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PREP2012
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The faster a car is traveling, the less time the driver has to avoid a potential accident, and if a car does crash, higher speeds increase the risk of a fatality. Between 1995 and 2000, average highway speeds increased significantly in the United States, yet, over that time, there was a drop in the number of car-crash fatalities per highway mile driven by cars.Which of the following, if true about the United States between 1995 and 2000, most helps to explain why the fatality rate decreased in spite of the increase in average highway speeds?
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PREP2012
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Paper and plastic grocery bags are a continuing problem for the city, both as litter and in landfills. To discourage their use, the city has proposed a tax on each bag, to be paid by the supermarkets that supply them. Several environmental groups, however, oppose the tax, despite having brought the issue to the council's attention in the first place.Which of the following, if true, would best explain the environmental groups' opposition to the proposed tax?
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PREP2012
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Mall owner: Our mall's occupancy rate is so low that we are barely making a profit. We cannot raise rents because of an unacceptably high risk of losing established tenants. On the other hand, a mall that is fully occupied costs about as much to run as one in which a rental space here and a rental space there stands empty. Clearly, therefore, to increase profits we must sign up new tenants.Which of the following, if true, most seriously weakens the argument?
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PREP2012
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Roughly twice each century the planet Venus passes between the Earth and the Sun, an occasion known as a transit of Venus, during which it makes the outline of the planet visible in stark relief.
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PREP2012
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In February 1995, Doris Schopper became president of the international council of Médecins sans Frontiéres, known in English as “Doctors Without Borders,” the world's largest independent, international, voluntary emergency medical assistance and relief organization.
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PREP2012
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Restorers say that if allowed to remove and replace the discolored layer of varnish on the Mona Lisa, the colors Leonardo da Vinci painted nearly five hundred years ago will once again shine through.
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PREP2012
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After long years of indifferent reception by the scientific community, Barbara McClintock's subtle work on the genetics of corn has now been acknowledged to be of major importance; her analyses show that movable elements control the action of genes and thus cause mutations.
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PREP2012
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In contrast to India, where many early followers of Buddhism were itinerants travelling the countryside to disseminate the Buddha's teachings, those in China lived in monastic communities in which rules were developed for purposes of administrative organization, discipline, and the management of monastic lands and properties.
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PREP2012
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The infant mortality rate has decreased steadily over the past decades and is now at a lower rate than ever before.
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PREP2012
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A row of upright fan-shaped plates running down the spine provided the Stegosaurus dinosaur with an especially efficient solar heating and cooling system to allow them to move comfortably through different climatic regions.
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PREP2012
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Now generally regarded as a forgery, the Kensington Rune Stone, a 90-kilogram slab of inscribed rock discovered in Minnesota in 1898, was said to have recorded an encounter between Native Americans and Norse explorers in 1362 and thus was cited as evidence that Europeans explored North America in pre-Columbian times.
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PREP2012
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Though widely used for decades to fuel home heating systems, utility boilers, and industrial furnaces, natural gas has still accounted for far less of the energy consumed in the United States than has oil.
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PREP2012
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Like humans and other warm-blooded animals, researchers report that the lotus has the remarkable ability of keeping its temperature in a narrow range.
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PREP2012
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On the surface of Jupiter's moon Europa, water remains frozen, but the gravitational force of Jupiter and its other moons cause contractions that may generate so much heat that it would melt ice below Europa's surface.
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PREP2012
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Sculpted boulders found at Lepenski Vir, an example of the earliest monumental art known from central and western Europe, includes 15 figures with human features similar to Upper Paleolithic forms and to Middle Eastern Nantufian stone figurines.
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PREP2012
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Naked mole rats form colonies of approximately twenty animals, each of which consists of a single reproductive female and workers that defend her.
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PREP2012
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Although beavers can still be found throughout the western United States, their number has declined compared with the eighteenth century, when the abundance of beavers lured armies of European trappers into the Rocky Mountain region to slaughter them for their pelts.
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PREP2012
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In order to conserve the energy and heat they need to spend the entire winter sitting motionless over incubating eggs, male emperor penguins huddle over the nests in groups, thereby reducing the rate at which they burn energy so that it is 25 percent lower than it would be for isolated birds.
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PREP2012
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Unlike amateur clammers, who usually dig clams by hand during the summer, professional clammers work year-round, using all-weather instruments such as the hydraulic dredge or a 20-foot-Iona implement known as a bull rake.
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PREP2012
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Inhospitable places on our planet, from steaming hot springs to the thick ice of the Polar Regions, tend to be populated by specially adapted microbes flourishing, it seems, in these extreme conditions and are therefore called “extremophiles.”
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