Some tests present you with a reading selection and then ask you to answer questions about it. Often, these tests measure reading comprehension and the ability to draw inferences. Follow these tips to score well on reading-comprehension questions:
Our Dog-Help-Dog World
Some people see nature as all hungry mouths—a dog-eat-dog world driven by fierce competition for scarce resources. That’s not the whole story, though. In fact, the most successful life forms place a premium on collaboration.
Each cell in our bodies has two distinct types of DNA—nuclear and mitochondrial. That’s because the mitochondria in our cells are basically energy-generating bacteria that collaborate with the larger cell for mutual benefit. At the cellular level, each of us is a collaboration. And collaborative cells (eukaryotes) out-compete cells that work alone (prokaryotes).
The trick of collaboration also works between cells. Some of the simplest multicellular life forms are basically just tubes set up to bring food in one end and send waste out the other. By working together, individual cells benefit, and the collaborative as a whole out-competes cells that go solo.
Higher organisms introduce a form of collaboration called specialization. A single fertilized egg divides and divides and divides, and the resultant cells take on specific jobs to benefit the whole. They become the cells that make up hearts, lungs, brains, kidneys, and so on. Each of us is a collaboration of trillions of cells.
