The small hive beetle, Aethina tumida (Order Caleoptera; Family Nitidulidae), was first discovered in
Florida in June of 1998 and has now been found in six other states, George, South Carolina, North
Carolina, Pennsylvania, Ohio, and Minnesota. To date, the beetle has not been found in Virginia, but the
movement of migratory beekeepers from Florida may have transported the beetle to other states. Recent
finding also indicate transport of the beetles in packages. The small hive beetle can be a destructive pest
of honey bee colonies, causing damage to comp, stored honey, and pollen. If a beetle infestation is
sufficiently heavy, they may cause bees to abandon their hive. The beetles can also be a pest of stored
combs and honey (in the comb) awaiting extraction. Beetle larvae may tunnel through combs of honey,
causing discoloration and fermentation of honey.
This passage was most likely written to

• A. inform beekeepers about a menace that may be contaminating their hives
• B. convince the Pure Food and Drug Administration to take the problem more seriously
• C. spark a federal bailout of the industry
• D. help customers understand how difficult it is to raise commercial honey
• E. warn consumers that the price of honey is likely to raise

The Amazonian wilderness harbors the greatest number of species on this planet and is an irreplaceable
resource for present and future generations. Amazonia is crucial for maintaining global climate and
genetic resources, and its forest and rivers provide vital sources of food, building materials,
pharmaceuticals, and water needed by wildlife and humanity. The Los Amigos watershed in the state of
Madre de Dios, southeastern Peru, is representative of the pristine lowland moist forest once found
throughout most of upper Amazonian South America. Threats to tropical forests occur in the form of
fishing, hunting, gold mining, timber extraction, impending road construction, and slash-and-burn
agriculture.
The Los Amigos watershed, consisting of 1.6 million hectares (3.95 million acres), still offers the
increasingly scarce opportunity to study rainforest as it was before the disruptive encroachment of
modern human civilization. Because of its relatively pristine condition and the immediate need to justify it
as a conservation zone, this area deserves intensive, long-term projects aimed at botanical training,
ecotourism, biological inventory, and information synthesis. On July 24, 2001, the government of Peru
and the Amazon Conservation Association signed a contractual agreement creating the first long-term
permanently renewable conservation concession. To our knowledge this is the first such agreement to be
implemented in the world. The conservation concession protects 340,000 acres of old-growth Amazonian
forest in the Los Amigos watershed, which is located in southeastern Peru. This watershed protects the
eastern flank of Manu National Park and is part of the lowland forest corridor that links it to
Bahuaja-Sonene National Park. The Los Amigos conservation concession will serve as a mechanism for
the development of a regional center of excellence in natural forest management and biodiversity science.
Several major projects are being implemented at the Los Amigos Conservation Area. Louise Emmons is
initiating studies of mammal diversity and ecology in the Los Amigos area. Other projects involve studies
of the diversity of arthropods, amphibians, reptiles, and birds. Robin Foster has conducted botanical
studies at Los Amigos, resulting in the labeling of hundreds of plant species along two kilometers of trail in
upland and lowland forest. Michael Goulding is leading a fisheries and aquatic ecology program, which
aims to document the diversity of fish, their ecologies, and their habitats in the Los Amigos area and the
Madre de Dios watershed in general. With support from the Amazon Conservation Association, and in
collaboration with U.S. and Peruvian colleagues, the Botany of the Los Amigos project has been initiated.
At Los Amigos, we are attempting to develop a system of preservation, sustainability, and scientific
research; a marriage between various disciplines, from human ecology to economic botany, product
marketing to forest management. The complexity of the ecosystem will best be understood through a
multidisciplinary approach, and improved understanding of the complexity will lead to better management.
The future of these forests will depend on sustainable management and development of alternative
practices and products that do not require irreversible destruction. The botanical project will provide a
foundation of information that is essential to other programs at Los Amigos. By combining botanical
studies with fisheries and mammology, we will better understand plant/animal interactions. By providing
names, the botanical program will facilitate accurate communication about plants and the animals that
use them. Included in this scenario are humans, as we will dedicate time to people-plant interactions in
order to learn what plants are used by people in the Los Amigos area, and what plants could potentially
be used by people. To be informed, we must develop knowledge. To develop knowledge, we must collect,
organize, and disseminate information. In this sense, botanical information has conservation value.
Before we can use plant-based products from the forest, we must know what species are useful and we
must know their names. We must be able to identify them, to know where they occur in the forest, how
many of them exist, how they are pollinated and when they produce fruit (or other useful products). Aside
from understanding the species as they occur locally at Los Amigos, we must have information about their
overall distribution in tropical America in order to better understand and manage the distribution, variation,
and viability of their genetic diversity. This involves a more complete understanding of the species through
studies in the field and herbarium. The author implies in paragraph 4 that the agreement between Peru
and the Amazon Conservation Association is historic primarily because it

• A. was the first long-term agreement regarding land in the Amazon Rainforest.
• B. is essentially a permanent conservation agreement.
• C. was the first time a South American government had made an agreement of any kind with the Amazon
  Conservation Association.
• D. represented the first time a South American government had agreed to renew a conservation
  agreement.
• E. represents the first time such an agreement had been made in the form of a renewable contract.

