Researchers placed a slime mold In the middle of a map of Spain and Portugal with pieces of food on the largest cities. To reach the food, the slime mold grew a network of tentacles nearly identical to the network pattern of the actual highway system in Spain and Portugal. On this basis, highway planners in another nation proposed to raise the efficiency of their nation's new highway system by using similar mapping technique and following the routes found by the slime mold.
The highway planners’ proposal relies on which of the following assumptions?
A Most other slime mold species form networks similar to that formed by the slime mold in the researchers’ experiment.
B At least some highway routes in Spain and Portugal were planned using the slime-mold mapping technique.
C No highway planning techniques other than the slime mold mapping technique is as likely to maximize the efficiency of the new highway system.
D The highway system connecting the largest cities in Spain and Portugal is relatively efficient.
E In all similar experiments using maps of other regions, slime molds have grown tentacles closely matching actual highway systems.
A preliminary announcement from the government of the Republic of Bilong indicated that the country’s year-to-date trade deficit dropped again last month. In fact, according to a government spokesperson, last month was the third month in a row that Bilong’s exports were substantially greater in value than its imports. The government has not yet released any actual figures, but clearly the trend reported indicates that government efforts to promote Bilong’s export trade are finally bearing fruit.
Which of the following is an assumption on which the argument depends?
(A) There has not been a sharp contraction in the total value of goods imported into Bilong in recent months.
(B) There has been no lessening in recent months in the government’s efforts to promote exports.
(C) The government’s efforts to promote export trade did not lead Bilong’s exporters to reduce prices in order to achieve a higher volume of exports.
(D) Bilong’s government is able to discern broad trends in foreign trade long before actual figures are available.
(E) There has been no significant shift in Bilong’s exports from one category of exported goods to another in recent months.