Passage A When Senator Chuck Grassley first got into politic…

Questions

Pаssаge A When Senаtоr Chuck Grassley first gоt intо politics, Ike Eisenhower was president of the United States. It was 1959, the same year the first transcontinental commercial flight made it from Los Angeles to New York’s Idlewild Airport, later to be renamed in honor of John F. Kennedy. Late in the year, IBM introduced the 7090, a milestone computer model that relied on “transistors, not vacuum tubes.” Grassley served in the Iowa House, then served three terms in the U. S. House. He’s now in his seventh term in the Senate. And he announced last September, a week after his 88th birthday, that he’s running again. That will make him 95 years old at the end of his next term. Simply put, this is too damn old to be doing this job. It’s too old to be doing just about any job. The FAA mandates that pilots retire at 65. Their colleagues in air-traffic control are out at 56, though they can get exceptions to work until they’re 61. Most police departments show employees the door in their 60s. At white-shoe law firms, partners are often pointed to the exit sign by age 68. Foreign-service employees at the State Department are out at 65. Mandatory retirements are mostly verboten in the United States. But there are some professions with such intense physical and mental demands, that require such high-stakes decision-making and mental acuity, that we’ve decided they’re just different. The overall genre of the passage is

Pаssаge A When Senаtоr Chuck Grassley first gоt intо politics, Ike Eisenhower was president of the United States. It was 1959, the same year the first transcontinental commercial flight made it from Los Angeles to New York’s Idlewild Airport, later to be renamed in honor of John F. Kennedy. Late in the year, IBM introduced the 7090, a milestone computer model that relied on “transistors, not vacuum tubes.” Grassley served in the Iowa House, then served three terms in the U. S. House. He’s now in his seventh term in the Senate. And he announced last September, a week after his 88th birthday, that he’s running again. That will make him 95 years old at the end of his next term. Simply put, this is too damn old to be doing this job. It’s too old to be doing just about any job. The FAA mandates that pilots retire at 65. Their colleagues in air-traffic control are out at 56, though they can get exceptions to work until they’re 61. Most police departments show employees the door in their 60s. At white-shoe law firms, partners are often pointed to the exit sign by age 68. Foreign-service employees at the State Department are out at 65. Mandatory retirements are mostly verboten in the United States. But there are some professions with such intense physical and mental demands, that require such high-stakes decision-making and mental acuity, that we’ve decided they’re just different. The primary purpose of the underlined details in the 3rd paragraph is to

[Nоte: Steve Wоnder аnd Rаy Chаrles, well-knоwn musicians of the 20th and 21st centuries, both lost their vision during early childhood.] Passage E The music of Stevie Wonder and Ray Charles supports the common belief that losing one sense can enhance another. Italian researchers have better evidence. They find that after only 90 minutes, blindfolded people can develop a keener sense of touch — a sign that the portion of the brain dedicated to vision can help process other senses. Although such neurological flexibility used to be considered a feature of a developing brain, "we know now that, even in adults, it is possible to find plastic interactions. If you change the input, you can recruit a part of the brain for a different function," says Salvatore Aglioti, a neurologist at the University of Rome La Sapienza and the Santa Lucia Foundation. Aglioti and a colleague asked 28 test subjects to place their fingers on a series of plates marked with grooves of varying sizes, with the width of the grooves equal to the distance between them. Some of the grooves were so fine that the surface of the plate felt smooth. After being blindfolded, however, people were able to feel grooves that were more subtle than the smallest ones they could discern in a previous test. Repeating the test 130 minutes after the blindfolds were removed, the subjects' sense of touch had reset to normal. "Forgetting is as important as learning," Aglioti says. "If we don't forget quickly, we don't have enough room for other functions." As used in the first paragraph, "plastic" most nearly means

