Early life insurers in the United States found

themselves facing the problem of obtaining

reliable information, as they needed to rely on
applicants themselves to provide truthful,
complete answers to a standard set of
questions. In an attempt to personalize the
relationship
between insurers and their individual applicants,
firms selected highly respected local citizens
to act as their agents. These agents were
expected to evaluate the appearance of
candidates,
unearth evidence of unhealthy family histories
or questionable habits, and attest to the
respectability of the people writing testimonial
letters on an applicant's behalf. In short, the
initial purpose of the agency system was not to
actively solicit customers, but, rather, to
recreate the glass-bowl mentality associated
with small towns or city neighborhoods.

1. The primary purpose of the passage is to

A. explain the original function of life insurance
agents
B. evaluate the effectiveness of early life
insurance agents
C. describe how life insurance was first
introduced
D. illustrate how the life insurance agency
system changed over time
Although fullerenes-spherical molecules made entirely of
carbon-were first found in the laboratory, they have
since been found in nature, formed in fissures of the rare
mineral shungite. Since laboratory synthesis of fullerenes
requires distinctive conditions of temperature and
pressure, this discovery should give geologists a test
case for evaluating hypothesis about the state of the
Earth's crust at the time these naturally occuring
fullerenes were formed.

Which of the following, if true, most seriously

undermines the argument?

(A) Confirming that the shungite genuinely contained

fullerenes took careful experimentation.
(B) Some fullerenes have also been found on the remains
of a small meteorite that collided with a spacecraft.
(C) The mineral shungite itself contains large amounts of
carbon, from which the fullerenes apparently formed.
(D) The naturally occuring fullerenes are arranged in a
previously unknown crystalline structure.
For years, the leading theory for what caused the
Younger Dryas (a dramatic reversal, about
12,900 years ago, in a global warming trend) was a
release of water from Glacial Lake
Agassiz. The theory posited that this meltwater flooded
into the North Atlantic, lowering the
salinity and intensity of surface waters enough to
prevent them from sinking. Ocean currents
were changed in such a way that northward transport
of heat in the ocean diminished, and the
North Atlantic regions plunged back into near-glacial
conditions. However, evidence has
emerged that the Younger Dryas began long before
freshwater flooded the North Atlantic.
Additionally, the temperature changes induced by a
shutdown in the North Atlantic heat
conveyor system are too small to explain the Younger
Dryas.

The passage is primarily concerned with

A. presenting evidence that undermines an explanation

B. explaining the nature of a climatological phenomenon
C. questioning the timing of a particular event
D. discussing a new explanation for a phenomenon
Passage 5
An Irish newspaper editorial encouraging women to participate
in the non-importation
movement launched in Ireland in 1779 appears consistent with
a perception that the political
use of the consumer boycott originated in North America and
spread eastwards across the
Atlantic to Ireland. This is a view that most historians have
concurred with. For example, T.H.
Breen argued that the consumer boycott was a brilliantly
original American invention. Breen
did acknowledge that a few isolated boycotts may have taken
place in other countries.
However, Mary ODowd argues that from the late seventeenth
century, Irish political discourse
advocated for the nonconsumption of imported goods and
support for home manufactures by
women in ways that were strikingly similar to those used later
in North America.

The passage is primarily concerned with

A. resolving a dispute
B. advocating a course of action
C. tracing the evolution of a practice
D. citing competing views of an issue
The attribution of the choral work Lacrimae to the
composer Pescard (1400 – 1474) has been regarded
as tentative, since it was based on a single treatise
from the early 1500’s that named Pescard as the
composer. Recently, several musical treatises from
the late 1500’s have come to light, all of which
name Pescard as the composer of Lacrimae.
Unfortunately, these newly discovered treatises lend
no support to the attribution of Lacrimae to
Pescard, since _____.

A. the treatise from the early 1500’s misidentifies

the composers of some of the musical works it
considers
B. the author of the treatise from the early 1500’s
had no very strong evidence on which to base the
identification of Pescard as the composer of
Lacrimae
C. there are works that can conclusively be
attributed to Pescard that are not even mentioned
in the treatise from the early 1500’s
D. the later treatises probably had no source for
their attribution other than the earlier treatise
Constant variations in the amount of sunlight available
on Earth at any given location make
energy storage a necessary design feature of terrestrial
solar-energy systems. For systems
transforming solar to thermal energy, the thermal energy
may be stored in matter as either
latent heat or sensible heat. Latent heat is absorbed or
released whenever matter changes
phase, as when matter changes from liquid to gas, for
example, or from gas to liquid. Large
heat capacities are associated with certain materials, like
salts, but in any substance this
storage is available only at the unique fixed temperature
at which the particular phase
transition occurs in that substance. Moreover, materials
that have transitions at the
temperatures that terrestrial solar-energy systems are
likely to encounter are usually
destructively corrosive at those temperatures. The
storage of sensible heat, on the other hand,
allows flexibility as to temperature, in addition, safe
substances like water and most rocks
have large sensible heat capacities.

The primary purpose of the passage is to discuss which

of the following?

A. reasons for the necessity for developing solar-energy

systems
B. different ways of storing solar energy as heat
C. new designs for devices that collect solar energy
D. procedures for transferring thermal energy between
materials