The following text is from Agatha Christie's 1924 novel The Man in the Brown Suit.
My object in life is to be thoroughly comfortable. I have devoted a certain amount of thought, and a considerable amount of money, to further that end. But I cannot say that I always succeed.

Brazilian artist Camila Rosa started her career with a female street art collective called Colectivo Chá. Rosa says that her artistic style has been ______ by her time in the group and her interest in things like punk rock and political movements. Those inspirations can be seen in her artworks’ references to identity and social justice.

The reception of Misa Sugiura’s book It’s Not Like It’s a Secret has been very good. Many reviewers have ______ the book, and it won the Asian/Pacific American Award for Literature.

It would not be productive for supporters of a proposal to increase the toll that drivers must pay to use the Veterans Bridge, which spans the Southern Branch of the Elizabeth River in Virginia, to direct their arguments at those drivers who strongly believe that the current toll is too high. There’s little point in trying to ______ someone whose mind is already made up.

The first souvenir postcards in the United States were sold at the 1893 World’s Fair in Chicago. People bought them to mail to family and friends or to keep as collectibles. Extremely popular, these postcards sparked a craze for souvenir postcards that lasted into the early 1900s: tourists bought postcards showing pictures of scenery and attractions from across the US, and billions of souvenir postcards were sent through the mail.

Can marsh thistle plants grow on Mars? Can pea plants? You might think the answer to these questions is obviously no, but researchers in the Netherlands recently showed that many common plant species can thrive in soil designed to simulate Martian conditions, as long as water is supplied. In fact, some species actually did better in Martian soil than in Earth soil: 54 percent of marsh thistle plants grown in simulated Martian soil were alive after 50 days, compared with 46 percent that were when planted in soil from their home planet.

The following text is adapted from Daniel Defoe's 1704 nonfiction book The Storm.
If I judge right, ’tis the duty of an historian to set everything in its own light, and to convey matter of fact upon its legitimate authority, and no other: I mean thus, (for I would be as explicit as I can) that where a story is vouched to him with sufficient authority, he ought to give the world the special testimonial of its proper voucher, or else he is not just to the story: and where it comes without such sufficient authority, he ought to say so; otherwise he is not just to himself.

The orbital period of a moon is the time it takes the moon to go around the planet it orbits one time. The table shows the orbital period of three of Jupiter’s moons, measured in Earth days.

Regulations called RSRs prevent insurance companies from raising prices by large amounts. Researchers Naoki Aizawa and Ami Ko collected data about the years in which various US states implemented RSRs.

Cane is a 1923 novel by Jean Toomer. In the novel, Toomer mentions a road in rural Georgia called Dixie Pike and describes it as having a deep connection to a faraway place, writing, ______

The Reckoning and Resilience (2022) exhibition at Duke University's Nasher Museum of Art was the first to focus entirely on North Carolina artists since the exhibition Across County Lines four years earlier. The curators of the 2022 exhibition included painters like Beverly McIver, photographers like Kennedi Carter, and printmakers like Ayla Gizlice. But whereas the work by Carter would have fit the theme for Across County Lines, works by McIver and Gizlice would not have.

High-speed rail (HSR) systems have trains that move at much higher speeds than traditional trains. HSR is expanding in Greece, Sweden, and many other countries around the world. The United States, however, has been slow to build HSR systems. Researchers surveyed United States residents about their attitudes toward HSR. The researchers claim that this survey reveals that there is strong support for building more HSR lines in the United States.

Uncle Vanya: Scenes from Country Life in Four Acts is an 1898 play by Anton Chekhov, originally written in Russian. In the play, Professor Serebrakoff and his wife Helena have come to stay at their country estate, which Vanya manages with the help of Sonia, the professor's daughter from a previous marriage. Chekhov portrays Vanya as feeling underappreciated by the professor, as is evident when ______

Over 600 languages are spoken in New York City in addition to English—one can find Amharic spoken in the neighborhood of Norwood, or Ghale in Jackson Heights. Most speakers of Chinese languages reside in the neighborhood of Flushing (part of New York City's borough of Queens), where the dominant Chinese language is Mandarin, and in Chinatown, in the borough of Manhattan, where the dominant Chinese languages are Cantonese and Fuzhounese. Mandarin is widely spoken in north China, while Cantonese and Fuzhounese are widely spoken in south China. It can therefore be inferred that ______

