GRE GRE-TEST Online Practice Questions and Exam Preparation

GRE GRE-TEST Online Questions & Answers

• Question 301:

  The author mentions "sentimental novels" primarily to

  A. account for the increased attention being paid to certain kinds of writing
  B. explain the relative obscurity of some categories of literature
  C. question an assumption shared by certain scholars
  D. emphasize the apparent incongruity of a scholarly omission
  E. note the literary diversity of a particular historical period
  D. emphasize the apparent incongruity of a scholarly omission

• Question 302:

  Writing for the New York Times in 1971. Saul Braun claimed that - todays superhero is about as much like his predecessors as today's child is like his parents." In an unprecedented article on the state of American comics, "Shazam Here Comes Captain Relevant. Braun wove a story of an industry whose former glory producing jingoistic fantasies of superhuman power in the 1930s and 1940s had given way to a canny interest in revealing the power structures against which ordinary people and heroes alike struggled following World War II Quoting a description of a course on Comparative Comics" at Brown University, he wrote, 'New heroes are different--they ponder moral questions, have emotional differences, and are just as neurotic as real people. Captain America openly sympathizes with campus radicals.. Lois Lane apes John Howard Griffin and turns herself black to study racism, and everybody battles to save the environment."" Five years earlier. Esquire had presaged Braun s claims about comic books: generational appeal, dedicating a spread to the popularity of superhero comics among university students in their special 'College Issue." As one student explained. "My favorite is the Hulk. I identify with him, he's the outcast against the institution.'1 Only months after the NW York Times article saw print. Rolling Stone published a six-page expose on the inner workings of Marvel Comics, while Ms. Magazine emblazoned Wonder Woman on the cover of its premier issue--declaring s Wonder Woman for President'' no less--and devoted an article to the origins of the latter- day feminist superhero.

  Where little more than a decade before comics had signaled the moral and aesthetic degradation of American culture, by 1971 they had come of age as America's "native art::: taught on Ivy League campuses, studied by European scholars and filmmakers, and translated and sold around the world, they were now taken up as a new generation's critique of American society. The concatenation of these sentiments among such diverse publications revealed that the growing popularity and public interest in comics (and comic- book superheroes) spanned a wide demographic spectrum, appealing to middle-class urbamtes, college-age men. members of the counterculture, and feminists alike. At the heart of this newfound admiration for comics lay a glaring yet largely unremarked contradiction: the cultural regeneration of the comic-book medium was made possible by the revamping of a key American fantasy figure, the superhero, even as that figure was being lauded for its realism"" and social relevance."" As the title of Braun's article suggests, in the early 1970s, "relevance" became a popular buzzword denoting a shift in comic-book content from oblique narrative metaphors for social problems toward direct representations of racism and sexism, urban blight, and political corruption.

  Which of the following best characterizes the relationship between the first and second paragraphs?

  A. The first paragraph presents an account of a phenomenon: the second questions the validity of that account.
  B. The first paragraph introduces a problem; the second discusses a possible solution to that problem.
  C. The first paragraph characterizes a phenomenon; the second offers two alternative explanations of that phenomenon.
  D. The first paragraph establishes a framework: the second relates a specific case to that framework
  E. The first paragraph describes a trend: the second analyzes that trend.
  D. The first paragraph establishes a framework: the second relates a specific case to that framework

• Question 303:

  Recent research has questioned the long-standing view of pearly mussels as exclusively suspension feeders (animals that strain suspended particles from water) that subsist on phytoplankton (mostly algae). Early studies of mussel feeding were based on analyses of gut contents, a method that has three weaknesses. First, material in mucus-bound gut contents is difficult to identify and quantify. Second, material found in the gut may pass undigested out of the mussel, not contributing to its nutrition. Finally, examination of gut contents offers limited insight into the mechanisms and behaviors by which mussels acquire food. Modem studies suggest that pearly mussels feed on more than just algae and may use other means than suspension feeding. Pedal feeding (sweeping up edible material with a muscular structure called the foot) has been observed in juvenile pearly mussels.

  Besides the phytoplankton pearly mussels capture from the water column, their guts also contain small animals, protozoans, and detritus (nonliving particulate organic material). Recent studies show that mussels can capture and assimilate bacteria as well, a potentially important source of food in many fresh waters. Another potential source of food for mussels is dissolved organic matter. Early studies showing that pearly mussels could take up simple organic compounds were largely discounted because such labile (unstable) compounds are rarely abundant in nature. Nevertheless, recent work on other bivalves suggests that dissolved organic matter may be a significant source of nutrition.

  Of this complex mix of materials that pearly mussels acquire, what is actually required and assimilated? Stable-isotope analyses of mussels taken from nature and of captive-reared mussels are beginning to offer some insight into this question. Nichols and Garling showed that pearly mussels in a small river were omnivorous, subsisting mainly on particles less than 2S micrometers in diameter, including algae, detritus, and bacteria. Bacterially derived carbon was apparently the primary source of soft-tissue carbon. However, bacteria alone cannot support mussel growth, because they lack the necessary long-chain fatty acids and sterols and are deficient in some amino acids. Bacteria may supplement other food resources, provide growth factors, or be the primary food In habitats such as headwater streams, where phytoplankton is scarce. Juvenile mussels have been most successfully reared m the laboratory on diets containing algae high in polyunsaturated fatty acids. Thus, it appears that the pearly mussel diet in nature may consist of algae, bacteria, detritus, and small animals and that at least some algae and bacteria may be required as a source of essential biochemicals.

