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It can be inferred that the author of the passage mentions Fern's “sharply humorous social criticism'" primarily in order to
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In the context in which it appears, “reclamations” most nearly means
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Educated people in the Renaissance learned their Latin from contemporary collections, like Erasmus' Adages and Ravisius Textor's Epitheta, that grouped pithy expressions not by author or period but by subject. Thus Renaissance students encountered the many variations ancient Roman writers (ca. 100 B.C.-ca. A.D. 200) had for maxims like "War is pleasant to those who haven`t tried it." They could even use these sayings flawlessly themselves, for example, urging friends who worked too long on one book to "take your hand off the writing tablet." But they had no sense of context; instead they associated the quotations not with the original sources, but with the other identical, similar, or opposite sayings cited in their textbooks. Modem scholarship has explored this point to explain the idiosyncratic nature of most Renaissance allusions to classical texts. The prevalence of this sort of secondhand classical culture in the Renaissance should figure in any effort to assess the degree and kind of influence that Roman writers had on the educated class of the sixteenth century in Europe.
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The term "idiosyncratic", is used by the author of the passage to characterize the
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The author of the passage suggests that when a Renaissance student quoted a Latin expression, that student would typically
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With which of the following views of modern scholarship on the Renaissance period would the author of the passage most likely agree?
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James: Why is it that fish living in the ocean's dark depths do not swim around very much? It must be that the scarcity of food available there prevents them from having much energy for swimming.
Marie: But fish swim around only to approach or avoid other creatures that they can see, and in such conditions of darkness, almost nothing can be seen.
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Marie responds to James by
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The decline of the heath hen began when the first Europeans arrived on the East Coast of North America. Before European settlement, Native Americans used fire to maintain a mosaic of forests, shrublands, agricultural fields, and grasslands. After European diseases decimated Native American populations, the formerly open habitats of the Northeast became largely forested, resulting in major changes to bird communities and probably reducing habitat. Although the clearing of forests by European settlers probably once again increased heath hen habitat, hunting pressure was extreme, and by 1821 the formerly common bird was rare in New England. The last reports of heath hens in Pennsylvania and New Jersey are from 1869, and it is doubtful that the heath hen survived much after that on mainland North America.
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Which of the following can be inferred about the action mentioned in the highlighted portion of the passage?
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Which of the following statements about the impact of European settlers on the heath hen is supported by the passage?
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Academics have been reconsidering the meaning of "wilderness" and its usefulness to conservation strategies. The idea of pristine wilderness is historically inaccurate, argue scholars of Native American history, who have demonstrated that Native Americans shaped their environments with their agricultural practices and residential patterns. Other scholars argue that wilderness is simply a cultural construct created in opposition to modem society, not a real place untouched by humans. Scientists, in turn, have argued that the goal of wilderness preservation is based on a model in which ecosystems progress toward a stable equilibrium state, a model replaced in the 1970s with one stressing constant change. These insights complicate wilderness management, which critics charge aims to preserve a supposedly stable environment that existed prior to human disturbance.
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Which of the following statements best describes the function of the highlighted sentence?
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The author suggests that the model "stressing constant change" is significant because it
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African American soul music's commercial influence gradually declined during the early 1970s as newer styles such as funk and disco began to dominate the airwaves and other, larger changes occurred within the American music industry. After the Second World War, African American popular music had largely been the province of independent record labels. By the 1970s, though, these labels were either going out of business or, to an increasing degree, coming under the control of major corporations. This shift had dire consequences for the production of soul music, whereas independent labels had achieved success through a skillful balance of commercial and artistic considerations, the emphasis now became fixed upon marketing a product, resulting in the more individualized voices in African American popular music being quelled.
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According to the passage, which of the following is true about the independent record labels?
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The passage suggests which of the following about “the more individualized voices”?
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Since Earth is the only habitable planet known to humankind, the orbital and physical characteristics of Earth are used to define a habitable planet. In other words, habitability is the characteristic of an environment which has similar properties as those of Earth, and the capability of developing and sustaining Earthly life.
The statement above implies that the fact that the only habitable planet we know is Earth has strongly biased our understanding of the conditions required for life. From the astronomers' point of view, and owing to the essential role that water plays on life on Earth, the definition of a habitable planet is tied to the presence of liquid water. However, as simple as this definition might be, it has strong connections to a variety of complex interdependent processes that need to be unraveled and understood to make predictions on which planets could be habitable. The basic principle is that the surface temperature and pressure of a planet should allow for liquid water. This is determined by the amount of irradiation that the planet receives from the star, and the response of the planet's atmosphere. The latter delicately depends on the composition of the planet, and that in turn determines the heat transport mechanism, cloud presence, and many other atmospheric properties
The irradiation from the star is contingent on the type of the star and the planet's orbital parameters. The atmospheric composition, on the other hand, depends on the in-gassing, out-gassing, ad escape histories of the planet. The in-gassing and out-gassing accounts are intrinsically connected to the interior dynamics of the planet, while atmospheric escape is related to a variety of thermal and non-thermal processes, which themselves are linked to the presence of a magnetic field. It is not clear how delicate the balance between these different processes could be. Nor is it evident if there are different pathways that could yield a habitable planet. However, the fact that Earth has succeeded in developing life indicates that our planet might have followed one, perhaps of many evolutionary paths that resulted naturally in a complex system by the series of steps and bifurcations that it encountered. It is important to note that the complexity and interdependence of these processes cannot be taken as evidence for the uniqueness of life on Earth. The road ahead is to understand which planetary characteristics are indispensable, which are facilitating, and which are a byproduct of evolution. For that purpose, and in order to assess the possibility that a planet (e.g, a super-Earth) may be habitable, a deep understanding of these processes (i.e, interior composition and dynamics, planet's magnetic field, and atmospheric characteristics) is required.
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The primary purpose of the passage is to
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The author suggests that the “amount of irradiation that the planet receives from the star” is affected by the
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