Main Point Identification — CAT Previous-Year Questions
66 previous-year questions on Main Point Identification from CAT, with full solutions. Practise free — check answers as you go; sign in to save your progress.
Main Point Identification · CAT PYQs
The passage given below is followed by four alternate summaries. Choose the option that best captures the essence of the passage.
When the tradwife puts on that georgic, pinstriped dress, she is not just admiring the visual cues of a fantastical past. She takes these dreams of storybook bliss literally, tracing them backward in time until she reaches a logical conclusion that satisfies her. And by doing so, she ends up delivering an unhappy reminder of just how much our lives consist of artifice and playacting. The tradwife outrages people because of her deliberately regressive ideals. And yet her behaviour is, on some level, indistinguishable from the nontradwife’s. The tradwife’s trollish genius is to beat us at our own dress-up game. By insisting that the idyllic cottage daydream should be real, right down to the primitive gender roles, she leaves others feeling hollow, cheated. The hullabaloo and headaches she causes may be the price we pay for taking too many things at face value: our just deserts, served Instagram-perfect by a manicured hand on a gorgeous ceramic dish, with fat, mouthwatering maraschino cherries on top.
The passage below is accompanied by four questions. Based on the passage, choose the best answer for each question.
There is a group in the space community who view the solar system not as an opportunity to expand human potential but as a nature preserve, forever the provenance of an elite group of scientists and their sanitary robotic probes. These planetary protection advocates [call] for avoiding “harmful contamination” of celestial bodies. Under this regime, NASA incurs great expense sterilizing robotic probes in order to prevent the contamination of entirely theoretical biospheres. . . .
Transporting bacteria would matter if Mars were the vital world once imagined by astronomers who mistook optical illusions for canals. Nobody wants to expose Martians to measles, but sadly, robotic exploration reveals a bleak, rusted landscape, lacking oxygen and flooded with radiation ready to sterilize any Earthly microbes. Simple life might exist underground, or down at the bottom of a deep canyon, but it has been very hard to find with robots. . . . The upsides from human exploration and development of Mars clearly outweigh the welfare of purely speculative Martian fungi. . . .
The other likely targets of human exploration, development, and settlement, our moon and the asteroids, exist in a desiccated, radiation-soaked realm of hard vacuum and extreme temperature variations that would kill nearly anything. It’s also important to note that many international competitors will ignore the demands of these protection extremists in any case. For example, China recently sent a terrarium to the moon and germinated a plant seed—with, unsurprisingly, no protest from its own scientific community. In contrast, when it was recently revealed that a researcher had surreptitiously smuggled super-resilient microscopic tardigrades aboard the ill-fated Israeli Beresheet lunar probe, a firestorm was unleashed within the space community. . . .
NASA’s previous human exploration efforts made no serious attempt at sterility, with little notice. As the Mars expert Robert Zubrin noted in the National Review, U.S. lunar landings did not leave the campsites cleaner than they found it. Apollo’s bacteria-infested litter included bags of feces. Forcing NASA’s proposed Mars exploration to do better, scrubbing everything and hauling out all the trash, would destroy NASA’s human exploration budget and encroach on the agency’s other directorates, too. Getting future astronauts off Mars is enough of a challenge, without trying to tote weeks of waste along as well. A reasonable compromise is to continue on the course laid out by the U.S. government and the National Research Council, which proposed a system of zones on Mars, some for science only, some for habitation, and some for resource exploitation. This approach minimizes contamination, maximizes scientific exploration . . .
Mars presents a stark choice of diverging human futures. We can turn inward, pursuing ever more limited futures while we await whichever natural or manmade disaster will eradicate our species and life on Earth. Alternatively, we can choose to propel our biosphere further into the solar system, simultaneously protecting our home planet and providing a backup plan for the only life we know exists in the universe. Are the lives on Earth worth less than some hypothetical microbe lurking under Martian rocks?
The passage given below is followed by four alternate summaries. Choose the option that best captures the essence of the passage.
Humans have managed to tweak the underlying biology of various plants and animals to produce high-tech crops and microbes. But regulating these entities is complicated,
as the framework of policies and procedures are outdated and not flexible enough to adapt to emerging technology. The question is whether regulation will ever be able to
keep up with human innovation, to regulate living things, which are apt to be unpredictable and unique; to capture all the potential risks when new biological entities are introduced, or when they pass on variations of their genes?
The passage below is accompanied by four questions. Based on the passage, choose the best answer for each question.
There is a group in the space community who view the solar system not as an opportunity to expand human potential but as a nature preserve, forever the provenance of an elite group of scientists and their sanitary robotic probes. These planetary protection advocates [call] for avoiding “harmful contamination” of celestial bodies. Under this regime, NASA incurs great expense sterilizing robotic probes in order to prevent the contamination of entirely theoretical biospheres. . . .
Transporting bacteria would matter if Mars were the vital world once imagined by astronomers who mistook optical illusions for canals. Nobody wants to expose Martians to measles, but sadly, robotic exploration reveals a bleak, rusted landscape, lacking oxygen and flooded with radiation ready to sterilize any Earthly microbes. Simple life might exist underground, or down at the bottom of a deep canyon, but it has been very hard to find with robots. . . . The upsides from human exploration and development of Mars clearly outweigh the welfare of purely speculative Martian fungi. . . .
