The following text is from Jhumpa Lahiri's 2003 novel The Namesake. Gogol, a child, is at a beach in Massachusetts with his father.
He watches his father raise a kite within minutes into the wind, so high that Gogol must tip his head back in order to see, a rippling speck against the sky. The wind whips around their ears, turning their faces cold.
©2003 by Jhumpa Lahiri

The Chauvet Cave paintings—detailed paintings of animals found in what is now France and dating from 30,000-32,000 years ago—are thought of as art today, but how the people of the time understood the paintings is ______. They may have thought of the paintings as something akin to art in our modern sense, but it is entirely possible that they did not—we simply cannot say for certain.

Some ethicists challenge the concept of personal character, claiming that if it were meaningful, situational factors could not, as they clearly can, induce behavior contrary to that character. As Rachana Kamtekar observes, this argument is difficult to reconcile with our lay conception of character: we expect a person of helpful character to be frequently helpful, not ______ helpful.

Some cities estimate where sidewalks are located using road maps, which is not very accurate. Maryam Hosseini and her team trained a computer program to identify sidewalks in aerial images of Manhattan and used it on images of Chicago. The program's performance was ______ to that of the road-map method: it more accurately identified sidewalks, and it even distinguished between concrete and brick.

Literary production in the period after the Mexican Revolution (which lasted from 1910-1920) was ______, with writers like Octavio Paz contributing to the outpouring of poetry, fiction, essays, and more. Unfortunately, this flood of interesting writing can divert scholarly attention from the fascinating work of nineteenth-century figures like Guillermo Prieto.

When people think of dinosaurs with feathers, they typically think of winged dinosaurs, such as the four-winged Microraptor. However, many dinosaurs that didn't have wings also had feathers on their bodies. For instance, research indicates that the wingless, speedy Ornithomimus likely had feathers.

Known for the albums E.S.P. and ’Round About Midnight, jazz trumpeter Miles Davis collaborated several times with pianist Gil Evans. Their 1958 adaptation of George Gershwin's opera Porgy and Bess bears little resemblance to the 1935 original. Davis and Evans felt no desire to please listeners expecting an exact duplication of the opera. They omitted parts, such as the aria “I Got Plenty of Nuthin’,” and sometimes made only brief gestures toward Gershwin's melodies. But Davis and Evans's willingness to recompose Gershwin's work led to one of the most enduring albums in Davis's catalog.

The following text is from Julia Alvarez's 2000 novel In the Name of Salomé. Salomé, a poet, is hosting guests in the front parlor of her family home, and Ramona is her sister. A salon is a social gathering for the exploration of intellectual ideas.
It was evening when the two men got up to leave. Tía Ana had already come into the room several times to see if these guests had departed yet. The front parlor had always been her special province, as she used it for her little school. Now, every evening, it turned into Salomé's salon, as Ramona called it, and it was never in order for its transformation back to a classroom the following morning.
©2000 by Julia Alvarez

Dandelions are a kind of weed found in North America. Although dandelions are unwelcome in gardens and on farms, weeds like this do provide some benefits. For example, they can be helpful to pollinators.

Optimal foraging theory (OFT) holds that animals' foraging behaviors reflect cost-benefit trade-offs that vary by species and with dynamic ecological circumstances. One such circumstance is lunar intensity, which Rodrigo A. Vásquez found to be negatively associated with foraging by olive grass mice but Deborah J. Curtis and colleagues found to be positively associated with foraging by mongoose lemurs. This discrepancy is explicable in terms of OFT: the lemurs' greater reliance on vision means that higher lunar intensity benefits them more than it benefits the mice.

