Fire ants from Brazil now infest the southern United States. Unlike queen fire ants in Bra

emises of privately owned businesses is an intrusion into the private sector that cannot be justified. The fact that studies indicate that nonsmokers might be harmed by inhaling the smoke from others cigarettes is not the main issue. Rather, the main issue concerns the governments violation of the right of private businesses to determine their own policies and rules. Which one of the following is a principle that, if accepted, could enable the conclusion to be properly drawn?

A．Government intrusion into the policies and rules of private businesses is justified only when individuals might be harmed.

B．The right of individuals to breathe safe air supersedes the right of businesses to be free from government intrusion.

C．The right of businesses to self-determination overrides whatever right or duty the government may have to protect the individual.

D．It is the duty of private businesses to protect employees from harm in the workplace.

E．Where the rights of businesses and the duty of government conflict, the main issue is finding a successful compromise.

of underdeveloped communication skills in children. After-school hours spent playing computer games are hours not spent talking with people. Therefore, children who spend all their spare time playing these games have less experience in interpersonal communication than other children have. The argument depends on which of the following assumptions?

A．Passive activities such as watching television and listening to music do not hinder the development of communication skills in children.

B．Most children have other opportunities, in addition to after-school hours, in which they can choose whether to play computer games or to interact with other people.

C．Children who do not spend all of their after-school hours playing computer games spend at least some of that time talking with other people.

D．Formal instruction contributes little or nothing to children"s acquisition of communication skills.

E．The mental skills developed through playing computer games do not contribute significantly to children"s intellectual development.

heart disease. However, a new, more reliable study has indicated that eating chocolate does not increase the likelihood of getting heart disease. When the results of the new study become known, consumption of chocolate will undoubtedly increase. Which of the following is an assumption on which the conclusion above is based?

A．Most people who eat a great deal of chocolate will not get heart disease.

B．Although they believe that eating chocolate increases the likelihood of getting heart disease, some people still eat as much chocolate as they want.

C．People who have heard that eating chocolate increases the likelihood of getting heart disease do not believe it.

D．There are people who currently eat as much chocolate as they want because they have not heard that eating chocolate increases the likelihood of getting heart disease.

E．There are people who currently limit their consumption of chocolate only because they believe that eating chocolate increases the likelihood of getting heart disease.

s equipped their vehicles with radar detectors, thirty-three percent of all vehicles ticketed for exceeding the speed limit were equipped with them. Clearly, drivers who equip their vehicles with radar detectors are more likely to exceed the speed limit regularly than are drivers who do not.The conclusion drawn above depends on which of the following assumptions?

A．Drivers who equip their vehicles with radar detectors are less likely to be ticketed for exceeding the speed limit than are drivers who do not.

B．Drivers who are ticketed for exceeding the speed limit are more likely to exceed the speed limit regularly than are drivers who are not ticketed.

C．The number of vehicles that were ticketed for exceeding the speed limit was greater than the number of vehicles that were equipped with radar detectors.

D．Many of the vehicles that were ticketed for exceeding the speed limit were ticketed more than once in the time period covered by the report.

E．Drivers on Maryland highways exceeded the speed limit more often than did drivers on other state highways not covered in the report.

e witness. Rightly so, because it is usually prudent to be highly skeptical of unsubstantiated claims made by any one person. But then, to be consistent, juries should end an all-too-common practice: convicting defendants on the basis of an uncorroborated full confession. Which of the following, if true, most strengthens the argument above?

A．Juries often acquit in cases in which a defendant retracts a full confession made before trial.

B．The process of jury selection is designed to screen out people who have a firm opinion about the defendant" s guilt in advance of the trial.

C．Defendants sometimes make full confessions when they did in fact do what they are accused of doing and have come to believe that the prosecutor has compelling proof of this.

D．Highly suggestible people who are accused of wrongdoing sometimes become so unsure of their own recollection of the past that they can come to accept the accusations made against them.

E．Many people believe that juries should not convict defendants who have not made a full confession.

diminished. A historian theorizes that, rather than industrialization s being the cause, this change resulted from a series of migrations to urban areas, each occasioned by a depression in the agrarian economy. To test this hypothesis, the historian will compare economic data with population census data. The historian s hypothesis would be most strongly supported if which of the following were found to be true?