The other likely targets of human exploration, development, and settlement, our moon and the asteroids, exist in a desiccated, radiation-soaked realm of hard vacuum and extreme temperature variations that would kill nearly anything. It’s also important to note that many international competitors will ignore the demands of these protection extremists in any case. For example, China recently sent a terrarium to the moon and germinated a plant seed—with, unsurprisingly, no protest from its own scientific community. In contrast, when it was recently revealed that a researcher had surreptitiously smuggled super-resilient microscopic tardigrades aboard the ill-fated Israeli Beresheet lunar probe, a firestorm was unleashed within the space community. . . .
NASA’s previous human exploration efforts made no serious attempt at sterility, with little notice. As the Mars expert Robert Zubrin noted in the National Review, U.S. lunar landings did not leave the campsites cleaner than they found it. Apollo’s bacteria-infested litter included bags of feces. Forcing NASA’s proposed Mars exploration to do better, scrubbing everything and hauling out all the trash, would destroy NASA’s human exploration budget and encroach on the agency’s other directorates, too. Getting future astronauts off Mars is enough of a challenge, without trying to tote weeks of waste along as well. A reasonable compromise is to continue on the course laid out by the U.S. government and the National Research Council, which proposed a system of zones on Mars, some for science only, some for habitation, and some for resource exploitation. This approach minimizes contamination, maximizes scientific exploration . . .
Mars presents a stark choice of diverging human futures. We can turn inward, pursuing ever more limited futures while we await whichever natural or manmade disaster will eradicate our species and life on Earth. Alternatively, we can choose to propel our biosphere further into the solar system, simultaneously protecting our home planet and providing a backup plan for the only life we know exists in the universe. Are the lives on Earth worth less than some hypothetical microbe lurking under Martian rocks?
The passage given below is followed by four alternate summaries. Choose the option that best captures the essence of the passage.
Lyric poetry is a genre of private meditation rather than public commitment. The impulse in Marxism toward changing a society deemed unacceptable in its basic design would seem to place demands on lyric poetry that such poetry, with its tendency toward the personal, the small scale, and the idiosyncratic, could never answer. There is within Marxism, however, also a strand of thought that would locate in lyric poetry alternative modes of perception and description that call forth a vision of worlds at odds with a repressive reality or that draw attention to the workings of ideology within the hegemonic culture. The poetic imagination may indeed deflect larger social concerns, but it may also be implicitly critical and utopian.
The passage below is accompanied by four questions. Based on the passage, choose the best answer for each question.
[S]pices were a global commodity centuries before European voyages. There was a complex chain of relations, yet consumers had little knowledge of producers and vice versa. Desire for spices helped fuel European colonial empires to create political, military and commercial networks under a single power.
Historians know a fair amount about the supply of spices in Europe during the medieval period – the origins, methods of transportation, the prices – but less about demand. Why go to such extraordinary efforts to procure expensive products from exotic lands? Still, demand was great enough to inspire the voyages of Christopher Columbus and Vasco Da Gama, launching the first fateful wave of European colonialism. . . .
So, why were spices so highly prized in Europe in the centuries from about 1000 to 1500? One widely disseminated explanation for medieval demand for spices was that they covered the taste of spoiled meat. . . . Medieval purchasers consumed meat much fresher than what the average city-dweller in the developed world of today has at hand. However, refrigeration was not available, and some hot spices have been shown to serve as an anti-bacterial agent. Salting, smoking or drying meat were other means of preservation. Most spices used in cooking began as medical ingredients, and throughout the Middle Ages spices were used as both medicines and condiments. Above all, medieval recipes involve the combination of medical and culinary lore in order to balance food's humeral properties and prevent disease. Most spices were hot and dry and so appropriate in sauces to counteract the moist and wet properties supposedly possessed by most meat and fish. . . .
Where spices came from was known in a vague sense centuries before the voyages of Columbus. Just how vague may be judged by looking at medieval world maps . . . To the medieval European imagination, the East was exotic and alluring. Medieval maps often placed India close to the so-called Earthly Paradise, the Garden of Eden described in the Bible.
Geographical knowledge has a lot to do with the perceptions of spices’ relative scarcity and the reasons for their high prices. An example of the varying notions of scarcity is the conflicting information about how pepper is harvested. As far back as the 7th century Europeans thought that pepper in India grew on trees "guarded" by serpents that would bite and poison anyone who attempted to gather the fruit. The only way to harvest pepper was to burn the trees, which would drive the snakes underground. Of course, this bit of lore would explain the shriveled black peppercorns, but not white, pink or other colors.
Spices never had the enduring allure or power of gold and silver or the commercial potential of new products such as tobacco, indigo or sugar. But the taste for spices did continue for a while beyond the Middle Ages. As late as the 17th century, the English and the Dutch were struggling for control of the Spice Islands: Dutch New Amsterdam, or New York, was exchanged by the British for one of the Moluccan Islands where nutmeg was grown.
The passage given below is followed by four alternate summaries. Choose the option that best captures the essence of the passage.
Recent important scientific findings have emerged from crossing the boundaries of scientific fields. They stem from physicists collaborating with biologists, sociologists and others, to answer questions about our world. But physicists and their potential collaborators often find their cultures out of sync. For one, physicists often discard a lot of information while extracting broad patterns; for other scientists, information is not readily disposed. Further, many non-physicists are uncomfortable with mathematical models. Still, the desire to work on something new and different is real, and there are clear benefits from the collision of views.
The passage below is accompanied by four questions. Based on the passage, choose the best answer for each question.
