SNAP Reading Comprehension Questions

Instructions

Read the following passage and answer the questions that follow.
ASSOCIATED PRESS
San Francisco August 13 2018
Google wants to know where you go so badly that it records your movements even when you explicitly tell it not to. An Associated Press investigation found that many Google services on Android devices and iPhones store your location data even if you've used privacy settings that say they will prevent it from doing so. Computer science researchers at Princeton confirmed these ﬁndings at the AP's request. For the most part, Google is upfront about asking permission to use your location information. An app like Google Maps will remind you to allow access to location if you use it for navigating. If you agree to let it record your location over time, Google Maps will display that history for you in a "timeline" that maps out your daily movements. Storing your minute-by—minute travels carries privacy risks and has been used by police to determine the location of suspects - such as a warrant that police in North Carolina, served on Google last year to ﬁnd devices near a murder scene. So the company will let you "pause' a setting called Location History. Google says this will prevent the company from remembering where you have been. Google’s support page on the subject states. "You can turn off Location History at any time. With Location History off, the places you go are no longer stored”. That isn’t true. Even with Location History paused, some Google apps automatically store time — stamped location data without asking. For example, Google stores a snapshot of where you are when you merely open its Maps app. Automatic daily weather updates on Android phones pinpoint roughly where you are. And some searches that have nothing to do with location, like “chocolate chip cookies" or "kids science kits," pinpoint your precise latitude and longitude — accurate to the square foot and save it to the Google account. The privacy issue affects some two billion users of devices that run Google's Android operating software and hundreds of millions of world wide iPhone users who rely on Google for maps or search. Storing location data in violation of a user’s preferences is wrong, said Ionathon Mayer, a Princeton computer scientist. A researcher from Mayer’s lab conﬁrmed the AP's ﬁndings; the AP conducted its own tests on several iPhones that found the same behaviour. “If you are going to allow users to turn off something called ‘Location History‘, then all the places where you maintain ‘Location History' should be turned off," Mayer said. "That seems like a pretty straightforward position to have”. Google says it is being perfectly clear. "There are a number of different ways that Google may use location to improve people’s experience, including: Location History, Web and App activity and through device-level Location Services" a Google spokesperson said. "We provide clear descriptions of these tools, and robust controls, so people can turn them on and off, and delete their histories at any time." To stop Google from saving these location markers, the company says, users can turn off another setting, one that does not speciﬁcally reference location information. Called "Web and App activity" and enabled by default, that setting stores a variety of information from Google apps and websites to your Google account. When paused, it will prevent activity on any device from being saved to your account But leaving "Web and App activity” on and turning "Location History" off only prevents Google from adding your movements to the "timeline", its visualization of your daily travels. It does not stop Google’s collection of other location markers.

Question 1

An appropriate title to this passage would be:

Android iPhones and Google

Google snapshot

Google tracks you, with or without your permission

Smart phones are a boon

Instructions

Question 2

For the most part, Google is upfront about asking permission to use your location information. This sentence means:

Google is not secretive about recording your movements

Google is tracking your movements even if you don't want it to

Google is quite candid about asking you to allow it to show you where you are located

None of the option is correct

Instructions

Question 3

When the author says : ‘That isn't true' to Google's claim that "you can turn off Location History at any time....and the places you go are no longer stored" ...he means

Although google declares that the places are no longer stored, they automatically store time stamped location data without asking.

Google asks permission every time it stores data

Google tracks your movements and tells you about it

The author is paranoid.

Instructions

Question 4

How many users does the privacy issue affect?

Half the world population

Two billion users and hundreds of millions of iPhone users

Data not available

Everyone who owns a phone

Instructions

Question 5

What does the author mean when he says: ‘It does not stop Google’s collection of other location markers?

Google only informs you of your location

If Location history is off, Google does not collect the location markers

If you leave 'Web and App Activity‘ on and turn ‘Location History’ off, Google can still collect the location markers

None of the option is correct

Instructions

Read the following passage and answer the questions that follow.

Frederic Bastiat, who was that rarest of creatures, a French free-market economist, wrote to this newspaper in 1846 to express a noble and romantic hope: ”May all the nations soon throw down the barriers which separate them." Those words were echoed 125 years later by the call of John Lennon, who was not an economist but a rather successful global capitalist, to "imagine there's no countries”. As he said in his 1971 song. it isn't hard to do. But despite the spectacular rise in living standards that has occurred as barriers between nations have fallen, and despite the resulting escape from poverty by hundreds of millions of people in those places that have joined the world economy, it is still hard to convince publics and politicians of the merits of openness. Now, once again, a queue is forming to denounce openness—i.e, globalisation. It is putting at risk the next big advance in trade liberalisation and the next big reduction in poverty in the developing countries. The world will find out, to some extent, next month when ministers from the 148 countries in the WTO meet in Hong Kong. The last time they gathered for such a crucial meeting was in September 2003 in Cancun, and the result was a shambles. There was a bitter row between rich countries and poor ones, and the meeting broke up in acrimony. At that stage, however, there was still plenty of time to repair the damage. For in effect, the deadline for the Doha round comes in June 2007, when the trade-negotiating authority granted by Congress to President Bush expires. But, although that leaves more than a year and a half after Hong Kong, the complexity of a negotiation involving 148 countries and scores of highly technical issues means that the deal really needs to be done during 2006, with the political framework for it set early on—which essentially means in Hong Kong. The case for selﬁsh generosity Trade- liberalisation rounds are arcane affairs about which free-traders are often thought to cry wolf. The previous talks, known as the Uruguay round, went through lots of brinkmanship and delays before they were completed. The result was still disappointing in many ways, especially to developing countries, and yet, since the round's completion in 1993, the world economy has grown lustily and the biggest developing countries, China, India and Brazil, have all burst on to the global trading scene. Would the world really be hurt if the EU merely refuses to expose its farmers to more competition? The likeliest outcome both from the Hong Kong meeting and the eventual Doha agreement is a compromise—as always. The European position is feeble but not risible, for it has offered an overall average cut in its farm tariffs of 39%, up from 25% only a month ago, though with rather a lot of loop holes that could severely limit the benefits. France, and other European farm protectionists, may prove more ﬂexible than they currently imply: this is hardly the ﬁrst time they have promised to man the barricades shortly before striking a deal. Yet though some sort of fudge in Hong Kong must be likely, with the Americans lowering their ambition and the Europeans raising theirs a little, such an outcome would still represent both a missed opportunity and a risk. The missed opportunity is that Doha has offered the ﬁrst proper chance to involve developing countries in trade negotiations—they now make up two- thirds of the WTO members—but also thereby to use a full exchange of agricultural, industrial and service liberalisations to make a big advance in free trade that could benefit a wide range of countries. Some of that progress may still be made, even in a fudged deal: Brazil, for example, stands to beneﬁt hugely from freer trade in agriculture, so it should be willing to promote other concessions in return. India is reluctant to cut its own farm tariffs but has a big interest in liberalising trade in services, wanting more freedom in everything from ﬁnance to health care to entertainment But if the rich world could gird itself to be more ambitious on agriculture, the gains would be even greater: help for the poorest countries, making the rich look generous; better access to the biggest and richest developing countries for western companies; and a rise in global income in a decade's time of $300 billion a year (says the World Bank), which would thus help everyone. The risk is that failure to agree on a new wave of openness during a period [the past two years) in which the world economy has been growing at its fastest for three decades, with more countries sharing in that growth than ever before, will set a sour political note for what may well be tougher times ahead. A turn away from trade liberalisation just ahead of an American recession, say, or a Chinese economic slowdown, could open up a chance not just for a slowdown in progress but for a rollback Currently, for example, the Schumer bill to put a penal tariff on Chinese goods looks unlikely to pass. If American unemployment were rising and world trade talks had turned acrimonious, that might change. So might the political wind in many developing countries. If so, that would be a tragedy for the whole world. Although the case for reducing poverty by sending more aid to the poorest countries has some merit, the experience of China, South Korea, Chile and India shows that the much better and more powerful way to deal with poverty is to use the solution that worked in the past in America, western Europe and japan: open, trading economies, exploiting the full infrastructure of capitalism (including ﬁnancial services) amid a rule of law provided by government In other words, globalisation. To paraphrase Samuel Johnson, anyone who is tired of that, is tired of life.

