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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. 3Utah 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
  4. 4Biologists 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
  5. 5Paleontologists 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
  6. 6The 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
  7. 7In 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
  8. 8Philadelphia'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
  9. 9In 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
  10. 10To 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
  11. 11The 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
  12. 12Choctaw/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
  13. 13NASA'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
  14. 14Many 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
  15. 15In 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
  16. 16The 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
  17. 17The 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
  18. 18The 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
  19. 19The 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
  20. 20The 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
  21. 21The 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
  22. 22The 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
  23. 23To 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
  24. 24Culinary 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
  25. 25The following text is adapted from Charles W. Chesnutt's 1901 novel The Marrow of Tradition. Mrs. Ochiltree was a woman of strong individuality, whose comments upon her acquaintaMedium · Information and Ideas
  26. 26Cats can judge unseen people's positions in space by the sound of their voices and thus react with surprise when the same person calls to them from two different locations in a shoMedium · Information and Ideas