Many studies have found a positive association between levels of dissolved organic carbon and mercury in bodies of fresh water undisturbed by human activity. Stéphane Guédron, Delphine Tisserand, and colleagues did not find this correlation in an examination of freshwater bodies impacted by wastewater, but Michael E. Berndt and Travis K. Bavin, who studied freshwater bodies disturbed by mining, did find it, leading some scientists to hypothesize that wastewater affects water chemistry differently than mining does. Guédron, Tisserand, and colleagues’ study, however, was conducted in Laos, whereas Berndt and Bavin's study was conducted in the United States, suggesting that ______

Many folktales that originate in the Lithuanian language begin with the same phrase. In English, this phrase ______ roughly to "beyond nine seas, beyond nine lagoons."

You can see Brazilian artist Tarsila do Amaral’s bold use of color in her painting Sol Poente (Setting Sun). Created in 1929, the painting ______ bright green cacti towering in front of a candy-orange sky.

Leptoptilos dubius, also known as the greater ______ can be found in places like the Central Tanintharyi Coast in Myanmar and Chitwan National Park in Nepal, but more than 80 percent of this endangered stork species is found in Assam, India. There, wildlife biologist Dr. Purnima Devi Barman is on the front lines of a conservation effort that aims to bring adjutants back from near extinction.

In 2010, anthropologist Lívia Barbosa published a study wherein she documented survey respondents’ perceptions of popular Brazilian foods, such as coxinha and broa. While the data may now be somewhat outdated, scholars in the future interested in tracking changes in food and sociability in Brazilian society ______ Barbosa’s study useful.

In Puerto Rico, it’s not unusual for a city or town to be known by a nickname that corresponds to one of its notable features, like landscape, climate, famous residents, or chief export. For example, the Puerto Rican municipality of Arecibo is well known for Antonio de los Reyes Correa, the 17th-century army captain who once defended the ______ this distinction has earned it a fitting nickname: “the Villa of Captain Correa.”

The Eiger, the Mönch, the Jungfrau—Alpine summits like these were little more than wastelands to many Europeans until the eighteenth century, when attitudes toward such intimidating landscapes shifted as part of a broader aesthetic ______ by Irish philosopher Edmund Burke, this shift framed mountains as sublime objects capable of producing delightful terror.

While some researchers have identified the planet Teegarden’s Star c as potentially habitable, it’s unlikely that humanity will be able to take advantage of its favorable conditions anytime soon—it’s 12.58 light years away. ______ at 1,196 light years away, the planet Kepler-1410b is also inaccessible.

John Rankin was an outspoken abolitionist whose Ohio home was a stop on the underground railroad (the network of people and places that some enslaved people used to escape to freedom). ______ supporters of the railroad were secretive about their antislavery views. Usually, they were vocal abolitionists like Rankin.

While researching a topic, a student has taken the following notes:
• Angelina Weld Grimke was an African American poet, playwright, and journalist.
• Grimke lived and worked in Washington, DC, for many years.
• "To Miss Harriet E. Riggs" is a poem by Grimke.
• It was published in 1923.

While researching a topic, a student has taken the following notes:
• Snow hydrologist Julie Koeberle helps maintain automated snow measurement stations throughout the western United States.
• They are called SNOTEL sites.
• There are around 90 sites throughout Wyoming.
• There is one at Bear Trap Meadow.

While researching a topic, a student has taken the following notes:
• One and All is the name of a sailboat.
• Uku Randmaa is an Estonian sailor.
• He sailed One and All on a nonstop, 254-day journey around the world.
• He set sail from Les Sables d'Olonne, France, in July 2018.
• He returned to Les Sables d'Olonne in March 2019.

While researching a topic, a student has taken the following notes:
• Body positions are a fundamental aspect of dance.
• In Cecchetti method ballet, there is a position for the dancer’s arms called fourth position en avant.
• In the position, one arm is out to the side, and the other is rounded to roughly align the fingers with the navel.
• In Vaganova method ballet, there is a position for the dancer’s arms called big pose.
• In this position, one arm is out to the side, and the other is rounded and raised above the head.

The National Heritage Fellowship was created to ______ exceptional folk and traditional artists in the United States. One artist who received the fellowship, the Native Hawaiian singer and ukulele player Genoa Keawe, was chosen for her lifetime contributions to the arts.