Question 6

According to the article, why is Frederic Bastiat called the "rarest of creatures"?

Because he was a German industrialist

Because he was a French who promoted a free market economy

Because he wrote to a newspaper

Because he was a friend of john Lennon

Instructions

Read the following passage and answer the questions that follow.

Question 7

Who was John Lennon?

A writer

An economist

A singer

An industrialist

Instructions

Read the following passage and answer the questions that follow.

Question 8

According to the article, the better way to deal with poverty is:

By giving more aid to poor countries

By reducing interest rates

By moving away from democracy

By exploiting the full infrastructure of capitalism

Instructions

Read the following passage and answer the questions that follow.

Question 9

"Trade-liberalisation rounds are arcane affairs". The adjective arcane means:

Well known

International

lncomprehensible

Transparent

Instructions

Read the following passage and answer the questions that follow.

Question 10

As per the article, India’s position with respect to the talks is:

Reduced taxes for agriculture and liberalisation for manufacturing sector

Reduced taxes for agriculture and liberalisation for services sector

Higher tariff for agriculture and liberalisation for manufacturing sector

Higher tariff for agriculture and liberalisation for services sector

Instructions

Read the following passage and answer the questions:

"There are several factors that contribute to wisdom. Of these I should put first a sense of proportion; the capacity to take account of all the important factors in a problem and to attach to each its due weight. This has become more difficult than it used to be owing to the extent and complexity of the specialized knowledge required of various kinds of technicians. Suppose, for example, that you are engaged in research in scientific medicine. The work is difficult and is likely to absorb the whole of your intellectual energy. You have no time to consider the effect which your discoveries or invention may have outside the field of medicine. You succeed (let us say), as modern medicine has succeeded, in enormously lowering the infant death-rate, not only in Europe and America, but also in Asia and Africa. This has the entirely unintended result of making the food supply inadequate and lowering the standard of life in the most populous parts of the world. To take aneven more spectacular example, which is in everybody's mind at the present time- you study the composition of the atom from a disinterested desire for knowledge and incidentally place in the hands of powerful lunatics the means of destroying the human race. In such ways the pursuit of knowledge may become harmful unless it is combined with wisdom; and wisdom in the sense of comprehensive vision is not necessarily present in specialists in the pursuit of knowledge. Comprehensiveness alone, however, is not enough to constitute wisdom. There must be, also, certain awareness of ends of human life. This may be illustrated by the study of history. Many eminent historians have done more harm than good because they viewed facts through the distorting medium of their own passions. Hegel had a philosophy of history which did not suffer from any lack of comprehensiveness, since it started from earliest time and continued into an indefinite future. But the chief lesson of history which he sought to inculcate was that from the year A.D. 400 down to his own time, Germany had been the most important nation and the standard bearer of progress in the world. Perhaps one could stretch the comprehensiveness that constitutes wisdom to include not only intellect but also feeling. It is by no means uncommon to find men/ women whose knowledge is wide but those feelings are narrow. Such men / women lack what I am calling wisdom. I think the essence of wisdom is emancipation, as far as possible, from the tyranny of the here and the now. We cannot help the egoism of our senses. Sight, sound and touch are bound up with our own bodies and cannot be made impersonal. Our emotions start similarly from ourselves. An infant feels hunger or discomfort; gradually with the years his horizon widens, and, in proportion as his thoughts and feelings become less personal and less concerned with his own physical states, he achieves growing wisdom. This is of course a matter of degree. No one can view the world with complete impartiality; however, it is possible to make a continual approach towards impartiality, on the one hand, by knowing things somewhat remote in time or space, and, on the other hand, by giving to such things their due weight in our feelings. It is this approach towards impartiality that constitutes growth in wisdom. Perhaps in this sense the wisdom can be taught. I think that this teaching should have a larger intellectual element than has been customary in what has been thought of as moral instruction. I think that the disastrous result of hatred and narrow mindedness to those who fed them can be pointed out incidentally in the course of giving knowledge. Knowledge and morals ought not to be too much separated. It is true that the kind of specialized knowledge which is required for various kinds of skills has very little to do with wisdom. But it should be supplemented in education by wider surveys calculated to put it in its place in the totality of human activities. Even the best technicians should also be good citizens, i.e. citizens of the world and not of any one nation. With every increase of knowledge and skill, wisdom becomes more necessary for every such increase augments our capacity of realizing our purposes, and therefore augments our capacity for evil, if our purposes are unwise. The world needs wisdom as it has never needed it before; and if knowledge continues to increase, the world will need wisdom in the future even more than it does now.

Question 1

According to the author what results in growth of wisdom ?

Widening Knowledge and narrowing feelings

Acquiring specialized knowledge which is required for various kinds of skills

Viewing the world with complete impartiality

None of the above

Instructions

Read the following passage and answer the questions:

Question 2

According to the author the essence of wisdom is ______

Deliverance from the oppression of here and now

Subduing from the oppression of here and now

Captivity from the oppression of here and now

All of the above

Instructions

Read the following passage and answer the questions:

Question 3

What according to the author is the relationship between knowledge and wisdom ?

As human wisdom increases there is increase in knowledge created

As knowledge keeps on increasing there is lesser need of wisdom

As knowledge keeps on increasing there is a higher need for wisdom

As growth in wisdom stops, knowledge creation stagnates.

Instructions

Read the following passage and answer the questions:

Question 4

The example used by the author to explain the ways in which the pursuit of knowledge can be harmful, unless combined with wisdom, is

the space mission

medicine that lowers infant mortality across the world.

the progress of Germany.

none of the above.

Instructions

Read the following passage and answer the questions:

Question 5

What factors according to the author, contribute to wisdom ?

a sense of proportion, giving knowledge, study of history, emancipation

a sense of proportion, dignity, knowledge, skill

comprehensiveness, a sense of proportion, awareness of the end of human life, emancipation from the tyranny of the present

none of the above.

Instructions

Read the following Passage and answer the questions below:

A TED talk (the acronym stands for Technology, Entertainment, and Design) is one of the routes to academic stardom that didn’t exist a decade ago. (The 30th anniversary celebration aside, curators only began posting fame-making free online videos in 2006.) Although TED plays an inordinate role in setting the tone for how ideas are conveyed—not only because of the reach of its videos but also through spinoffs like regional “TEDx” events and the TED Radio Hour, one of the few places nonpolicy intellectuals get substantial on-air time—it’s just one of a number of platforms that are changing the ecology of academic celebrity. These include similar ideas-in-nuggets conclaves, such as the Aspen Ideas Festival and PopTech, along with huge online courses and—yes, still—blogs. These new, or at least newish, forms are upending traditional hierarchies of academic visibility and helping to change which ideas gain purchase in the public discourse. In a famous essay, “The Unbearable Ugliness of Volvos,” first published in the early 90s, the literary scholar Stanley Fish wrote that “the flourishing of the lecture circuit has brought with it new sources of extra income ... [and] an ever-growing list of stages on which to showcase one’s talents, and geometric increase in the availability of the commodities for which academics yearn, attention, applause, fame, and ultimately, adulation of a kind usually reserved for the icons of popular culture.” Fish was Exhibit A among professors taking advantage of such trends, and his trailblazing as a lit-crit celebrity inspired the dapper, globe-trotting lit theory operator Morris Zapp, a character in David Lodge’s academic satire Small World. But the world Fish was describing, where no one could live-tweet the lectures, let alone post the talks for worldwide distribution, now seems sepiatoned. “If David Lodge’s Morris Zapp were alive and kicking today,” observes John Holbo, an associate professor of philosophy at the National University of Singapore, and blogger at Crooked Timber and the Valve, “he’d be giving a TED talk, not an MLA talk. Which is to say: He wouldn’t be doing Theory. He probably wouldn't be in an English department.

Question 1

The phrase “sepia-toned” implies :

The end of an era.

The way things were.

The brown pigment.

