Text 1

Dominique Potvin and colleagues captured five Australian magpies

Text 2
It can be tempting to think that animals are deliberately providing help when
we see them removing trackers and other equipment from one another,
especially when a species is known to exhibit other cooperative behaviors. At
the same time, it can be difficult to exclude the possibility that individuals
are simply interested in the equipment because of its novelty, curiously
pawing or pecking at it until it detaches.

Based on the texts, how would the author of Text 2 most likely respond to the
researchers’ perspective in Text 1 on the behavior of the magpies without
trackers?
A. That behavior might have been due to the novelty of the magpies’ captive
setting rather than to the novelty of the tracker.
B. That behavior likely indicates that the magpies were deliberately
attempting to benefit themselves by obtaining the tracker.
C. That behavior may not be evidence of selflessness in Gymnorhina
tibicen because not all the captured magpies demonstrated it.
D. That behavior might be adequately explained without suggesting that the
magpies were attempting to assist the other magpie.
Text 1
The University of Wisconsin and the online class provider Coursera are two of
the many institutions offering training programs in entrepreneurship. But
what results do such programs produce? In a study of aspiring entrepreneurs
in the United States, researcher James Chrisman and colleagues addressed
this question and reported that participants who received entrepreneurial
training showed high performance at their jobs.

Text 2
While studies of entrepreneurial training typically report positive results, a
close look reveals widespread methodological shortcomings that could
explain those findings. These studies are plagued by insufficient sample
sizes, a lack of control groups, and failures to establish pretraining baselines
for the measured attributes of participants.

Based on the texts, the author of Text 2 would most likely want to know if
Chrisman and colleagues took steps to preclude which potential objection to
the finding described in Text 1?
A) The participants would have shown greater responsiveness to the training
if the training sessions had lasted longer.
B) The participants would have been less likely to show high performance at
their jobs if the study sample size had been smaller.
C) The participants would have shown high performance at their jobs
regardless of whether they received the training.
D) The participants would have responded to the training differently if they
had not known that they were participating in a study.
Text 1
When the 50-second-long film Arrival of the Train—which depicts what its
title says, a train pulling into a station—was first shown publicly in 1896,
spectators, naïve to the new medium of film and seeing a train appearing to
come directly at them, leaped from their seats and fled the room. This
moment marks a major cultural shift: a new way of representing and seeing
the world had arrived with that train, and nothing would ever be the same.

Text 2
The fact that there is no contemporary evidence that the first audience
of Arrival of the Train was alarmed has not stopped the story from becoming
canonical, even among film historians. But that phenomenon itself is highly
revealing. Our belief that the coming of film was transformative is so strong
that we invented and keep retelling a founding myth that divides cultural
history into a (naïve) “before” and (sophisticated) “after.”

Based on the texts, the author of Text 2 would most likely agree with which
statement about the description of the first showing of Arrival of the Train in
Text 1?
A) It is not based on evidence and reflects film historians’ belief that they are
more sophisticated than today’s audiences.
B) It expresses a view about the transformative nature of film that film
historians tend to regard as naïve.
C) It is more motivated by a perception of the significance of the invention of
film than by facts.
D) It reflects a misconception that is widely believed because it captures
early film audiences’ sense that the new medium was alarming.
Text 1
In separate studies, Lingbo Meng and colleagues and Xinhua He and
colleagues examined whether plants transfer nutrients to one another using
a common mycorrhizal network (CMN)—a lattice of fungal strands in the soil.
Meng and colleagues excluded all pathways other than the CMN, using
barriers to keep the plants’ root systems separate while allowing mycorrhizal
strands through—a crucial step He and colleagues’ study did not take.

Text 2
Meng and colleagues took the necessary precaution of separating the plants’
root systems (thereby excluding root-to-root transmission). However, any
barrier used must allow the thread-like hyphae of CMN to pass through. This
permeability would also allow liquids through. Thus, the researchers’
experimental design cannot ensure that any nutrient transfer observed is
attributed to CMN and not to some other pathway.

Based on the texts, the author of Text 1 and the author of Text 2 would most
likely give the same answer to which question?
A) Did He and colleagues’ study effectively exclude any nutrient pathway
other than a CMN?
B) Are the barriers used in Meng and colleagues’ study sufficient to ensure
that nutrient transfer could only occur via a CMN?
C) Is there an available barrier material that can block root and liquids while
allowing fungal strands through?
D) Do plants that transfer nutrients through a root-to-root pathway also
transmit nutrients via a CMN?