[S]pices were a global commodity centuries before European voyages. There was a complex chain of relations, yet consumers had little knowledge of producers and vice versa. Desire for spices helped fuel European colonial empires to create political, military and commercial networks under a single power.
Historians know a fair amount about the supply of spices in Europe during the medieval period – the origins, methods of transportation, the prices – but less about demand. Why go to such extraordinary efforts to procure expensive products from exotic lands? Still, demand was great enough to inspire the voyages of Christopher Columbus and Vasco Da Gama, launching the first fateful wave of European colonialism. . . .
So, why were spices so highly prized in Europe in the centuries from about 1000 to 1500? One widely disseminated explanation for medieval demand for spices was that they covered the taste of spoiled meat. . . . Medieval purchasers consumed meat much fresher than what the average city-dweller in the developed world of today has at hand. However, refrigeration was not available, and some hot spices have been shown to serve as an anti-bacterial agent. Salting, smoking or drying meat were other means of preservation. Most spices used in cooking began as medical ingredients, and throughout the Middle Ages spices were used as both medicines and condiments. Above all, medieval recipes involve the combination of medical and culinary lore in order to balance food's humeral properties and prevent disease. Most spices were hot and dry and so appropriate in sauces to counteract the moist and wet properties supposedly possessed by most meat and fish. . . .
Where spices came from was known in a vague sense centuries before the voyages of Columbus. Just how vague may be judged by looking at medieval world maps . . . To the medieval European imagination, the East was exotic and alluring. Medieval maps often placed India close to the so-called Earthly Paradise, the Garden of Eden described in the Bible.
Geographical knowledge has a lot to do with the perceptions of spices’ relative scarcity and the reasons for their high prices. An example of the varying notions of scarcity is the conflicting information about how pepper is harvested. As far back as the 7th century Europeans thought that pepper in India grew on trees "guarded" by serpents that would bite and poison anyone who attempted to gather the fruit. The only way to harvest pepper was to burn the trees, which would drive the snakes underground. Of course, this bit of lore would explain the shriveled black peppercorns, but not white, pink or other colors.
Spices never had the enduring allure or power of gold and silver or the commercial potential of new products such as tobacco, indigo or sugar. But the taste for spices did continue for a while beyond the Middle Ages. As late as the 17th century, the English and the Dutch were struggling for control of the Spice Islands: Dutch New Amsterdam, or New York, was exchanged by the British for one of the Moluccan Islands where nutmeg was grown.
The passage given below is followed by four alternate summaries. Choose the option that best captures the essence of the passage.
Different from individuals, states conduct warfare operations using the DIME model— “diplomacy, information, military, and economics.” Most states do everything they can to inflict pain and confusion on their enemies before deploying the military. In fact, attacks on vectors of information are a well-worn tactic of war and usually are the first target when the charge begins. It’s common for telecom data and communications networks to be routinely monitored by governments, which is why the open data policies of the web are so concerning to many advocates of privacy and human rights. With the worldwide adoption of social media, more governments are getting involved in low-grade information warfare through the use of cyber troops. According to a study by the Oxford Internet Institute in 2020, cyber troops are “government or political party actors tasked with manipulating public opinion online.” The Oxford research group was able to identify 81 countries with active cyber troop operations utilizing many different strategies to spread false information, including spending millions on online advertising.
The passage below is accompanied by four questions. Based on the passage, choose the best answer for each question.
[S]pices were a global commodity centuries before European voyages. There was a complex chain of relations, yet consumers had little knowledge of producers and vice versa. Desire for spices helped fuel European colonial empires to create political, military and commercial networks under a single power.
Historians know a fair amount about the supply of spices in Europe during the medieval period – the origins, methods of transportation, the prices – but less about demand. Why go to such extraordinary efforts to procure expensive products from exotic lands? Still, demand was great enough to inspire the voyages of Christopher Columbus and Vasco Da Gama, launching the first fateful wave of European colonialism. . . .
So, why were spices so highly prized in Europe in the centuries from about 1000 to 1500? One widely disseminated explanation for medieval demand for spices was that they covered the taste of spoiled meat. . . . Medieval purchasers consumed meat much fresher than what the average city-dweller in the developed world of today has at hand. However, refrigeration was not available, and some hot spices have been shown to serve as an anti-bacterial agent. Salting, smoking or drying meat were other means of preservation. Most spices used in cooking began as medical ingredients, and throughout the Middle Ages spices were used as both medicines and condiments. Above all, medieval recipes involve the combination of medical and culinary lore in order to balance food's humeral properties and prevent disease. Most spices were hot and dry and so appropriate in sauces to counteract the moist and wet properties supposedly possessed by most meat and fish. . . .
Where spices came from was known in a vague sense centuries before the voyages of Columbus. Just how vague may be judged by looking at medieval world maps . . . To the medieval European imagination, the East was exotic and alluring. Medieval maps often placed India close to the so-called Earthly Paradise, the Garden of Eden described in the Bible.
Geographical knowledge has a lot to do with the perceptions of spices’ relative scarcity and the reasons for their high prices. An example of the varying notions of scarcity is the conflicting information about how pepper is harvested. As far back as the 7th century Europeans thought that pepper in India grew on trees "guarded" by serpents that would bite and poison anyone who attempted to gather the fruit. The only way to harvest pepper was to burn the trees, which would drive the snakes underground. Of course, this bit of lore would explain the shriveled black peppercorns, but not white, pink or other colors.