The time bound nature of things

The decadence of ideas.

Instructions

Read the following Passage and answer the questions below:

Question 2

Which of the following cannot be inferred from the passage?

TED is the future

Theory can no longer be counted on.

Philosophy is best understood through demos.

TED is irreplaceable

Instructions

Read the following Passage and answer the questions below:

Question 3

The passage is mainly about:

Technology, Entertainment, and Design

Turning over the conventional.

Gaining popular adulation.

Changing presentations.

Worldwide metamorphosis

Instructions

Read the following Passage and answer the questions below:

The World Trade Organisation (WTO) was created in the early 1990s as a component of the Uruguay Round negotiation. However, it could have been
negotiated as part of the Tokyo Round of the 1970's, since that negotiation was an attempt at a ‘constitutional reform’ of the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT). Or it could have been put off to the future, as the US government wanted. What factors led to the creation of the WTO in the early 1990s? One factor was the pattern of multilateral bargaining that developed late in the Uruguay Round. Like all complex international agreements, the WTO was a product of a series of trade-offs between principal actors and groups. For the United States, which did not want a new organization, the dispute settlement part of the WTO package achieved its long-standing goal of a more effective and more legal dispute settlement system.

For the Europeans, who by the 1990s had come to view GATT dispute settlement less in political terms and more as a regime of legal obligations, the WTO package was acceptable as a means to discipline the resort to unilateral measures by the United States. Countries like Canada and other middle and smaller trading partners were attracted by the expansion of a rules based system and by the symbolic value of a trade organization, both of which inherently support the weak against the strong. The developing countries were attracted due to the provisions banning unilateral measures. Finally, and perhaps most important, many countries at the Uruguay Round came to put a higher priority on the export gains than on the import losses that the negotiation would produce, and they came to associate the WTO and a rules-based system with those gains. This reasoning replicated in many countries - was contained in U.S. Ambassador Kantor’s defense of the WTO, and it amounted to a recognition that international
trade and its benefits cannot be enjoyed unless trading nations accept the discipline of a negotiated rules-based environment.

A second factor in the creation of the WTO was pressure from lawyers and the legal process. The dispute settlement system of the WTO was seen as a victory of legalists over pragmatists but the matter went deeper than that. The GATT, and the WTO, are contract organizations based on rules, and it is inevitable that an organization created to further rules will in turn be influenced by the legal process. Robert Hudec has written of the ‘momentum of legal development’, but what is this precisely? Legal development can be defined as promotion of the technical legal values of consistency, clarity (or, certainty) and effectiveness; these are values that those responsible for administering any legal system will seek to maximize. As it played out in the WTO, consistency meant integrating under one roof the whole lot of separate agreements signed under GATT auspices; clarity meant removing ambiguities about the powers of contracting parties to make certain decisions or to undertake waivers; and
effectiveness meant eliminating exceptions arising out of grandfather-rights and resolving defects in dispute settlement procedures and institutional provisions.

Concern for these values is inherent in any rules based system of co-operation, since without these values, rules would be meaningless in the first place. Rules, therefore, create their own incentive for fulfillment. The momentum of legal development has occurred in other institutions besides the GATT, most notably in the European Union (EU).

Over the past two decades, the European Court of Justice (ECJ) has consistently rendered decisions that have expanded incrementally the EU’s internal market, in which the doctrine of ‘mutual recognition’ handed down in the case Cassis de Dijon was a key turning point. The Court is now widely recognized as a major player in European integration, even though arguably such a strong role was not originally envisaged in the Treaty of Rome, which initiated the current European Union. One means the Court used to expand integration was the ‘teleological method of interpretation’ whereby the actions of member states were evaluated against ‘the accomplishment of the most elementary community goals set forth in the Preamble to the [Rome] treaty.

The teleological method represents an effort to keep current policies consistent with stated goals, and it is analogous to the effort in GATT to keep contracting party trade practices consistent with stated rules. In both cases legal concerns and procedures are an independent force for further co-operation. In large part, the WTO was an exercise in consolidation. In the context of a trade negotiation that created a near-revolutionary expansion of international trade rules, the formation of the WTO was a deeply conservative act needed to ensure that the benefits of the new rules would not be lost. The WTO was all about institutional structure and dispute settlement, these are the concerns of conservatives and not revolutionaries, which is why lawyers and legalists took the lead on these issues. The WTO codified the GATT institutional practice that had developed by custom over three decades, and it incorporated a new dispute settlement system that was necessary to keep both old and new rules from becoming a sham. Both the international structure and the dispute settlement system were necessary to preserve and enhance the integrity of the multilateral trade regime that had been built incrementally from the 1940s to the 1990s.

Question 4

What could be the closest reason why the WTO was not formed in the 1970s?

The US government did not like it.

Important players did not find it in their best interest to do so.

Lawyers did not work for the dispute settlement system

The Tokyo round negotiations was an attempt at constitutional reform

Instructions

Read the following Passage and answer the questions below:

Question 5

The most likely reason for the acceptance of the WTO package by nations was that

it had the means to prevent the US from taking unilateral measures.

they recognized the need for a rule-based environment to protect the benefits of increased trade.

it settles disputes more legally and more effectively.

its rule-based system leads to export gains.

Instructions

Read the following Passage and answer the questions below:

Question 6

According to the passage, WTO promoted the technical legal values partly through

integrating under one roof the agreements signed under GATT.

rules that create their own incentive for fulfillment

grandfather-rights exceptions and defects in dispute settlement procedures.

ambiguities about the powers of contracting parties to make certain decisions.

Instructions

Read the following Passage and answer the questions below:

Question 7

In the method of interpretation of the European Court of Justice

current policies needed to be consistent with stated goals

contracting party trade practices needed to be consistent with stated rules.

enunciation of the most elementary community goals needed to be emphasized.

actions of member states needed to be evaluated against the stated community goals

Instructions

Read the following Passage and answer the questions below:

Question 8

In the statement ‘.... it amounted to a recognition that international trade and its benefits cannot be enjoyed unless trading nations accept the discipline of a negotiated rules-based environment’, ‘it’ refers to

Ambassador Kantor’s defence of the WTO

the higher priority on export gains placed by many countries at the Uruguay Round

the export gains many countries came to associate with a rule-based system

the provision of a rule-based system by the WTO.

Instructions

Read the following Passage and answer the questions below:

Question 9

The importance of Cassis de Dijon is that it

gave a new impetus to the momentum of legal development at the European Court of Justice.

resulted in a decision that expanded incrementally the EU’s internal market

strengthened the role of the Court more than envisaged in the Treaty of Rome.

led to a doctrine that was a key turning point in European integration.

Instructions

Read the following Passage carefully and answer the questions below:

A spectre is haunting the world, just as Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels wrote in the Communist Manifesto of 1848. This time, however, it is not the spectre of communism but that of neoliberalism. Just as Marx and Engels reported of ‘a holy alliance to exorcise this spectre,’ there is once again an alliance, whether holy or unholy, that has formed to chase the ghost of neoliberalism from the world stage. In any case, it is a curious alliance that has committed to fighting neoliberalism: Religious leaders and artists, environmental activists and globalisation critics, politicians of the left and the right as well as trade unionists, commentators and academics. They all share a passion to unmask neoliberalism
as an inhuman, anti-social, and potentially misanthropic ideology or as a cynical exercise by strangely anonymous forces that wish to exploit the world to their own advantage.

The members of this colourful alliance against neoliberalism are as united in their opposition to neoliberalism as they are diverse. This suggests that neoliberalism cannot be too clearly defined as a concept. Rather, it is a broad umbrella under which very different groups with various points of view can meet. In the church of anti-neoliberalism, there is a place for anyone who believes that neoliberalism stands in the way of reaching his or her political goals. This may also explain the lack of any clear and coherent definition of neoliberalism among its dissenters.

