GRE作业1

Q1:Although some skeptics points to Arctic places such as the high latitudes of Greenland, where temperatures seem to have fallen, a recent scientific report concludes that in recent decades average temperatures have increased faster in the Arctic than elsewhere. Scientists have long suspected that several factors lead to greater temperature swings at Earths polar regions than elsewhere. First, most of the Arctic is covered in snow and ice, which are highly reflective; if snow and ice melt, the exposed soil, which absorbs heat, serves to accelerate warming. Second, the polar atmosphere is thin, so little energy is required to warm it. Third, less solar energy is lost in evaporation at the frigid poles than in the tropics.

Q2:An Irish newspaper editorial encouraging women to participate in the non-importation movement launched in Ireland in 1779 appears consistent with a perception that the political use of the consumer boycott originated in North America and spread eastwards across the Atlantic to Ireland. This is a view that most historians have concurred with. For example, T.H. Breen argued that the consumer boycott was a brilliantly original American invention. Breen did acknowledge that a few isolated boycotts may have taken place in other countries. However, Mary ODowd argues that from the late seventeenth century, Irish political discourse advocated for the nonconsumption of imported goods and support for home manufactures by women in ways that were strikingly similar to those used later in North America.

Q3:Biologists have long debated about whether egg production in birds is biologically highly costly, some theorizing that egg production is energetically or nutritionally demanding. Lack, however,suggested that clutch size—the number of eggs a bird lays per breeding cycle—is far below the potential limit of egg production. He suggested that clutch size had instead evolved in relation to the number of young that the parents could successfully rear. Subsequently, most studies focused on limitations operating during chick rearing, particularly among altricial species (species in which the parents feed their young in the nest). Lack later recognized that in precocial species (species in which young feed themselves), clutch size might be explained by different factors—the availability of food for egg-laying females, for example.