SAT Timed Quiz 7

Biologist Natacha Bodenhausen and colleagues analyzed the naturally occurring bacterial communities associated with leaves and roots of wild Arabidopsis thaliana, a small flowering plant. The researchers found many of the same bacterial genera in both the plants' leaves and roots. To explain this, the researchers pointed to the general proximity of A. thaliana leaves to the ground and noted that rain splashing off soil could bring soil-based bacteria into contact with the leaves. Alternatively, the researchers noted that wind, which may be a source of bacteria in the aboveground portion of plants, could also bring bacteria to the soil and roots. Either explanation suggests that ______

Which choice most logically completes the text?

• A. A. thaliana leaves and roots are especially vulnerable to harmful bacteria.

• B. bacteria carried by wind are typically less beneficial to A. thaliana than soil-based bacteria are.

• C. many bacteria in A. thaliana leaves may have been deposited by means other than rain.

• D. some bacteria in A. thaliana leaves and roots may share a common source.

Arthur Conan Doyle's stories about detective Sherlock Holmes were published between 1887 and 1927. They have inspired countless successful adaptations, including comic strips, movies, and a television series Sherlock Hound, directed by Hayao Miyazaki, who is celebrated for his animated movies. Until 2014, these stories were copyrighted. The right to adapt was only available to those who could afford the copyright fee and gain approval from the strict copyright holders of Doyle's estate. Some journalists predict that the number of Sherlock Holmes adaptations is likely to increase since the end of copyright means that ______

Which choice most logically completes the text?

• A. producing adaptations will become easier and less expensive.

• B. people will become more interested in detective stories than they were in the 1800s.

• C. the former copyright holders of Doyle's estate will return fees they collected.

• D. Doyle's original stories will become hard to find.

Tides can deposit large quantities of dead vegetation within a salt marsh, smothering healthy plants and leaving a salt panne—a depression devoid of plants that tends to trap standing water—in the marsh's interior. Ecologist Kathryn Beheshti and colleagues found that burrowing crabs living within these pannes improve drainage by loosening the soil, leading the pannes to shrink as marsh plants move back in. At salt marsh edges, however, crab-induced soil loosening can promote marsh loss by accelerating erosion, suggesting that the burrowing action of crabs ______

Which choice most logically completes the text?

• A. can be beneficial to marshes with small pannes but can be harmful to marshes with large pannes.

• B. may promote increases in marsh plants or decreases in marsh plants, depending on the crabs' location.

• C. tends to be more heavily concentrated in areas of marsh interiors with standing water than at marsh edges.

• D. varies in intensity depending on the size of the panne relative to the size of the surrounding marsh.

In musical theater, a collection of top-notch songs dwelling within a second-rate story will not last long. Conversely, a compelling drama or truly funny script that comes with some hit-and-miss songs can be a winner. Story, it seems, trumps tune for winning over both audiences and critics. This holds true even for today’s “jukebox musicals,” shows built around well-loved pop songs. One would think they’d be immune to concerns about story, since the songs are the whole point of the show. Yet, the most successful of these productions are still those in which story delivers the engaging characters, dramatic situations, and few good laughs.

The main idea of the paragraph is:

• A. top-notch songs are crucial to the success of a musical. 

• B. jukebox musicals are the only shows that do not heavily rely on story.

• C. no musical without a strong story and top-notch songs is likely to be successful.

• D. the quality of the story is more important to a musical's success than that of its songs.

Companies whose products are similar to competing products often pursue a marketing strategy of brand differentiation, trying to get consumers to associate their brand with unique attributes (e.g., to think of their brand of rice as the healthy brand, when in fact there is little difference among brands of the same type of rice). Jaywant Singh and Francesca Dall'Olmo Riley investigated consumer perceptions of such products, finding that consumers view competing brands as having largely the same attributes and that any differences in the strength of consumers' associations of brands with attributes are explained by differences in market share—the more popular a brand is, the stronger people's associations with it are—suggesting that ______

Which choice most logically completes the text?

• A. consumers tend to perceive products with high market share more positively than they perceive products with low market share.

• B. marketing aimed at brand differentiation influences consumers’ perceptions of branded products but not consumers’ purchasing behavior.

• C. marketing efforts focused on brand differentiation do not have much effect on consumers’ perceptions of branded products’ attributes.

• D. differences in consumers’ perceptions of products’ attributes are less influenced by brand differentiation than by actual differences between products.