Yet the most curious characteristic of neoliberalism is the fact that these days hardly anyone self-identifies as a neoliberal. In former times, ideological debates were fought between, say, conservatives and socialists, collectivists and individualists. While there may not have been any other agreement between these opposing groups, at least they would have agreed about their respective identities. A socialist would not have felt offended by a conservative calling him a socialist and vice-versa. In present-day debates around neoliberalism, on the other hand, most accused of holding ‘neoliberal’ views would not accept being called ‘neoliberal.’ Either they would insist on being something else (whether it is ‘liberal,’ ‘classical liberal,’ or ‘libertarian’), or they would simply claim to be misunderstood by their opponents. In any case, scarcely anybody wants to be a ‘neoliberal’ any more. For example, in an online survey of the readers of Andrew Norton’s blog, out of more than 1,200 participants not a single person selfidentified with the term, while ‘classical liberal,’ ‘conservative,’ and ‘libertarian’ were strong responses. These are strange debates indeed when the enemy you are fighting claims he does not exist.

Question 1

According to the passage, the spectre, is being chased by all except which one of the following:

Religious leaders and artists

Environmental activists and globalisation critics.

Communists and socialists.

Politicians and trade unionists

Instructions

Read the following Passage carefully and answer the questions below:

Question 2

Why, according to the passage, is there an association against the phenomenon of neoliberalism?

Because they cannot face it alone

Because it is easy to collaborate against it.

Because they resent its spread.

Because they fear the misuse of the world.

Instructions

Read the following Passage carefully and answer the questions below:

Question 3

The author implies:

That neoliberalism defies conceptualization

That neoliberalism is vague

That neoliberalism has not been accepted

That neoliberalism has not been understood by people

Instructions

Read the following Passage carefully and answer the questions below:

Question 4

The word ‘libertarian’ used in the passage can be best substituted with

neoliberal

libertine- immoral

conservative

liberal- favouring individual liberty

Instructions

Read the following Passage carefully and answer the questions below:

In a famous essay, “The Unbearable Ugliness of Volvos,” first published in the early 90s, the literary scholar Stanley Fish wrote that “the flourishing of the lecture circuit has brought with it new sources of extra income ... [and] an ever-growing list of stages on which to showcase one’s talents, and geometric increase in the availability of the commodities for which academics yearn, attention, applause, fame, and ultimately, adulation of a kind usuallyreserved for the icons of popular culture.” Fish was Exhibit A among professors taking advantage of such trends, and his trailblazing as a lit-crit celebrity inspired the dapper, globe-trotting littheory operator Morris Zapp, a character in David Lodge’s academic satire Small World. But the world Fish was describing, where no one could live-tweet the lectures, let alone post the talks for worldwide distribution, now seems sepiatoned. “If David Lodge’s Morris Zapp were alive and kicking today,” observes John Holbo, an associate professor of philosophy at the National University of Singapore, and blogger at Crooked Timber and the Valve, “he’d be giving a TED talk, not an MLA talk. Which is to say: He wouldn’t be doing Theory. He probably wouldn’t be in an English department.”

Question 5

The passage is mainly about:

Technology, Entertainment, and Design

Turning over the conventional.

Gaining popular adulation.

Changing presentations

Instructions

Read the following Passage carefully and answer the questions below:

Question 6

The phrase “sepia-toned” implies:

The end of an era.

The way things were.

The brown pigment

The time bound nature of things.

Instructions

Read the following Passage carefully and answer the questions below:

Question 7

Which of the following cannot be inferred from the passage?

TED is the future

Theory can no longer be counted on

Philosophy is best understood through demos

TED is irreplaceable.

Instructions

Read the following passage and answer the questions that follow.
Passage:

D. H. Lawrence - 1885 - 1930: The Supreme Triumph For man, the vast marvel is to be alive. For man as for flower and beast and bird, the supreme triumph is to be most vividly, most perfectly alive. Whatever the unborn and the dead may know, they cannot know the beauty, the marvel of being alive in the flesh. The dead may look after the afterwards. But the magnificent here and now of life in the flesh is ours, and ours alone, and ours only for a time. We ought to dance with rapture, that we should be alive and in the flesh, and part of the living, incarnate cosmos. I am part of the sun as my eye is the part of me. That I am part of the earth my feet below know the perfectly, and my blood is part of the sea. My soul knows that I am a part of the human race, my soul is an inorganic part of the great human soul, as my spirit is a part of my nation. In my own very self, I am part of my family. There is nothing of me that is alone and absolute except my mind, and we shall find that the mind has no existence by itself, it is only the glitter of the sun on the surface of the waters. - Apocalypse, 1931.

Question 1

By triumph the author means-

sin

loss

sorrow

victory

Instructions

Read the following passage and answer the questions that follow.
Passage:

Question 2

When the dead look after the afterwards the living should look at life

forever

for some months

for only a short while

in the past

Instructions

Read the following passage and answer the questions that follow.
Passage:

Question 3

By rapture the author means an emotion involving great

trepidation

thrill

fear

joy

Instructions

Read the following passage and answer the questions that follow.
Passage:

Question 4

The tone of this passage is

social

moral

reflective

philosophical

Instructions

Read the following passage and answer the questions that follow.
Passage:

Question 5

The most suitable title for this passage would be -

The Surface of the Waters

My Mind

The Human Race

Alive and Kicking

Instructions

Read the passage and then determine the best choice for an answer from the questions given below. Base your choice on what this passage states directly or implies, not on any information you may have got from else where.

"The emancipation of women", James Joyce told one of his friends, "has caused the greatest revolution in our time."

Other modernists agree: Virginia Woolf, claiming that in a about 1910 "human character changed" and illustrating the new balance between the sexes, urged, "Read the 'Agamemon' and see whether your sympathies are not almost entirely with Clytemnestra". D.H. Lawrence wrote "perhaps the deepest fight for 200 years and more has been the fight for women's independence".

But if modernist writers considered women's revolt against men's domination as one of their "greatest" and "deepest" themes, only recently, perhaps in the past 15 years has literary criticism begun to catch up with it. Not that the images of sexual antagonism that abound in modern literature have gone unremarked - far from it. We are able to see in literary works the perspective we bring to them and now that women are enough to make a difference in reforming canons and interpreting literature, the landscapes of literary history and the features of individual books have begun to change.

Question 1

According to the passage, modernists are changing literary criticism by :

Noting instances of hostility between men and women

Seeing literature from fresh points of view

Studying the works of early twentieth-century writers

Reviewing books written by feminists

Instructions

"The emancipation of women", James Joyce told one of his friends, "has caused the greatest revolution in our time."

Question 2

The author quotes James Joyce, Virginia Woolf and D.H. Lawrence primarily in order to show that:

These were feminist writers

Although well-meaning, they were ineffectual

Before the twentieth century, there was little interest in women's literature

None of the above

Instructions

"The emancipation of women", James Joyce told one of his friends, "has caused the greatest revolution in our time."

Question 3

The author's attitude towards women's reformation of literary canons can best be described as one of:

Ambivalence

Antagonism

Indifference

Endorsement

Instructions

"The emancipation of women", James Joyce told one of his friends, "has caused the greatest revolution in our time."

Question 4

Which of the following titles best describes the contents of the passage?

Modernist Writers and the Search for Equality

The meaning of Literature from 1910 onwards

Transforming Literature

None of the options

Instructions

Read the passage carefully and answer within the context.

“A way to deal with frozen feelings”
Every child experiences all that happens around him with total awareness. In the first seven years the child's brain is like a sponge, taking in all sensory inputs and building his idea of his surroundings. As long as the environment is safe, the child learns with incredible speed. However, when the environment is scary or stressful, the child unlearns past learning just as rapidly.

In the early years of every child's life, whenever there is shock, violence, fear or pain, these intense emotions are imprinted deeply into memory. Whenever the same activity or situation is repeated, the nervous system and body subconsciously re-experience the memory of that trauma.

Any emotional situation that takes us out of the present and into the past means that whenever the same kind of emotion crops up later in our life we return to the past for our reference point. If that point was at age three, we find ourselves behaving like a three-year-old. We feel childish and we behave childishly. Our feelings are the cause of this 'glitch' in our learning process. We know we should be able to make a positive change, but that doesn't change anything.

The process of change need not be traumatic. We couldn't have done any better because we didn't know how to. But we should realise that was then and this is now! We can choose to choose again. It's up to us. It's our movie!