Farmlands, wetlands, forests, and deserts that composed the American landscape in the early twentieth
century have frequently been transformed during the past thirty years into mushrooming metropolitan
areas as urbanization spreads across the country. Many metropolitan areas in the United States are
growing at extraordinary rates. "Urban growth is a vital issue that requires our careful attention from local
to global scales," said Barbara Ryan, USGS Associate Director of Geography.
"It is not until we begin to take a broad census of the land itself--tracking landscapes from a spatial
perspective in a time scale of decades--that we can grasp the scale of the changes that have already
occurred and predict the impact of changes to come."
On average, between 1984 and 2004, Atlanta, Boston, Chicago, Denver, Houston, Las Vegas, Memphis,
Minneapolis- St. Paul, Orlando, Phoenix, Pittsburgh, Raleigh-Durham, Reno-Sparks, Sacramento,
Seattle- Tacoma, and Tampa-St. Petersburg averaged 173 square miles of additional urban land over the
two decades, with Houston, Orlando, and Atlanta as the top three regions by area. The growth leaders by
percentage change were Las Vegas (193 percent), Orlando (157 percent), and Phoenix (103 percent).
You can infer from this article that

• A. the author believes that further study on the issue of urban growth is needed
• B. Seattle-Tacoma is getting overcrowded
• C. the author is very much against urban sprawl and is actively working to limit it
• D. the author is inflating the change in land use to further his or her own agenda
• E. the author heartily endorses urban growth

The main purpose of this story is to appeal to the reader's interest in a subject which has been the theme
of some of the greatest writers, living and dead--but which has never been, and can never be, exhausted,
because it is a subject eternally interesting to all mankind. Here is one more book that depicts the struggle
of a human creature, under those opposing influences of Good and Evil, which we have all felt, which we
have all known.
It has been my aim to make the character of "Magdalen," which personifies this struggle, a pathetic
character even in its perversity and its error; and I have tried hard to attain this result by the least
obtrusive and the least artificial of all means--by a resolute adherence throughout to the truth as it is in
Nature. This design was no easy one to accomplish; and it has been a great encouragement to me
(during the publication of my story in its periodical form) to know, on the authority of many readers, that
the object which I had proposed to myself, I might, in some degree, consider as an object achieved.
Round the central figure in the narrative other characters will be found grouped, in sharp contrast--
contrast, for the most part, in which I have endeavored to make the element of humor mainly predominant.
I have sought to impart this relief to the more serious passages in the book, not only because I believe
myself to be justified in doing so by the laws of Art--but because experience has taught me (what the
experience of my readers will doubtless confirm) that there is no such moral phenomenon as unmixed
tragedy to be found in the world around us. Look where we may, the dark threads and the light cross each
other perpetually in the texture of human life.
Which word best describes the meaning of "personifies" in 1st paragraph?

• A. exemplifies perversity
• B. takes on the characteristics of a pathetic character
• C. embodies the basic evil within
• D. contains the qualities of goodness
• E. represents as a human being

Oliver Goldsmith (17301774) wrote criticism, plays, novels, biographies, travelogues, and nearly every
other conceivable kind of composition. This good-humored essay is from a series published in the Public
Ledger and then in book form as The Citizen of the World (1762).
Were we to estimate the learning of the English by the number of books that are every day published
among them, perhaps no country, not even China itself, could equal them in this particular. I have
reckoned not less than twenty-three new books published in one day, which, upon computation, makes
eight thousand three hundred and ninety-five in one year. Most of these are not confined to one single
science, but embrace the whole circle. History, politics, poetry, mathematics, metaphysics, and the
philosophy of nature, are all comprised in a manual no larger than that in which our children are taught the
letters. If then, we suppose the learned of England to read but an eighth part of the works which daily
come from the press and surely non can pretend to learning upon less easy terms), at this rate every
scholar will read a thousand books in one year. From such a calculation, you may conjecture what an
amazing fund of literature a man must be possessed of, who thus reads three new books every day, not
one of which but contains all the good things that ever were said or written.
And yet I know not how it happens, but the English are not, in reality so learned as would seem from this
calculation. We meet but few who know all arts and sciences to perfection; whether it is that the generality
are incapable of such extensive knowledge, or that the authors of those books are not adequate
instructors. In China, the Emperor himself takes cognizance of all the doctors in the kingdom who profess
authorship. In England, every man may be an author, that can write; for they have by law a liberty, not
only of saying what they please, but of being also as dull as they please. Yesterday, as I testified to my
surprise, to the man in black, where writers could be found in sufficient number to throw off the books I
saw daily crowding from the press. I at first imagined that their learned seminaries might take this method
of instructing the world. But, to obviate this objection, my companion assured me that the doctors of
colleges never wrote, and that some of them had actually forgot their reading. "But if you desire,"
continued he, "to see a collection of authors, I fancy I can introduce you to a club, which assembles every
Saturday at seven. . . ." I accepted his invitation; we walked together, and entered the house some time
before the usual hour for the company assembling. My friend took this opportunity of letting me into the
characters of the principal members of the club . .
.
"The first person," said he, "of our society is Doctor Nonentity, a metaphysician. Most people think him a
profound scholar, but, as he seldom speaks, I cannot be positive in that particular; he generally spreads
himself before the fire, sucks his pipe, talks little, drinks much, and is reckoned very good company. I'm
told he writes indexes to perfection: he makes essays on the origin of evil, philosophical inquiries upon
any subject, and draws up an answer to any book upon 24 hours' warning . . . ."
Goldsmith first assumes that English writers come from

• A. China
• B. seminaries
• C. foreign lands
• D. clubs
• E. the press