VOCABULARY IN CONTEXT

On the basis of extensive calculations and models, astronomers in the 1990s predicted that the collision of two neutron stars or a neutron star and a black hole could release a massive burst of gamma rays in an event called a kilonova. This _______ was confirmed with observations in 2017.

Which choice completes the text with the most logical and precise word or phrase?

The following text is from John Muir’s 1913 autobiography The Story of My Boyhood and Youth. Muir describes being on a boat. The water was so clear that it was almost invisible, and when we floated slowly out over the plants and fishes, we seemed to be miraculously sustained in the air while exploring a veritable fairyland.

As used in the text, what does the word “clear” most nearly mean?

At the turn of the twentieth century, Black residents of Richmond, Virginia, had few formal options for banking and other financial services. To _______ this situation, Maggie Lena Walker chartered the St. Luke Penny Savings Bank in 1903. The bank went on to provide home loans and savings opportunities to thousands of Black families over the following decades.

Which choice completes the text with the most logical and precise word or phrase?

• A. prolong

• rectify

• retain

• highlight

The results of randomized clinical trials testing the efficacy of common medical interventions sometimes fail to _______ conclusions that practitioners reach based on their real-world observations of patients. While there are several possible reasons for this, one is that practitioners may overlook confounding variables that account for the results they attribute to the interventions in question.

Which choice completes the text with the most logical and precise word or phrase?

• A. circumvent

• B. corroborate

• C. disseminate

• D. implement

Diadromous fish migrate between freshwater and marine biomes during their life cycle. The migration’s obligate nature is why diadromous fish can be _______ those that are merely euryhaline (able to tolerate high salinity): the euryhaline blackchin tilapia can survive high salinity, but its life cycle does not involve relocation to a different biome, as does that of the diadromous wild salmon.

Which choice completes the text with the most logical and precise word or phrase?

• A) demarcated from

• B) reconstituted as

• C) conflated with

• D) derived from

Taking photographs in the mid-1800s was complicated and expensive, but this changed with the 1854 invention of the carte de visite, a small photo that cost little to make. Carte de visite photos helped to _______ photography: they made it easy and enjoyable for everyday people to have their pictures taken, and people at the time loved exchanging these small photos with friends and family.

Which choice completes the text with the most logical and precise word or phrase?

Painter Alma W. Thomas was fascinated by the colors and shapes found in nature. The flowers and trees in the garden at her home in Washington, DC, _______ her work. For example, Thomas’s use of broken brushstrokes was inspired by the way that light would shine through the leaves of a tree in front of her house.

Which choice completes the text with the most logical and precise word or phrase?

In the 1990s, conservationists began planting more than 500,000 native trees in the habitat of the Azores bullfinch to boost the bird’s numbers. This approach was apparently _______: the Azores bullfinch’s population size increased from as few as 100 birds at the end of the 1980s to around 1,300 in 2023.

Which choice completes the text with the most logical and precise word or phrase

The recently observed gamma ray burst GRB 230307A lasted for 200 seconds, _______ for a burst generated by the merger of neutron stars. Bursts caused by neutron mergers typically last fewer than 2 seconds.

Which choice completes the text with the most logical and precise word or phrase?

• A. a coincidence

• B. a reprieve

• C. an incident

• D. an oddity

In 1776, the United States sent Benjamin Franklin to France to try to win the country’s support in the United States’ fight for independence from Great Britain. Franklin was very popular in France. This _______ surely helped him to convince France to assist the United States.

Which choice completes the text with the most logical and precise word or phrase?

• A. thoughtfulness

• B. esteem

• C. controversy

• D. sincerity