Question 1

The “Frozen Feelings” being talked about are about

negative childhood experiences

childhood learning patterns

inability to learn as an adult

none of the above.

Instructions

Read the passage carefully and answer within the context.

Question 2

A ‘glitch’ is

a ditch

uneasy emotions

sudden malfunction or breakdown

learning patterns

Instructions

Read the passage carefully and answer within the context.

Question 3

Identify the correct sentence, based on the paragraph

The process of change needs to be traumatic.

We feel childish and we behave childishly.

Both sentences are incorrect.

Both the sentences are correct.

Instructions

Answer the question based on the passage given below.

In September of 1929, traders experienced a lack of confidence in the stock market’s ability to continue its phenomenal rise. Prices fell. For many inexperienced investors, the drop produced a panic. They had all their money tied up in the market, and they were pressed to sell before the prices fell even lower. Sell orders were coming in so fast that the ticker tape at the New York Stock Exchange could not accommodate all the transactions.

To try to reestablish confidence in the market, a powerful group of New York bankers agreed to pool their funds and purchase stock above current market values. Although the buy orders were minimal, they were counting on their reputations to restore confidence on the part of the smaller investors, thereby affecting the number of sell orders. On Thursday, October 24, Richard Whitney, the Vice President of the New York Stock Exchange and a broker for the J.P. Morgan Company, made the effort on their behalf. Initially it appeared to have been successful, then, on the following Tuesday, the crash began again and accelerated. By 1932, stocks were worth only twenty percent of their value at the 1929 high. The results of the crash had extended into every aspect of the economy, causing a long and painful depression, referred to in American history as the
Great Depression.

Question 1

The New York bankers counted on -

Current market values

The number of sell orders

Confidence

Their reputation

Instructions

Answer the question based on the passage given below.

Question 2

The cause of downfall of share market was-

Inexperienced investors

Phenomenal decrease

Lack of confidence in stock market’s ability

Panic amongst investors

Instructions

Answer the question based on the passage given below.

Question 3

Choose the word in the passage that is an antonym of ‘minimal’

Negligible

Minimum

Maximal

Significant

Instructions

Answer the question based on the passage given below.

Rajendra K. Pachauri, head of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, is getting nightmares because of the Nano, Tata’s soon - to - be - launched Rs. One lakh car. Sunita Narain of the Centre for Science and Environment (CSE) says that it isn’t the Nano by itself but cars overall that give her nightmares. The villains in my nightmares are neither the Nano nor cars overall, but stupid government policies that subsidize and encourage pollution, adulteration and congestion.

Sanctimonious greens call the Nano disastrous because of its affordability - millions more will now clog roads and consume more fossil fuel. This is elitism parading as virtue. Elite greens own cars, but cannot stand the poorer masses becoming mobile, since the consequent congestion will eat into the time of the elite!

More logical would be a protest against big cars that use more space and fuel, or highly polluting old cars. Instead, green hypocrites aim at a new car with the lowest cost, best mileage and least emissions. The Nano will not burden us with too many cars. India has very few cars per person by world standards. London and New York have ultra-high car densities, yet have clearer air than Delhi. Our problem is too many bad
policies, not too many cars.

We subsidize vehicles on a gargantuan scale invisible to lay folk. Roads and flyovers cost crores to build and maintain, yet road use is free (save on a few toll roads). Traffic police and lights are costly, yet are provided free. These invisible subsidies starve cities of funds to expand roads and public transport. Land in cities now costs lakhs per square metre. Yet parking is free in the suburbs, and often costs just Rs.
10 day per day in city centres. A single parking space of 23 square meters occupies land worth Rs. 40 lakhs. A car occupies more space than an office desk, yet the desk space pays full commercial rent while parking space costs just about Rs. 10 per day.

Daily parking charges range from $30 (Rs. 630) in Washington to $30 (Rs. 1260) in New York. CSE launched a sensible campaign to raise parking fees in Delhi to Rs. 120 per day, but was foiled. So, parking space now exceeds green space, a scathing comment on priorities.

The world price of crude oil has risen 13 fold since 1998 to over $139 per barrel, but Indian petrol prices have barely doubled. Left Front politicians, who once wanted to soak the rich, now want to subsidize them. Under-recoveries of oil companies’ total may be Rs. 2,00,000 crore, even after a recent price hike. This is far more than the cost of Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan (education for all) and the Employment Guarantee
Scheme put together.

We sanctimoniously lecture rich countries to reduce their green house emissions, yet subsidize our own. Diesel is subsidized to be cheaper than petrol. So, Indian car makers produce the highest proportion of diesel cars in the world. Diesel fumes contain suspended particles that are highly toxic. This subsidy kills.

So does kerosene provided at throwaway prices, ostensibly to benefit poor villagers. One third of all kerosene is used to adulterate petrol and diesel. This causes horrendous pollution even in the greenest of cars.

What’s the way forward? We must abolish subsidies and raise taxes on vehicles and fuels to reflect their full social cost. The biggest but least visible subsidy is for parking, and we should start there.

Many car owners in the West take public transport to work since parking space downtown is costly and scarce. We should levy parking fees on an hourly, not daily, basis. Rs. 10 per hour could be a starting point in the metros.

In parts of Tokyo, you cannot own a car unless you own a private parking space. This is too extreme for India, but indicates the future path. If we charge owners the full social cost of parking, people will buy smaller and perhaps fewer vehicles, and fewer still will take them to work. That will slash congestion and pollution.

Cities should levy stiff annual taxes on vehicles, not a one-time tax, and use the revenue to constantly expand public transport and roads. This will create economic synergy: Private transport will finance public transport. London and New York have high density public transport as well as high car density.

Apart from underground rail, cities need elevated roads to ease congestion and pollution. Lata Mangeshkar helped kill a proposal for an elevated
road near her Mumbai flat: perhaps she felt her throat and singing would be affected. She did not care that the throats of poor people living on the pavements were far worse affected by fumes, and might get relief if some fumes were diverted to a higher level. What elitism!

Next, some medicine that will be really bitter, politically. The excise duty on all automotive vehicles should be raised to reflect their social costs. Fuel subsidies should be abolished. Price differentials between petrol, diesel and kerosene should be removed, ending incentives for adulteration. Diesel cars should bear a heavy additional cess to finance improved healthcare for those affected by their emission of harmful particulate matter.

That is a long, politically difficult agenda. Only part of it will ever be achieved. Yet that is the way to go, rather than agitate the Nano.

Question 4

The writer blames India for

subsidizing kerosene whereby greenhouse emissions are indirectly subsidized

subsidizing diesel

for increasing the cost of parking by the hour

for not making it mandatory for car owners to own parking space

Instructions

Answer the question based on the passage given below.

That is a long, politically difficult agenda. Only part of it will ever be achieved. Yet that is the way to go, rather than agitate the Nano.

Question 5

The most suitable title for this passage is

Polluting Politics

No No Nano

Submerge Subsidies

More Cars, Less Pollution

Instructions

Answer the question based on the passage given below.

That is a long, politically difficult agenda. Only part of it will ever be achieved. Yet that is the way to go, rather than agitate the Nano.

Question 6

By ‘Sanctimonious greens’ the writer refers to

aristocratic environmentalists

the rich

environmentalists with a ‘holier than thou’ attitude

those who decry deforestation

Instructions

Answer the question based on the passage given below.

That is a long, politically difficult agenda. Only part of it will ever be achieved. Yet that is the way to go, rather than agitate the Nano.

Question 7

The elite are

jealous of Nano owners

afraid of traffic jams and depletion of fossil fuel

afraid of reaching their destinations late

full of disdain that the poor can afford cars

Instructions

Answer the question based on the passage given below.

That is a long, politically difficult agenda. Only part of it will ever be achieved. Yet that is the way to go, rather than agitate the Nano.

Question 8

The paradox of the situation is that

bigger cars mean more fuel, more space and more pollution

though India has fewer cars the Nano will bring more pollution

London and New York have more cars and less pollution

though India is smaller than the US its cars cause more pollution

Instructions

Answer the question based on the passage given below.

