1. Math poses difficulties. There’s little room for
eyewitness testimony, seasoned judgment, a skeptical
eye or transcendental rhetoric.

Q-1 As used in line 2, “seasoned” “most nearly means

2. Around the middle of the 20th century, science
dispensed with the fantasy that we could easily colonize
the other planets in our solar system. Science fiction
writers absorbed the new reality: soon, moon and
5 asteroid settings replaced Mars and Venus.

Q-1 As used in line 2 “dispensed with” most nearly means

3. Conservationists have historically been at odds
with the people who inhabit wildernesses. During the
last half of the 20th century, millions of indigenous
people were ousted from their homelands to establish
5 nature sanctuaries free of humans. Most succumbed to
malnutrition, disease, and exploitation. Such outcomes
coupled with the realization that indigenous groups
usually help to stabilize ecosystems by, for instance,
keeping fire at bay-have convinced major conservation
10 groups to take local human concerns into account. The
World Wildlife Fund (WWF) now describes indigenous
peoples as “natural allies,” and the Nature Conservancy
pledges to seek their “free, informed and prior” consent
to projects impacting their territories.

Q-1 -As used in line 5, “free” most nearly means

Q-2 As used in line 7, “coupled” most nearly means

Q-3 As used in line 10, “account” most nearly means

4. Perhaps the most classic definition of a species is a
group of organisms that can breed with each other to
produce fertile offspring, an idea originally set forth in
1942 by evolutionary biologist Ernst Mayr. While
5 elegant in its simplicity, this concept has since come
under fire by biologists, who argue that it didn’t apply to
many organisms, such as single-celled ones that
reproduce asexually, or those that have been shown to
breed with other distinct organisms to create hybrids.
10 Alternatives quickly arose. Some biologists
championed an ecological definition that assigned
species according to the environmental niches they fill
(this animal recycles soil nutrients, this predator keeps
insects in check). Others asserted that a species was a
15 set of organisms with physical characteristics that were
distinct from others (the peacock’s fanned tail, the beaks
of Darwin ‘ s finches).
The discovery of DNA’s double helix prompted the
creation of yet another definition, one in which scientists
20 could look for minute genetic differences and draw even
finer lines denoting species. Based on a 1980 book by
biologists Niles Eldredge and Joel Cracraft, under the
definition of a phylogenetic species , animal species now
can differ by just 2 percent of their DNA to be
25 considered separate .

Q-1 As used in line 11, “championed” most nearly means

Q-2 As used in line 18, “prompted” most nearly means

Q-3 As used in line 21, “finer” most nearly means

5. Citrus greening, the plague that could wipeout
Florida’s $9 billion orange industry, begins with the
touch of a jumpy brown bug on a sun-kissed leaf.
From there, the bacterial disease incubates in the
5 tree’s roots, then move back up the trunk in full force,
causing nutrient flows to seize up. Leaves turn yellow,
and the oranges, deprived of sugars from the leaves,
remain green, sour, and hard. Many fall before harvest,
brown necrotic flesh ringing failed stems.
10 For the past decade, Florida’s oranges have been
literally starving. Since it first appeared in 2005,
citrus greening, also known by its Chinese name,
huanglongbing, has swept across Florida’s groves
like a flood. With no hills to block it, the Asian citrus
15 psyllid-the invasive aphid relative that carries the
disease-has infected nearly every orchard in the
state. By one estimate, 80 percent of Florida’s citrus
trees are infected and declining.
The disease has spread beyond Florida to nearly
20 every orange-growing region in the United States.
Despite many generations of breeding by humanity,
no citrus plant resists greening; it afflicts lemons,
grapefruits, and other citrus species as well. Once a
tree is infected, it will die. Yet in a few select
25 Floridian orchards, there are now trees that, thanks to
innovative technology, can fight the greening tide.

Q-1 As it is used in line 9, “ringing” most nearly means

Q-2 As it is used in line 24, “select” most nearly means.

