Command of Evidence Lv Hard (Part1)

In the United States, firms often seek incentives from municipal governments to expand to those municipalities. A team of political scientists hypothesized that municipalities are much more likely to respond to firms and offer incentives if expansions can be announced in time to benefit local elected officials than if they can’t. The team contacted officials in thousands of municipalities, inquiring about incentives for a firm looking to expand and indicating that the firm would announce its expansion on a date either just before or just after the next election.

Which choice best describes data from the graph that weaken the team’s hypothesis?

High levels of public uncertainty about which economic policies a country will adopt can make planning difficult for businesses, but measures of such uncertainty have not tended to be very detailed. Recently, however, economist Sandile Hlatshwayo analyzed trends in news reports to derive measures not only for general economic policy uncertainty but also for uncertainty related to specific areas of economic policy, like tax or trade policy. One revelation of her work is that a general measure may not fully reflect uncertainty about specific areas of policy, as in the case of the United Kingdom, where general economic policy uncertainty ______

Which choice most effectively uses data from the graph to illustrate the claim?

Geographer Adebayo Oluwole Eludoyin and his colleagues surveyed small-scale farmers in three locations in Ondo State, Nigeria—which has mountainous terrain in the north, an urbanized center, and coastal terrain in the south—to learn more about their practices, like the types of crops they mainly cultivated. In some regions, female farmers were found to be especially prominent in the cultivation of specific types of crops and even constituted the majority of farmers who cultivated those crops; for instance, ______

Which choice most effectively uses data from the graph to complete the example?

Many archaeologists will tell you that categorizing excavated fragments of pottery by style, period, and what objects they belong to relies not only on standard criteria, but also on instinct developed over years of practice. In a recent study, however, researchers trained a deep-learning computer model on thousands of images of pottery fragments and found that it could categorize them as accurately as a team of expert archaeologists. Some archaeologists have expressed concern that they might be replaced by such computer models, but the researchers claim that outcome is highly unlikely.

Which finding, if true, would most directly support the researchers’ claim?

Black beans (Phaseolus vulgaris) are a nutritionally dense food, but they are difficult to digest in part because of their high levels of soluble fiber and compounds like raffinose. They also contain antinutrients like tannins and trypsin inhibitors, which interfere with the body’s ability to extract nutrients from foods. In a research article, Marisela Granito and Glenda Álvarez from Simón Bolívar University in Venezuela claim that inducing fermentation of black beans using lactic acid bacteria improves the digestibility of the beans and makes them more nutritious.

Which finding from Granito and Álvarez’s research, if true, would most directly support their claim?

The novelist Toni Morrison was the first Black woman to work as an editor at the publishing company Random House, from 1967 to 1983. A scholar asserts that one of Morrison’s likely aims during her time as an editor was to strengthen the presence of Black writers on the list of Random House’s published authors.

Which finding, if true, would most strongly support the scholar’s claim?

Given that stars and planets initially form from the same gas and dust in space, some astronomers have posited that host stars (such as the Sun) and their planets (such as those in our solar system) are composed of the same materials, with the planets containing equal or smaller quantities of the materials that make up the host star. This idea is also supported by evidence that rocky planets in our solar system are composed of some of the same materials as the Sun.

Which finding, if true, would most directly weaken the astronomers’ claim?

The Souls of Black Folk is a 1903 book by W.E.B. Du Bois. In the book, Du Bois suggests that upon hearing Black folk songs, he felt an intuitive and sometimes unexpected sense of cultural recognition: ______

Which quotation from The Souls of Black Folk most effectively illustrates the claim?

Distribution of Ecosystem Services Affected by Invasive Species by Service Type

To assess the impact of invasive species on ecosystems in Africa, Benis N. Egoh and colleagues reviewed government reports from those nations about how invasive species are undermining ecosystem services (aspects of the ecosystem on which residents depend). The services were sorted into three categories: provisioning (material resources from the ecosystem), regulating (natural processes such as cleaning the air or water), and cultural (nonmaterial benefits of ecosystems). Egoh and her team assert that countries in each region reported effects on provisioning services and that provisioning services represent the majority of the reported services.

Which choice best describes data from the table that support Egoh and colleagues’ assertion?

Percentage Point Changes in US Federal Outlays Relative to GDP by Congressional Status

Economist Steve H. Hanke has shown that divided US Congresses—which occur when one party holds the majority in the House of Representatives and another holds the majority in the Senate—tend to accompany reductions in total federal outlays (spending) relative to gross domestic product (GDP), which Hanke interprets to reflect decreases in government size. Hanke calculated the percentage point change in total outlays (encompassing nondefense and defense outlays) for consecutive US Congresses. Hanke has pointed to his calculations as evidence that a divided Congress may be a “necessary but not sufficient condition” for a decrease in government size to occur.

Which choice best describes data from the table that support the underlined claim?

Corn-Related Vocabulary in Various Southeastern Languages

In Caddo, a language from what is now the US Southeast, vocabulary pertaining to corn cultivation resembles equivalent vocabulary in the Totozoquean language family in Mexico. This resemblance is perhaps attributable to cultural contact: such words could have entered Caddo through the intermediary of the neighboring but unrelated Chitimacha language, concurrent with the dissemination of corn itself from Mexico into the Southeast after 700 CE. That the vocabulary pertaining to domestic crops accompanies them as they diffuse into new regions is an established phenomenon globally. Crops may also be decoupled from vocabulary altogether: corn cultivation became ubiquitous among the Southeastern tribes, yet ______

Which choice most effectively uses data from the table to complete the statement?

A member of the Otomi, an Indigenous people in Central Mexico, Octavio Medellín immigrated to the United States as a child, and his sculpture bears the impress of traditions on both sides of the border: US-based modernist sculpture, Mexican modernist painting, Otomi art, and the ancient sculpture of other Mexican Indigenous peoples, including the Maya. In his 1950 masterpiece History of Mexico, Medellín fuses these influences into a style so idiosyncratic that it resists efforts to view his work through the lens of nationality or cultural identity. Artists, he insisted, should strive for individual expression, even as they draw inspiration from their heritage and the communities where they live and work.

Which quotation from an art critic most directly challenges the underlined claim in the text?

Juvenile Plants Found Growing on Bare Ground and in Patches of Vegetation for Five Species

Alicia Montesinos-Navarro, Isabelle Storer, and Rocío Perez-Barrales recently examined several plots within a diverse plant community in southeast Spain. The researchers calculated that if individual plants were randomly distributed on this particular landscape, only about 15% would be with other plants in patches of vegetation. They counted the number of juvenile plants of five species growing in patches of vegetation and the number growing alone on bare ground and compared those numbers to what would be expected if the plants were randomly distributed. Based on these results, they claim that plants of these species that grow in close proximity to other plants gain an advantage at an early developmental stage.

Which choice best describes data from the table that support the researchers’ claim?