That is a long, politically difficult agenda. Only part of it will ever be achieved. Yet that is the way to go, rather than agitate the Nano.

Question 9

In saying 23 square metres of parking space costs 40 lakhs, the writer is _____

Caustic

exaggerating

Sarcastic

ironical

Instructions

Answer the question based on the passage given below.

Nearly two thousand years have passed since a census decreed by Caesar Augustus became part of the greatest story ever told. Many things have changed in the intervening years. The hotel industry worries more about overbuilding than overcrowding, and if they had to meet an unexpected influx, few inns would have managed to accommodate the weary guests. Now it is the census taker that does the travelling in the fond hope that a highly mobile population will stay put long enough to get a good sampling. Methods of gathering, recording and evaluating information have presumably been improved a great deal. And where then it was the modest purpose of Rome to obtain a simple head count as an adequate basis for levying taxes, now batteries of complicated statistical series furnished by governmental agencies and private organizations are eagerly scanned and interpreted by sages and seers to get a clue for future events.

The Bible does not tell us how the Roman census takers made out, and as regards our more immediate concern, the reliability of present-day economic forecasting, there are considerable differences of opinion. They were aired at the celebration of the 125th anniversary of the American Statistical Association. There was the thought that business forecasting might well be on its way from an art to a science, and some speakers talked about new-fangled computers and high-faulting mathematical systems in terms of excitement and endearment, which we, at least in our younger years when these things mattered, would have associated more readily with the description of a fair maiden.

But others pointed to a deplorable record of highly esteemed forecasts and forecasters with a batting average below that of the Mets and the President-elect of the Association cautioned that “high-powered statistical methods are usually in order where the facts are crude and inadequate, statisticians assume.” We left his birthday party somewhere between hope and despair and with the conviction, not really newly acquired, that proper statistical methods applied to ascertainable facts have their merits in economic forecasting as long as neither forecaster nor public is deluded into mistaking the delineation of probabilities and trends for a prediction of certainties of mathematical exactitude.

Question 10

According to the passage, taxation in Roman times was based on

mobility

wealth

population

census takers

Instructions

Answer the question based on the passage given below.

Question 11

The author refers to the Mets primarily in order to

show that sports do not depend on statistics

contrast verifiable and unverifiable methods of record keeping

indicate the changes in attitudes from Roman days to the present

illustrate the failure of statistical predictions.

Instructions

Answer the question based on the passage given below.

Question 12

The author’s tone can best be described as

jocular

scornful

pessimistic

humanistic

Instructions

The following is an excerpt from a recent article by David Ewing Duncan. Read the passage and answer the questions within its context.

Eye surgeon Virendar Sangwan has perfected a procedure so cutting-edge that most who have tried it have failed. In an operating theatre in the central Indian city of Hyderabad, he surgically implants corneas grown in a petri dish from stem cells by his colleague Geeta Vemuganti in patients with damaged eyes. Together they perform about 80 corneal regeneration procedures a year, making the L.V. Prasad Eye Institute, where they work, one of the most prolific facilities in the world using stem cells to regenerate tissues of any kind. The Sangwan-Vemuganti team uses stem cells found in the tissues of living adults, not ones derived from embryos. Teams all over the world are working with adult stem cells, trying to coax them to regrow cells in hearts, brains, livers and other organs, but progress is slow. Besides corneas, scientists have had some success regrowing skin cells and bone tissues, but those procedures remain experimental. “A number of programs around the world have tried to perfect this treatment, but they have had bad outcomes,” says University of Cincinnati eye surgeon and stem cell specialist Edward Holland. “It is impressive what they are doing at Prasad.” In addition to the Hyderabad project, only Holland’s program and a half-dozen others in the world conduct operations using corneas grown from stem cells.The treatment uses stem cells harvested from the limbus, located where the cornea touches the white of the eye. For those with damaged corneas, these cells - called “limbic” and “conjunctiva” - are harvested from a patients good eye, if he has one, or from a close relative. They are placed in a petri dish and chemically tweaked to grow into the lower layer of a cornea, called epithelium. It is then transplanted into the eye of the patient where in most cases it takes hold and grows. In 56% of the cases at the Prasad Institute, patient could still see clearly after 40 months later.

Indians are well known for reverse engineering, meaning they can deduce how drugs are made in order to produce generic versions. But in this case, Sangwan and Vemuganti, a pathologist, developed the technique on their own from reading papers and running experiments in the lab. Sangwan says he had a number of patients with burned eyes who could not helped with standard corneal transplants from cadavers, so he persuaded Vemuganti to try growing corneas in her lab. “You know how to grow cells, and I know how to do the transplant surgery.” Vemuganti recalls him saying. “Why don’t we work together?” She smiles and shakes her head. “I had no clue if this was going to work.” Vemuganti’s major innovation was developing a platform on which to grow corneas. First she designed a circular glass tube about the size of a stack of coins. Then she overlaid the glass with tissue from a human placenta which is “a good surface to grow corneas on.” She says. After that she placed stem cells in four places around a circle, added a growth medium, and watched the corneas begin to grow. Commercial interests among stem cell companies for the procedure has been scant because of the perceived small volume of patients, says venture capitalist Antoun Nabhan of ay Capital, who sits on the board of Cellerant, a leading stem cell company in San Carlos. Calif. But corneal stem cell treatment may have wider applications, say ophthalmologist Ivan Schwab of University of California at Davis. “These stem cells are similar to others in the body that make mucous membrane,” he say. “These techniques of growing stem cells might one day be used to treat mucous-membrane tissue in the sinuses, bladder, and other organs.”

Question 1

According to the article Sangwan-Vemuganti team’s cutting-edge procedure of implanting cornea grown from stem cells is considered a major advancement by the experts because

They derive stems cells from embryos.

Their labs are customised to grow stem cells.

They regrow cells in hearts, brains, livers with stems cells from tissues of living adults.

They derive stem cells from tissues of living adults and grow cells in labs.

Instructions

The following is an excerpt from a recent article by David Ewing Duncan. Read the passage and answer the questions within its context.

Question 2

Sangwan-Vemuganti procedure is carried out on

Patients requiring any corneal transplant

Patients with damaged corneas

Patients with damaged eyes of any kind

None of the above

Instructions

The following is an excerpt from a recent article by David Ewing Duncan. Read the passage and answer the questions within its context.

Question 3

The world recognises this Indian innovation because Indian scientists are normally known

To be good at analysing and finding out a method of how an existing drug is made.

As they are good researchers of drugs.

As they are good at carrying out experiments to create generic drugs.

As they are able to carry out drug trials on large samples.

Instructions

The following is an excerpt from a recent article by David Ewing Duncan. Read the passage and answer the questions within its context.

Question 4

The pathologist, Vemuganti, started growing cornea in a petri dish

By following procedures published in research papers

By inventing a totally new procedure

By experimenting with procedures published in journals

By following the instruction of the transplant surgeon.

Instructions

The following is an excerpt from a recent article by David Ewing Duncan. Read the passage and answer the questions within its context.

Question 5

In the context of the passage choose the correct set of meanings for the words: PLATFORM and GENERIC

Lab table; related to genes

Method; related to genes

Lab experiments; without a brand name

Methodology; without a brand name

Instructions

Read the edited excerpt of an article by NELSON VINOD MOSES and answer the questions in this context.