Spices never had the enduring allure or power of gold and silver or the commercial potential of new products such as tobacco, indigo or sugar. But the taste for spices did continue for a while beyond the Middle Ages. As late as the 17th century, the English and the Dutch were struggling for control of the Spice Islands: Dutch New Amsterdam, or New York, was exchanged by the British for one of the Moluccan Islands where nutmeg was grown.
The passage given below is followed by four alternate summaries. Choose the option that best captures the essence of the passage.
John Cleese told Fox News Digital that comedians do not have the freedom to be funny in 2022. “There’s always been limitations on what they’re allowed to say,” Cleese said. “I think it’s particularly worrying at the moment because you can only create in an atmosphere of freedom, where you’re not checking everything you say critically before you move on. What you have to be able to do is to build without knowing where you’re going because you’ve never been there before. That’s what creativity is — you have to be allowed to build. And a lot of comedians now are sitting there and when they think of something, they say something like, ‘Can I get away with it? I don’t think so. So and so got into trouble, and he said that, oh, she said that.’ You see what I mean? And that’s the death of creativity.”
The passage given below is followed by four alternate summaries. Choose the option that best captures the essence of the passage.
When the tradwife puts on that georgic, pinstriped dress, she is not just admiring the visual cues of a fantastical past. She takes these dreams of storybook bliss literally, tracing them backward in time until she reaches a logical conclusion that satisfies her. And by doing so, she ends up delivering an unhappy reminder of just how much our lives consist of artifice and playacting. The tradwife outrages people because of her deliberately regressive ideals. And yet her behaviour is, on some level, indistinguishable from the nontradwife’s. The tradwife’s trollish genius is to beat us at our own dress-up game. By insisting that the idyllic cottage daydream should be real, right down to the primitive gender roles, she leaves others feeling hollow, cheated. The hullabaloo and headaches she causes may be the price we pay for taking too many things at face value: our just deserts, served Instagram-perfect by a manicured hand on a gorgeous ceramic dish, with fat, mouthwatering maraschino cherries on top.
The passage below is accompanied by four questions. Based on the passage, choose the best answer for each question.
Moutai has been the global booze sensation of the decade. A bottle of its Flying Fairy which sold in the 1980s for the equivalent of a dollar now retails for $400. Moutai’s listed shares have soared by almost 600% in the past five years, outpacing the likes of Amazon. . . .
It does this while disregarding every Western marketing mantra. It is not global, has meagre digital sales and does not appeal to millennials. It scores pitifully on environmental, social and governance measures. In the Boy Scout world of Western business it would leave a bad taste, in more ways than one.
Moutai owes its intoxicating success to three factors—not all of them easy to emulate. First, it profits from Chinese nationalism. Moutai is known as the “national liquor”. It was used to raise spirits and disinfect wounds in Mao’s Long March. It was Premier Zhou Enlai’s favourite tipple, shared with Richard Nixon in 1972. Its centuries-old craftsmanship—it is distilled eight times and stored for years in earthenware jars—is a source of national pride. It also claims to be hangover-proof, which would make it an invention to rival gunpowder....
Second, it chose to serve China’s super-rich rather than its middle class. Markets are littered with the corpses of firms that could not compete in the cut-throat battle for Chinese middleclass wallets. And the country’s premium market is massive—at 73m-strong, bigger than the population of France, notes Euan McLeish of Bernstein, an investment firm, and still less crowded with prestige brands than advanced economies. Moutai is to these well-heeled drinkers what vintage champagne is to the rest of the world.....
Third, Moutai looks beyond affluent millennials and digital natives. The elderly and the middleaged, it found, can be just as lucrative. Its biggest market now is (male) drinkers in their mid30s. Many have no siblings, thanks to four decades of China’s one-child policy—which also means their elderly parents can splash out on weddings and banquets. Moutai is often a guest of honour.
Moutai has succeeded thanks to nationalism, elitism and ageism, in other words—not in spite of this unholy trinity. But it faces risks. The government is its largest shareholder—and a meddlesome one. It appears to want prices to remain stable. Exorbitantly priced booze is at odds with its professed socialist ideals. Yet minority investors—including many foreign funds —lament that Moutai’s wholesale price is a third of what it sells for in shops. Raising it could boost the company’s profits further. Instead, in what some see as a travesty of corporate governance, its majority owner has plans to set up its own sales channel.....
In the long run, its biggest risk may be millennials. As they grow older, health concerns, worklife balance and the desire for more wholesome pursuits than binge-drinking may curb the “Ganbei!” toasting culture [heavy drinking] on which so much of the demand for Moutai rests. For the time being, though, the party goes on.
The passage given below is followed by four alternate summaries. Choose the option that best captures the essence of the passage.
Humans have managed to tweak the underlying biology of various plants and animals to produce high-tech crops and microbes. But regulating these entities is complicated, as the framework of policies and procedures are outdated and not flexible enough to adapt to emerging technology. The question is whether regulation will ever be able to keep up with human innovation, to regulate living things, which are apt to be unpredictable and unique; to capture all the potential risks when new biological entities are introduced, or when they pass on variations of their genes?
The passage below is accompanied by four questions. Based on the passage, choose the best answer for each question.
Moutai has been the global booze sensation of the decade. A bottle of its Flying Fairy which sold in the 1980s for the equivalent of a dollar now retails for $400. Moutai’s listed shares have soared by almost 600% in the past five years, outpacing the likes of Amazon. . . .