6. Chimps do it, birds do it, even you and I do it.
Once you see someone yawn, you are compelled to
do the same. Now it seems that wolves can be added
to the list of animals known to spread yawns like a 5 contagion.
Among humans, even thinking about yawning can trigger the reflex,
leading some to suspect that catching a yawn is linked to our
ability to empathize with other humans. For instance, contagious yawning activates the
10 same parts of the brain that govern empathy and social
know-how. And some studies have shown that humans
with more fine-tuned social skills are more likely to
catch a yawn.

Q-1 As used in line 10, “govern” most nearly means

7. The following passage is adapted from Daniel Webster’s
speech to the Senate in support of the Compromise of
1850, the congressional effort to resolve the issues
propelling the United States toward a civil war.
I wish to speak to-day, not as a Massachusetts
man, nor as a Northern man, but as an American, and
a member of the Senate of the United States. It is
fortunate that there is a Senate of the United States; a
5 body not yet moved from its propriety, not lost to a just
sense of its own dignity and its own high responsibilities,
and a body to which the country looks, with confidence,
for wise, moderate, patriotic, and healing counsels .
It is not to be denied that we live in the midst of strong
10 agitations, and are surrounded by very considerable
dangers to our institutions and government. The
imprisoned winds are let loose. The East, the North,
and the stormy South combine to throw the whole sea
into commotion, to toss its billows to the skies, and
15 disclose its profoundest depths. I do not affect to regard
myself, Mr. President, as holding, or as fit to hold, the
helm in this combat with the political elements; but I
have a duty to perform, and I mean to perform it with
fidelity, not without a sense of existing dangers, but not
20 without hope. I have a part to act, not for my own
security or safety, for I am looking out for no fragment
upon which to float away from the wreck, if wreck there
must be, but for the good of the whole, and the
preservation of all; and there is that which will keep me
25 to my duty during this struggle, whether the sun and the
stars shall appear, or shall not appear for many days.
I speak to-day for the preservation of the Union.

Q-1 As used in line 16, “fit” most nearly means

Q-2 As used in line 20, “part” most nearly means.

8. To understand what the new software-that Is,
analytics-can do that’s different from more familiar
software like spreadsheets, word processing, and
graphics, consider the lowly photograph. Here the
5 relevant facts aren’t how many bytes constitute a digital
photograph, or a billion of them. That’s about as
instructive as counting the silver halide molecules used
to form a single old-fashioned print photo. The important
feature of a digital image’s bytes is that, unlike
10 crystalline molecules, they are uniquely easy to store,
transport, and manipulate with software. In the first era
of digital images, people were fascinated by the
convenience and malleability (think PhotoShop) of
capturing, storing, and sharing pictures. Now, instead of
15 using software to manage photos, we can mine features
of the bytes that make up the digital image. Facebook
can, without privacy invasion, track where and when,
for example, vacationing is trending, since digital images
reveal at least that much. But more importantly, those
20 data can be cross-correlated, even in real time, with
seemingly unrelated data such as local weather, interest
rates, crime figures, and so on. Such correlations
associated with just one photograph aren’t revealing.
But imagine looking at billions of photos over weeks,
25 months, years, then correlating them with dozens of
directly related data sets (vacation bookings, air traffic),
tangential information (weather, interest rates,
unemployment), or orthogonal information (social or
political trends). With essentially free super-computing,
30 we can mine and usefully associate massive, formerly
unrelated data sets and unveil all manner of economic,
cultural, and social realities.
For science-fiction aficionados, Isaac Asimov
anticipated the idea of using massive data sets to predict
35 human behavior, coining it “psychohistory” in his 1951
Foundation trilogy. The bigger the data set, Asimov said
then, the more predictable the future. With big-data
analytics, one can finally see the forest, instead of just
the capillaries in the tree leaves. Or to put it in more
40 accurate terms, one can see beyond the apparently
random motion of a few thousand molecules of air inside
a balloon; one can see the balloon itself, and beyond that,
that it is inflating, that it is yellow, and that it is part of a
bunch of balloons en route to a birthday party. The
45 data/software world has, until now, been largely about
looking at the molecules inside one balloon.