A successful non-resident Indian employed in the United States returns to a backward Indian village and transforms the lives of the villagers. Sounds familiar? At 31, Ashwin Naik is pacing through the path Shah Rukh Khan traced in his off-bear Bollywood movie, Swades. Naik had just quit his cushy job in a genomics firm in the US to join MIT Sloan School of Business. With a month in hand, he headed home a travelled through the remote areas of Bagalkot district in Karnataka. The woeful social conditions he saw moved him. Naik chucked the MBA course and in six months set up Vaatsalya Healthcare, a rural healthcare delivery system. In February 2005, Vaatsalya’s first hospital opened in Hubli. Two more centres were opened in Gadag and Karwar to offer specialist services of surgeons and facilities such as physiotherapy for children suffering from cerebral palsy. “We introduced paediatric surgery for infants below six months,” says Naik. “Else, patients would have to be taken to distant cities of Hubli or Bangalore.” Naik plans 100 more units in five states in the next three years. Mere charity by an affluent, middle-class professional? Far from it. Vaatsalya is one among rapidly spreading ‘for profit’ social enterprises that serve the poor and bring in profit. Mumbai-based Ziqitza, an imbalance services company, is another. It never refuses a patient for money, and charges Rs. 50 to 200. Done fleetingly in India and elsewhere till now, entrepreneurial minds with a social conscience are methodically creating such models at a greater pace. “There has been a boom in the past two years,” says Varun Sahni, country director of Acumen Fund, a US-based social fund that invests in companies that target low income communities. “Currently, there are about 1,000 in India.” The timing seems perfect. There is a wide market acceptance and funding has
been coming in easily. These enterprises work across a swathe of areas including healthcare, education, rural energy, agriculture, arts and crafts, banking and more. ‘For profit’ entrepreneurs are obsessed with social and environmental impact in addition to the financial returns. Since they are answerable to the investors, they try expanding the business rapidly. SKS Microfinance, for instance, started in 1998 and has now over 900,000 customers, 440 branches and an outstanding loan disbursement of over Rs. 452 crores as of August 2007

Question 6

Identify the appropriate business model of the kind of enterprise described by the author.

Servicing societies at no profit

Profiting from poor people

Setting up enterprises for masses of low-income groups on experimental basis.

Setting up enterprises for social causes for profit and expand rapidly

Instructions

Read the edited excerpt of an article by NELSON VINOD MOSES and answer the questions in this context.

Question 7

Which of the following companies does not illustrate the idea explained by the author?

SKS Micro finance

Acumen Fund

Ziqitza

Vaatsalya Healthcare

Instructions

Read the edited excerpt of an article by NELSON VINOD MOSES and answer the questions in this context.

Question 8

According to the author, which of the following options describes ‘for profit’ entrepreneurs
most appropriately?

NRI’s paying back to their motherland.

Those affluent, middle-class professionals treating it as charity.

Those who work towards getting financial returns on social business by expanding quickly.

Those who have sympathetic investors for their business ideas for poor.

Instructions

Read the following passage and answer within its context.

The world dismisses curiosity by calling it idle, or mere idle curiosity - even though curious persons are seldom idle. Parents do their best to extinguish curiosity in their children because it makes life difficult to be faced every day with a string of answerable questions about what makes fire hot or why grass grows. Children whose curiosity survives parental discipline are invited to join our university. Within the university, they go on asking their questions and trying to find the answers. In the eyes of a scholar, that is mainly what a university is for. Some of the questions that scholars ask seem to the world to be scarcely worth asking let alone answering. They ask questions too minute and specialized for you and me to understand without years of explanation. If the world inquires of one of them why he wants to know the answer to a particular question he may say, especially if he is a scientist, that the answer will in some obscure way make possible a new machine or weapon or gadget. He talks that way because he knows that the world understands and respects utility. But to you who are now part of the university, he will say that he wants to know the answer simply because he does not know it. The way a mountain climber wants to climb a mountain simply because it is there. Similarly a historian when asked by outsiders why he studies history may come out with argument that he has learnt to repeat on such occasions. Something about knowledge of the past making it possible to understand the present and mould the future. But if you really want to know why a historian studies the past, the answer is much simpler: something happened, and he would like to know what. All this does not mean that the answers which scholars find to their questions have no consequences. They may have enormous consequences but these seldom form the reason for asking the question or pursuing the answers. It is true that scholars can be put to work answering questions for the sake of the consequences as thousands are working now, for example, in search of a cure for cancer. But this is not the primary function of the scholar, for the consequences are usually subordinate to the satisfaction of curiosity.

Question 9

Common people consider some of the questions asked by scholars as unimportant

since they are not worth asking of answering

because the question is related to new machines and gadgets

because the common man doesn’t understand questions without years of explanations.

scholars ask very minute, specialized questions beyond the comprehension of the common man.

Instructions

Read the following passage and answer within its context.

Question 10

In the statement ‘that is mainly what a university is for’ ‘that’ refers to

parents refusal to answer questions.

children’s curiosity that survives parents structures.

questions not worth answering.

the aim and scope of the university to provide an opportunity to curious minds to find out the answers to their questions.

Instructions

Read the following passage and answer within its context.

Question 11

According to the passage the general public respects

new inventions.

any useful invention.

any invention that makes life easier for them.

a scientist who invents gadgets and machines for them.

Instructions

Read the following passage and answer within its context.

Question 12

The writer compares the scientist to

a historian and mountain climber.

a historian

a mountain climber.

a scholar

Instructions

Read the following passage and answer within its context.

Question 13

The primary function of a scholar is different from the search for a cure for cancer because

the answers to the scholar’s question have no consequence unlike the results of the research involving a cure for cancer.

the answer sought by the scholar is selfish unlike the consequences of cancer research which are for the common weal.

the primary function of a scholar is satisfaction of his mental curiosity, while research involving a cure for cancer demands a constant, systematic and planned pursuit by several scholars.

several scholars work for a cancer cure while a single scholar works with a selfish motive.

Instructions

Read the following passage and answer within its context.

Question 14

Idle curiosity means

curiosity is lazy.

idle people are curious.

curiosity is apt

casual curiosity.

Instructions

Read the following passage and answer within its context.

TRIPs agreement provides a comprehensive set of global trade rules for the protection of copyright patents, trademarks, industrial designs, trade secrets, semiconductor lay out designs, and geographical indications, that apply to all the number-countries irrespective of their levels of development, natural and human endowments and history. Every member-country has been asked by the WTO to amend its national patent law to confirm to that universal globalized format for legislation relating to pharmaceutical, agrochemical, food, alloys, etc. Under Article 65, the developed countries have been asked to change their laws within another five years, and the less developed countries within an additional five years. The least developed countries have been asked to make those changes by 2005 AD. This attempt at global standardisation and uniformity by way of TRIP’s agreement is in conflict with the main thrust of the Rio Earth Summit of 1992 that set out the conditions for sustainable development. These two reveal two contrasting types of international approaches and norms. While the 1992 Earth Summit and the 1993 convention on biodiversity (CBD) focused on ‘diversity’ as being fundamental to sustain life and development, TRIPs and WTO are pushing for ‘conformity’ to international standardized norms on patents, services, labour, investment and what not irrespective of their history, ecology, level of economic development, etc. But despite their diametrically opposed viewpoints, 170 countries signed CBD upholding the need for diversity, and 50 countries signed the TRIPs agreement in 1994 claiming the urgency of uniformity, with a very large element of common names (130) in both. The convention on bio-diversity (CBD) in its Article 16.5 specifically asserts that intellectual property right must not be in conflict with conservation and sustainable use of bio-diversity, a provision that has been totally ignored by those who composed the TRIPs agreement. While in case of agriculture the higher yield of patented products induces the farmers to switch form a more varied production pattern, the resulting narrowing of genetic base makes the economy and society more vulnerable to plant disease and epidemics. It is true that the move towards cultivation of a smaller number of higher yielding varieties and the uniform spread of the same variety over a large space predates the present debate on patent, particularly since the introduction of the green revolution technology in the mid-sixties, but there can be no doubt that the latter has brought about a qualitative change in the scenario and has created possibility of a vast quantitative change too in that direction. So far no attempt has been made to reconcile the two conflicting approaches of CBD and TRIPs. If diversity is so important for sustaining life, how can WTO demand conformity to standardised global formats?

Question 15

The author points out that intellectual property rights and their administration mechanism

is throttling the interest of global bio-diversity

is working to help sustain global bio-diversity

is being sustained by global bio-diversity

is what the global bio-diversity needs

Instructions

Read the following passage and answer within its context.

Question 16

Which of the following has been said by the author in the passage?

A high number of countries have signed both C D and TRIPs, two conflicting treaties.

A narrow genetic base, if stuck to for ling, is fraught with danger

Although a nondiscriminatory approach has been followed in the applicability of TRIPs, there has been a confessional attitude in prescribing a time frame for Transition, as per needs of the respective countries.

