Ratified by more than 90 countries, the Nagoya Protocol is an international agreement ensuring that Indigenous communities are compensated when their agricultural resources and knowledge of wild plants and animals are utilized by agricultural corporations. However, the protocol has shortcomings. For example, it allows corporations to insist that their agreements with communities to conduct research on the commercial uses of the communities’ resources and knowledge remain confidential. Therefore, some Indigenous advocates express concern that the protocol may have the unintended effect of____.

Which option most logically completes the paragraph?

A) reducing the reward corporations can get from their domestic contracts.

B) limiting research on Indigenous resources by corporations that have signed treaties.

C) preventing independent observers from determining whether the agreements guarantee equitable compensation for Indigenous communities.

D) discouraging Indigenous communities from learning new methods for harvesting plants and animals from their corporate partners.

The domestic sweet potato (Ipomoea batatas) descends from a wild plant native to South America. It also populates the Polynesian Islands, where evidence confirms that Native Hawaiians and other indigenous peoples were cultivating the plant centuries before seafaring first occurred over the thousands of miles of ocean separating them from South America. To explain how the sweet potato was first introduced in Polynesia, botanist Pablo Muñoz-Rodríguez and colleagues analyzed the DNA of numerous varieties of the plant, concluding that Polynesian varieties diverged from South American ones over 100,000 years ago. Given that Polynesia was peopled only in the last three thousand years, the team concluded that____.

Which option most logically completes the paragraph?

A) cultivation of sweet potato may have preceded cultivation in South America.

B) Polynesian people acquired the sweet potato from South American peoples only three thousand years ago.

C) human activity likely played no role in the introduction of the sweet potato in Polynesia.

D) sweet potato varieties come from domesticated South American variety that was domesticated South American varieties

Atoms in a synchrotron, a type of circular particle accelerator, travel faster and faster until they____a desired energy level, at which point they are diverted to collide with a target, smashing the atoms.

Which option completes the paragraph so that it conforms to the conventions of Standard English?

A) had reaching

B) reach

C) reached

D) reaching

Even though bats prefer very sweet nectar, the plants that attract them have evolved to produce nectar that is only moderately sweet. A recent study____why: making sugar is energy-intensive, and it is more advantageous for plants to make a large amount of low-sugar nectar than a small amount of high-sugar nectar.

Which option completes the paragraph so that it conforms to the discussion of Standard English?

A) explains

B) explained

C) explaining

D) is explain

Former First Lady of the United States Eleanor Roosevelt and Indian activist and educator Hansa Mehta was instrumental in drafting the United Nations’ Universal Declaration of Human Rights, a document that____the basic freedoms to which all people are entitled.

Which alternative completes the content so that it conforms to the discussion of Standard English?

A) have outlines

B) outline

C) outlines

D) were outlines