Words in Context Lv Hard (Part1)

Rejecting the premise that the literary magazine Ebony and Topaz (1927) should present a unified vision of Black American identity, editor Charles S. Johnson fostered his contributors’ diverse perspectives by promoting their authorial autonomy. Johnson’s self-effacement diverged from the editorial stances of W.E.B. Du Bois and Alain Locke, whose decisions for their publications were more ______.

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Some economic historians ______ that late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century households in the United States experienced an economy of scale when it came to food purchases—they assumed that large households spent less on food per person than did small households. Economist Trevon Logan showed, however, that a close look at the available data disproves this supposition.

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As an undergraduate researcher in anthropology, Jennifer C. Chen contributed to a groundbreaking study challenging the accepted view that among prehistoric peoples, female participation in hunting was ______. The research team’s review of data from late Pleistocene and early Holocene burials in the Americas revealed that, in fact, as many as half of the hunters in those populations were female.

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The province of Xoconochco was situated on the Pacific coast, hundreds of kilometers southeast of Tenochtitlan, the capital of the Aztec Empire. Because Xoconochco’s location within the empire was so ______, cacao and other trade goods produced there could reach the capital only after a long overland journey.

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Within baleen whale species, some individuals develop an accessory spleen—a seemingly functionless formation of splenetic tissue outside the normal spleen. Given the formation’s greater prevalence among whales known to make deeper dives, some researchers hypothesize that its role isn’t ______; rather, the accessory spleen may actively support diving mechanisms.

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The author’s claim about the relationship between Neanderthals and Homo sapiens is ______, as it fails to account for several recent archaeological discoveries. To be convincing, his argument would need to address recent finds of additional hominid fossils, such as the latest Denisovan specimens and Homo longi.

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According to a US tax policy expert, state taxes are ______ other factors when considering an interstate move. Even significant differences in state taxation have almost no effect on most people’s decisions, while differences in employment opportunities, housing availability, and climate are strong influences.

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Investigating whether shared false visual memories—specific but inaccurate and widely held recollections of images such as product logos—are caused by people’s previous ______ incorrect renditions of the images, researchers Deepasri Prasad and Wilma Bainbridge found that, in fact, such memories are often not explained by familiarity with erroneous versions of the images.

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Some scientists have suggested that mammals in the Mesozoic era were not a very ______ group, but paleontologist ZheXi Luo’s research suggests that early mammals living in the shadow of dinosaurs weren’t all ground-dwelling insectivores. Fossils of various plant-eating mammals have been found in China, including species like Vilevolodon diplomylos, which Luo says could glide like a flying squirrel.

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Some foraging models predict that the distance bees travel when foraging will decline as floral density increases, but biologists Shalene Jha and Claire Kremen showed that bees’ behavior is inconsistent with this prediction if flowers in dense patches are ______: bees will forage beyond patches of low species richness to acquire multiple resource types.

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Researcher Haesung Jung led a 2020 study showing that individual acts of kindness can ______ prosocial behavior across a larger group. Jung and her team found that bystanders who witness a helpful act become more likely to offer help to someone else, and in doing so, can inspire still others to act.

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While most animals are incapable of passing somatic mutations—genetic alterations that arise in an organism’s nonreproductive cells—on to their offspring, elkhorn coral (Acropora palmata) presents an intriguing ______: in a 2022 study, researchers found that elkhorn coral produced offspring that inherited somatic mutations from a parent.

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For her 2021 art installation Anthem, Wu Tsang joined forces with singer and composer Beverly Glenn-Copeland to produce a piece that critics found truly ______: they praised Tsang for creatively transforming a museum rotunda into a dynamic exhibit by projecting filmed images of Glenn-Copeland onto a massive 84-foot curtain and filling the space with the sounds of his and other voices singing.

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Given that the conditions in binary star systems should make planetary formation nearly impossible, it’s not surprising that the existence of planets in such systems has lacked ______ explanation. Roman Rafikov and Kedron Silsbee shed light on the subject when they used modeling to determine a complex set of factors that could support planets’ development.

Which choice completes the text with the most logical and precise word or phrase?