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Reading & Writing · Information and Ideas · 66 questions · every one comes with a full explanation.

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  1. 1A common assumption among art historians is that the invention of photography in the mid-nineteenth century displaced the painted portrait in the public consciousness. The diminishMedium · Information and Ideas
  2. 2Believing that living in an impractical space can heighten awareness and even improve health, conceptual artists Madeline Gins and Shusaku Arakawa designed an apartment building inMedium · Information and Ideas
  3. 3The most recent iteration of the immersive theater experience Sleep No More, which premiered in New York City in 2011, transforms its performance space—a five-story warehouse—into Hard · Information and Ideas
  4. 4Utah is home to Pando, a colony of about 47,000 quaking aspen trees that all share a single root system. Pando is one of the largest single organisms by mass on Earth, but ecologisMedium · Information and Ideas
  5. 5The following text is from Jane Austen's 1811 novel Sense and Sensibility. Elinor lives with her younger sisters and her mother, Mrs. Dashwood. Elinor, this eldest daughter, whoseEasy · Information and Ideas
  6. 6Biologists have predicted that birds' feather structures vary with habitat temperature, but this hadn't been tested in mountain environments. Ornithologist Sahas Barve studied featMedium · Information and Ideas
  7. 7Paleontologists searching for signs of ancient life have found many fossilized specimens of prehistoric human ancestors, including several from the Pleistocene era discovered in a Medium · Information and Ideas
  8. 8The following text is adapted from Johanna Spyri's 1881 novel Heidi (translated by Elisabeth Stork in 1915). Eight-year-old Heidi and her friend's grandmother are looking at some iEasy · Information and Ideas
  9. 9The following text is adapted from Edgar Allan Poe's 1849 story "Landor's Cottage." During a pedestrian trip last summer, through one or two of the river counties of New York, I fMedium · Information and Ideas
  10. 10In 1934 physicist Eugene Wigner posited the existence of a crystal consisting entirely of electrons in a honeycomb-like structure. The so-called Wigner crystal remained largely conMedium · Information and Ideas
  11. 11The following text is adapted from María Cristina Mena's 1914 short story "The Vine-Leaf." It is a saying in the capital of Mexico that Dr. Malsufrido carries more family secrets Hard · Information and Ideas
  12. 12The following text is adapted from Countee Cullen's 1926 poem "Thoughts in a Zoo." They in their cruel traps, and we in ours, Survey each other's rage, and pass the hours ComHard · Information and Ideas
  13. 13In superfluorescence, electrical charges known as dipoles emit light in synchronized bursts so intense that they are visible to the eye. Until recently, this phenomenon has only beHard · Information and Ideas
  14. 14Scent is tightly interwoven with our daily lives, often evoking significant memories and important social events. This connection is of growing interest to archaeologists who hope Easy · Information and Ideas
  15. 15The following text is adapted from Edith Nesbit's 1906 novel The Railway Children. Mother did not spend all her time in paying dull [visits] to dull ladies, and sitting dully at hEasy · Information and Ideas
  16. 16Paleontologist Lucas E. Fiorelli and colleagues have reported the discovery at a mine in Brazil of several egg clutches, partially preserved single eggs, and egg shells from the LaHard · Information and Ideas
  17. 17Philadelphia's Black Pearl Chamber Orchestra, founded by Jeri Lynne Johnson, performs classical music, from well-known compositions by Beethoven to contemporary works by Jessie MonMedium · Information and Ideas
  18. 18Several scholars have argued that conditions in England in the late ninth through early eleventh centuries—namely, burgeoning literacy amid running conflicts between England's AnglHard · Information and Ideas
  19. 19The following text is adapted from Oscar Wilde's 1891 novel The Picture of Dorian Gray. Dorian Gray is taking his first look at a portrait that Hallward has painted of him. DorianEasy · Information and Ideas