It does this while disregarding every Western marketing mantra. It is not global, has meagre digital sales and does not appeal to millennials. It scores pitifully on environmental, social and governance measures. In the Boy Scout world of Western business it would leave a bad taste, in more ways than one.
Moutai owes its intoxicating success to three factors—not all of them easy to emulate. First, it profits from Chinese nationalism. Moutai is known as the “national liquor”. It was used to raise spirits and disinfect wounds in Mao’s Long March. It was Premier Zhou Enlai’s favourite tipple, shared with Richard Nixon in 1972. Its centuries-old craftsmanship—it is distilled eight times and stored for years in earthenware jars—is a source of national pride. It also claims to be hangover-proof, which would make it an invention to rival gunpowder....
Second, it chose to serve China’s super-rich rather than its middle class. Markets are littered with the corpses of firms that could not compete in the cut-throat battle for Chinese middleclass wallets. And the country’s premium market is massive—at 73m-strong, bigger than the population of France, notes Euan McLeish of Bernstein, an investment firm, and still less crowded with prestige brands than advanced economies. Moutai is to these well-heeled drinkers what vintage champagne is to the rest of the world.....
Third, Moutai looks beyond affluent millennials and digital natives. The elderly and the middleaged, it found, can be just as lucrative. Its biggest market now is (male) drinkers in their mid30s. Many have no siblings, thanks to four decades of China’s one-child policy—which also means their elderly parents can splash out on weddings and banquets. Moutai is often a guest of honour.
Moutai has succeeded thanks to nationalism, elitism and ageism, in other words—not in spite of this unholy trinity. But it faces risks. The government is its largest shareholder—and a meddlesome one. It appears to want prices to remain stable. Exorbitantly priced booze is at odds with its professed socialist ideals. Yet minority investors—including many foreign funds —lament that Moutai’s wholesale price is a third of what it sells for in shops. Raising it could boost the company’s profits further. Instead, in what some see as a travesty of corporate governance, its majority owner has plans to set up its own sales channel.....
In the long run, its biggest risk may be millennials. As they grow older, health concerns, worklife balance and the desire for more wholesome pursuits than binge-drinking may curb the “Ganbei!” toasting culture [heavy drinking] on which so much of the demand for Moutai rests. For the time being, though, the party goes on.
The passage given below is followed by four alternate summaries. Choose the option that best captures the essence of the passage.
Lyric poetry is a genre of private meditation rather than public commitment. The impulse in Marxism toward changing a society deemed unacceptable in its basic design would seem to place demands on lyric poetry that such poetry, with its tendency toward the personal, the small scale, and the idiosyncratic, could never answer. There is within Marxism, however, also a strand of thought that would locate in lyric poetry alternative modes of perception and description that call forth a vision of worlds at odds with a repressive reality or that draw attention to the workings of ideology within the hegemonic culture. The poetic imagination may indeed deflect larger social concerns, but it may also be implicitly critical and utopian.
The passage given below is followed by four alternate summaries. Choose the option that best captures the essence of the passage.
Manipulating information was a feature of history long before modern journalism established rules of integrity. A record dates back to ancient Rome, when Antony met Cleopatra and his political enemy Octavian launched a smear campaign against him with “short, sharp slogans written upon coins.” The perpetrator became the first Roman Emperor and “fake news had allowed Octavian to hack the republican system once and for all”. But the 21st century has seen the weaponization of information on an unprecedented scale. Powerful new technology makes the fabrication of content simple, and social networks amplify falsehoods peddled by States, populist politicians, and dishonest corporate entities. The platforms have become fertile ground for computational propaganda, ‘trolling’ and ‘troll armies’.
The passage given below is followed by four alternate summaries. Choose the option that best captures the essence of the passage.
Colonialism is not a modern phenomenon. World history is full of examples of one society gradually expanding by incorporating adjacent territory and settling its people on newly conquered territory. In the sixteenth century, colonialism changed decisively because of technological developments in navigation that began to connect more remote parts of the world. The modern European colonial project emerged when it became possible to move large numbers of people across the ocean and to maintain political control in spite of geographical dispersion. The term colonialism is used to describe the process of European settlement, violent dispossession and political domination over the rest of the world, including the Americas, Australia, and parts of Africa and Asia.
The passage given below is followed by four alternate summaries. Choose the option that best captures the essence of the passage.
Heatwaves are becoming longer, frequent and intense due to climate change. The impacts of extreme heat are unevenly experienced; with older people and young children, those with pre-existing medical conditions and on low incomes significantly more vulnerable. Adaptation to heatwaves is a significant public policy concern. Research conducted among at-risk people in the UK reveals that even vulnerable people do not perceive themselves as at risk of extreme heat; therefore, early warnings of extreme heat events do not perform as intended. This suggests that understanding how extreme heat is narrated is very important. The news media play a central role in this process and can help warn people about the potential danger, as well as about impacts on infrastructure and society
The passage given below is followed by four alternate summaries. Choose the option that best captures the essence of the passage.
People spontaneously create counterfactual alternatives to reality when they think “if only” or “what if” and imagine how the past could have been different. The mind computes counterfactuals for many reasons. Counterfactuals explain the past and prepare for the future, they implicate various relations including causal ones, and they affect intentions and decisions. They modulate emotions such as regret and relief, and they support moral judgments such as blame. The ability to create counterfactuals develops throughout childhood and contributes to reasoning about other people's beliefs, including their false beliefs.
