The anthropomorphic bias of those who would relegate marsupials to an inferior evolutionary status is most apparent in their recourse to data on brain structure and behavior. Unlike humans and other placentals, marsupials lack the corpus callosum, which facilitates inter-hemisphere transfer of data acquired through the senses. Yet it cannot be inferred that marsupials are thus deprived of such function. Didelphis Virginiana, one of the opossums, makes use of the anterior commissure, an adaptation that is also found in reptiles and monotremes. Diprodontons, including kangaroos and koalas, supplement the anterior commissure with the fasciculus aberrans. While the modes of neocortical interconnection may be diverse, the work of Johnson, Heath and Jones points to the conclusion that, functionally speaking the cortices and neocortices of both groups of mammals exhibit parallel connections. Parker also notes "a similar range of brain size to body weight ratios and of neocortical expansion".Another stigma borne by marsupials is the consensus that they are less intelligent than placentals. Yet Williams argues that, all else being equal, natural selection will favor instinctive over learned behavior as being more biologically efficient and that it is the accidental death of the young that is the prime selective pressure for the evolution of intelligence. Seen in this light, marsupials have a competitive edge; their gestation period is brief and the young remain in the pouch for an extended period exposed only to those dangers which also affect the mother. There they are directly exposed to the mothers food supply and can observe her behavior at leisure. Placentals, on the other hand, not only have a longer gestation period but, once their young are born, must often leave while foraging. Such absences increase the risk of mortality and decrease the opportunity to learn. Thus, among placentals, selection would favor the apparent intelligence in the young and protective behavior in the mother.Marsupials are not known to exhibit maternal protective behavior. In fact, Serventy has reported that frightened female kangaroos will drop their pouch-young as they flee, drawing a predators attention to the less able offspring while the adult escapes. This behavior, whether purposeful or accidental, instantaneously relieves the female marsupial of the mechanical difficulties of pregnancy with which her placental counterpart would be burdened, while marsupials can replace any lost young quickly. Thus, in the absence of any need for close maternal supervision, sacrificing their offspring in this manner may well have been favored in selection. Pointing to the absence of the "virtue" of maternal protectiveness in marsupials is an instance of how mistaken are those theorists who see similarities with humans as marks of evolutionary sophistication.With which of the following statements would the author be most likely to agree?
Until last year many people but not most economists thought that the economic data told a simple tale. On one side, productivity the average output of an average worker was rising. And although the rate of productivity increase was very slow during the 1970s and early 1980s, the official numbers said that it had accelerated significantly in the 1990s. By 1994 an average worker was producing about 20 percent more than his or her counterpart in 1978.On the other hand, other statistics said that real, inflation- adjusted wages had not been rising at anything like the same rate. In fact, some of the most commonly cited numbers showed real wages actually falling over the last 25 years. Those who did their homework knew that the gloomiest numbers overstated the case.Still, even the most optimistic measure, the total hourly compensation of the average worker, rose only 3 percent between 1978 and 1994.But now the experts are telling us that the whole thing may have been a figment of our statistical imaginations. a blue-ribbon panel of economists headed byMichael Boskin of Stanford declared that the Consumer Price Index [C.P.I.] had been systematically overstating inflation, probably by more than 1 percent per year for the last two decades, mainly failing to take account of changes in the patterns of consumption and improvements in product quality.The Boskin report, in particular, is not an official document it will be quite a while before the Government actually issues a revised C.P.I., and the eventual revision may be smaller than Boskin and his colleagues propose. Still, the general outline of the resolution is pretty clear. When all the revisions are taken into account, productivity growth will probably look somewhat higher than it did before, because some of the revisions being proposed to the way we measure consumer prices will also affect the way we calculate growth. But the rate of growth of real wages will look much higher and so it will now be roughly in line with productivity, which will therefore reconcile numbers on productivity and wages with data that show a roughly unchanged distribution of income between capital and labor. In other words, the whole story about workers not sharing in productivity gains will turn out to have been based on a statistical illusion.It is important not to go overboard on this point. There are real problems in America, and our previous concerns were by no means pure hypochondria. For one thing, it remains true that the rate of economic progress over the past 25 years has been much slower than it was in the previous 25. Even if Boskins numbers are right, the income of the median family which officially has experienced virtually no gain since 1973 has risen by only about 35 percent over the past 25 years, compared with 100 percent over the previous 25. Furthermore, it is quite likely that if we "Boskinized" the old data — that is, if we tried to adjust the C.P.I. for the50s and 60s to take account of changing consumption patterns and rising product quality we would find that official numbers understated the rate of progress just as much if not more than they did in recent decades.Moreover, while workers as a group have shared fully in national productivity gains, they have not done so equally. The overwhelming evidence of a huge increase in income inequality in America has nothing to do with price indexes and is therefore unaffected by recent statistical revelations. It is still true that families in the bottom fifth, who had 5.4 percent of total income in 1970, had only 4.2 percent in 1994; and that over the same period the share of the top 5 percent went from 15.6 to 20.1. And it is still true that corporate C.E.O.s, who used to make about 35 times as much as their employees, now make 120 times as much or more.While these are real and serious problems, however, one thing is now clear: the truth about what is happening in America is more subtle than the simplistic morality play about greedy capitalists and oppressed workers that so many would-be sophisticates accepted only a few months ago. There was little excuse for buying into that simplistic view then; there is no excuse now.Which of the situations below best reflects public perception regarding the economy prior to the release of Boskins report?