In her 2021 article "Throwaway History: Towards a Historiography of Ephemera," scholar Anne Garner discusses John Johnson (1882–1956), a devoted collector of items intended to be discarded, including bus tickets and campaign pamphlets. Johnson recognized that scholarly institutions considered his expansive collection of ephemera to be worthless—indeed, it wasn't until 1968, after Johnson's death, that Oxford University's Bodleian Library acquired the collection, having grasped the items' potential value to historians and other researchers. Hence, the example of Johnson serves to ______

Which choice most logically completes the text?

• A. represent the challenge of incorporating examples of ephemera into the collections of libraries and other scholarly institutions.

• B. illustrate both the relatively low scholarly regard in which ephemera was once held and the later recognition of ephemera's possible utility.

• C. lend support to arguments by historians and other researchers who continue to assert that ephemera holds no value for scholars.

• D. demonstrate the difficulties faced by contemporary historians in conducting research at the Bodleian Library without access to ephemera.

In a study of new technology adoption, Davit Marikyan et al. examined negative disconfirmation (which occurs when experiences fall short of one's expectations) to determine whether it could lead to positive outcomes for users. The team focused on established users of "smart home" technology, which presents inherent utilization challenges but tends to attract users with high expectations, often leading to feelings of dissonance. The researchers found that many users employed cognitive mechanisms to mitigate those feelings, ultimately reversing their initial sense of disappointment.

Which choice best states the main idea of the text?

• A. Research suggests that users with high expectations for a new technology can feel content with that technology even after experiencing negative disconfirmation.

• B. Research suggests that most users of smart home technology will not achieve a feeling of satisfaction given the utilization challenges of such technology.

• C. Although most smart home technology is aimed at meeting or exceeding users' high expectations, those expectations in general remain poorly understood.

• D. Although negative disconfirmation has often been studied, little is known about the cognitive mechanisms shaping users' reactions to it in the context of new technology adoption.

Vegetarianism in on the rise in virtually all demographic groups in the United States and in much of the rest of the world. Even more impressive is the rate of increase in the percentage of the U.S. population that has substantially cut back on their animal product intake. These changes are not fads: analysts of every segment of the food industry agree that the American diet has irrevocably altered.

The primary function of the paragraph is to:

• A. briefly describe the how the food industry tracks vegetarianism.

• B. explain that the United States has started a worldwide rise in vegetarianism.

• C. show that the author approves in the rise in vegetarianism.

• D. identify the trend that people in the United States eat less meat and will continue to do so.

Although many transposons, DNA sequences that move within an organism’s genome through shuffling or duplication, have become corrupted and inactive over time, those from the long interspersed nuclear elements (LINE) family appear to remain active in the genomes of some species. In humans, they are functionally important within the hippocampus, a brain structure that supports complex cognitive processes. When the results of molecular analysis of two species of octopus—an animal known for its intelligence—were announced in 2022, the confirmation of a LINE transposon in Octopus vulgaris and Octopus bimaculoides genomes prompted researchers to hypothesize that that transposon family is tied to a species’ capacity for advanced cognition.

Which finding, if true, would most directly support the researchers’ hypothesis?

• A. The LINE transposon in O. vulgaris and O. bimaculoides genomes is active in an octopus brain structure that functions similarly to the human hippocampus.

• B. The human genome contains multiple transposons from the LINE family that are all primarily active in the hippocampus.

• C. A consistent number of copies of LINE transposons is present across the genomes of most octopus species, with few known corruptions.

• D. O. vulgaris and O. bimaculoides have smaller brains than humans do relative to body size, but their genomes contain sequences from a wider variety of transposon families.

Several studies of sediment (e.g., dirt, pieces of rock, etc.) in streams have shown an inverse correlation between sediment grain size and downstream distance from the primary sediment source, suggesting that stream length has a sorting effect on sediment. In a study of sediment sampled at more than a dozen sites in Alpine streams, however, geologists Camille Litty and Fritz Schlunegger found that cross-site variations in grain size were not associated with differences in downstream distance, though they did not conclude that downstream distance is irrelevant to grain size. Rather, they concluded that sediment influx in these streams may have been sufficiently spatially diffuse to prevent the typical sorting effect from being observed.

Which finding about the streams in the study, if true, would most directly support Litty and Schlunegger's conclusion?

• A. The streams contain several types of sediment that are not typically found in streams where the sorting effect has been demonstrated.

• B. The streams are fed by multiple tributaries that carry significant volumes of sediment and that enter the streams downstream of the sampling sites.

• C. The streams mostly originate from the same source, but their lengths vary considerably due to the different courses they take.

• D. The streams regularly experience portions of their banks collapsing into the water at multiple points upstream of the sampling sites.