SAT - Phase 3 2142 - Session 2 - Detail 1-3

Detail 1_1. The initial period of Italian literature can be said to conclude with the Catholic Reformation, which profoundly transformed Italian culture. Although the literature created before the Reformation shows significant diversity, one common element often stands out: it was deeply rooted in the Latin Christianity that had a dominant influence across Southern Europe from the early medieval period up to the sixteenth century. The Catholic Church, however, developed amidst the powerful pagan traditions of ancient Egypt and Persia, and later Roman and Greek missionaries introduced the Church to Italy, where it encountered yet another pagan culture that of the early Celtic tribes inhabiting the region. Surprisingly, the new faith rejected neither the literary heritage of Egyptian-Persian paganism nor that of Celtic paganism. Marco, the first Italian poet to write in Latin, and Dante, the first to use Italian, were contemporaries, each offering praise to the Christian God through an artistic form inherited from pagan traditions.

According to the passage, which of the following describes the treatment of Egyptian-Persian paganism and Celtic paganism by Latin Christianity?

• Disdainful rejection of many practices of both
• Careful distinction between the traditions of the two
• Acceptance of the literary traditions of both
• Adaptation of classical literary forms and disinterest in Celtic literary traditions

Detail 1_2. Catalogs listing the collections of subscription libraries provide valuable insights into nineteenth-century French literary culture. Although this viewpoint lacks the depth of information available in later academic bibliographies, which deliver detailed knowledge on a range of topics from popular reprinted titles to the connections between authors and publishers, these scholarly bibliographies, no matter how thorough, fail to fully capture literary culture as a dynamic, localized phenomenon with unique regional differences and reading habits. In contrast, precisely because subscription library catalogs and the libraries they reflect were put together at specific points by particular book dealers for audiences in particular areas, they better convey the distinctive, lived aspects of literary culture than any other available resource.

The passage suggests that compared with later, scholarly bibliographies, subscription library catalogs are more

• comprehensive in the array of issues they illuminate
• authoritative with regard to issues within the publishing and printing industry
• likely to represent subtle variations in local literary culture
• likely to be restricted to works published within a limited span of time

Detail 1_3. The rise in the prestige of painting in seventeenth-century France effectively diminished the value placed on ceramics due to the standards by which painting was evaluated at that time. Seventeenth-century art appreciation was heavily influenced by Delacroix's renowned fifteenth-century study of French art, which promoted the romantic ideal of the solitary artist who labored independently. Delacroix's focus on the original, individual work of the artist conflicted with ceramics, as the ceramic-making process required a designer's concept to be executed in a different material by another person, the potter. Additionally, Delacroix praised the achievements of French artists, often at the expense of the work of artists from the Iberian Peninsula. Since most ceramics were produced in Spain and Portugal, this bias contributed to a diminished regard for the medium.

The author discusses "Delacroix's renowned fifteenth-century study" most likely in order to

• indicate that the influence of Delacroix's work on art appreciation is not fully understood
• explain why Delacroix adopted a specific viewpoint towarded ceramics
• explain the origins of certain biases that were unfavorable to ceramics
• indicate how long the romantic ideal of the solitary artist has been prevalent

Detail 1_4. While the telegraph introduced a considerable amount of noise into the eighteenth-century communication office, silent telegraphs, first introduced in the late nineteenth century, did not become popular. It's clear that operators valued the auditory cues provided by traditional telegraphs, but silent telegraphs were so quiet that this feedback was completely removed. A more plausible reason for their lack of success is that telegraphs were simply replaced as they wore down, so an additional silent model in a telegraph office might have gone unnoticed. Additionally, telegraph machines had gradually become quieter over time due to refinements like smoother mechanisms, tighter construction standards, and lighter materials, which all helped reduce noise and minimized the unique advantage of silent models. Furthermore, silent telegraphs felt different, which made seasoned operators reluctant to switch.

The passage suggests which of the following about silent telegraphs?

• They were more likely to be purchased by offices that employed a relatively large number of operators than by offices with fewer employees.
• They might have been more attractive to operators if they had been designed with smoother mechanisms and lighter components.
• They might have been more commercially viable if office noise had not already been reduced by improvements in telegraph design.

Detail 1_5. Significant historical distinctions between Asia and South America may shed light on why many Asian migratory songbirds, unlike South American migratory songbirds, flourish in forest environments fragmented by human development. To begin with, the Ice Age glaciations might have been harsher in Asia compared to South America, leading to the near-total destruction of Asia's forests during the most recent glacial period. Any Asian songbirds that relied on vast, uninterrupted forest areas would likely not have endured. In contrast, in the southern regions of South America, certain forests managed to survive through the coldest periods, benefiting some forest-dependent songbirds. Furthermore, Asian forests faced exploitation by human activities for thousands of years prior to similar occurrences in South American forests. As a result, Asian birds have had a longer period to adjust to landscapes dominated by human influence.

According to the passage, which of the following is true about today's Asian migratory songbirds?