Broods of periodical cicadas (inch-long winged insects) emerge for six weeks in late spring on a cycle of either 13 or 17 years. In 2024, the emergences of the Great Southern Brood (on a 13-year cycle) and the Northern Illinois Brood (on a 17-year cycle) coincided in the Midwest and Southeast United States, ______ that happens only once every 221 years. Sixteen states were covered with a trillion cicadas.

Japanese animator and director Hayao Miyazaki often includes fantasy elements in otherwise realistic settings in his movies, but he tends to ______ details and exposition about those elements. Miyazaki simply presents fantastical characters and actions with little backstory or explanation, encouraging viewers to embrace the presence of the extraordinary in everyday life.

Östersund, Sweden, was named a City of Gastronomy by UNESCO in 2010, a title that ______ that Östersund has a unique and vibrant food culture worthy of celebration.

Beth Shapiro and other researchers studying the history of organisms have long utilized ancient DNA—DNA recovered from ancient organic material that has been preserved under natural conditions. However, Michael G. Campana and colleagues’ 2017 study of the evolutionary origins of a fungal pathogen affecting bats instead relied on historical DNA—genomic data incidentally preserved in specimens that are housed in natural history collections—thus capitalizing on the research potential offered by a vast but hitherto relatively underutilized source of insight into the biological past.

Curious about how people visually perceive objects in their dreams, Stephen LaBerge and team recruited lucid dreamers—people aware that they’re dreaming as it’s happening—for a research study. These participants were reliably able to signal when they had entered a dream state; the team then observed participants’ eye movements as they slept. The smoothness with which participants’ eyes tracked objects in their dreams closely matched how sighted people who are awake visually track objects around them, suggesting to the team that the brain perceives dream objects as the product of something other than pure imagination.

Text 1
Thomas Piketty's book Capital in the Twenty-First Century has a more rigorous structure than its sequel, Capital and Ideology. While the first book's chapters all contribute to bolstering a clear, coherent argument about income inequality, the second book's digressions on subjects such as the history of vegetarian diets in India do not just make the book tedious but also muddy its reasoning.

Text 2
Capital and Ideology has different aims than Piketty's earlier books. It should be judged not just in the context of Piketty's previous work but placed next to books like Robert Burton's Anatomy of Melancholy, in which the stated theme of the varieties of melancholy is mainly an excuse for a polymath to map his own mind. Even when sections do not explicitly support the central thesis, they link to each other in intriguing ways. None of them should be considered extraneous.

Musician and astronomer Darsan Swaroop Bellie researches gravitational waves. These invisible waves move very quickly through space. They cannot be viewed through a telescope, but they do make sounds that can be detected with special equipment. In his musical composition Dance of the Black Holes, Bellie demonstrates what gravitational waves might sound like as two black holes merge in space. With this composition and others, Bellie hopes to make aspects of science more accessible.

The Late Devonian mass extinction happened approximately 365 million years ago, when about 75 percent of species (including many species of corals) died off. Researchers have proposed the effects of global cooling as one mechanism that may have brought on this mass extinction. But mass extinctions, while abrupt in geological terms, unfold over thousands or millions of years: it’s likely that multiple factors drove widespread species loss.

The following text is from Yung Wing's 1909 memoir My Life in China and America.
We landed in New York on the 12th of April, 1847, after a passage of ninety-eight days of unprecedented fair weather. The New York of 1847 was altogether a different city from the New York of 1909. It was a city of only 250,000 or 300,000 inhabitants; now it is a metropolis rivaling London in population, wealth and commerce. The whole of Manhattan Island is turned into a city of skyscrapers, churches and palatial residences.

A team of public transportation experts in Detroit is creating a new streetcar stop for the Woodward Avenue Streetcar system that will service a neighborhood in which a stop does not currently exist. To decide where to place the stop, the team is using a survey from ten years ago that asked how far neighborhood residents would be willing to walk to a streetcar stop. The team also looked at studies showing that people's willingness to walk to public transit is influenced by factors like weather and the presence of paved sidewalks and available crosswalks. A researcher has argued that the survey does not accurately reflect the feelings of today's residents of this neighborhood.

Memoirs of Elleanor Eldridge is an 1838 historical account by Elleanor Eldridge and Frances Harriet Whipple Green. In the book, the authors assert that all people naturally have an emotional attachment to where they live, writing, ______

One antipredator defense that the masked 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.