One of the basic principles of ecology is that population size is to some extent a function of available food resources. Recent field experiments demonstrate that the interrelationship may be far more complex than hitherto imagined. Specifically, the browsing of certain rodents appears to trigger biochemical reactions in the plants they feed on that help regulate the size of the rodent populations. Two such examples of phytochemical regulation (regulation involving plant chemistry) have been reported so far.Patricia Berger and her colleagues at the University of Utah have demonstrated that instrumentality of 6-methoxybenzoxazolinone (6-MBOA) in triggering reproductive behavior in the mountain vole (Microtus montanus), a small rodent resembling the field mouse. 6-MBOA forms in young mountain grasses in response to browsing by predators such as voles. The experimenters fed rolled oats coated with 6-MBOA to non-breeding winter populations of Microtus. After three weeks, the sample populations revealed a high incidence of pregnancy among the females and pronounced swelling of the testicles among the males.Control populations receiving no 6- MBOA revealed no such signs. Since the timing of reproductive effort is crucial to the short-lived vole in an environment in which the onset of vegetative growth can vary by as much as two months, the phytochemical triggering of copulatory behavior in Microtus represents a significant biological adaptation.A distinct example is reported by John Bryant of the University of Alaska. In this case, plants seem to have adopted a form of phytochemical self-defense against the depredations of the snowshoe hare (Lepus americanus) of Canada and Alaska. Every ten years or so, for reasons that are not entirely understood, the Lepus population swells dramatically. The result is intense overbrowsing of early and mid-successional deciduous trees and shrubs. Bryant has shown that, as if in response, four common boreal forest trees favored by Lepus produce adventitious shoots high in terpene and phenolic resins which effectively discourage hare browsing. He treated mature, non-resinous willow twigs with resinous extracts from the adventitious shoots of other plants and placed treated and untreated bundles at hare feeding stations, weighing them at the end of each day. Bryant found that bundles containing only half the resin concentration of natural twigs were left untouched. The avoidance of these unpalatable resins, he concludes, may play a significant role in the subsequent decline in the Lepus population to its normal level.These results suggest obvious areas for further research. For example, observational data should be reviewed to see whether the periodic population explosions among the prolific lemming (like the vole and the snowshoe hare, a small rodent in a marginal northern environment) occur during years in which there is an early onset of vegetative growth; if so, a triggering mechanism similar to that found in the vole may be involved.Bryants interpretation of the results of his experiment (lines 4648) depends on which of the following assumptions?
