Free Test Prep GRE-Verbal-Reasoning Exam Questions

The amount of bone in the elderly ske|eton—a key determinant in its susceptibility to fractures-is believed to be a function of two major factors. The first is the peak amount of bone mass attained, determined to a large extent by genetic inheritance. The marked effect of gender is obvious: Elderly men experience only one-half as many hip fractures per capita as elderly women. But also, African- American women have a lower incidence of osteoporotic fractures than Caucasian women. Other important variables include diet, exposure to sunlight, and physical actMty. The second major factor is the rate of bone loss after peak bone mass has been attained. While many of the variables that affect peak bone mass also affect rates of bone loss, additional factors influencing bone loss include physiological stresses such as pregnancy and lactation. It is hormonal status, however, refilected primarily by estrogen and progesterone levels, that may exert the greatest effect on rates of decline in skeletal mass. It can be inferred from the passage that the peak amount of bone mass in women

In 1892 the Sierra Club was formed. In 1908 an area of coastal redwood trees north of San Francisco was established as Muir Woods National Monument. In the Sierra Nevada mountains, a walking trail from Yosemite Valley to Mount Whitney was dedicated in 1938. It is called John Muir Trail. John Muir was born in 1838 in Scotland. His family name means "moor," which is a meadow full of flowers and animals. John loved nature from the time he was small. He also liked to climb rocky cliffs and walls. When John was eleven, his family moved to the United States and settled in Wisconsin. John was good with tools and soon became an inventor. He first invented a model of a sawmill. Later he invented an alarm clock that would cause the sleeping person to be tipped out of bed when the timer sounded. Muir left home at an early age. He took a thousand-mile walk south to the Gulf of Mexico in 1867and 1868. Then he sailed for San Francisco. The city was too noisy and crowded for Muir, so he headed inland for the Sierra Nevadas. When Muir discovered the Yosemite Valley in the Sierra Nevadas, it was as if he had come home. He loved the mountains, the wildlife, and the trees. He climbed the mountains and even climbed trees during thunderstorms in order to get closer to the wind. He put forth the theory in the late 1860's that the Yosemite Valley had been formed through the action of glaciers. People ridiculed him. Not until 1930 was Muir's theory proven correct. Muir began to write articles about the Yosemite Valley to tell readers about its beauty. His writing also warned people that Yosemite was in danger from timber mining and sheep ranching interests. In 1901 Theodore Roosevelt became president of the United States. He was interested in conservation. Muir took the president through Yosemite, and Roosevelt helped get legislation passed to create Yosemite National Park in 1906. Although Muir won many conservation battles, he lost a major one. He fought to save the Hetch Valley, which people wanted to dam in order to provide water for San Francisco. In the late 1913 a bill was signed to dam the valley. Muir died in 1914. Some people say losing the fight to protect the valley killed Muir. What happened first?

To marine biologists, the giant squid is especially , as it has never been seen alive, making it virtually impossible to study in its natural habitat.

While there will always be a need for social programs geared toward alleviating the poverty of indMduals, the community is perhaps the more relevant level for public policy intervention, especially in rural areas. It has been recognized that social isolation within urban ghettos is a structural characteristic of urban poverty, but rural poverty is marked by physical isolation as well. This uniqueness makes rural community poverty particularly intractable, requiring policies that account for the cost of isolation. It is possible to provide vocational training for indMduals anywhere, but if there are no jobs within the community for those indMduals, the training is largely wasted. The current transition to a service-based economy and deregulation in transportation (resulting in disproportionately higher transportation costs for relatively isolated areas) have only exacerbated the growing social and economic distress in rural America, underscoring the need to redefine poverty and redirect the focus of our funding agencies and policy-makers in accordance with the new definition. What’s needed is a more holistic view on an aggregate level, where poverty is properly seen as a condition of the local social structure, with income only one of the salient parameters. The author seeks to draw which of the following distinctions between urban ghettos and impoverished rural communities?

The Galapagos Islands are in the Pacific Ocean, off the western coast of South America. They are a rocky, lonely spot, but they are also one of the most unusual places in the world. One reason is that they are the home of some of the last giant tortoises left on earth. Weighing hundreds of pounds, these tortoises, or land turtles, wander slowly around the rocks and sand of the islands. Strangely, each of these islands has its own particular kinds of tortoises. There are seven different kinds of tortoises on the eight islands, each kind being slightly different from the other. Hundreds of years ago, thousands of tortoises wandered around these islands. However, all that changed when people started landing there. When people first arrived in 1535, their ships had no refrigerators. This meant that fresh food was always a problem for the sailors on board. The giant tortoises provided a solution to this problem. Ships would anchor off the islands, and crews would row ashore and seize as many tortoises as they could. Once the animals were aboard the ship, the sailors would roll the tortoises onto their backs. The tortoises were completely helpless once on their backs, so they could only lie there until used for soups and stews. Almost 100,000 tortoises were carried off in this way. The tortoises faced other problems, too. Soon after the first ships, settlers arrived bringing pigs, goats, donkeys, dogs and cats. All of these animals ruined life for the tortoises. Donkey and goats ate all the plants that the tortoises usually fed on, while the pigs. Dogs and cats consumed thousands of baby tortoises each year. Within a few years, it was hard to find any tortoise eggs-or even any baby tortoises. By the early 1900s, people began to worry that the last of the tortoises would soon die out. No one, however, seemed to care enough to do anything about the problem. More and more tortoises disappeared, even though sailors no longer needed them for food. For another fifty years, this situation continued. Finally, in the 1950s, scientist decided that something must be done. The first part of their plan was to get rid of as many cats, dogs and other animals as they could. Next, they tried to make sure that more baby tortoises would be born. To do this, they started looking for wild tortoise eggs. They gathered the eggs and put them in safe containers. When the eggs hatched, the scientists raised the tortoises in special pens. Both the eggs and tortoises were numbered so that the scientists knew exactly which kinds of tortoises they had-and which island they came from. Once the tortoises were old enough and big enough to take care of themselves, the scientists took them back to their islands and set them loose. This slow, hard work continues today, and, thanks to it, the number of tortoises is now increasing every year. When did people start to do something to save the tortoises?