A mid-sized city tested a bus-priority pilot: painted dedicated lanes on three of its busiest corridors during rush hour and adjusted signal timing. GPS logs show average bus travel times on those corridors dropped by 12 percent, with variability halved; on control corridors without changes, no improvement was detected. A rider survey taken during the pilot found 60 percent of respondents on the treated corridors reported arriving on time more often; on untreated corridors, responses were unchanged. Due to budget limits, officials must decide how to scale the program. The available evidence establishes benefits only on the corridors where changes were made, so in choosing next steps, the city can conclude that _______.

Which choice most logically completes the text?

After a schedule overhaul in early 2023, the city's transit department reviewed average weekday bus ridership on three routes that serve downtown. Officials claim that ridership rose on all routes compared with 2022 levels. The table summarizes the counts. Counts reflect spring averages, collected on comparable weekdays. (Grayscale table; Times New Roman) Average Weekday Ridership (riders/day) Route | 2022 | 2023 A | 1800 | 2000 B | 1350 | 1500 C | 900 | 1000

Which choice best describes data from the table that support the claim?

Some education researchers argue that adolescent biology renders early school start times misaligned with students' natural sleep patterns. According to chronobiology studies, teenagers experience a delayed release of melatonin, making it difficult for them to fall asleep before 11 p.m. A policy analyst contends that therefore, moving the first bell at least 45 minutes later should measurably improve learning, not merely by boosting attendance or convenience, but by enabling students to obtain more total sleep and more REM sleep just before waking. The analyst dismisses claims that homework load and extracurriculars are the principal drivers of fatigue, noting that comparable workloads yield different outcomes depending on start times. If increased sleep quantity and quality are truly the mechanisms at work, then later starts should produce academic gains even when other school practices remain unchanged.

Which finding, if true, would most directly support the scholar's claim?

While researching a topic, a student has taken the following notes:

• Pilot at Lincoln Middle began 2023; weekly gardening and tasting sessions during science classes.
• Surveys showed 60% more students choosing vegetables at lunch after ten weeks.
• Participants averaged 35 additional minutes of moderate outdoor activity each week.
• Teachers reported improved attention during afternoon classes on gardening days.
• Program funded by small grants and a local grocer's donation of seeds and tools.
• Families attended two harvest nights; community volunteers logged 120 hours maintaining beds. Goal: Emphasize the program's benefits for students' health.

The student wants to emphasize the program's health benefits for students. Which choice most effectively uses relevant information from the notes to accomplish this goal?

To test whether applying a thin layer of moss to residential roofs cools homes in summer, researchers instrumented sixteen houses: eight with north-facing, dark-shingle roofs were partially inoculated with a maintained moss layer; eight similar roofs were left untreated. Over six weeks of clear weather, afternoon roof-surface temperatures on treated sections averaged 5 degrees lower than adjacent untreated sections; attic air temperatures showed no consistent differences between houses. Electricity consumption varied widely with occupancy and air-conditioner settings. The team notes that lower surface temperatures may precede interior effects but did not detect them here. Based on these results, any claim about home energy savings would be premature, but the researchers can reasonably conclude that _______.

Which choice most logically completes the text?

While researching a topic, a student has taken the following notes:

• Coral reefs support fisheries that feed millions and attract high-spending tourists.
• Climate-driven bleaching events have increased in frequency and severity since 1998.
• Local economies lose billions when reefs degrade, including from storm damage and tourism declines.
• New coral 'gardening' techniques can regrow fragments on artificial structures within two years.
• Success depends on reducing coastal pollution and protecting herbivorous fish populations.
• Some reefs show natural resilience, recovering after heat waves when stressors are limited. Goal: Emphasize the economic consequences of reef decline.

The student wants to emphasize the economic consequences of reef decline. Which choice most effectively uses relevant information from the notes to accomplish this goal?

An archaeologist examining early iron-smelting in West Africa proposes that the technology did not arrive as a single package from the north but instead emerged independently in several locales. The scholar points to the diversity of furnace designs across neighboring regions and argues that such variability is more consistent with local innovation than with the diffusion of a standard technique carried by migrants. In this view, similarities between West African and Saharan sites reflect convergent solutions to the same metallurgical challenges rather than direct transmission. The archaeologist acknowledges evidence of long-distance trade but maintains that the earliest smelting centers predate clear signs of large-scale migration into the area. If the claim is correct, strong evidence of imported expertise or imported ore should be absent from the oldest smelting layers.

Which finding, if true, would most directly weaken the scholar's claim?

An online store tested a price reduction in June to see whether selling more units could offset the lower price per item. The company argues that the cut increased monthly revenue; according to the table, _____ Use the data to evaluate the claim. No other promotions or channels changed during this period, according to the report.

Grayscale table (Times New Roman labels). Title: "Unit Price and Units Sold, May-June 2024". Columns: "Month", "Unit Price (USD)", "Units Sold". Rows: "May - $50 - 800"; "June - $45 - 1,000".

Which choice most effectively uses data from the table to complete the text?

A historian contends that nineteenth-century urban parks were built primarily to improve workers' health, not to police their behavior or display civic grandeur. She cites reformers' worries about smoke-choked factories and crowded tenements, and notes that early park advocates emphasized 'fresh air and exercise' in public appeals. While acknowledging that parks often featured bandstands and promenades that encouraged orderly conduct, she argues these were secondary to the health mission. The timing, amid cholera outbreaks and rising tuberculosis deaths, suggests an urgent public health rationale. Critics counter that strict park rules and patrols reveal a social-control agenda. The historian replies that such rules were pragmatic tools for maintenance, not the parks' core purpose. The debate turns on whether park planners aimed first at healthy bodies or compliant citizens.

Which finding, if true, would most directly support the historian's claim?

Engineers tested twenty pairs of identical smartphones to study how storage temperature affects battery aging. In each pair, one phone was stored for eight weeks at a cool, controlled 15 degrees Celsius, and the other at a steady 30 degrees. All other conditions (charge level, usage cycles, and charging hardware) were held constant. Across all pairs, the cooler-stored phones lost less capacity than their warmer-stored counterparts, a pattern that repeated in three separate trials conducted months apart. The team also opened several batteries and found more degradation by-products in the warmer group, consistent with known heat-accelerated chemistry. Consequently, if two otherwise identical phones differ only in storage temperature, then, at the end of the storage period, _______.

Which choice most logically completes the text?