GRE Verbal Section 81- Section 88

自测

latent

portentous

codification

cursory

somatic

GRE Verbal Section 71- Section 80

自测

shore up

vitiate

introverted

extroverted

beneficiary

GRE Verbal Section 60- Section 70

自测

brocade

cohesive

override

prolific

GRE Verbal Section 1- Section 50

Glossary Session 1- Session 10

自测

ravage

quarantine

quiescence

decimate

abeyance

evasive

congenial

melancholy

GRE Verbal Section 51- Section 60

自测

hunch

pictorial

consolidation

calamity

aberrant

15-2

Mycorrhizal fungi (mycorrhizal fungi: 菌根真菌) infect more plants than do any other fungi and are necessary for many plants to thrive, but they have escaped widespread investigation until recently for two reasons. First, the symbiotic association is so well-balanced that the roots of host plants show no damage even when densely infected. Second, the fungi cannot as yet (as yet: adv.至今) be cultivated in the absence of a living root. Despite these difficulties, there has been important new work that suggests that this symbiotic association can be harnessed to achieve more economical use of costly superphosphate fertilizer (superphosphate fertilizer: 过磷酸钙肥料) and to permit better exploitation of cheaper, less soluble rock phosphate. Mycorrhizal benefits are not limited to improved phosphate uptake in host plants. In legumes, mycorrhizal inoculation has increased nitrogen fixation beyond levels achieved by adding phosphate fertilizer (phosphate fertilizer: 磷肥(料)) alone. Certain symbiotic associations also increase the host plant’s resistance to harmful root fungi. Whether this resistance results from exclusion of harmful fungi through competition for sites, from metabolic change involving antibiotic production, or from increased vigor is undetermined.

15-1

All of Francoise Duparc’s surviving paintings blend portraiture and genre. Her subjects appear to be acquaintances whom she has asked to pose; she has captured both their self-consciousness and the spontaneity of their everyday activities, the depiction of which characterizes genre painting. But genre painting, especially when it portrayed members of the humblest classes, was never popular in eighteenth-century France. The Le Nain brothers and Georges de La Tour, who also chose such themes, were largely ignored. Their present high standing is due to a different, more democratic political climate and to different aesthetic values: we no longer require artists to provide ideal images of humanity for our moral edification but rather regard such idealization as a falsification of the truth. Duparc gives no improving message and discreetly refrains from judging her subjects. In brief, her works neither elevate nor instruct. This restraint largely explains her lack of popular success during her lifetime, even if her talent did not go completely unrecognized by her eighteenth-century French contemporaries.