Q-1 As in line 15, “mine” most neatly means

Q-2 As in line 15, “mine” most neatly means

Q-3 As used in line 34, “anticipated” most nearly means

9. This passage is adapted from Sharon Tregaskis,” What
Bees Tell Us About Global Climate Change,• 0 2010
by Johns Hopkins Magazine.
Standing in the apiary on the grounds of the U.S.
Department of Agriculture’s Bee Research Laboratory
in Beltsville, Maryland, Wayne Esaias digs through the
canvas shoulder bag leaning against his leg in search of
5 the cable he uses to download data. It’s dusk as he runs
the cord from his laptop-precariously perched on the
beam of a cast-iron platform scale-to a small, batteryoperated
data logger attached to the spring inside the
scale’s steel column. In the 1800s, a scale like this
10 would have weighed sacks of grain or crates of apples,
peaches, and melons. Since arriving at the USDA’s bee
lab in January 2007, this scale has been loaded with a
single item: a colony of Apis mellifera, the fuzzy,
black-and-yellow honey bee. An attached, 12-bit
15 recorder captures the hive’s weight to within a 10th of
a pound, along with a daily register of relative ambient
humidity and temperature.
On this late January afternoon, during a
comparatively balmy respite between the blizzards that
20 dumped several feet of snow on the Middle Atlantic
states, the bees, their honey, and the wooden boxes in
which they live weigh 94.5 pounds. In mid-July, as last
year’s unusually long nectar flow finally ebbed, the
whole contraption topped out at 275 pounds, including
25 nearly 150 pounds of honey. “Right now, the colony is
in a cluster about the size of a soccer ball,” says Esaias,
who’s kept bees for nearly two decades and knows
without lifting the lid what’s going on inside this hive.
“The center of the cluster is where the queen is, and
30 they’re keeping her at 93 degrees-the rest are just
hanging there, tensing their flight muscles to generate
heat.” Provided that they have enough calories to fuel
their winter workout, a healthy colony can survive as
far north as Anchorage, Alaska. “They slowly eat their
35 way up through the winter,” he says. “It’s a race: Will
they eat all their honey before the nectar flows, or not?”
To make sure their charges win that race, apiarists have
long relied on scale hives for vital management clues.
By tracking daily weight variations, a beekeeper can
40 discern when the colony needs a nutritional boost to
carry it through lean times, whether to add extra combs
for honey storage and even detect incursions by
marauding robber bees-all without disturbing the
colony. A graph of the hive’s weight-which can
45 increase by as much as 35 pounds a day in some
parts of the United States during peak nectar flow –
reveals the date on which the bees’ foraging was
was most productive and provides a direct record of
successful pollination. “Around here, the bees make
50 their living in the month of May,” says Esaias, noting
that his bees often achieve daily spikes of 25 pounds,
the maximum in Maryland. “There’s almost no nectar
coming in for the rest of the year.” A scientist by
training and career oceanographer at NASA, Esaias
55 established the Mink Hollow Apiary in his Highland,
Maryland, backyard in 1992 with a trio ofhand-medown
hives and an antique platform scale much like
the one at the Beltsville bee lab. Ever since, he’s
maintained a meticulous record of the bees’ daily
60 weight, as well as weather patterns and such details
as his efforts to keep them healthy. In late 2006,
honey bees nationwide began disappearing in an
ongoing syndrome dubbed colony collapse disorder
(CCD). Entire hives went empty as bees inexplicably
65 abandoned their young and their honey. Commercial
beekeepers reported losses up to 90 percent, and the
large-scale farmers who rely on honey bees to ensure
rich harvests of almonds, apples, and sunflowers
became very, very nervous. Looking for clues, Esaias
70 turned to his own records. While the resulting graphs
threw no light on the cause of CCD, a staggering
trend emerged: In the span of just 15 seasons, the date
on which his Mink Hollow bees brought home the
most nectar had shifted by two weeks-from late May
75 to the middle of the month. “I was shocked when I
plotted this up,” he says. “It was right under my nose,
going on the whole time.” The epiphany would lead
Esaias to launch a series of research collaborations,
featuring honey bees and other pollinators, to
80 investigate the relationships among plants, pollinators,
and weather patterns. Already, the work has begun
to reveal insights into the often unintended
consequences of human interventions in natural and
agricultural ecosystems, and exposed significant
85 gaps in how we understand the effect climate change
will have on everything from food production to
terrestrial ecology.

