According to statistician Nassim Nicholas Taleb, the best way to predict the amount of time a nonperishable entity (such as a building or a technology) will continue to exist is to examine how long it has survived so far. In this view, an item’s age is the strongest____how much longer it will last.

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

A) uncertainty about

B) motivation for

C) indicator of

D) criticism of

Arturo A. Schomburg was dedicated to preserving books, art, and other materials from peoples of African descent around the world. To get these items, Schomburg____friends and colleagues, whom he asked to bring back rare and valuable objects from their international travels. Now, Schomburg’s collection is a valuable resource for scholars of Black history and culture.

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

A) depended on

B) admired

C) disagreed with

D) warned

Diego Velázquez was the leading artist in the court of King Philip IV of Spain during the seventeenth century, but his influence was hardly____Spain: realist and impressionist painters around the world employed his techniques and echoed elements of his style.

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

A) derived from

B) recognized in

C) repressed by

D) confined to

The parasitic dodder plant increases its reproductive success by flowering at the same time as the host plant it has latched onto. In 2020, Jianqiang Wu and his colleagues determined that the tiny dodder achieves this____with its host by absorbing and utilizing a protein the host produces when it is about to flower.

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

A) hibernation

B) synchronization

C) prediction

D) moderation

Beginning in the 1950s, Navajo Nation legislator Annie Dodge Wauneka continuously worked to promote public health; this____effort involved traveling throughout the vast Navajo homeland and writing a medical dictionary for speakers of Diné bizaad, the Navajo language.

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

A) impartial

B) offhand

C) persistent

D) mandatory

Some researchers believe that the genes that enable groundhogs and certain other mammals to hibernate through the winter by slowing their breathing and heart rates and lowering their body temperature may be____in humans: present yet having essentially no effect on our bodily processes.

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

A) decisive

B) lacking

C) variable

D) dormant

Handedness, a preferential use of either the right or left hand, typically is easy to observe in humans. Because this trait is present but less____in many other animals, animal-behavior researchers often employ tasks specially designed to reveal individual animals’ preferences for a certain hand or paw.

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

A)intriguing

B) recognizable

C) significant

D) useful

The recent discovery of a carved wooden figure dating to around 2,000 years ago in a ditch in England was truly surprising.Wooden objects____survive for so long due to their high susceptibility to rot, but archaeologists suspect layers of sediment in the ditch preserved the figure by creating an oxygen-free environment.

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

A) sturdily

B) rarely

C) carelessly

D) simply

The process of mechanically recycling plastics is often considered____because of the environmental impact and the loss of material quality that often occurs. But chemist Takunda Chazovachii has helped develop a cleaner process of chemical recycling that converts superabsorbent polymers from diapers into a desirable reusable adhesive.

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

A) resilient

B) dynamic

C) inadequate

D) satisfactory

Like the 1945 play it reimagines—Federico García Lorca’s The House of Bernarda Alba—Marcus Gardley’s 2014 play The House That Will Not Stand prominently features women. In both plays, the all-female cast____an array of female characters, including a strong mother and several daughters dealing with individual struggles.

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

A) comprises

B) engulfs

C) encourages

D) provokes