Antonia Olivia Dolan and colleagues conducted a study of participants’ preferred listening volume, in decibels (dB), for various audio recordings, including heavy metal music, acoustic folk music, and nature sounds. The team found that participants listened to recordings they liked most at higher volumes (greater dB) than recordings they liked less and that musicians tended to listen at higher volumes than nonmusicians did. For example, if the favorite recording of both a participating musician and a participating nonmusician was Metallica’s “Sad but True” and the musician played it at 85.5 dB, it was therefore likely that ______

Right-handedness is overwhelmingly prevalent in humans. Among studies of laterality in nonhuman primates, Jane Goodall’s 1963 study of wild chimpanzees reported no tendency toward right-handedness, while Margaret E. Redshaw’s 1993 study of captive gorillas did. However, the latter study included only 2 individuals, and a meta-analysis of primate-laterality studies demonstrated that a minimum sample size of 176 individuals is required to be confident that a finding of population-level handedness is not mere statistical noise. The claim of right-handedness in the 1993 study should therefore be treated skeptically given that ______

“What stories like this do for us is make the world just a smidge bigger,” writes Stephen Graham Jones in the foreword to Never Whistle at Night: An Indigenous Dark Fiction Anthology. For Jones, dark fiction does more than entertain readers: ______ horror tropes to challenge familiar ways of knowing, blurring the “borders of the real.”

Florida resident Frederick Hill, one of the nearly two thousand African Americans elected to public office during the decade that followed the Civil War, ______ his term as a member of the state senate in 1871.

Lily Everett and Mary Foote were among the 300 artists who exhibited at the 1913 Armory Show, a groundbreaking New York City art exhibition that introduced modernism to American audiences. Marcel Duchamp’s abstract cubist aesthetic received the most skepticism from critics, as ______ represented a radical departure from the more realistic painting style that was popular at the time.

The International Wheelchair Basketball Federation (IWBF) is one of many sports organizations that collect and analyze data on player performance. Coaches in the IWBF ______ these data to help them develop game strategies that have a high probability of success.

Polymers used in industrial applications are weakened by environmental stress, mechanical fatigue, and unexpected damage. However, new types of polymers have been engineered to repair ______ aided by embedded microcapsules, such materials begin to self-heal.

Doha, the capital of Qatar, has a population of 1,450,000, which accounts for 92 percent of the country's total population. Having proportionally large populations ______ common for national capitals.

Many past Olympic Games featured demonstration sports—nonmedal events—to showcase sports related to the host country. These events included icestocksport, a throwing sport popular in Austria, and canne de combat, a French combat sport. ______ they were chosen as demonstration sports at the Olympic Games in Innsbruck, Austria, and Paris, France, respectively.

In Amarna, Egypt, archaeologist Anna Hodgkinson unearthed bits of glass near lower-status dwellings, which she believes may refute the long-held notion that the material was enjoyed exclusively by Ancient Egyptian royalty. ______ archaeologist Thilo Rehren states flatly that glass doesn’t appear to have been “a closely controlled royal commodity,” concurring, based on his own research, that the material was more common than once surmised.

While researching a topic, a student has taken the following notes:
• The large tree finch is a species of bird.
• It has an average weight of 19 grams.
• It can be found on the Galápagos Island of Santa Fe.
• The Galápagos Islands are a group of islands that have many different species of birds.

While researching a topic, a student has taken the following notes:
• The willow oak is a species of deciduous tree.
• Its scientific name is Quercus phellos.
• It is native to the Southeastern ecoregion of the US.

While researching a topic, a student has taken the following notes:
• In music theory, the term "key" refers to the set of musical notes that forms the foundation of a piece of music.
• In Ideas Toward an Aesthetic of Music (1806), German poet and composer Christian Schubart describes the mood of various musical keys.
• He describes the key of C minor as expressing "longing."
• "Don't Speak" (1996) by No Doubt is a song written in C minor.

While researching a topic, a student has taken the following notes:
• Kumiko is a Japanese woodworking technique in which thin strips of wood are interlaced to create latticed panels that incorporate intricate patterns.
• These wooden strips are fit together without the use of nails or other fasteners.
• Many of the geometric patterns used in kumiko designs are inspired by elements from nature.
• The overlapping hexagons of the kikko pattern resemble a tortoise's shell.
• The curved fan shapes of the seigaiha pattern resemble ocean waves.