The passage given below is followed by four alternate summaries. Choose the option that best captures the essence of the passage.
The weight of society’s expectations is hardly a new phenomenon but it has become particularly draining over recent decades, perhaps because expectations themselves are so multifarious and contradictory. The perfectionism of the 1950s was rooted in the norms of mass culture and captured in famous advertising images of the ideal white American family that now seem self-satirising. In that era, perfectionism meant seamlessly conforming to values, behaviour and appearance: chiselled confidence for men, demure graciousness for women. The perfectionist was under pressure to look like everyone else, only more so. The perfectionists of today, by contrast, feel an obligation to stand out through their idiosyncratic style and wit if they are to gain a foothold in the attention economy.
The passage given below is followed by four alternate summaries. Choose the option that best captures the essence of the passage.
Gradually, life for the island’s birds is improving. Antarctic prions and white-headed petrels, which also nest in burrows, had managed to cling on in some sites while pests were on the island. Their numbers are now increasing. “It’s fantastic and so exciting,” Shaw says. As birds return to breed, they also poo. This adds nutrients to the soil, which in turn helps the plants to grow back stronger. Tall plants then help burrowing birds hide from predatory skuas. “It’s this wonderful feedback loop,” Shaw says. Today, the “pretty paddock” that Houghton first experienced has been transformed. “The tussock is over your head, and you’re dodging all these penguin tunnels,” she says. The orchids and tiny herb that had been protected by fencing have started turning up all over the place.
The passage given below is followed by four alternate summaries. Choose the option that best captures the essence of the passage.
Petitioning is an expeditious democratic tradition, used frequently in prior centuries, by which citizens can bring issues directly to governments. As expressions of collective voice, they support procedural democracy by shaping agendas. They can also recruit citizens to causes, give voice to the voteless, and apply the discipline of rhetorical argument that clarifies a point of view. By contrast, elections are limited in several respects: they involve only a few candidates, and thus fall far short of a representative democracy. Further, voters’ choices are not specific to particular policies or laws, and elections are episodic, whereas the voice of the people needs to be heard and integrated constantly into democratic government.
The passage given below is followed by four alternate summaries. Choose the option that best captures the essence of the passage.
It’s not that modern historians of medieval Africa have been ignorant about contacts between Ethiopia and Europe; they just had the power dynamic reversed. The traditional narrative stressed Ethiopia as weak and in trouble in the face of aggression from external forces, so Ethiopia sought military assistance from their fellow Christians to the north. But the real story, buried in plain sight in medieval diplomatic texts, simply had not yet been put together by modern scholars. Recent research pushes scholars of medieval Europe to imagine a much more richly connected medieval world: at the beginning of the so-called Age of Exploration, there is evidence that the kings of Ethiopia were sponsoring their own missions of diplomacy, faith and commerce.
The passage given below is followed by four alternate summaries. Choose the option that best captures the essence of the passage.
All that we think we know about how life hangs together is really some kind of illusion that we have perpetrated on ourselves because of our limited vision. What appear to be inanimate objects such as stones turn out not only to be alive in the same way that we are, but also in many infinitesimal ways to be affected by stimuli just as humans are. The distinction between animate and inanimate simply cannot be made when you enter the world of quantum mechanics and try to determine how those apparent subatomic particles, of which you and everything else in our universe is composed, are all tied together. The point is that physics and metaphysics show there is a pattern to the universe that goes beyond our capacity to grasp it with our brains.
The passage given below is followed by four alternate summaries. Choose the option that best captures the essence of the passage.
Several of the world’s earliest cities were organised along egalitarian lines. In some regions, urban populations governed themselves for centuries without any indication of the temples and palaces that would later emerge; in others, temples and palaces never emerged at all, and there is simply no evidence of a class of administrators or any other sort of ruling stratum. It would seem that the mere fact of urban life does not, necessarily, imply any particular form of political organization, and never did. Far from resigning us to inequality, the picture that is now emerging of humanity’s past may open our eyes to egalitarian possibilities we otherwise would have never considered.
The passage given below is followed by four alternate summaries. Choose the option that best captures the essence of the passage.
There's a common idea that museum artworks are somehow timeless objects available to admire for generations to come. But many are objects of decay. Even the most venerable Old Master paintings don't escape: pigments discolour, varnishes crack, canvases warp. This challenging fact of art-world life is down to something that sounds more like a thread from a morality tale: inherent vice. Damien Hirst's iconic shark floating in a tank – entitled The Physical Impossibility of Death in the Mind of Someone Living – is a work that put a spotlight on inherent vice. When he made it in 1991, Hirst got himself in a pickle by not using the right kind of pickle to preserve the giant fish. The result was that the shark began to decompose quite quickly – its preserving liquid clouding, the skin wrinkling, and an unpleasant smell wafting from the tank.
The passage given below is followed by four alternate summaries. Choose the option that best captures the essence of the passage.
Today, many of the debates about behavioural control in the age of big data echo Cold War-era anxieties about brainwashing, insidious manipulation and repression in the ‘technological society’. In his book Psychopolitics, Han warns of the sophisticated use of targeted online content, enabling ‘influence to take place on a pre-reflexive level’. On our current trajectory, “freedom will prove to have been merely an interlude.” The fear is that the digital age has not liberated us but exposed us, by offering up our private lives to machine-learning algorithms that can process masses of personal and behavioural data. In a world of influencers and digital entrepreneurs, it’s not easy to imagine the resurgence of a culture engendered through disconnect and disaffiliation, but concerns over the threat of online targeting, polarisation and big data have inspired recent polemics about the need to rediscover solitude and disconnect.
