Read this excerpt from "Heads Up on Sports Safety.”The dangers to your head depend on the sport, but some general principles guide helmet design. First, the helmet needs to be as cool and lightweight and comfortable as possible. Second, the helmet needs to be hard enough and fit well enough to protect the skull and brain. For some athletes, like hockey goalies or baseball catchers, the helmet also needs to protect the face from fast pucks or balls. Third, it must not prevent the wearer from seeing or hearing. Fourth, it cannot cause more injuries than it prevents.It turns out that the way to address many of these concerns is to use hard but flexible, light, strong materials on the outside and soft materials on the inside. Scientists create new plastics all the time, but sometimes the best designs come from using old materials in new ways. One recent design makes the shell of helmets out of Kevlar, the same kind of light plastic used in bulletproof vests.
Read this excerpt from "Herd about the Flu.”The flu shot helps prevent huge numbers of infections. Even when it doesn’t fully prevent infection in every person, the shot makes any flu infection less serious. On a global scale, the vaccine can reduce the number of infections only if most people in the community take it. That’s because vaccines need to reach enough people to achieve a "herd immunity,” the level of immunity needed to prevent the virus from spreading. If too few people get the vaccine, the people who receive it may not be well protected against infection.So the next time you are at the drugstore, and you see No Flu Shots Available, think about the reasons behind it. Drug makers are scared to make too many flu shots because they could lose too much money. They then make fewer flu shots and the effect of the flu shots becomes weaker because not enough people take it. People become more reluctant to take the flu shot since they don’t think it will fully work. The demand goes down further and the flu companies make even fewer shots the next year.This could continue until the community changes its mind and we all get the flu shot. "That is a community responsibility," says the president of Merck, one of the two remaining flu vaccine manufacturers.
Read the excerpt from "The Environmental Ethic."It is fashionable in some quarters to wave aside the small and obscure, the bugs and weeds, forgetting that an obscure moth from Latin America saved Australia’s pastureland from overgrowth by cactus, that the rosy periwinkle provided the cure for Hodgkin’s disease and childhood lymphocytic leukemia, that the bark of the Pacific yew offers hope for victims of ovarian and breast cancer, that a chemical from the saliva of leeches dissolves blood clots during surgery, and so on down a roster already grown long and illustrious despite the limited research addressed to it.Which of the following claims is best supported by the evidence in this excerpt?
Read this excerpt from "Mad Cow, Furious Farmer.”The disease was first detected in England in 1986, though some scientists think the very first cases started at least ten years before. Cows usually eat only grass and other plants, but farmers had been feeding them a meat and bone mixture that made the cows plumper. But somehow, at least one batch of the mixture had become contaminated with what was then an unknown killer: a prion.By 1993, British farmers were reporting up to one thousand new cases of BSE a week. Governments all around the world reacted by increasing testing for the disease and not allowing any cows to be eaten if they were at risk of having the disease. As sheep can also get a prion disease called scrapie, they were tested as well. Farmers were angry that they were losing their livestock, and nobody knew how to protect cows and people from the disease.Consumers were also in a panic when they learned about BSE, and for a very good reason: prions are infectious. If you eat a prion from a "mad cow” or sheep, you are at risk for developing a human version of BSE. The public felt betrayed that their governments had underreacted to the problem or covered it up.Eventually, in 1997, governments began to ban farmers from feeding their livestock high-risk meat and bone mixtures. With that ban, the epidemic quickly peaked, and by 2010 had largely disappeared. Over the years, half a million cows and two hundred people had been killed by prions.
Read the excerpt from Freakonomics. It’s worth thinking about the incentive a wrestler might have to throw a match. Maybe he accepts a bribe (which would obviously not be recorded in the data). Or perhaps some other arrangement is made between the two wrestlers. Keep in mind that the pool of elite sumo wrestlers is extraordinarily tight-knit. Each of the sixty-six elite wrestlers fights fifteen of the others in a tournament every two months. Furthermore, each wrestler belongs to a stable that is typically managed by a former sumo champion, so even the rival stables have close ties. Which of the following claims is best supported by the evidence in this excerpt?
Read the excerpt from "The Environmental Ethic." Mother Earth . . . is no more than the commonality of organisms and the physical environment they maintain with each passing moment, an environment that will destabilize and turn lethal if the organisms are disturbed too much. . . . To disregard the diversity of life is to risk catapulting ourselves into an alien environment. We will have become like the pilot whales that inexplicably beach themselves on New England shores.Which of the following choices best expresses the type of appeal Wilson uses in this passage?
A medical journal is an example of a(n)
Read the sentence from the video transcript of Dr.X and the Quest for Food Safety.While we’re sleeping, bacteria are everywhere, multiplying and multiplying.
What must be present in a strong research plan? Check all that apply.research methodresearch evaluationresearch questionsresearch answersresearch goalssourcestopic
Which characteristics should a text have to be relevant? Check all that apply.It should be believable.It should be current.It should be distinctive.It should be new.It should be topical.
Word choice in an argumentative essay should be
Read the scenario.After the research project was assigned and Charlie decided on his topic, he became overwhelmed. He feels disorganized and worried that he will never finish his project by the due date.
Which is an advantage that video and writing share?
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When working on a research project, the focus of the research should be based on
The image shows various objects.

When it comes to research goals, students should be able to explain how they are going to
Which type of organization has a website ending in .org?
Which citation format is correct if a student is quoting from an article entitled “We the People” that is published on a website and has no author information?
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