The nearly forty tribes located in Oklahoma, including the Choctaw Nation and the Seminole Nation, operate numerous businesses, employ tens of thousands of people, and generate billions of dollars in revenue. A student in an economics class is researching the tribes’ collective activity as a single industry. The student wants to compare that industry's role in Oklahoma in 2017 with the roles of other industries in the state. Looking at a table with information about three industries, the student finds that compared with the other two industries, tribal economic activity ______

The Age of Innocence is a 1920 novel by Edith Wharton set in 1870s New York City. In the novel, Newland Archer attends an opera. The narrator describes Newland's tendency to follow the social conventions dictated by other men of New York City society who are in the audience: ______

One antipredator defense that the grey-headed lapwing uses to protect its nest and young chicks is called “broken-wing display”; this form of deceptive defense involves an adult bird pretending to be injured and unable to fly in order to distract an approaching predator. Broken-wing display has been documented in 285 bird species from 13 different avian orders. A student predicts that bird species with mean body masses greater than 150 grams do not use deceptive defenses because larger birds tend to be more effective than smaller birds at using aggressive defenses to protect nests from predators, making deceptive defenses unnecessary.

Describing adverbs “as damaging to a writer,” novelist Graham Greene is one of several authors and literary critics who have recommended minimizing the use of adverbs, especially those ending in -ly (e.g., “obediently”), in works of fiction. To investigate the prevalence of -ly adverbs in novels, author and statistician Ben Blatt used natural language processing—machine learning technology that reads and interprets text—to calculate the rates at which these words occur in the novels of Ernest Hemingway, who was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1954. Blatt concluded that in Hemingway's oeuvre, there is a negative correlation between -ly adverb proliferation and perceived literary merit.

In their 2019 study of butterfly diversity at Rupa Lake in Nepal, researcher Bijaya Neupane and his colleagues counted one bluetail jester ______ to the Nymphalidae family, the bluetail jester (Symbrenthia niphanda) is known to be very rare.

While the ancient Celts—Iron Age peoples who inhabited parts of western and central Europe—weren't a single unified group, their art often featured common elements. These included intricate patterns of interlocking spiral lines, which often held symbolic ______ of birds, horses, and other animals; and inlaid enamel accents.

Paramaribo, with a population of roughly 250,000 people, ______ home to an impressive 47 percent of Suriname's total population.

Robert B. Elliott was one of the nearly two thousand African Americans who won a public office during the Reconstruction era, the twelve-year period that followed the Civil War. A politician from South Carolina, ______

The small celestial body known as 2060 Chiron is expected to have a relatively short lifetime in the outer solar system. Within just a few million years, 2060 Chiron is likely to migrate into the inner solar system or be destroyed, according to ______ trajectory.

Paxillus panuoides fungi have a well-documented association with alder ______ is, symbiotic bonds between fungal hyphae and host tree roots—the organisms can create extensive nutrient exchange networks.

Patricia Hampl's essay on “terracette,” a term referring to a series of terrace-like formations on a hillside, is just one of many essays included in Home Ground: A Guide to the American ______ by Barry Lopez and Debra Gwartney, the book celebrates the rich language used to describe the landscape of North America.

In 2005, notoriously shy American singer-songwriter Ray LaMontagne saw his life change with the success of his hit single “Trouble.” That year, he performed more than thirty live sets, including at Icahn Stadium in New York, United States, and Théatre Outremont in Montreal, Canada; ______ he'd performed fewer than a dozen times in 2004.

Unlike in Bolivia, where members of the national legislature are elected by a proportional representation system, legislators in Malaysia are elected via a single-member plurality voting system. ______ candidates in Malaysia are elected when they receive a plurality (i.e., greatest number) of votes.

While researching a topic, a student has taken the following notes:
• Morning Haiku (2010) is a book of poetry by African American poet Sonia Sanchez.
• Each poem in the book is a sequence of haiku.
• According to the book's publisher, Penguin Random House, the book “celebrates the gifts of life and mourns the deaths of revered African American figures.”
• The poem “5 haiku (for Brother Damu)” is written as a sequence of five haiku.
• The poem “15 haiku (for Toni Morrison)” is written as a sequence of fifteen haiku.