The passage given below is followed by four alternate summaries. Choose the option that best captures the essence of the passage.
To defend the sequence of alphabetisation may seem bizarre, so obvious is its application that it is hard to imagine a reference, catalogue or listing without it. But alphabetical order was not an immediate consequence of the alphabet itself. In the Middle Ages, deference for ecclesiastical tradition left scholars reluctant to categorise things according to the alphabet — to do so would be a rejection of the divine order. The rediscovery of the ancient Greek and Roman classics necessitated more efficient ways of ordering, searching and referencing texts. Government bureaucracy in the 16th and 17th centuries quickened the advance of alphabetical order, bringing with it pigeonholes, notebooks and card indexes.
The passage given below is followed by four alternate summaries. Choose the option that best captures the essence of the passage.
“It does seem to me that the job of comedy is to offend, or have the potential to offend, and it cannot be drained of that potential,” Rowan Atkinson said of cancel culture. “Every joke has a victim. That’s the definition of a joke. Someone or something or an idea is made to look ridiculous.” The Netflix star continued, “I think you’ve got to be very, very careful about saying what you’re allowed to make jokes about. You’ve always got to kick up? Really?” He added, “There are lots of extremely smug and self-satisfied people in what would be deemed lower down in society, who also deserve to be pulled up. In a proper free society, you should be allowed to make jokes about absolutely anything.”
The passage given below is followed by four alternate summaries. Choose the option that best captures the essence of the passage.
Tamsin Blanchard, curator of Fashion Open Studio, an initiative by a campaign group showcasing the work of ethical designers says, “We're all drawn to an exquisite piece of embroidery, a colourful textile or even a style of dressing that might have originated from another heritage. [But] this magpie mentality, where all of culture and history is up for grabs as 'inspiration', has accelerated since the proliferation of social media... Where once a fashion student might research the history and traditions of a particular item of clothing with care and respect, we now have a world where images are lifted from image libraries without a care for their cultural significance. It's easier than ever to steal a motif or a craft technique and transfer it on to a piece of clothing that is either mass produced or appears on a runway without credit or compensation to their original communities."
Directions for Summary: A paragraph is followed by four options which have summarized the passage in their own way. Pick the option that best summarizes the passage:
McGurk and MacDonald (1976) reported a powerful multisensory illusion occurring with audio-visual speech. They recorded a voice articulating a consonant 'ba-ba-ba' and dubbed it with a face articulating another consonant 'ga-ga-ga'. Even though the acoustic speech signal was well recognized alone, it was heard as another consonant after dubbing with incongruent visual speech i.e., 'da-da-da'. The illusion, termed as the McGurk effect, has been replicated many times, and it has sparked an abundance of research. The reason for the great impact is that this is a striking demonstration of multisensory integration, where that auditory and visual information is merged into a unified, integrated percept.
Directions for Summary: A paragraph is followed by four options which have summarized the passage in their own way. Pick the option that best summarizes the passage:
Foreign peacekeepers often exist in a bubble in the poor countries in which they are deployed; they live in posh compounds, drive fancy vehicles, and distance themselves from locals. This may be partially justified as they are outsiders, living in constant fear, performing a job that is emotionally draining. But they are often despised by the locals, and many would like them to leave. A better solution would be bottom-up peacebuilding, which would involve their spending more time working with communities, understanding their grievances and earning their trust, rather than only meeting government officials.
Directions for Summary: A paragraph is followed by four options which have summarized the passage in their own way. Pick the option that best summarizes the passage:
Developing countries are becoming hotbeds of business innovation in much the same way as Japan did from the 1950s onwards. They are reinventing systems of production and distribution, and experimenting with entirely new business models. Why are countries that were until recently associated with cheap hands now becoming leaders in innovation? Driven by a mixture of ambition and fear they are relentlessly climbing up the value chain. Emerging-market champions have not only proved highly competitive in their own backyards, they are also going global themselves.
The passage given below is followed by four alternate summaries. Choose the option that best captures the essence of the passage.
Biologists who publish their research directly to the Web have been labelled as “rogue”, but physicists have been routinely publishing research digitally (“preprints”), prior to submitting in a peer-reviewed journal. Advocates of preprints argue that quick and open dissemination of research speeds up scientific progress and allows for wider access to knowledge. But some journals still don’t accept research previously published as a preprint. Even if the idea of preprints is gaining ground, one of the biggest barriers for biologists is how they would be viewed by members of their conservative research community.
The passage given below is followed by four alternate summaries. Choose the option that best captures the essence of the passage.
Creativity is now viewed as the engine of economic progress. Various organizations are devoted to its study and promotion; there are encyclopedias and handbooks surveying creativity research. But this proliferating success has tended to erode creativity’s stable identity: it has become so invested with value that it has become impossible to police its meaning and the practices that supposedly identify and encourage it. Many people and organizations committed to producing original thoughts now feel that undue obsession with the idea of creativity gets in the way of real creativity
The passage given below is followed by four alternate summaries. Choose the option that best captures the essence of the passage.
