans since we can ftilly close our mouths to create suction, but species that cannot do so. including most adult carnivores, must resort to some other mechanism.

A.

necessary

B.

imiocuous

C.

uncom

D.

plicated

E.

tediou:

F.

ordinary

Some archaeologists speculate that the Americas might have been initially colonized between 40.000 and 25.000 years ago. However, to support this theory it is necessary to explain the absence of generally accepted habitation sites for that time interval in what is now the United States. Australia, which has a smaller land area than the United States, has many such sites, supporting the generally accepted claim that the continent was colonized by humans at least 40.000 years ago. Australia is less densely populated (resulting in lower chances of discovering sites) and with its overall greater aridity would have presented conditions less favorable for hunter-gatherer occupation. Proportionally, at least as much land area has been lost from the coastal regions of Australia because of postglacial sea-level rise as in the United States, so any coastal archaeological record in Australia should have been depleted about as much as a coastal record in the United States. Since there are so many resource-rich rivers leading inland from the United States coastline, it seems implausible that a growing population of humans would have confined itself to coasts for thousands of years. If inhabitants were present 25.000 years ago. the chances of their appearing in the archaeological record would seem to be greater than for Australia.

The author of the passage notes Australia's "smaller land area" in order to

A.

suggest that the number of habitation sites from between 40.000 and 25.000 years ago that have been found in Australia is somewhat surprising

B.

help show why the absence of habitation sites from between 40.000 and 25.000 years ago in what is now the United States is problematic

C.

indicate that Australia is not exactly comparable to the United States in size

D.

emphasize a difference between Australia and the United States in population density

E.

help explain a difference between Australia and the United States in the number of habitation sites from between 40.000 and 25.000 years ago

What accounts for the low-lying. Hat surface of Mars's north? On Earth's surface, higher- and lower-lying areas have different types of onest: one. thin and dense, is pulled toward Earth's center more strongly by gravity, and the planet's water naturally comes to sit over it. creating oceans. The processes that generate this oceanic crust drive plate tectonics.

Is Mars's north similarly characterized by a sort of crust different from other areas of the planet? Some researchers do see signs of tectonic activity surrounding the northern basin that suggest that it was created through the formation of new crust, like ocean basins on Earth. However. McGill points to northern bedrock structures that predate the features said to mark the start of the tectonic process. McGill instead believes that through some novel mechanism the ancient surface sank to its current depth as a single unit. This would explain why features around the basin's edge. which would have formed as the surface dropped, seem to be younger than structures at its floor.

The third possibility is that the northern lowlands result from impacts. Some researchers suggest they formed as a series of big overlapping impact craters. Others, arguing that the odds against such a pattern of impacts are large, postulate a single event—the impact of an object bigger than any asteroid the solar system now contains.

The passage implies that McGill points to certain "northern bedrock Structures? in order to

A.

establish the maximum and minimum bounds for the age of the northern basin of Mars

B.

contrast the geological characteristics of the northern basin with the characteristics of the terrain at its rim

C.

question the role of impacts in the formation of Mars's surface features

D.

dispute the idea that the northern basin of Mars was formed by the creation of new crust

E.

argue that their elevation now must be lower than it was at the time the structures formed