Most bird species build a new nest each breeding season, but bald eagles often return to the same nest for many years, adding fresh sticks each time. Over decades, some eagle nests have become ______ enough to weigh more than a ton.

Every summer, Linh's grandfather planted far more melons than the family could eat. When neighbors stopped by the garden, he filled their arms with fruit and waved away their thanks. Linh once asked why he worked so hard for melons he gave away. "A garden," he said, "is for the people who walk past it, too."

Poison dart frogs live in the rainforests of Central and South America. The bright colors of these small frogs ______ predators that the frogs are dangerous to eat, so most animals leave them alone.

Tea was first grown in China thousands of years ago, where it was used both as a medicine and as a daily drink. ______ the plant was carried to other regions, including Japan, India, and Vietnam.

The following text is from Christina Rossetti's 1872 poem "Who Has Seen the Wind?"

Who has seen the wind?
Neither I nor you:
But when the leaves hang trembling,
The wind is passing through.

A town library recorded how many books were borrowed in four categories during one month.

Category	Books borrowed
Science	420
History	310
Fiction	680
Poetry	90

The librarian claims that fiction was the most popular category that month and was borrowed more than twice as often as history.

In 1953, Edmund Hillary of New Zealand and Tenzing Norgay of Nepal became the first climbers confirmed to have reached the summit of Mount ______ the world's highest mountain above sea level.

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

• The Mekong is one of the longest rivers in Asia.
• It flows through six countries: China, Myanmar, Laos, Thailand, Cambodia, and Vietnam.
• Millions of people rely on the river for fishing and farming.

The student wants to emphasize the river's importance to people.

Early critics dismissed the architect's design as impractical, but engineers later found that its curved roof shed rainwater more efficiently than flat roofs did. The design's success ______ the critics' assumption that unusual shapes must sacrifice function.

Researchers compared two groups of tomato plants grown in the same greenhouse. Plants growing next to a row of flowering marigolds had far fewer insect pests than plants grown away from the marigolds, even though both groups received the same water, soil, and light. This finding suggests that ______

The museum's newest exhibit features objects from daily life in ancient Rome: oil lamps, coins, and ______ visitors can even handle replicas of a few of the coins.

Many people assume that deserts are nearly empty of life. ______ the Sonoran Desert, which stretches across parts of the United States and Mexico, supports around 2,000 species of plants, along with many reptiles, birds, and mammals.

Text 1
Some historians argue that the printing press spread quickly across fifteenth-century Europe mainly because printed books were cheaper to produce than handwritten ones.

Text 2
Other historians note that cost was only part of the story. Printers often opened shops years earlier in cities with universities than in cities without them, which suggests that demand from scholars also shaped where printing spread.

In a short story set in the city of Huế, the narrator says that her older brother, Tâm, rarely showed his feelings openly, even during difficult moments.

The storm had overturned their small boat late in the afternoon. By the time the rescue boat arrived, the two fishermen ______ on the overturned hull for nearly six hours, waving their shirts to attract attention.

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

• Phở is a Vietnamese noodle soup.
• It is usually made with beef or chicken broth, rice noodles, and fresh herbs.
• The dish became popular in northern Vietnam in the early twentieth century.
• Today, phở is served in restaurants around the world.

The student wants to describe phở to an audience unfamiliar with the dish.

The biologist's report was notably ______: rather than claiming that the newly described beetle lived only on the island, she stated simply that it had not yet been found anywhere else.

Ice cores drilled from glaciers contain tiny bubbles of air that were trapped as snow was compressed into ice. Because each layer of ice forms in a particular year, scientists can analyze the gases in a layer's bubbles to learn about the atmosphere at that time. In places where the ice has partly melted and refrozen, however, the layers can mix. As a result, measurements from such places ______

After months of meetings, the education committee finally completed its review. The committee's list of recommendations, which drew on surveys from more than forty schools, ______ to be published next spring.

For decades, astronomers assumed that planets could form only around stars similar to the Sun. Observations of distant systems, ______ have revealed planets orbiting red dwarfs, stars that are far smaller and dimmer than the Sun.

The house on Lý Thường Kiệt Street had been empty for years, and the town had decided it was haunted. Children crossed the road to avoid it. But Mrs. Phan, who moved in that spring, simply washed the windows, painted the door a cheerful yellow, and set a pot of marigolds on the step. By summer, children were knocking to ask whether she needed help in the garden.

A researcher surveyed visitors to a national park about how they traveled there, before and after the park began a shuttle-bus program in 2019.

Year	Car	Bus	Bicycle
2018	72%	20%	8%
2023	61%	27%	12%

The researcher concludes that the shuttle-bus program may have encouraged some visitors to switch from driving to other ways of traveling.

Marie Curie, who won Nobel Prizes in both physics and chemistry, kept detailed records of her experiments. Her laboratory notebooks are still stored in lead-lined ______ more than a century after she used them, they remain radioactive.

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

• Ocean "dead zones" are areas with too little oxygen to support most marine life.
• A major cause is fertilizer runoff from farms, which feeds large blooms of algae.
• When the algae die and decompose, the process uses up oxygen in the water.
• Some farmers reduce runoff by planting strips of vegetation along streams.

The student wants to explain how farming practices can lead to dead zones.