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Question 1
Until the Federal government began providing low-cost flood insurance to coastal property owners, construction along beaches was limited by owners’ fears that their property would be washed away. Since the insurance was made available, however, beachfront construction has boomed and land erosion has increased at a dangerous rate.
Which of the following, if feasible, offers the best prospects for the Federal government to put a stop to the problem of land erosion along beaches?
A. prohibiting beachfront property owners from embellishing or adding to existing buildings
B. utilizing computer science techniques to obtain detailed information on the extent and rapidity of land erosion along beaches
C. enacting building codes requiring new beachfront structures in flood-threatened areas to be elevated above the high water level of a storm
D. compensating beachfront property owners for moving to a new location off the coast while canceling flood insurance benefits for any new or remaining beachfront construction
E. requiring beachfront property owners receiving flood insurance coverage to adopt construction standards that will protect their buildings from inundation
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Question 2
People with Williams syndrome, a rare mental disorder, are often highly articulate and sensitive. Not uncommonly, they are gifted in music and possess rich vocabularies. Yet these same people, because of their lack of ability in basic arithmetic and difficulty distinguishing left from right, are misleadingly labeled mentally retarded. As evaluated by conventional means such as IQ tests, their intelligence is no higher than that of people with Down’s syndrome, despite the fact that people with Down’s syndrome have uniformly limited cognitive abilities and show no specialized aptitudes.
The author is arguing that
A. conventional methods of measuring intelligence, such as IQ tests, are inadequate for evaluating the capabilities of people with certain mental disorders such as Williams syndrome
B. people with Down’s syndrome usually have less verbal and musical ability but more mathematical and spatial ability than do people with Williams syndrome
C. conventional methods of measuring intelligence tend to consider basic mathematical and spatial ability to be more important than verbal and musical skills
D. people with Williams syndrome are only rarely given the opportunity to develop their unique musical and verbal abilities
E. people with Williams syndrome need greater encouragement if they are to develop their mathematical spatial skills
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Question 3
When the nineteenth-century German bacteriologist Robert Koch identified a particular bacterium as responsible for cholera, Max von Pettenkoffer, a physician, expressed his scepticism by voluntarily drinking an entire bottle of the allegedly responsible bacteria. Although von Pettenkoffer took his failure to come down with the disease as a refutation of Koch’s hypothesis that cholera was caused by bacteria, Koch argued that von Pettenkoffer had been protected by his own stomach acid. The acid secreted by the stomach, Koch explained, kills most ingested bacteria.
Which of the following, if true, provides the most evidence to support Koch’s counterargument?
A. Peptic ulcers, often associated with excessive secretions of stomach acid, are common in certain areas characterized by high rates of cholera.
B. As von Pettenkoffer later admitted that he had previously had cholera, it is probable that he had developed antibodies that protected him from a second attack.
C. Cholera is endemic in areas in which poor sanitation results in high concentrations of cholera bacteria in drinking water.
D. Although stomach acid kills most ingested bacteria, large numbers of E. coli bacteria nonetheless manage to make their way to the lower intestine of the digestive tract.
E. Cholera bacteria ingested with bicarbonate of soda, a neutralizer of stomach acid, is more likely to result in cholera than if the bacteria is ingested alone.
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Question 4
Citing the legal precedent set by asbestos exposure cases, a state judge agreed to combine a series of workplace disability cases involving repetitive stress injuries to the hands and wrists. The judge’s decision to consolidate hundreds of suits by data entry workers, word processors, newspaper employees, and other workers who use computers into one case is likely to prove detrimental for the computer manufacturing companies being sued, notwithstanding the defense’s argument that the cases should not be combined because of the different individuals and workplaces involved. Which of the following, if true, casts the most serious doubt on the validity of the judge’s decision to consolidate the cases?
A. Unlike asbestos exposure cases, in which the allegedly liable product is the same in each situation, the type and quality of the allegedly liable office equipment is different in each case.
B. The fact that consolidation will accelerate the legal process may prove advantageous for the defense, as it limits the number of witnesses who can testify for the plaintiffs.
C. One of the most common causes of repetitive stress injuries is companies’ failure to allow its employees adequate rest time from using computer keyboards.
D. Whereas exposure to asbestos often leads to fatal forms of cancer, repetitive stress injury typically results in personal discomfort and only rarely in unemployability.
E. The issue of responsibility for repetitive stress injury cannot be resolved without first addressing the question of its existence as an actual medical condition.
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Question 5
Between 1977 and 1989, the percentage of income paid to federal taxes by the richest one percent of Americans decreased, from 40 percent to 25 percent. By the end of that same period, however, the richest one percent of Americans were paying a larger proportion of all federal tax revenues, from 12.7 percent in 1977 to 16.2 percent in 1989.
Which of the following, if true, contributes most to an explanation of the discrepancy described above?