  20. 20For centuries, the widespread acknowledgment of the involvement of the cerebellum—a dense brain structure in vertebrates—in coordinating motor control in humans has hindered recognHard · Information and Ideas
  21. 21In West Africa, jalis have traditionally been keepers of information about family histories and records of important events. They have often served as teachers and advisers, too. NMedium · Information and Ideas
  22. 22In 2014, Amelia Quon and her team at NASA set out to build a helicopter capable of flying on Mars. Because Mars's atmosphere is only one percent as dense as Earth's, the air of MarEasy · Information and Ideas
  23. 23Modern dog breeds are largely the result of 160 years of owners crossbreeding certain dogs in order to select for particular physical appearances. Owners often say that some breedsHard · Information and Ideas
  24. 24For many years, the only existing fossil evidence of mixopterid eurypterids—an extinct family of large aquatic arthropods known as sea scorpions and related to modern arachnids andHard · Information and Ideas
  25. 25Algae living within the tissues of corals play a critical role in keeping corals, and the marine ecosystems they are part of, thriving. Some coral species appear brown in color wheHard · Information and Ideas
  26. 26Having written the impassioned call to arms "Letter to the Spanish Americans" in 1791, Peruvian intellectual Juan Pablo Viscardo y Guzmán is often considered a forerunner for the iHard · Information and Ideas
  27. 27To dye wool, Navajo (Diné) weaver Lillie Taylor uses plants and vegetables from Arizona, where she lives. For example, she achieved the deep reds and browns featured in her 2003 ruMedium · Information and Ideas
  28. 28Bicycles were first mass-produced in the late nineteenth century throughout Europe and North America, allowing individuals remarkable freedom to travel longer distances quickly andEasy · Information and Ideas
  29. 29Artist Justin Favela explained that he wanted to reclaim the importance of the piñata as a symbol in Latinx culture. To do so, he created numerous sculptures from strips of tissue Easy · Information and Ideas
  30. 30The painter María Izquierdo played an important role in the development of twentieth-century Mexican art, but her work has never been well-known in the United States except among aMedium · Information and Ideas
  31. 31In a paper about p-i-n planar perovskite solar cells (one of several perovskite cell architectures designed to collect and store solar power), Lyndsey McMillon-Brown et al. describHard · Information and Ideas
  32. 32Disco remains one of the most ridiculed popular music genres of the late twentieth century. But as scholars have argued, the genre is far less superficial than many people believe.Hard · Information and Ideas
  33. 33Choctaw/Cherokee artist Jeffrey Gibson turns punching bags used by boxers into art by decorating them with beadwork and elements of Native dressmaking. These elements include leathMedium · Information and Ideas
  34. 34Xin Wang and colleagues have discovered the earliest known example of a flower bud in a 164-million-year-old plant fossil in China. The researchers have named the new species FloriEasy · Information and Ideas
  35. 35NASA's Aspera mission, led by Carlos Vargas, will investigate the circumgalactic medium (CGM), the huge swaths of low-density gas that fill and surround galaxies. Specifically, theMedium · Information and Ideas
  36. 36Many intellectual histories of the Black Power movement of the 1960s and 1970s rely heavily on essays and other explicitly ideological works as primary sources, a tendency that canMedium · Information and Ideas
  37. 37In many of his sculptures, artist Richard Hunt uses broad forms rather than extreme accuracy to hint at specific people or ideas. In his first major work, Arachne (1956), Hunt consMedium · Information and Ideas
  38. 38In 2022, researchers rediscovered ancient indigenous glyphs, or drawings, on the walls of a cave in Alabama. The cave's ceiling was only a few feet high, affording no position fromEasy · Information and Ideas
  39. 39The following text is adapted from William Shakespeare's 1609 poem "Sonnet 27." The poem is addressed to a close friend as if he were physically present. Weary with toil, I [hurryHard · Information and Ideas
  40. 40The following text is adapted from Robert Louis Stevenson's 1883 novel Treasure Island. Bill is a sailor staying at the Admiral Benbow, an inn run by the narrator's parents. EveryMedium · Information and Ideas