Q-1 As used in line 41, “lean” most nearly means

Q-2 As used in line 42, “incursions” most nearly means

Q-3 As used in lines 49-50, “make their living” most nearly means

Q-4 As used in line 68, “rich” most nearly means.

10. The following passage is adapted from the novel
Summerb y EdithW harton,i nitiallyp ublished in 1917.
The hours of the Hatchard Memorial librarian were
from three to five; and Charity Royall’s sense of duty
usually kept her at her desk until nearly half-past four.
But she had never perceived that any practical
5 advantage thereby accrued either to North Dormer or to
herself; and she had no scruple in decreeing, when it
suited her , that the library should close an hour earlier.
A few minutes after Mr. Hamey’s departure she formed
this decision, put away her lace, fastened the shutters,
10 and turned the key in the door of the temple of
knowledge. The street upon which she emerged was
still empty: and after glancing up and down it she began
to walk toward her house. But instead of entering she
passed on, turned into a field-path and mounted to a
15 pasture on the hillside. She let down the bars of the gate, followed a trail
along the crumbling wall of the pasture, and walked on
till she reached a knoll where a clump of larches shook
out their fresh tassels to the wind. There she lay down
20 on the slope, tossed off her hat and hid her face in the
grass. She was blind and insensible to many things, and
dimly knew it; but to all that was light and air, perfume
and color, every drop of blood in her responded. She
loved the roughness of the dry mountain grass under
25 her palms, the smell of the thyme into which she crushed
her face, the fingering of the wind in her hair and
through her cotton blouse, and the creak of the larches
as they swayed to it. She often climbed up the hill and lay there alone for
30 the mere pleasure of feeling the wind and of rubbing her
cheeks in the grass. Generally at such times she did not
think of anything, but lay immersed in an inarticulate
well-being . Today the sense of well-being was
intensified by her joy at escaping from the library. She
35 liked well enough to have a friend drop in and talk to
her when she was on duty, but she hated to be bothered
about books . How could she remember where they
were, when they were so seldom asked for? Orma Fry
occasionally took out a novel, and her brother Ben was
40 fond of what he called “jography ,” and of books
relating to trade and bookkeeping; but no one else asked
for anything except, at intervals, “Uncle Tom’s Cabin,”
or “Opening of a Chestnut Burr ,” or Longfellow . She
had these under her hand, and could have found them
45 in the dark; but unexpected demands came so rarely
that they exasperated her like an injustice ….
She had liked the young man’s looks, and his shortsighted
eyes, and his odd way of speaking, that was abrupt
yet soft, just as his hands were sun-burnt and sinewy , yet
50 with smooth nails like a woman’s . His hair was
sunburnt-looking too, or rather the colour of bracken
after frost; eyes grey, with the appealing look of the
shortsighted, his smile shy yet confident, as if he knew
lots of things she had never dreamed of, and yet
55 wouldn’t for the world have had her feel his superiority.
But she did feel it, and liked the feeling; for it was new
to her . Poor and ignorant as she was, and knew herself
to be-humblest of the humble even in North Dormer,
where to come from the Mountain was the worst
60 disgrace-yet in her narrow world she had always ruled.
It was partly, of course, owing to the fact that lawyer
Royall was “the biggest man in North Dormer ‘.’; so
much too big for it, in fact, that outsiders, who didn’t
know , always wondered how it held him. In spite of
65 everything-and in spite even of Miss Hatchardlawyer
Royall ruled in North Dormer; and Charity ruled
in lawyer Royall ‘ s house . She had never put it to herself
in those terms ; but she knew her power. Confusedly, the
young man in the library had made her feel for the first
70 time what might be the sweetness of dependence. She
sat up and looked down on the house where she held sway.
It stood just below her, cheerless and untended.
Behind the house a bit of uneven ground with clothes –
75 lines strung across it stretched up to a drywall, and
beyond the wall a patch of com and a few rows of
potatoes strayed vaguely into the adjoining wilderness
of rock and fem.

Q-1 As used in line 21 “blind” most nearly means

Q-2 As used in line 72, “sway” most nearly means