GRE GRE Certifications GRE-TEST Questions & Answers

• Question 61:

  Like paleontologists who interpret timescales from fossil evidence, we infer the history of star formation in the Milky Way galaxy from the heavy-element composition of its stars. According to the big bang theory of the origin of the universe, the first gas clouds--and the first generation of stars formed from them--were composed of pure hydrogen and helium; most heavier elements-- iron and calcium, for example--came later, created by explosions of supernovas, massive stars in their death throes. Loaded with heavy elements, material ejected from supernovas enriched the interstellar gas clouds from which the next generation of stars formed, the level of heavy elements increasing with succeeding generations. Because most stars live for many billions of years and because the Milky Way is thus composed of multiple stellar generations, comparing the number of stars of low heavy-element abundance with those of high heavy-element abundance enables astronomers to untangle the history of star formation in the Milky Way.

  The passage contains information about each of the following subjects EXCEPT the

  A. age of the Milky Way galaxy relative to the age of other galaxies

  B. events that led to the presence of heavier elements in stars

  C. time in the history of the galaxy when calcium and iron first appeared

  D. composition of early generations of stars

  E. composition of early interstellar gas clouds

  Correct Answer: A

• Question 62:

  The efficacy of a placebo may not _________ deception: inert sugar pills have been shown to reduce the symptoms of irritable bowel syndrome even in patients who were explicitly told they were receiving a placebo.

  A. justify

  B. preclude

  C. require

  D. mitieate

  E. circumvent

  Correct Answer: C

• Question 63:

  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 稢omparative 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.

  In the first paragraph, the author of the passage develops his argument primarily by

  A. pointing out the limitations of earlier approaches

  B. citing evidence from a range of published sources

  C. refuting a generalization by appealing to an individual case

  D. tracing different examples of a trend to the influence of a single source

  E. highlighting the merits of a particular critical framework

  Correct Answer: B

• Question 64:

  Larvae of many marine invertebrate species delay their metamorphosis into juveniles when cues signaling an appropriate juvenile environment are absent, thereby increasing then* likelihood of thriving as juveniles and of ultimately reaching adulthood Nevertheless, delayed metamorphosis has potential costs for juveniles including reduced growth and increased mortality Nearly all evidence of such costs involves species whose larvae do not feed but rather subsist on stored nutrients, indicating that insufficient energy reserves may be an underlying cause of these costs. Supporting this hypothesis are laboratory studies showing that in a certain bryozoan. the prolonged larval swimming that results from delayed metamorphosis is associated with size reductions in the juvenile feeding organ (the lophophore) and that one factor influencing the size of juveniles of certain barnacle species is how long larvae delay metamorphosis However, other studies show that while significantly fewer juvenile Capitella worms survived to adulthood when metamorphosis had been delayed, prolonged larval swimming had no significant effect on juvenile size, suggesting, perhaps, that in some species, factors other than insufficient energy reserves account for the negative effects of the larval stresses that result from delayed metamorphosis.

  The "hypothesis" implies that compared to marine invertebrate larvae that subsist on stored nutrients, marine invertebrate larvae that feed are less likely to

  A. exhibit prolonged larval swimming as a result of delayed metamorphosis

  B. experience negative effects as a result of delayed metamorphosis

  C. thrive as juveniles in environments inappropriate for juveniles

  D. delay metamorphosis in the absence of appropriate environmental cues

  E. delay metamorphosis for an extended period of time

  Correct Answer: B

• Question 65:

  Female Korean shellfish divers, known as haemyeo. are (i)_________the (ii)_________the international seafood market: since they export most of their products, even consistent harvests translate into unreliable earnings.

  A. unfamiliar with

  B. vulnerable to

  C. responsible for

  D. information about

  E. vicissitudes of

  F. opportunities beyond

  Correct Answer: BE

• Question 66:

  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

  Correct Answer: C

• Question 67:

  Among geophysicists there was considerably less (i)_________the proposed environmental measure than the (ii)_________media accounts of the conference would suggest: the debate was often animated but never uncivil.

  A. ambivalence toward

  B. satisfaction with

  C. rancor over

  D. sanitized

  E. sensationalized

  F. poignant

  Correct Answer: CE

• Question 68:

  The current_________of repackaged music under Miles Davis* name might prompt any reasonable person to conclude that the recording vault has been plundered bare.

  A. glut

  B. revival

  C. hodgepodge

  D. surfeit

  E. modicum

  F. dearth

  Correct Answer: AD

• Question 69:

  Nature's Metropolis was Cronon's effort to show that the idea of a boundary between natural and unnatural is profoundly_________. that neither the city of Chicago nor its hinterland can be understood independently of the other.

  A. conspiratorial

  B. reductive

  C. derivative

  D. abstruse

  E. revisionist

  Correct Answer: D

• Question 70:

  The danger often facing authors of satirical works is that if the audience is not (i)_________the joke, the piece may

  end up (ii)_________the behavior it was trying to (iii)_________.

  A. already frustrated by

  B. willing to laugh at

  C. discerning enough to get

  D. reinforcing

  E. depicting

  F. elucidating

  G. conceal

  H. support

  I. ridicule

  Correct Answer: CDI