While researching a topic, a student has taken the following notes:
• The Japanese Ministry of the Environment made a list of 100 soundscapes of Japan.
• Each soundscape on the list was selected for its cultural significance to Japan.
• The sound of the bell at Hikone Castle is on the list.
• The sound of crickets on the banks of the Yodo River is on the list.

While researching a topic, a student has taken the following notes:
• The United States has designated more than 500 areas National Wildlife Refuges (NWRs).
• Some NWRs were established specifically to protect endangered species.
• The St. Johns NWR is a 6,255-acre area in Florida, on the Atlantic coast.
• It was established to protect the endangered dusky seaside sparrow.
• The Bitter Creek NWR is a 14,054-acre area in California, on the Pacific coast.
• It was established to protect the endangered California condor.

While researching a topic, a student has taken the following notes:
• A supercontinent is a single landmass made up of most or all of Earth's continents.
• Over time, continents merge together to form supercontinents, which then break apart.
• This process is believed to take hundreds of millions of years and is known as the supercontinent cycle.
• Kenorland and Rodinia were supercontinents.
• Kenorland formed about 2.6 billion years ago.
• Rodinia formed about 1.1 billion years ago.

Although Hawaiian literature is highly heterogeneous in many ways, it is also characterized by considerable thematic ______: scholars have drawn connections linking works by writers such as Anwei Skinsnes Law and Gary Pak to the traditional stories of the Kanaka Maoli, the Native Hawaiian people.

When discussing literary movements in the United States, scholars regularly characterize the works of Amos Bronson Alcott as especially representative of transcendentalism. The reasons for this characterization may seem ______, but linking Alcott with transcendentalism risks disregarding the subtleties in his style that do not neatly conform to the conventions of this literary movement.

The sloping tile roofs and picturesque façade of Mission San Luis Rey de Francia in Oceanside, California, exemplify the Spanish contribution to Californian architecture, an influence that is ______ throughout the state—architectural tourists visiting the Santa Fe Depot in San Diego, for example, can easily recognize how its style draws inspiration from the Spanish missions.

In 2013 Bridie J.M. Allan and colleagues published a study concluding that ocean acidification has a strong effect on the behavior of Pomacentrus amboinensis, a species of fish. However, Allan and colleagues’ study relied on a mean sample size of only about 18 fish. In a 2022 review of various scientists’ conclusions about the impacts of ocean acidification on fish behavior, Timothy D. Clark and colleagues caution that relying on such a relatively small sample size can increase the potential for biased analysis. Such analysis, in turn, can contribute to reports of exaggerated effects.

Dubautia menziesii is a species in a family of plants known collectively as the silversword alliance, all of which grow only on the Hawaiian Islands. Members of this alliance exhibit an extraordinary range of phenotypes, with some species maturing into vines and others into shrubs and trees. All species in the alliance descended from a single ancestral tarweed plant that arrived on the islands around 5 million years ago. The tarweed's descendants diversified into distinct species as they adapted to live in the wide variety of habitats found on the Hawaiian Islands.

Text 1
One challenge faced by researchers studying global urbanization is that countries may define urban settlements differently. Many countries define urban settlements based on the number of people living in them. However, countries do not all use the same number; for example, Iceland uses a minimum population of 200, while the Netherlands uses 20,000. Other countries use a combination of population and other factors. This variation makes it difficult for researchers to compare aspects of urbanization in different countries.
Text 2
Recently, a group of six international organizations developed global definitions of common types of settlements. The group developed a new measure called the “degree of urbanization.” This new measure establishes global criteria used to define three types of settlements (cities, towns, and rural areas) and allows researchers to better understand global urbanization rates.

