Both weakened by concern about the government’s agreement with the International Monetary Fund and by growing fears of a rise in inflation, the country’s currency continued its slide to a record low against the dollar, which forced the central bank to intervene for the fourth time in a week.

Roland:  The alarming fact is that 90 percent of the people in this country now report that they know someone who is unemployed.

Sharon:  But a normal, moderate level of unemployment is 5 percent, with 1 out of 20 workers unemployed.  So at any given time if a person knows approximately 50 workers, 1 or more will very likely be unemployed.

Sharon’s argument is structured to lead to which of the following as a conclusion?

Roland:  The alarming fact is that 90 percent of the people in this country now report that they know someone who is unemployed.

Sharon:  But a normal, moderate level of unemployment is 5 percent, with 1 out of 20 workers unemployed.  So at any given time if a person knows approximately 50 workers, 1 or more will very likely be unemployed.

Sharon’s argument relies on the assumption that

A new genetically engineered papaya was produced not by seed companies who have been motivated by profit, which was the case with most genetically modified crops previously approved for commercial use, but university and United States Department of Agriculture researchers who allowed growers to use it free of charge.

A certain mayor has proposed a fee of five dollars per day on private vehicles entering the city, claiming that the fee will alleviate the city’s traffic congestion.  The mayor reasons that, since the fee will exceed the cost of round-trip bus fare from many nearby points, many people will switch from using their cars to using the bus.

Which of the following statements, if true, provides the best evidence that the mayor’s reasoning is flawed?

Because no employee wants to be associated with bad news in the eyes of a superior, information about serious problems at lower levels is progressively softened and distorted as it goes up each step in the management hierarchy.  The chief executive is, therefore, less well informed about problems at lower levels than are his or her subordinates at those levels.

The conclusion drawn above is based on the assumption that

Mideast immigrants’ rates of entrepreneurship exceed virtually every other immigrant group in the increasingly diverse United States economy.

The bones of Majungatholus atopus, a meat-eating dinosaur that is a distant relative of Tyrannosaurus rex and closely resembles South American predatory dinosaurs, have been discovered in Madagascar.

Data gathered by weather satellites has been analyzed by scientists, reporting that the Earth’s northern latitudes have become about ten percent greener since 1980, due to more vigorous plant growth associated with warmer temperatures and higher levels of atmospheric carbon dioxide.

Which of the following best completes the passage below?

At a recent conference on environmental threats to the North Sea, most participating countries favored uniform controls on the quality of effluents, whether or not specific environmental damage could be attributed to a particular source of effluent.  What must, of course, be shown, in order to avoid excessively restrictive controls, is that __________.

Unlike emergency calls that travel through regular telephone lines, where they thus automatically inform the operator of the location and phone number of the caller, cellular calls require emergency operators to determine the location of the caller.

The interview is an essential part of a successful hiring program because, with it, job applicants who have personalities that are unsuited to the requirements of the job will be eliminated from consideration.

The argument above logically depends on which of the following assumptions?

Recently documented examples of neurogenesis, the production of new brain cells, include the brain growing in mice when placed in a stimulating environment or neurons increasing in canaries that learn new songs.

Companies O and P each have the same number of employees who work the same number of hours per week.  According to records maintained by each company, the employees of Company O had fewer job-related accidents last year than did the employees of Company P.  Therefore, employees of Company O are less likely to have job-related accidents than are employees of Company P.

Which of the following, if true, would most weaken the conclusion?