  41. 41In 2019, 20 previously unknown moons were confirmed to be orbiting Saturn. Three of the moons have prograde orbits (orbiting in the direction the planet spins), and the other 17 haHard · Information and Ideas
  42. 42The following text is adapted from Guy de Maupassant's nineteenth-century short story "The Trip of Le Horla" (translated by Albert M. C. McMaster, A. E. Henderson, Mme. Quesada, etMedium · Information and Ideas
  43. 43The following text is from Shyam Selvadurai's 1994 novel Funny Boy. The seven-year-old narrator lives with his family in Sri Lanka. Radha Aunty is the narrator's aunt. Radha AuntyEasy · Information and Ideas
  44. 44The recovery of a 1,000-year-old Chinese shipwreck in the Java Sea near present-day Indonesia has yielded a treasure trove of artifacts, including thousands of small ceramic bowls.Medium · Information and Ideas
  45. 45The following text is adapted from Christina Rossetti's 1881 poem "Monna Innominata 2." I wish I could remember that first day, First hour, first moment of your meeting me, IfMedium · Information and Ideas
  46. 46The following text is from Ezra Pound's 1909 poem "Hymn III," based on the work of Marcantonio Flaminio. As a fragile and lovely flower unfolds its gleaming foliage on the breastMedium · Information and Ideas
  47. 47The following text is from Maggie Pogue Johnson's 1910 poem "Poet of Our Race." In this poem, the speaker is addressing Paul Laurence Dunbar, a Black author. Thou, with stroke of mHard · Information and Ideas
  48. 48NASA's Cassini probe has detected an unusual wobble in the rotation of Mimas, Saturn's smallest moon. Using a computer model to study Mimas's gravitational interactions with SaturnEasy · Information and Ideas
  49. 49The following text is adapted from Frances Hodgson Burnett's 1911 novel The Secret Garden. Mary, a young girl, recently found an overgrown hidden garden. Mary was an odd, determinEasy · Information and Ideas
  50. 50Shimmering is a collective defense behavior that researchers have observed in giant honeybee colonies. When shimmering, different groups of bees flip their bodies up and down in whEasy · Information and Ideas
  51. 51Oluwaseyi Moejoh cofounded U-recycle Initiative Africa when she was only a teenager. Moejoh and her team founded the organization to teach young people how their actions affect theEasy · Information and Ideas
  52. 52The ice melted on a Norwegian mountain during a particularly warm summer in 2019, revealing a 1,700-year-old sandal to a mountaineer looking for artifacts. The sandal would normallMedium · Information and Ideas
  53. 53In a study of new technology adoption, Davit Marikyan et al. examined negative disconfirmation (which occurs when experiences fall short of one's expectations) to determine whetherHard · Information and Ideas
  54. 54The following text is adapted from Jack London's 1903 novel The Call of the Wild. Buck is a sled dog living with John Thornton in Yukon, Canada. Thornton alone held [Buck]. The reMedium · Information and Ideas
  55. 55To protect themselves when being attacked, hagfish—jawless marine animals that resemble eels—will release large quantities of slimy, mucus-like threads. Because these threads are uMedium · Information and Ideas
  56. 56Optical tweezers are specialized scientific tools—particularly useful in biology and medicine—that use high-powered beams of light to trap and manipulate minuscule particles for stHard · Information and Ideas
  57. 57Culinary anthropologist Vertamae Smart-Grosvenor may be known for her decades of work in national public television and radio, but her book Vibration Cooking: or, the Travel Notes Medium · Information and Ideas
  58. 58Microplastics are pieces of plastic that are smaller than a grain of rice. These small plastics can be found in large quantities in ocean waters. Ecologist Jessica Reichert and herEasy · Information and Ideas
  59. 59Psychologists wanted to test how young children think about rewards and fairness. In an experiment, two teachers handed out rewards while children (ages four to six) watched. The tEasy · Information and Ideas
  60. 60The following text is adapted from Lewis Carroll's 1889 satirical novel Sylvie and Bruno. A crowd has gathered outside a room belonging to the Warden, an official who reports to thHard · Information and Ideas