The author is supportive of international conventions and treaties such as TRIPs, CBD etc.

Instructions

Read the following passage and answer within its context.

Question 17

Out of the countries that signed CBD, the percentage of those that signed the TRIPs also, is

76.5

74.5

78.5

80.2

Instructions

Read the following passage and answer within its context.

Question 18

According to the author, a higher-yield seed variety is not always welcome as it also
ultimately leads to

diseases among the consumers.

diseases among the plants.

monopoly of developed countries.

monopoly of developing countries.

Instructions

Read the following passage and answer within its context.

Question 19

As per the TRIPs agreement not much differentiation is made between a developed country
such as the USA and an undeveloped country such as Sudan. This is

definitely true

probably true

probably false

definitely false

Instructions

Come with me to Kiebera: the largest shantytown in sub-Saharan Africa. More than 500,000 people live in this vast illegal section of Nairobi, in mud huts on mud streets, with no fresh water or sanitation. Walk down Kiebera's sodden pathways and you will see a great deal of hunger, poverty and disease. But you'll also find health clinics, beauty salons, grocery stores, bars, restaurants, tailors, clothiers, churches, and schools. In the midst of squalor and open sewage, business is booming.

Indeed, Kiebera's underground economy is so vibrant that it has produced its own squatter millionaire, someone I have known for years. From his start a generation ago selling cigarettes and biscuits from the window of his hut, this Kenyan (he asked to remain unnamed) has assembled an empire that includes pharmacies, groceries, bars, beverage-distribution outlets, transportation and manufacturing firms, and even real estate.

Families flock to Kiebera for the same reason country folk have always migrated to the city in search of oppurtunity. In the city they find work but not a place to live. So they build illegally on land they don't own. There are a billion squatters in the world today, almost one in six people on the planet. And their numbers are on the rise. Current projections are that by 2030 there will be two billion squatters, and by 2050, three billion, better than one in three people on the planet. In itself, it is nothing to worry about, for squatting has long had a positive role in urban development. Many urban neighbourhoods in Europe and North America began as squatter outposts. London and Paris boasted huge swaths of mud and stick homes, even during the glory years of the British and French monarchies. Squatters were a significant force in most U.S. cities too. It would no doubt surprise residents paying millions for co-op apartments on Manhatten's Upper east and West Sides to know that squatters occupied much of the turf under their buildings until the start of the 20th century. ............. from an article by Robert Neuwirth.

Question 1

The author argues that Kiebera becoming the shantytown is not unusual because

Kiebera has many poor people who have come to earn but have no land to live on.

Researchers have predicted that squatters will continue to grow in numbers.

Squatting has long had a positive role in urban development.

All of the above

Instructions

Question 2

The prosperity of Keibera's underground economy is described by the author
through

The description of Kiebera

The description of his friends businesses.

The comparison with co-op apartments of Manhatten

The history of London and Paris.

Instructions

Question 3

The author puts forward the thesis that

Squatters will continue to rise in numbers in the coming years irrespective of whether they are
from poor countries or not.

There is nothing wrong in squatting on the land of a stranger

London & Paris too are shantytowns.

even today squatters live under the Manhatten's co-op apartments.

Instructions

Question 4

What is the most appropriate title for this passage?

Kiebera-Squatters' Paradise of Nairobi

Squatters of the World

Squatter Cities

Future of Squatters

Instructions

Read the following passage and answer (c) how climatic changes led to the founding of the earliest the 7 questions following the same.

As the climate in the Middle East changed beginning around 7000 B.C.E., conditions emerged that were conducive to a more complex and advanced form of civilization in both Egypt and Mesopotamia. The process began when the swampy valleys of the Nile in Egypt and of the Tigris and Euphrates Rivers in Mesopotamia became driver, producing reverine lands that were both habitable and fertile, and attracting settlers armed with the newly developed techniques of agriculture. This migration was further encouraged by the gradual transformation of the once-hospitable grasslands of these regions into deserts. Human population became increasingly concentrated into pockets of settlement scattered along the banks of the great rivers.

These rivers profoundly shaped the way of life along their banks. In Mesopotamia, the management of water in conditions of unpredictable drought, flood and storm became the central economic and social challenge. Villagers began early to build simple earthworks, dikes, canals, and ditches to control the waters and reduce the opposing dangers of drought during the dry season (usually the spring) and flooding at harvest time.

Such efforts required a degree of cooperation among large numbers of people that had not previously existed. The individual village, containing only a dozen or so houses and families, was economically vulnerable; but when several villages, probably under the direction of a council of elders, learned to share their human resources in the building of a coordinated network of water-control systems, the safety, stability, and prosperity of all improved. In this new cooperation, the seeds of the great Mesopotamian civilizations were being sown.

Technological and mathematical invention, too, were stimulated by life along rivers. Such devices as the noria (a primitive waterwheel) and the Archimedean screw (a device for raising water from the low riverbanks to the high ground where it was needed), two forerunners of many more varied and complex machines, were first developed here for use in irrigation systems. Similarly, the earliest methods of measurement and computation and the first developments in geometry were stimulated by the need to keep track of land holdings and boundaries in fields that were periodically inundated.

The rivers served as high roads of the earliest commerce. Traders used boats made of boundles of rushes to transport grains, fruits, nuts, fibers, and textiles from one village to another, transforming the rivers into the central spines of nascent commercial kingdoms. Trade expanded surprisingly widely; we have evidence suggesting that, even before the establishment of the first Egyptian dynasty, goods were being exchanged between villagers in Egypt and others as far away as Iran.

Similar developments were occuring at much the same time along the great river valleys in other parts of the world - for example, along the Indus in India and the Hwang Ho in China. The history of early civilization has been shaped to a remarkable degree by the relation of humans and rivers.

Question 5

This passage basically explains

the similarities and differences among several ancient socities

the influence of river settlements on the growth of early civilizations

how climatic changes led to the founding of the earliest recorded cities

the development of primitive technologies in the ancient Middle East

Instructions

Read the following passage and answer (c) how climatic changes led to the founding of the earliest the 7 questions following the same.

Question 6

According to the passage, the increasing aridity of formally fertile grasslands in
Egypt and Mesopotamia caused the settlement patterns in those regions to become.

less nomadic

less stable

more concentrated

more sparse

Instructions

Read the following passage and answer (c) how climatic changes led to the founding of the earliest the 7 questions following the same.

Question 7

The passage implies that the earliest geometry was practiced primarily by

farm workers

land owners

traders and merchants

mechanical artisans

Instructions

Read the following passage and answer (c) how climatic changes led to the founding of the earliest the 7 questions following the same.

Question 8

The passage indicates that the social effects of the unpredictability of water
supplies in Mesopotamia was

to encourage cooperation in the creation of water management systems

to drive farmers to settle in fertile grasslands far from the uncontrollable rivers

to cause warfare over water rights among rival villages

None of the above.

Instructions

Read the following passage and answer (c) how climatic changes led to the founding of the earliest the 7 questions following the same.

Question 9

The passage refers to the earliest trade routes in the Middle East

between various centrally ruled commercial kingdoms

between linked villages in Egypt with others in Iran

between connected villages that were scattered along the banks of the same river.

between the inhabitants of small villages and the dynastic kings who ruled them.

Instructions

Read the following passage and answer (c) how climatic changes led to the founding of the earliest the 7 questions following the same.

Question 10

The passage implies that the emergence of complex civilizations in the Middle
East was dependent upon the previous development of

a system of centralized government

symbolic systems for writing and mathematical computation

a method of storing and transferring wealth

basic techniques of agriculture

Instructions

Read the following passage and answer (c) how climatic changes led to the founding of the earliest the 7 questions following the same.

Question 11

By referring to emerging civilizations in India and China the author wants to
emphasize the

relatively advanced position enjoyed by the Middle East in comparison to other regions

rapidity with which social systems developed in the Middle East spread to other places

crucial role played by rivers in the development of human cultures around the world

importance of water transportation in the growth of early trade

SNAP Reading Comprehension Questions

SNAP Reading Comprehension Questions

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