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Which of the following most logically completes the argument given?
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From the 1880s to the 1930s, the textile industry in Japan employed over half of all workers, most of them in the three major branches of silk reeling, cotton spinning, and weaving. Because the branches were highly diverse-in scale, skill requirements, and technology-historians traditionally have analyzed them separately. However, the workforces of all three were drawn primarily from the same population: young, mostly rural women aged 10 to 25. Noting this commonality, Hunter argues that a consideration of the three branches of production together is long overdue: examining elements common to the different branches of textile production may, she asserts, permit the identification of gender-based factors that may have influenced the operation of the Japanese female labor market as a whole.
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Which of the following does the passage cite as an explanation for historians` traditional analysis of the Japanese textile industry?
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When studying shrimp feeding from hydro-thermal vents at the bottom of the ocean, biologists were surprised that the shrimps` reproductive cycles followed seasonal patterns. Far beyond the reach of sunlight, and with food abundant around the vents all year round, why should such animals reproduce seasonally? The answer might involve their offspring, which in their larval form drift in the currents to colonize new vents. The larvae must feed during their trip, and their springtime release coincides with a peak in algae raining down from surface waters. So far, researchers have found no evidence of seasonal breeding among vent-dwelling species that provide their offspring with yolk to sustain them or among vent-dwelling species found in areas of the ocean with not seasonal algae blooms.
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Which of the following best describes the function of the highlighted sentence?
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There is mounting evidence that the frequency and magnitude of landsliding is changing in many parts of the world in response to climate change. This is not surprising, given that precipitation is one of the two external triggering mechanisms--the other being seismic activity--involved in the formation of landslides. Evidence from the past clearly indicates that cycles of elevated landslide activity have been followed by cycles of low activity, and that these are correlated with climate fluctuations over a variety of timescales.
What sets current changes in landslide activity apart is the likely influence of anthropogenic [i.e., human-caused] factors, either acting alone or in concert with climate, which can further modify the process of landsliding and the nature of ecosystem responses. Among these factors, deforestation and land-use change have the potential to influence the frequency and magnitude of landsliding because of their direct effects on vegetation attributes that influence slope stability. The extent and conditions under which mountain ecosystems are resilient to these changes--that is, the amount of disturbance they can absorb before changing into states with different structure and function--are not known. Addressing this issue is crucial for the long-term conservation of mountainscapes.
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The author of the passage suggests which of the following about the role of human factors in landsliding activity?
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There have been numerous well-documented extinctions of indigenous species caused by the introduction of non-indigenous predators and pathogens. However, surprisingly few extinctions of indigenous species can be attributed to competition from introduced species. For example, during the past 400 years, 4,000 plant species have been introduced into North America, and these non-indigenous plants currently account for nearly 20 percent of North America`s plant species. Yet no evidence exists that any indigenous North American plant species became extinct as a result of competition from new species could mean that such extinctions take longer to occur than scientists initially believed or, alternatively, that extinctions are rarely caused by competition from non-indigenous species.
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The passage is concerned primarily with
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The author introduces statistics about North America`s non-indigenous plant species primarily in order to
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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 contexts, 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.
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The passage is primarily concerned with
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In the context in which it appears, "credit a writer with" most nearly means
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