[Nоte: Steve Wоnder аnd Rаy Chаrles, well-knоwn musicians of the 20th and 21st centuries, both lost their vision during early childhood.] Passage E The music of Stevie Wonder and Ray Charles supports the common belief that losing one sense can enhance another. Italian researchers have better evidence. They find that after only 90 minutes, blindfolded people can develop a keener sense of touch — a sign that the portion of the brain dedicated to vision can help process other senses. Although such neurological flexibility used to be considered a feature of a developing brain, "we know now that, even in adults, it is possible to find plastic interactions. If you change the input, you can recruit a part of the brain for a different function," says Salvatore Aglioti, a neurologist at the University of Rome La Sapienza and the Santa Lucia Foundation. Aglioti and a colleague asked 28 test subjects to place their fingers on a series of plates marked with grooves of varying sizes, with the width of the grooves equal to the distance between them. Some of the grooves were so fine that the surface of the plate felt smooth. After being blindfolded, however, people were able to feel grooves that were more subtle than the smallest ones they could discern in a previous test. Repeating the test 130 minutes after the blindfolds were removed, the subjects' sense of touch had reset to normal. "Forgetting is as important as learning," Aglioti says. "If we don't forget quickly, we don't have enough room for other functions." The author likely includes the underlined sentence to

Pаssаge D Milliоns оf Americаn students came back tо school in recent weeks, navigating new classroom rules and cafeteria social hierarchies. For some, the hardest part of the day was simply getting to school. A chronic shortage of school bus drivers is making it difficult for many children to get to class. Some districts have had to shorten school days; others have even canceled school because too few children could attend. The fix requires a shift in mind-set. School systems’ obligations to students should start when children step out their front doors, rather than when they walk through the schoolhouse gates. The idea of a school-specific public transportation system is the product of very American forces. The westward expansion of the 1800s, the suburbanization of the post-World War II era and the consolidation of neighborhood schools into larger institutions distanced children from their classrooms. Compulsory attendance laws made finding reliable transportation imperative. And the rise of the car inspired a wave of innovation that culminated in the iconic yellow school bus. Underlying these developments was a sense that the state had a duty to get children to school. In 1929, just 8.9 percent of kids were transported to school at public expense, according to the Education Department’s National Center for Education Statistics. By the 1983-1984 school year, the figure was nearly 61 percent. Yet, as children’s homes and schools got farther apart, the number served by public school transportation systems fell. Increasingly, it’s parents, not bus drivers, who get behind the wheel for the school commute. That’s true even for short distances. Between 1969 and 2009, the number of children aged between 4 and 15 and living within a mile of school who got there on foot or by bicycle fell from 89 percent to 35 percent, according to the National Center for Safe Routes to School. In theory, it makes sense for parents to be responsible for getting kids to school. It’s not as though principals are going door to door to negotiate with kindergartners who only want to wear the T-shirt at the bottom of the hamper or to rouse drowsy high school juniors and bundle them off to trigonometry. But not all parents have work schedules that align with the school day, access to reliable transportation or even a fixed address. Sixty percent of children from low-income families rely on school buses. For kids with additional needs who must attend faraway specialized schools, that transport is crucial. Any solution will cost money. But if kids can’t get to school, they can’t benefit from new phonics curriculums or fancy technology anyway. When the wheels on the bus stop going ’round and ’round, kids suffer. Let’s reclaim a sense of collective responsibility to get our littlest citizens between home and school. What do the first two paragraphs (underlined above) suggest about the context of this text?

Pаssаge B Trаumatic brain injuries are assоciated with cоgnitive decline later in life, and a sharper drоp in cognition as we age, a study of twins who served in World War II shows. There is robust research demonstrating a relationship between head injuries and cognitive impairment or dementia later in life, “but I do not know of any others that use a twin-study design,” said Holly Elser, an epidemiologist and resident physician in neurology at the University of Pennsylvania who peer-reviewed the study. The study published in Neurology on Wednesday found that individuals who had a traumatic brain injury were more likely to have lower scores on cognitive tests when they were about 70 years old. They were also more likely to have rapidly declining scores after their first test if they had multiple traumatic brain injuries, lost consciousness because of a head injury or were 25 or older when the injury happened. “Even if it’s just a single traumatic brain injury, we now know that it led to worse cognitive outcomes later in life,” said Marianne Chanti-Ketterl, the lead author of the study and an assistant professor in psychiatry and behavioral sciences at the Duke University School of Medicine. The study of identical and fraternal twins allows researchers to compare participants to each other while controlling for some, if not all, of the underlying genetic factors and some of the twins’ early life conditions. Identical twins share 100 percent of their genes, while fraternal twins share about half. Which choice most effectively summarizes the passage?

