Information and Ideas

Chief Editor

Mar 23, 2024

Take all 3 MCQs in interactive quiz mode with timer and progress tracking

Ratified by more than 90 countries, the Nagoya Protocol is an international agreement ensuring that Indigenous communities are compensated when their agricultural resources and knowledge of wild plants and animals are utilized by agricultural corporations. However, the protocol has shortcomings. For example, it allows corporations to insist that their agreements with communities to conduct research on the commercial uses of the communities' resources and knowledge remain confidential. Therefore, some Indigenous advocates express concern that the protocol may have the unintended effect of ________Which choice most logically completes the text?

Difficulty: Hard

diminishing the monetary reward that corporations might derive from their agreements with Indigenous communities.

limiting the research that corporations conduct on the resources of the Indigenous communities with which they have signed agreements.

preventing independent observers from determining whether the agreements guarantee equitable compensation for Indigenous communities.

discouraging Indigenous communities from learning new methods for harvesting plants and animals from their corporate partners.

Political scientists who favor the traditional view of voter behavior claim that voting in an election does not change a voter's attitude toward the candidates in that election. Focusing on each US presidential election from 1976 to 1996, Ebonya Washington and Sendhil Mullainathan tested this claim by distinguishing between subjects who had just become old enough to vote (around half of whom actually voted) and otherwise similar subjects who were slightly too young to vote (and thus none of whom voted). Washington and Mullainathan compared the attitudes of the groups of subjects toward the winning candidate two years after each election. Which finding from Washington and Mullainathan's study, if true, would most directly weaken the claim made by people who favor the traditional view of voter behavior?

Difficulty: Hard

Subjects' attitudes toward the winning candidate two years after a given election were strongly predicted by subjects' general political orientation, regardless of whether subjects were old enough to vote at the time of the election.

Subjects who were not old enough to vote in a given election held significantly more positive attitudes towards the winning candidate two years later than they held at the time of the election.

Subjects who voted in a given election held significantly more polarized attitudes toward the winning candidate two years later than did subjects who were not old enough to vote in that election.

Two years after a given election, subjects who voted and subjects who were not old enough to vote were significantly more likely to express negative attitudes than positive attitudes toward the winning candidate in that election.

Researchers hypothesized that a decline in the population of dusky sharks near the mid-Atlantic coast of North America led to a decline in the population of eastern oysters in the region. Dusky sharks do not typically consume eastern oysters but do consume cownose rays, which are the main predators of the oysters. Which finding, if true, would most directly support the researchers' hypothesis?

Difficulty: Hard

Declines in the regional abundance of dusky sharks' prey other than cownose rays are associated with regional declines in dusky shark abundance.

Eastern oyster abundance tends to be greater in areas with both dusky sharks and cownose rays than in areas with only dusky sharks.

Consumption of eastern oysters by cownose rays in the region substantially increased before the regional decline in dusky shark abundance began.

Cownose rays have increased in regional abundance as dusky sharks have decreased in regional abundance.