  The primary purpose of the passage is to

  A. summarize the present state of knowledge about what pearly mussels eat
  B. contrast two mechanisms by which pearly mussels have been shown lo feed
  C. explain why evidence used to support a long-standing view about pearly mussels is flawed
  D. suggest that a particular source of nutrients is more essential to pearly mussels than was previously thought
  E. question whether research findings about laboratory-reared pearly mussels can be extrapolated to pearly mussels in natural habitats
  A. summarize the present state of knowledge about what pearly mussels eat

• Question 304:

  Carbon dating of charcoal gathered from a Nok iron smelter at Intime. Nigeria, suggests that iron technology was established there by 410 B.C. This may not be the oldest smelter in sub-Saharan Africa, however. Archaeologists have located evidence of iron-smelting in the Termite Hills of Niger from as early as 1400 B.C.. but skeptics say the wood used for that dating could have already been centuries old when burned as fuel--a problem that dogs carbon dating, especially in arid places like Niger, where wood desiccates and lasts longer. Of course, the same problem could distort dates for the Intime furnace as well, but here there is an important piece of corroborating evidence: Nok pottery found inside the furnace alongside the charcoal.

  The author implies which of the following about the "Nok pottery found inside the furnace"?

  A. It provides independent support for the results of the carbon dating of the charcoal.
  B. It was probably imported to Intini from a less arid climate.
  C. It predates the pottery found in the Termit Mills of Niger.
  D. It indicates that the furnace was used primarily for purposes other than smelting.
  E. It contains traces of iron smelted in the same furnace.
  A. It provides independent support for the results of the carbon dating of the charcoal.

• Question 305:

  The perimeter of rectangle ABCD is 20. and the length of each side is an integer. Which of the following values could be the length of diagonal AC?

  Indicate all such values.

  

  A. Option A
  B. Option B
  C. Option C
  D. Option D
  A. Option A
  B. Option B
  C. Option C
  D. Option D

• Question 306:

  Hotels in major urban markets seem to offer the biggest potential________ seasoned investors looking to make an investment in the lodging sector: those hotels took the hardest hit during the recession, and analysts expect them to bounce back just as steeply.

  A. risk for
  B. concession from
  C. source of
  D. disincentive to
  E. windfall to
  C. source of

• Question 307:

  Although a Inch concentration of cholesterol in the blood increases the body's ability to fight off infections it typically also increases the risk of dying from a stroke or heart attack, two of the most common causes of death However, in a recently completed ten-year study of people eighty-five and older, higher cholesterol levels tended to be associated with greater longevity.

  Which of the following, if true, most helps to explain the contrast between the highlighted effect of high cholesterol levels and the result of the study?

  A. Both heart attacks and strokes are typically brought on by an obstruction of the flow of blood through a blood vessel.
  B. Blood cholesterol levels can be controlled in part by suitable dietary regimens
  C. Among the participants m the study, the proportion with very high blood cholesterol levels was higher than among the general population.
  D. Regular monitoring of the participants in the study revealed that most of them maintained relatively stable blood cholesterol levels over tune.
  E. As people age. the body's ability to fight off infections diminishes.
  D. Regular monitoring of the participants in the study revealed that most of them maintained relatively stable blood cholesterol levels over tune.

• Question 308:

  One difficulty in convincing early scientists that craters fanned as a result of impacts from space is that most craters are circular. Impacts could come in at any angle, and experiments firing projectiles in the laboratory show that low-angle impacts lead to elliptical craters, not circular ones. Furthermore, while there was rarely evidence of any impacting object, there was often silicate melt around, suggesting that craters were caused by volcanic processes. The breakthrough in understanding crater origin was the recognition that the shock caused by the impacting object--not the object itself--creates a circular crater some twenty Times larger than the diameter of the impactor. The impact also generates enough heat to largely vaporize the impactor and melt the native rock.

  Based on the passage, it can be inferred that research focused on "a classical case of bilingualism"

  A. could not establish metrics to compare bilinguals' and monolinguals' cognitive performance
  B. overstated the cognitive benefits of achieving perfect command of two languages as an adult
  C. identified a weak but consistent correlation between bilingualism and enhanced cognitive functioning D. failed to distinguish the effects of language acquisition from the effects of language use
  E. mischaractenzed the significance of childhood bilingualism for later language learning
  E. mischaractenzed the significance of childhood bilingualism for later language learning

• Question 309:

  As originally formulated, the selfish-herd theory of prey species aggregation assumed that predatory attacks were equally likely to be launched from any position within the environment. In some circumstances (e.g.. avian predators attacking prey from above), such an approach is appropriate. However, as James et at. argue, in many predator-prey associations, attacks are unlikely to occur from positions within the group. For example, it is likely that an ambushing predator waiting in the path of a group would be detected before the group moves over its position. Hence, in many ecological situations, predatory attacks on grouped prey will occur exclusively from outside the group. In such circumstances, there is a strong premium to a group member in being in the interior of the group.

  The passage suggests that compared to members of the prey groups in "some circumstances." certain members of the prey groups in "many ecological situations" are likely to be less

  A. skilled at detecting ambushing predators
  B. vulnerable to predator attacks
  C. able to reach escape routes to avoid predators
  A. skilled at detecting ambushing predators
  B. vulnerable to predator attacks

• Question 310:

  

  A. Quantity A is greater.
  B. Quantity B is greater.
  C. The two quantities are equal.
  D. The relationship cannot be determined from the information given.
  D. The relationship cannot be determined from the information given.