Pаssаge B Trаumatic brain injuries are assоciated with cоgnitive decline later in life, and a sharper drоp in cognition as we age, a study of twins who served in World War II shows. There is robust research demonstrating a relationship between head injuries and cognitive impairment or dementia later in life, “but I do not know of any others that use a twin-study design,” said Holly Elser, an epidemiologist and resident physician in neurology at the University of Pennsylvania who peer-reviewed the study. The study published in Neurology on Wednesday found that individuals who had a traumatic brain injury were more likely to have lower scores on cognitive tests when they were about 70 years old. They were also more likely to have rapidly declining scores after their first test if they had multiple traumatic brain injuries, lost consciousness because of a head injury or were 25 or older when the injury happened. “Even if it’s just a single traumatic brain injury, we now know that it led to worse cognitive outcomes later in life,” said Marianne Chanti-Ketterl, the lead author of the study and an assistant professor in psychiatry and behavioral sciences at the Duke University School of Medicine. The study of identical and fraternal twins allows researchers to compare participants to each other while controlling for some, if not all, of the underlying genetic factors and some of the twins’ early life conditions. Identical twins share 100 percent of their genes, while fraternal twins share about half. Which of the following conclusions about head injuries can most reasonably be drawn from the passage?

Pаssаge B Trаumatic brain injuries are assоciated with cоgnitive decline later in life, and a sharper drоp in cognition as we age, a study of twins who served in World War II shows. There is robust research demonstrating a relationship between head injuries and cognitive impairment or dementia later in life, “but I do not know of any others that use a twin-study design,” said Holly Elser, an epidemiologist and resident physician in neurology at the University of Pennsylvania who peer-reviewed the study. The study published in Neurology on Wednesday found that individuals who had a traumatic brain injury were more likely to have lower scores on cognitive tests when they were about 70 years old. They were also more likely to have rapidly declining scores after their first test if they had multiple traumatic brain injuries, lost consciousness because of a head injury or were 25 or older when the injury happened. “Even if it’s just a single traumatic brain injury, we now know that it led to worse cognitive outcomes later in life,” said Marianne Chanti-Ketterl, the lead author of the study and an assistant professor in psychiatry and behavioral sciences at the Duke University School of Medicine. The study of identical and fraternal twins allows researchers to compare participants to each other while controlling for some, if not all, of the underlying genetic factors and some of the twins’ early life conditions. Identical twins share 100 percent of their genes, while fraternal twins share about half. The dominant genre of Passage B is

[Nоte: Steve Wоnder аnd Rаy Chаrles, well-knоwn musicians of the 20th and 21st centuries, both lost their vision during early childhood.] Passage E The music of Stevie Wonder and Ray Charles supports the common belief that losing one sense can enhance another. Italian researchers have better evidence. They find that after only 90 minutes, blindfolded people can develop a keener sense of touch — a sign that the portion of the brain dedicated to vision can help process other senses. Although such neurological flexibility used to be considered a feature of a developing brain, "we know now that, even in adults, it is possible to find plastic interactions. If you change the input, you can recruit a part of the brain for a different function," says Salvatore Aglioti, a neurologist at the University of Rome La Sapienza and the Santa Lucia Foundation. Aglioti and a colleague asked 28 test subjects to place their fingers on a series of plates marked with grooves of varying sizes, with the width of the grooves equal to the distance between them. Some of the grooves were so fine that the surface of the plate felt smooth. After being blindfolded, however, people were able to feel grooves that were more subtle than the smallest ones they could discern in a previous test. Repeating the test 130 minutes after the blindfolds were removed, the subjects' sense of touch had reset to normal. "Forgetting is as important as learning," Aglioti says. "If we don't forget quickly, we don't have enough room for other functions." Which answer choice best reflects the text structure or overall organizational pattern of the passage?