Blog

A patient falls and sustains an impacted fracture. This means:

[Note: Stevie Wonder and Ray Charles, well-known musicians of the 20th and 21st centuries, both lost their vision during early childhood.] Passage E The music of Stevie Wonder and Ray Charles supports the common belief that losing one sense can enhance another.  Italian researchers have better evidence.  They find that after only 90 minutes, blindfolded people can develop a keener sense of touch—a sign that the portion of the brain dedicated to vision can help process other senses.  Although such neurological flexibility used to be considered a feature of a developing brain, “we know now that, even in adults, it is possible to find plastic interactions.  If you change the input, you can recruit a part of the brain for a different function,” says Salvatore Aglioti, a neurologist at the University of Rome La Sapienza and the Santa Lucia Foundation. Aglioti and a colleague asked 28 test subjects to place their fingers on a series of plates marked with grooves of varying sizes, with the width of the grooves equal to the distance between them.  Some of the grooves were so fine that the surface of the plate felt smooth.  After being blindfolded, however, people were able to feel grooves that were more subtle than the smallest ones they could discern in a previous test.  Repeating the test 130 minutes after the blindfolds were removed, the subjects’ sense of touch had reset to normal.  “Forgetting is as important as learning,” Aglioti says.  “If we don’t forget quickly, we don’t have room enough for other functions.” As used in the first paragraph, “plastic” most nearly means

Passage D Millions of American students came back to school in recent weeks, navigating new classroom rules and cafeteria social hierarchies. For some, the hardest part of the day was simply getting to school. A chronic shortage of school bus drivers is making it difficult for many children to get to class. Some districts have had to shorten school days; others have even canceled school because too few children could attend. The fix requires a shift in mind-set. School systems’ obligations to students should start when children step out their front doors, rather than when they walk through the schoolhouse gates. The idea of a school-specific public transportation system is the product of very American forces. The westward expansion of the 1800s, the suburbanization of the post-World War II era and the consolidation of neighborhood schools into larger institutions distanced children from their classrooms. Compulsory attendance laws made finding reliable transportation imperative. And the rise of the car inspired a wave of innovation that culminated in the iconic yellow school bus. Underlying these developments was a sense that the state had a duty to get children to school. In 1929, just 8.9 percent of kids were transported to school at public expense, according to the Education Department’s National Center for Education Statistics. By the 1983-1984 school year, the figure was nearly 61 percent. Yet, as children’s homes and schools got farther apart, the number served by public school transportation systems fell. Increasingly, it’s parents, not bus drivers, who get behind the wheel for the school commute. That’s true even for short distances. Between 1969 and 2009, the number of children aged between 4 and 15 and living within a mile of school who got there on foot or by bicycle fell from 89 percent to 35 percent, according to the National Center for Safe Routes to School. In theory, it makes sense for parents to be responsible for getting kids to school. It’s not as though principals are going door to door to negotiate with kindergartners who only want to wear the T-shirt at the bottom of the hamper or to rouse drowsy high school juniors and bundle them off to trigonometry. But not all parents have work schedules that align with the school day, access to reliable transportation or even a fixed address. Sixty percent of children from low-income families rely on school buses. For kids with additional needs who must attend faraway specialized schools, that transport is crucial. This will cost money. But if kids can’t get to school, they can’t benefit from new phonics curriculums or fancy technology anyway. When the wheels on the bus stop going ’round and ’round, kids suffer. Let’s reclaim a sense of collective responsibility to get our littlest citizens between home and school. The passage is best described as belonging to which genre?

Passage A When Senator Chuck Grassley first got into politics, Ike Eisenhower was president of the United States. It was 1959, the same year the first transcontinental commercial flight made it from Los Angeles to New York’s Idlewild Airport, later to be renamed in honor of John F. Kennedy. Late in the year, IBM introduced the 7090, a milestone computer model that relied on “transistors, not vacuum tubes.” Grassley served in the Iowa House, then served three terms in the U. S. House. He’s now in his seventh term in the Senate. And he announced last September, a week after his 88th birthday, that he’s running again. That will make him 95 years old at the end of his next term. Simply put, this is too damn old to be doing this job. It’s too old to be doing just about any job. While mandatory retirements are mostly verboten in the United States, there are some professions with such intense physical and mental demands, that require such high-stakes decision-making and mental acuity, that we’ve decided they’re just different.  The FAA mandates that pilots retire at 65. Their colleagues in air-traffic control are out at 56, though they can get exceptions to work until they’re 61. Most police departments show employees the door in their 60s. At white-shoe law firms, partners are often pointed to the exit sign by age 68. Foreign-service employees at the State Department are out at 65.   Which choice best describes the primary genre of Passage A?

Passage D Millions of American students came back to school in recent weeks, navigating new classroom rules and cafeteria social hierarchies. For some, the hardest part of the day was simply getting to school. A chronic shortage of school bus drivers is making it difficult for many children to get to class. Some districts have had to shorten school days; others have even canceled school because too few children could attend. The fix requires a shift in mind-set. School systems’ obligations to students should start when children step out their front doors, rather than when they walk through the schoolhouse gates. The idea of a school-specific public transportation system is the product of very American forces. The westward expansion of the 1800s, the suburbanization of the post-World War II era and the consolidation of neighborhood schools into larger institutions distanced children from their classrooms. Compulsory attendance laws made finding reliable transportation imperative. And the rise of the car inspired a wave of innovation that culminated in the iconic yellow school bus. Underlying these developments was a sense that the state had a duty to get children to school. In 1929, just 8.9 percent of kids were transported to school at public expense, according to the Education Department’s National Center for Education Statistics. By the 1983-1984 school year, the figure was nearly 61 percent. Yet, as children’s homes and schools got farther apart, the number served by public school transportation systems fell. Increasingly, it’s parents, not bus drivers, who get behind the wheel for the school commute. That’s true even for short distances. Between 1969 and 2009, the number of children aged between 4 and 15 and living within a mile of school who got there on foot or by bicycle fell from 89 percent to 35 percent, according to the National Center for Safe Routes to School. In theory, it makes sense for parents to be responsible for getting kids to school. It’s not as though principals are going door to door to negotiate with kindergartners who only want to wear the T-shirt at the bottom of the hamper or to rouse drowsy high school juniors and bundle them off to trigonometry. But not all parents have work schedules that align with the school day, access to reliable transportation or even a fixed address. Sixty percent of children from low-income families rely on school buses. For kids with additional needs who must attend faraway specialized schools, that transport is crucial. This will cost money. But if kids can’t get to school, they can’t benefit from new phonics curriculums or fancy technology anyway. When the wheels on the bus stop going ’round and ’round, kids suffer. Let’s reclaim a sense of collective responsibility to get our littlest citizens between home and school. The author mentions the data from the National Center for Safe Routes to School primarily to

Which anatomic structure(s) helps form the arms of the “Y” on the scapula?     1. coronoid process     2. acromion process     3. superior angle     4. coracoid process

Passage A When Senator Chuck Grassley first got into politics, Ike Eisenhower was president of the United States. It was 1959, the same year the first transcontinental commercial flight made it from Los Angeles to New York’s Idlewild Airport, later to be renamed in honor of John F. Kennedy. Late in the year, IBM introduced the 7090, a milestone computer model that relied on “transistors, not vacuum tubes.” Grassley served in the Iowa House, then served three terms in the U. S. House. He’s now in his seventh term in the Senate. And he announced last September, a week after his 88th birthday, that he’s running again. That will make him 95 years old at the end of his next term. Simply put, this is too damn old to be doing this job. It’s too old to be doing just about any job. While mandatory retirements are mostly verboten in the United States, there are some professions with such intense physical and mental demands, that require such high-stakes decision-making and mental acuity, that we’ve decided they’re just different.  The FAA mandates that pilots retire at 65. Their colleagues in air-traffic control are out at 56, though they can get exceptions to work until they’re 61. Most police departments show employees the door in their 60s. At white-shoe law firms, partners are often pointed to the exit sign by age 68. Foreign-service employees at the State Department are out at 65.   In the 3rd paragraph, “verboten” most nearly means

Passage CThe centerpiece of the student debt-relief plan that President Biden announced last month is his decision to cancel up to $20,000 per borrower in federal loans. But the more far-reaching — and, over time, more expensive — element of the president’s strategy is his blueprint for a revamped income-linked repayment plan, which would sharply reduce what many borrowers pay every month. It could, however, have unintended consequences. Unscrupulous schools, including for-profit institutions, have long used high-pressure sales tactics, or outright fraud and deception, to saddle students with more debt than they could ever reasonably hope to repay. By offering more-generous educational subsidies, the government may be creating a perverse incentive for both schools and borrowers, who could begin to pay even less attention to the actual price tag of their education — and taxpayers could be left footing more of the bill. “If people are taking out the same or more amount of debt and repaying less of it, then it’s just taxpayers bearing the brunt of it,” said Daniel Zibel, the chief counsel at the National Student Legal Defense Network, an advocacy group. Experts are particularly concerned about how the new subsidies could be manipulated by for-profit colleges, many of which have a record of persuading people to take on high debt for degrees that often fail to deliver the kind of earnings boost the schools advertise.  As used in the passage, the word “unscrupulous” most likely means

The following sentences have a blank indicating that something has been left out. Beneath each sentence are four words or phrases. Choose the word or phrase that, when inserted in the sentence, best fits the meaning of the sentence as a whole.  When students adjust their thinking to fit new information, they are using the process of __________.

Which of these is (are) TRUE for an AP axial projection of the clavicle?     1. entire clavicular body should be demonstrated     2. entire scapula should be demonstrated     3. an asthenic body habitus will require a CR angle of 15°