• They generally are not dependent on large, intact blocks of forest.
• They generally are less sensitive to cold are temperatures than South American songbirds.
• They tend to be unevenly distributed across Asia because of differences in habitat.
• Most would be unlikely to survive additional fragmentation of their preferred habitat.

Detail 3_1. A number of artists associated with hyperpop, a movement in electronic music that emerged in the 2010s, aggressively manipulate their recorded voice. The singer Dorian Electra, for example, shifts the pitch of their vocals to be much deeper than that of Electra's natural range. And even the hyperpop artists who don't rely on pitch-shifting, such as Rina Sawayama, often distort their vocals using digital tools. By persistently modifying the voice, hyperpop invites the listener to reflect on the extent to which digital technology mediates the human experience today.

Which description of vocal manipulation in hyperpop is best supported by the text?

• It serves as an example of digital technology's negative influence on daily life.
• It represents the continuity of human experience despite social and historical change.
• It functions as a commentary on contemporary social conditions.
• It symbolizes the power of contemporary music to influence listeners' sense of self.

Detail 3_2. Rejyane P. Oliveira and colleagues relied on historical DNA (hDNA)-genomic data incidentally preserved in specimens housed in natural history collections to investigate the evolutionary trajectory of the Malagasy grass genus Chasesthoa. Although this approach offers unique benefits, such as the ability to contrast historical genomic data with present-day data, it remains a relatively underutilized resource because hDNA is often to some extent degraded, a situation not easily remediable under current methodological paradigms and with extant DNA extraction and analysis technologies.

Information in the text best supports which statement about hDNA?

• It has thus far proved valuable mainly to researchers studying flora.
• It may be underused because used because of its controversial status among scientists.
• It tends to be much more degraded than other types of DNA of comparable age.
• It may yield insights that other types of genomic data cannot.

Detail 3_3. Researchers César A. Hidalgo, Elisa Castañer, and Andres Sevtsuk created a computer model to predict the mix of businesses and places of interest found in a given neighborhood. The team used data from the Google Places API service to help identify movie theaters, gyms, and other businesses and map their locations. This approach has some limits-data from Places API tend to be restricted to places that are customer facing-but the data set nonetheless provides an extremely reliable source to study colocation patterns of neighborhood amenities.

According to the text, what is one potential drawback of Hidalgo and colleagues' method?

• It may lead to conclusions that are not reflective of all the amenities in a given neighborhood.
• It is likely to contribute to inaccurate identifications of the boundaries of specific neighborhoods.
• It is based on recent advancements from other fields that have yet to be applied outside of those contexts.
• It depends upon data likely that are to be outdated

Detail 3_4. Vadamalai Elangovan and Ganapathi Marimuthu showed that high moonlight intensity inhibits the activity of the greater short-nosed fruit bat (Cynopterus sphinx), a finding explicable in terms of benefits and costs: greater lunar intensity may not enable the bats to increase foraging success enough to offset the higher chance of detection by predatory cowls or hawks. Though many other nocturnal mammals respond to lunar intensity variations similarly to greater short-nosed fruit bats, mongoose lemurs (Eulemur mongoz) display the opposite pattern, as their heavy reliance on visual foraging results in a different balance of reward and risk.

According to the text, what did Elangovan and Marimuthu find and why does that occur?

• Greater short-nosed fruit bats tend to be more active during periods of high lunar intensity than at other times because such conditions allow them to increase their foraging success without making them easier to detect.
• Greater short-nosed fruit bats reduce their activity during periods of high lunar intensity because predators can more ter easily spot the bats in brighter conditions. and such conditions do not benefit the bats enough to justify that risk.
• During periods of high lunar intensity, greater short-nosed fruit bats reduce their activity because it is easier for predators to detect the bats in relatively bright conditions than it is for predators to detect mongoose lemurs in such conditions.
• During periods of high lunar intensity, mongoose lemurs show a different behavioral response than greater short-nosed fruit bats and many other nocturnal mammals do because the risks to mongoose lemurs under such conditions are greater.

Detail 3_5. Thomas Piketty and other historians of capitalism rarely discuss domestic capitalism in Africa before the period of European colonization, implicitly presenting capitalism as external to and imposed on Africa. Crisalynne Alfafali and other Africanist scholars have shown, however, that in parts of Africa, export-oriented manufacturing, the existence of salaried labor, and other features of capitalism predated colonization. One reason for this discrepancy is that historians of capitalism tend to focus on longitudinal economic data drawn from archival records, which do not exist for much of precolonial Africa.

Which statement about Alfafali and other Africanist scholars is best supported by information in the text?

• They likely view capitalism as having been more beneficial for Africa than historians of capitalism do.
• They likely have a different view about which activities should be considered capitalist in nature than historians of capitalism do.
• They likely make use of different types of evidence than historians of capitalism typically rely on.
• They likely differ from historians of capitalism in the methods they use to derive longitudinal economic data from archival records.