When Gwendolyn Brooks published her first collection of poetry A Street In Bronzeville in 1945 most reviewers recognized Brooks versatility and craft as a poet.Yet, while noting her stylistic successes few of her contemporaries discussed the critical question of Brooks relationship to the Harlem Renaissance. How had she addressed herself, as a poet, to the literary movements assertion of the folk and African culture, and its promotion of the arts as the agent to define racial integrity?The New Negro poets of the Harlem Renaissance expressed a deep pride in being Black; they found reasons for this pride in ethnic identity and heritage; and they shared a common faith in the fine arts as a means of defining and reinforcing racial pride. But in the literal expression of this impulse, the poets were either romantics, or realists and, quite often within the same poem, both. The realistic impulse, as defined best in the poems of McKays Harlem Shadows (1922), was a sober reflection upon Blacks as second class citizens, segregated from the mainstream of American socio-economic life, and largely unable to realize the wealth and opportunity that America promised. The romantic impulse, on the other hand, as defined in the poems of Sterling Browns Southern Road (1932), often found these unrealized dreams in the collective strength and will of the folk masses.In comparing the poems in A Street in Bronzeville with various poems from the Renaissance, it becomes apparent that Brooks brings many unique contributions to bear on this tradition. The first clue that A Street In Bronzeville was, at its time of publication, unlike any other book of poems by a Black American is its insistent emphasis on demystifying romantic love between Black men and women. During the Renaissance, ethnic or racial pride was often focused with romantic idealization upon the Black woman. A casual streetwalker in Hughes’ poem, "When Sue Wears Red," for example, is magically transformed into an EgyptianQueen. In A Street In Bronzeville, this romantic impulse runs headlong into the biting ironies of racial discrimination. There are poems in which Hughes, McKay and Brown recognize the realistic underside of urban life for Black women. But for Brooks, unlike the Renaissance poets, the victimization of poor Black women becomes not simply a minor chord but a predominant theme.Brooks relationship with the Harlem Renaissance poets, as A Street in Bronzeville ably demonstrates, was hardly imitative. As one of the important links with the Black poetic tradition of the 1920s and 1930s, she enlarged the element of realism that was an important part of the Renaissance world-view. Although her poetry is often conditioned by the optimism that was also a legacy of the period, Brooks rejects outright their romantic prescriptions for the lives of Black women.And in this regard, she serves as a vital link with the Black Arts Movement of the 1960s that, while it witnessed the flowering of Black women as poets and social activists as well as the rise of Black feminist aesthetics in the 1970s, brought about a curious revival of romanticism in the Renaissance mode.Suppose that a recently-discovered collection of Gwendolyn Brooks poems contained female protagonists that embodied the ideal woman. This information would:
The mind, just like the body, has its needs. The needs of the body are the foundations of society; those of the mind are its amenities. While government and laws provide for the safety and well-being of men when they gather together, the sciences and the arts, which are less despotic but perhaps more powerful, spread garlands of flowers over the iron chains that bind them, stifle in them the sense for that original liberty for which they seem to have been born, cause them to love their own enslavement, and turn them into so-called "civilized people." Necessity raised thrones; the sciences and the arts have strengthened them. O earthly powers: cherish talents and protect those who cultivate them. O civilized people, cultivate them: you happy slaves owe to them that delicate and refined taste of which you are so proud, that gentleness of character and urbanity of manner which make relations among you so amiable and easy in other words, that semblance of all the virtues, none of which you actually possessHow pleasant it would be to live among us, if our external appearance were always a reflection of what is in our hearts, if decency were virtue, if our maxims served as our rules, and if true philosophy were inseparable from the title of philosopher! But so many qualities are seldom found together, and virtue hardly ever walks in such great pomp. Richness of adornment may be the mark of a man of taste, but a healthy, robust man is known by other signs: it is beneath the rustic clothes of a farmer, and not the gilt of a courtier, that strength and vigor of the body will be found. Ornamentation is just as foreign to virtue, which is the strength and vigor of the soul. The good man is an athlete who prefers to compete in the nude: he disdains all those vile ornaments which would hinder the use of his strength, ornaments which were for the most part invented only to hide some deformity.Before art had molded our manners and taught our passions to speak an affected language, our customs were rustic but natural, and differences in conduct revealed clearly differences in character. Human nature, basically, was no better, but men found security in being able to see through each other easily, and this advantage, which we no longer appreciate, spared them many vices.Now that more subtle refinements and more delicate taste have reduced the art of pleasing to set rules, a base and deceptive uniformity prevails in our behavior, and all minds seem to have been cast in the same mold. Incessantly politeness and propriety make demands on us, and incessantly we follow usage but never our own inclinations. We no longer dare to appear as we are, and under this perpetual constraint, the men who form this herd called society, when placed in the same circumstances, will all act similarly unless stronger motives direct them to do otherwise. Therefore we will never know well those with whom we deal, for to know our friends we will have to wait for some crises to arise which is to say that we will have to wait until it is too late, as it is for these very crises that it is essential to know ones friends well.What vice would not accompany this uncertainty? No more sincere friendships, no more genuine esteem, no more well-based confidence. Suspicion, offenses, fears, coldness, reserve, hatred and betrayal will constantly hide under the same false veil of politeness, under that much touted urbanity which we owe to the enlightenment of our times. The name of the Master of the Universe will no longer be profaned by swearing, but insulted by blasphemies that will not offend our scrupulous ears. Men will not boast of their own merits, but belittle those of others. An enemy will not be crudely insulted, but adroitly slandered. National hatreds will die, but so will patriotism. A dangerous skepticism will take the place of the scorning of ignorance. Some excesses will be forbidden, some vices dishonored, but others will be dignified with the name of virtues, and one must either have them or feign them. Let those who want to praise the sobriety of the sages of our time do so; as for me, I see in it only a refinement of intemperance that is as unworthy of my praise as their hypocritical simplicity.According to the author, an "urbane" person is most likely to put the highest value on which of the following characteristics?
