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

• The Azores is a group of islands about 870 miles off the coast of Portugal.
• Historians have long believed that in the fifteenth century Portuguese mariners were the first humans to populate the Azores.
• A 2015 study coauthored by Sofia Gabriel and Maria da Luz Mathias found that Vikings from Scandinavia may have populated the Azores as early as the ninth century.
• The researchers found a genetic connection between house mice in the Azores and house mice in Scandinavia.
• House mice may have traveled from Scandinavia to the Azores on Viking ships.

Samuel Coleridge-Taylor was a prominent classical music composer from England who toured the US three times in the early 1900s. The child of a West African father and an English mother, Coleridge-Taylor emphasized his mixed-race ancestry. For example, he referred to himself as Anglo-African. ______blank he incorporated the sounds of traditional African music into his classical music compositions.

In a heated debate in biogeography, the field is divided between dispersalists and vicariancists. ______blank there are those who argue that dispersal is the most crucial determining factor in a species’ distribution, and those who insist that vicariance (separation due to geographic barriers) is. Biogeographer Isabel Sanmartín counts herself among neither.

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

• Marine biologist Camille Jazmin Gaynus studies coral reefs.
• Coral reefs are vital underwater ecosystems that provide habitats to 25% of all marine species.
• Reefs can include up to 8,000 species of fish, such as toadfish, seahorses, and clown triggerfish.
• The Amazon Reef is a coral reef in Brazil.
• It is one of the largest known reefs in the world.

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

• Sam Maloof (1916–2009) was an American woodworker and furniture designer.
• He was the son of Lebanese immigrants.
• He received a “genius grant” from the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation in 1985.
• The Museum of Fine Arts in Boston, Massachusetts, owns a rocking chair that Maloof made from walnut wood.
• The armrests and the seat of the chair are sleek and contoured, and the back consists of seven spindle-like slats.

Researchers believe that pieces of hull found off Oregon’s coast are from a Spanish cargo ship that was lost in 1697. Stories passed down among the area’s Confederated Tribes of Siletz Indians support this belief. ______blank Siletz stories describe how blocks of beeswax, an item the ship had been carrying, began washing ashore after the ship was lost. 

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

• John Carver was one of the 41 signatories of the Mayflower Compact.
• The Mayflower Compact was a legal agreement among the pilgrims that immigrated to Plymouth Colony.
• It was created in 1620 to establish a common government.
• It states that the pilgrims who signed it wanted to “plant the first colony in the northern parts of Virginia” under King James.
• Carver became the first governor of Plymouth Colony.

Neuroscientist Karen Konkoly wanted to determine whether individuals can understand and respond to questions during REM sleep. She first taught volunteers eye movements they would use to respond to basic math problems while asleep (a single left-right eye movement indicated the number one). ______blank she attached electrodes to the volunteers’ faces to record their eye movements during sleep.

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

• The Philadelphia and Lancaster Turnpike was a road built between 1792 and 1794.
• It was the first private turnpike in the United States.
• It connected the cities of Philadelphia and Lancaster in the state of Pennsylvania.
• It was sixty-two miles long.

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

• In 2013, paleontology professor Hesham Sallam and his students from Mansoura University in Egypt made a discovery.
• The team found a partial dinosaur skeleton at a site in Egypt’s Dakhla Oasis.
• The skeleton belonged to a dinosaur species that lived approximately 80 million years ago.
• The new species was named Mansourasaurus to recognize the team that discovered it.

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

• As engineered structures, many bird nests are uniquely flexible yet cohesive.
• A research team led by Yashraj Bhosale wanted to better understand the mechanics behind these structural properties.
• Bhosale’s team used laboratory models that simulated the arrangement of flexible sticks into nest-like structures.
• The researchers analyzed the points where sticks touched one another.
• When pressure was applied to the model nests, the number of contact points between the sticks increased, making the structures stiffer.

In 1815, while in exile in Jamaica, Venezuelan revolutionary Simón Bolívar penned a letter praising England’s republican government and expressing hope that Latin American nations seeking independence from Spain might achieve something similar. The letter was addressed to a local merchant, Henry Cullen; ______blank though, Bolívar’s goal was to persuade political leaders from England and Europe to support his cause.

Before the 1847 introduction of the US postage stamp, the cost of postage was usually paid by the recipient of a letter rather than the sender, and recipients were not always able or willing to pay promptly. ______blank collecting this fee could be slow and arduous, and heaps of unpaid-for, undeliverable mail piled up in post offices.

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

• Jordan Bennett is a Mi’Kmaq visual artist.
• The Mi’Kmaq are a First Nations people in North America.
• Bennett’s paintings pay homage to traditional Mi’Kmaq craftsmanship and have been displayed in over 75 exhibitions.
• His 2017 exhibition Wije’wi was held at the Grenfell Art Gallery.
• His 2018 exhibition Ketu’elmita’jik was held at the Art Gallery of Nova Scotia.

In 2019, researcher Patricia Jurado Gonzalez and food historian Nawal Nasrallah prepared a stew from a 4,000-year-old recipe found on a Mesopotamian clay tablet. When they tasted the dish, known as pašrūtum (“unwinding”), they found that it had a mild taste and inspired a sense of calm. ______blank the researchers, knowing that dishes were sometimes named after their intended effects, theorized that the dish’s name, “unwinding,” referred to its function: to help ancient diners relax.