Mauricio Drelichman and Hans-Joachim Voth's research on the fiscal vulnerability of Philip Ⅱ (who ruled not only Spain but other regions including much of Belgium from 1556 to 1598) builds on other studies of European early modern state finance, including Hoffman and Norberg's work on the relationship between state finance and political development. But Drelichman and Voth's unique contribution is their reconstruction of the earliest extant set of annual fiscal records for any sovereign state, which demonstrate that Philip's defaults were caused by short-term liquidity crises, not long-term unsustainable debts.

Veronica L. Bura, Akito Y. Kawahara, and Jayne E. Yack investigated the evolution and function of sound production in silk moth and hawk moth caterpillars. They found that during harmless simulated attacks on caterpillars, 33% of the tested species produced sound, which ranged from clicks in Antheraea polyphemus to chirps in Schausiella santarosensis. A second research team has claimed that caterpillars use these sounds primarily to communicate with other members of their species.

Apple's introduction of the AirPods earbuds in 2016 is an instance of brand extension—the company leveraged its brand recognition as a computer manufacturer to enter a product category where it had not previously competed. To determine if perceived category similarity predicts consumers' likelihood of purchasing brand extensions, Alicia Grasby et al. identified 30 extended-brand pairs (e.g., the same brand of lipstick and eyeshadow) in 52 weeks of purchases by approximately 60,000 households; for each pair, Grasby et al. had consumers rate the similarity of the product categories and calculated the change in probability of a brand in one category being purchased if the same brand was purchased in the other category.

Neuroscientist Kiyohito ligaya and colleagues developed a computational model to predict how much a person will enjoy a particular work of art on a scale from 1 (not at all) to 4 (very much). They then recruited participants to use the same scale to rate several sets of paintings in various styles and calculated the correlation between the ratings predicted by the model and those reported by the participants. Assuming participant P6 gave equal ratings to the abstract and cubist paintings, the data in the graph indicate the model predicted that ______

To understand consumer loyalty to specific online retailers, Vijoleta Vrhovac and colleagues conducted a survey using 58 statements as proxy indicators of customer experience with receiving online purchases. The statements were categorized by topic—e.g., statement 13, “I am eagerly awaiting the delivery of the ordered items,” was categorized as joyful anticipation—and respondents, all of whom were from Serbia (which is characterized as having a developing economy), rated the importance of each statement to their experience. Researchers found that participants placed low importance on package aesthetics and high importance on speedy delivery and package tracking, but the researchers cautioned against applying the findings to customers generally, suggesting that ______

Chelsea Wood et al. tracked temperature-driven changes in the abundance of Lecithaster sp. (a complex life cycle parasite, or CLP, that requires three host species throughout its life cycle), Oceanobdella pallida (a directly transmitted parasite, which requires only one host species), and 83 other parasite taxa found on eight fish species. CLPs are transmitted when an infected host is ingested by an individual of another species, typically shielding CLPs from the external environment, whereas directly transmitted parasites are exposed to external conditions during transmission. However, Wood et al. found that three-host CLP abundance decreased as sea temperatures rose, whereas directly transmitted parasite abundance was largely stable, suggesting that ______

Prolonged exposure to anthropogenic noise (sounds from human sources like traffic or mining) can affect animals, as Matthew A. Wale and colleagues found in a 2013 study of shore crabs. Researchers conducted a meta-analysis of studies of how such noise affects animals and found that, for every study, relevant traits or behaviors of the animals were observably different between the exposed group and the otherwise similar but unexposed group. Although, on average, studies of arthropods showed larger differences than studies of birds did, for every class of animals examined, there were individual studies showing differences well above the average for arthropods. Therefore, the results of the meta-analysis suggest that ______

Obsidian hydration dating (OHD), an artifact-dating technique that measures the thickness of the rind that forms on the surface of obsidian (a volcanic glass), can be used to estimate when prehistoric humans used the sharp glass to shape stone tools. The use of OHD requires careful calibration based on a sample's climatic context and ______ temperature fluctuations, variations in water vapor pressure, and differences in glass chemistry are known to affect the rate of rind growth.

The Aksumite Empire, which reigned in northeast Africa from around 100 CE to 940 CE, benefited from trade with other societies: its merchants exported wheat, gold, and salt and ______ other valuable commodities, such as spices, iron, and textiles, which were then traded locally.

In her work, Tlingit artist Tanis S'eiltin uses a combination of traditional art techniques and innovative multimedia formats to create striking mixed-media pieces. The Eiteljorg Museum counts pieces by S'eiltin in______ impressive collection of Native artworks.

On March 3, 2005, American astronomers detected a striking and unusual phenomenon occurring in the constellation Coma Berenices, 4.7 billion light-years from ______ explosion of a massive star, also known as a supernova, an extremely bright yet transient event that typically results from the collapse of a star's core.

Between April 15 and April 28 each year, particles shed by comet 26P/Grigg-Skjellerup enter Earth's atmosphere at a velocity of 18 kilometers per second. Relatively few of these particles are likely to reach Earth's ______ since the meteoroids' compression of the air surrounding them causes the vast majority to burn up in the mesosphere, producing the Pi Puppid meteor shower.

In a chemical reaction, the value known as molar mass helps convert between the mass of the reactants and the mass of the product. The gaseous ______ have molar masses of 162.15 and 56.11 g/mol, respectively.

Scientists have figured out why ______ The hazy middle layer of Uranus's atmosphere is much thicker than Neptune's, making Uranus appear lighter in color.

The pedagogy of the Suzuki method is rooted in several central ______ by Japanese violinist Shinichi Suzuki, who sought to parallel the linguistic learning environment, the method emphasizes playing instruments from a very young age and teaches students as young as three to play simple folk songs such as “Cuckoo.”

Stella Kramrisch and Ilse Bing have both received Lifetime Achievement Awards from the Women's Caucus for Art, though for different reasons. Kramrisch was honored for her work as an art historian; Bing, ______ was recognized for her contributions as a photographer.

In a 2022 analysis of 200 terms, researchers found a broad pattern of valence-dependent mutation for which negative words saw a faster rate of cognate replacement—______ the rate at which a word will be replaced over time with a noncognate form. Adjectives (e.g., “criminal”) saw the largest effect; nouns (e.g., “victim”), meanwhile, saw the smallest.

At past Olympics, in contrast to demonstration sports with international appeal, regionally popular sports were exhibited as onetime showcases. ______ while the internationally popular sport of speed skating became a medal event after demonstration, glima, a combat sport popular in Sweden, only appeared at the 1912 Stockholm Olympics.

While researching a topic, a student has taken the following notes:
• Louis Ballard was a classical composer and citizen of the Quapaw Tribe.
• His compositions synthesize Western classical music with elements of various Native musical traditions.
• Ballard's classical piece Live On, Heart of My Nation features a Choctaw hymn.
• Ballard's classical piece Fantasy Aborigine No. 3 incorporates a Tewa seashell rattle, a traditional Native instrument.

While researching a topic, a student has taken the following notes:
• A U-shaped curve in a river channel is called a meander.
• A meander forms when water erodes sediment from one side of the riverbank and redeposits that sediment on the opposite side.
• Meanders will gradually change shape and migrate downstream over time.
• A river with high sinuosity has many meanders, and a river with low sinuosity has few.
• The Willapa River in the United States has high sinuosity.

While researching a topic, a student has taken the following notes:
• Saturn has 146 moons, including Iapetus and Mimas.
• Iapetus completes an orbit of Saturn in 79.33 Earth days on average.
• Mimas completes an orbit of Saturn in 0.94 Earth days on average.
• German mathematician and astronomer Johannes Kepler (1571-1630) described the orbits of planets as elliptical in shape rather than circular.
• Kepler published three laws of planetary motion to describe the orbits of planets around the Sun.
• Kepler's laws also apply to the elliptical orbits of natural satellites (e.g., moons).