Until last year many people but not most economists thought that the economic data told a simple tale. On one side, productivity the average output of an average worker was rising. And although the rate of productivity increase was very slow during the 1970s and early 1980s, the official numbers said that it had accelerated significantly in the 1990s. By 1994 an average worker was producing about 20 percent more than his or her counterpart in 1978.On the other hand, other statistics said that real, inflation- adjusted wages had not been rising at anything like the same rate. In fact, some of the most commonly cited numbers showed real wages actually falling over the last 25 years. Those who did their homework knew that the gloomiest numbers overstated the case.Still, even the most optimistic measure, the total hourly compensation of the average worker, rose only 3 percent between 1978 and 1994.But now the experts are telling us that the whole thing may have been a figment of our statistical imaginations. a blue-ribbon panel of economists headed byMichael Boskin of Stanford declared that the Consumer Price Index [C.P.I.] had been systematically overstating inflation, probably by more than 1 percent per year for the last two decades, mainly failing to take account of changes in the patterns of consumption and improvements in product quality.The Boskin report, in particular, is not an official document it will be quite a while before the Government actually issues a revised C.P.I., and the eventual revision may be smaller than Boskin and his colleagues propose. Still, the general outline of the resolution is pretty clear. When all the revisions are taken into account, productivity growth will probably look somewhat higher than it did before, because some of the revisions being proposed to the way we measure consumer prices will also affect the way we calculate growth. But the rate of growth of real wages will look much higher and so it will now be roughly in line with productivity, which will therefore reconcile numbers on productivity and wages with data that show a roughly unchanged distribution of income between capital and labor. In other words, the whole story about workers not sharing in productivity gains will turn out to have been based on a statistical illusion.It is important not to go overboard on this point. There are real problems in America, and our previous concerns were by no means pure hypochondria. For one thing, it remains true that the rate of economic progress over the past 25 years has been much slower than it was in the previous 25. Even if Boskins numbers are right, the income of the median family which officially has experienced virtually no gain since 1973 has risen by only about 35 percent over the past 25 years, compared with 100 percent over the previous 25. Furthermore, it is quite likely that if we "Boskinized" the old data — that is, if we tried to adjust the C.P.I. for the50s and 60s to take account of changing consumption patterns and rising product quality we would find that official numbers understated the rate of progress just as much if not more than they did in recent decades.Moreover, while workers as a group have shared fully in national productivity gains, they have not done so equally. The overwhelming evidence of a huge increase in income inequality in America has nothing to do with price indexes and is therefore unaffected by recent statistical revelations. It is still true that families in the bottom fifth, who had 5.4 percent of total income in 1970, had only 4.2 percent in 1994; and that over the same period the share of the top 5 percent went from 15.6 to 20.1. And it is still true that corporate C.E.O.s, who used to make about 35 times as much as their employees, now make 120 times as much or more.While these are real and serious problems, however, one thing is now clear: the truth about what is happening in America is more subtle than the simplistic morality play about greedy capitalists and oppressed workers that so many would-be sophisticates accepted only a few months ago. There was little excuse for buying into that simplistic view then; there is no excuse now.The author mentions the figures in paragraph six (lines 6772) in order to show that:
