Based on records from ancient Athens, each year young Athenian women collaborated to weave a new woolen robe that they used to dress a statue of the goddess Athena and that this robe depicted scenes of a battle between Zeus, Athena’s father, and giants.

Ancient hunter-gatherers developed instincts that stigmatized selfishness, and voluntary cooperation was encouraged as well, whether it be within the group or also with outsiders.

Japanese researchers are producing a series of robots that can identify human facial expressions, to which they will then respond; their goal is primarily creating a robot that will empathize with us.

Automobile Dealer’s Advertisement:

The Highway Traffic Safety Institute reports that the PZ 1000 has the fewest injuries per accident of any car in its class.  This shows that the PZ 1000 is one of the safest cars available today.

Which of the following, if true, most seriously weakens the argument in the advertisement?

Scientists are discussing ways to remove excess carbon dioxide from the atmosphere by increasing the amount that is absorbed by plant life.  One plan to accomplish this is to establish giant floating seaweed farms in the oceans.  When the seaweed plants die, they will be disposed of by being burned for fuel.

Which of the following, if true, would indicate the most serious weakness in the plan above?

Jennifer:  Video rental outlets in Centerville together handled 10,000 fewer video rentals in 1994 than in 1993.  The decline in rentals was probably due almost entirely to the February 1994 opening of Videorama, the first and only video rental outlet in the area that, in addition to renting videos, also sold them cheaply.

Brad:  There must be another explanation:  as you yourself said, the decline was on the order of 10,000 rentals.  Yet Videorama sold only 4,000 videos in 1994.

Which of the following, if true, would most seriously weaken the force of the objection that Brad presents to Jennifer’s explanation?

In contrast to ongoing trade imbalances with China and Japan, the United States trade deficit with Mexico declined by $500 million as a result of record exports to that country.

Mourdet Winery:  Danville Winery’s new wine was introduced to compete with our most popular wine, which is sold in a distinctive tall, black bottle.  Danville uses a similar bottle.  Thus, it is likely that many customers intending to buy our wine will mistakenly buy theirs instead.

Danville Winery:  Not so.  The two bottles can be readily distinguished:  the label on ours, but not on theirs, is gold colored.

Which of the following, if true, most undermines Danville Winery’s response?

Unlike most severance packages, which require workers to stay until the last day scheduled to collect, workers at the automobile company are eligible for its severance package even if they find a new job before they are terminated.

Finding of a survey of Systems magazine subscribers:  Thirty percent of all merchandise orders placed by subscribers in response to advertisements in the magazine last year were placed by subscribers under age thirty-five.

Finding of a survey of advertisers in Systems magazine:  Most of the merchandise orders placed in response to advertisements in Systems last year were placed by people under age thirty-five.

For both of the findings to be accurate, which of the following must be true?

Which of the following most logically completes the argument?

United States manufacturers currently produce most of the world’s solar-power generators–most of which are exported to Europe.  However, European manufacturers are emerging and probably will ultimately capture much of the European market.  The United States government is funding initiatives intended to encourage use of solar power within the United States.  If these initiatives succeed in increasing the demand for solar-power generators in the United States, United States manufacturers will probably maintain significant production levels, since __________.

Having finally reached a tentative labor agreement with its company’s pilots, it must now be determined by the airline’s board of directors how the airline can both increase profits and compete more effectively for customers than they did in the past.

The higher the level of certain vitamins and minerals in the bloodstream, the better a person’s lung function, as measured by the amount of air the person can expel in one second.  The lung function of smokers is significantly worse, on average, than that of nonsmokers.  Clearly, therefore, one way for smokers to improve their lung function is for them to increase their intake of foods that are rich in these helpful vitamins and minerals.

Which of the following is an assumption on which this argument depends?

Astronomer: Observations of the Shoemaker-Levi comet on its collision course with Jupiter showed that the comet broke into fragments before entering Jupiter’s atmosphere in 1994, but they did not show how big those fragments were.  In hopes of gaining some indication of the fragments’ size, astronomers studied spectrographic analyses of Jupiter’s outer atmosphere. These analyses revealed unprecedented traces of sulfur after the fragments’ entry. The fragments themselves almost certainly contained no sulfur, but many astronomers believe that the cloud layer below Jupiter’s outer atmosphere does contain sulfur. Since sulfur would have seeped into the outer atmosphere if comet fragments had penetrated this cloud layer, it is likely that some of the fragments were at least large enough to have passed through Jupiter’s outer atmosphere without being burned up.

In the astronomer’s argument, the two portions in boldface play which of the following roles?