A．The periods of greatest growth in the industrial economy were associated with a relatively rapid decline in the rural population.

B．The periods of greatest weakness in the agrarian economy were associated with relatively slow growth in the population as a whole.

C．Periods when the agrarian economy was comparatively strong and the industrial economy comparatively weak were associated with a particularly rapid decline in the rural population.

D．Periods when the agrarian and industrial economies were both strong were associated with particularly rapid growth in the urban population.

E．The periods of greatest strength in the agrarian economy were associated with relatively slow growth in the urban population.

who are greatly needed yet hard to find. The clients, in turn, require that they be off-limits to headhunters whose services they buy; i. e. , head-hunters cannot raid one client s staff on behalf of other clients. Of the following, which would, if feasible, be the best strategy for a company to pursue if that company wanted both to use headhunters to fill a vacancy and, if successful in filling the vacancy, to reduce the risk of losing the newly hired employee to a competitor?

A．Find out which headhunters recruit workers of the sort being sought and employ all those headhunters.

B．Find out which headhunter has the highest success rate in recruiting for its clients and hire that firm.

C．Find out how much the company"s competitors currently pay staff of the sort being sought and offer to pay prospective employees higher salaries.

D．Find out whether any of the company"s competitors are seeking to recruit workers of the sort being sought and, if so, make sure not to hire the same headhunters that they hire.

E．Find out which of the company"s competitors are on the client lists of the headhunters who are being considered for the job.

a phenomenon known as a red tide. Sea otters do not feed in areas where clams, their main source of food, have become contaminated with this toxin. According to a proposed explanation of the otters behavior, the otters sample the clams in a potential feeding area and can taste any toxin in them. Which of the following, if true, would most strongly indicate that the hypothesis described in the last sentence of the passage is not correct?

A．In some of the areas where red tides occur, neither clams nor sea otters are indigenous species.

B．The presence of sea otters in a given area has a significant effect on which other marine organisms are to be found in that area.

C．When seawater in an area unaffected by red tide is artificially dyed brownish red, sea otters do not feed on the clams in that area.

D．If the clams in a given area are contaminated with toxins, sea otters move to other areas in search of food.

E．Although very small amounts of the toxin produced during a red tide are not harmful, large doses can be fatal to animals the size of sea otters.

al injury—now have lower incomes and higher divorce rates, and score lower on psy chological profiles measuring general happiness, than medical personnel who served in less stressful settings during that war. This evidence demonstrates that exposure to heavy-combat situations produces serious adverse effects, even among those who suffered no physical harm. Which of the following, if true, most strengthens the conclusion drawn above?

A．The medical personnel who served in heavy combat had completed significantly less schooling prior to military service than had other medical personnel.

B．The medical personnel who served in heavy combat tended to be younger at the time of their entry into military service than were other medical personnel.

C．Parents of medical personnel who served in heavy combat show no significant difference in incomes, divorce rates, or general happiness from parents of other medical personnel.

D．Income levels, divorce rates, and levels of general happiness are the same for the medical personnel who served in heavy combat as they are for construction workers.

E．Medical personnel who served in heavy combat in an earlier war show no significant difference in incomes, divorce rates, or general happiness from other medical personnel who served in that war.

the fact that different local populations of bowerbirds of the same species build bowers that exhibit different building and decorative styles, researchers have concluded that the bowerbirds building styles are a culturally acquired, rather than a genetically transmitted, trait. Which of the following, if true, would most strengthen the conclusion drawn by the researchers?

A．There are more common characteristics than there are differences among the bower-building styles of the local bowerbird population that has been studied most extensively.

B．Young male bowerbirds are inept at bower-building and apparently spend years watching their elders before becoming accomplished in the local bower style.

C．The bowers of one species of bowerbird lack the towers and ornamentation characteristic of the bowers of most other species of bowerbird.

D．Bowerbirds are found only in New Guinea and Australia, where local populations of the birds apparently seldom have contact with one another.

E．It is well known that the song dialects of some songbirds are learned rather than transmitted genetically.