The unlikely alliance of the incumbent industrialist and the distressed unemployed worker is especially powerful amid the debris of corporate bankruptcies and layoffs. In an economic downturn, the capitalist is more likely to focus on costs of the competition emanating from free markets than on the opportunities they create. And the unemployed worker will find many others in a similar condition and with anxieties similar to his, which will make it easier for them to organize together. Using the cover and the political organization provided by the distressed, the capitalist captures the political agenda.
Directions for Summary: A paragraph is followed by four options which have summarized the passage in their own way. Pick the option that best summarizes the passage:
The human mind is wired to see patterns. Not only does the brain process information as it comes in, it also stores insights from all our past experiences. Every interaction, happy or sad, is catalogued in our memory. Intuition draws from that deep memory well to inform our decisions going forward. In other words, intuitive decisions are based on data, and not contrary to data as many would like to assume. When we subconsciously spot patterns, the body starts firing neurochemicals in both the brain and gut. These "somatic markers" are what give us that instant sense that something is right... or that it's off. Not only are these automatic processes faster than rational thought, but our intuition draws from decades of diverse qualitative experience (sights, sounds, interactions, etc.) - a wholly human feature that big data alone could never accomplish.
Directions for Summary: A paragraph is followed by four options which have summarized the passage in their own way. Pick the option that best summarizes the passage:
People view idleness as a sin and industriousness as a virtue, and in the process have developed an unsatisfactory relationship with their jobs. Work has become a way for them to keep busy, even though many find their work meaningless. In their need for activity people undertake what was once considered work (fishing, gardening) as hobbies. The opposing view is that hard work has made us prosperous and improved our levels of health and education. It has also brought innovation and labour and time-saving devices, which have lessened life's drudgery.
Directions for Summary: A paragraph is followed by four options which have summarized the passage in their own way. Pick the option that best summarizes the passage:
Brazil's growth rate has been low, yet most Brazilians say their financial situation has improved, and they expect it to get even better. This is because most incomes are rising fast, with higher minimum wages and very low unemployment. The result is falling inequality and a growing middle class - the result of economic stabilization, improved social security and universal primary education. But despite recent improvements the Brazilian economy is still painfully unequal, with poor Brazilians paying the biggest share of their income in taxes and getting the least back in government services.
The passage given below is followed by four alternate summaries. Choose the option that best captures the essence of the passage.
As Soviet power declined, the world became to some extent multipolar, and Europe strove to define an independent identity. What a journey Europe has undertaken to reach this point. It had in every century changed its internal structure and invented new ways of thinking about the nature of international order. Now at the culmination of an era, Europe, in order to participate in it, felt obliged to set aside the political mechanisms through which it had conducted its affairs for three and a half centuries. Impelled also by the desire to cushion the emergent unification of Germany, the new European Union established a common currency in 2002 and a formal political structure in 2004. It proclaimed a Europe united, whole, and free, adjusting its differences by peaceful mechanisms.
1. Europe has consistently changed its internal structure to successfully adapt to the changing world order.
2. Europe has consistently changed in keeping with the changing world order and that has culminated in a united Europe.
3. The establishment of a formal political structure in Europe was hastened by the unification of Germany and the emergence of a multipolar world.
4. Europe has chosen to lower political and economic heterogeneity, in order to adapt itself to an emerging multi-polar world.
The passage given below is followed by four alternate summaries. Choose the option that best captures the essence of the passage.
For years, movies and television series like Crime Scene Investigation (CSI) paint an unrealistic picture of the “science of voices.” In the 1994 movie Clear and Present Danger an expert listens to a brief recorded utterance and declares that the speaker is “Cuban, aged 35 to 45, educated in the […] eastern United States.” The recording is then fed to a supercomputer that matches the voice to that of a suspect, concluding that the probability of correct identification is 90%. This sequence sums up a good number of misimpressions about forensic phonetics, which have led to errors in reallife justice. Indeed, that movie scene exemplifies the so-called “CSI effect”—the phenomenon in which judges hold unrealistic expectations of the capabilities of forensic science.
1. Although voice recognition is often presented as evidence in legal cases, its scientific basis can be shaky.
2. Movies and televisions have led to the belief that the use of forensic phonetics in legal investigations is robust and fool proof.
3. Voice recognition as used in many movies to identify criminals has been used to identify criminals in real life also.
4. Voice recognition has started to feature prominently in crime-scene intelligence investigations because of movies and television series.
The passage given below is followed by four alternate summaries. Choose the option that best captures the essence of the passage.
For nearly a century most psychologists have embraced one view of intelligence. Individuals are born with more or less intelligence potential (I.Q.); this potential is heavily influenced by heredity and difficult to alter; experts in measurement can determine a person’s intelligence early in life, currently from paper-and-pencil measures, perhaps eventually from examining the brain in action or even scrutinizing his/her genome. Recently, criticism of this conventional wisdom has mounted. Biologists ask if speaking of a single entity called “intelligence” is coherent and question the validity of measures used to estimate heritability of a trait in humans, who, unlike plants or animals, are not conceived and bred under controlled conditions.
1. Biologists have questioned the long-standing view that ‘intelligence’ is a single entity and the attempts to estimate its heritability.
2. Biologists have started questioning psychologists' view of 'intelligence' as a measurable immutable characteristic of an individual.
3. Biologists have questioned the view that ‘intelligence’ is a single entity and the ways in which what is inherited.
4. Biologists have criticised that conventional wisdom that individuals are born with more or less intelligence potential.
The passage given below is followed by four alternate summaries. Choose the option that best captures the essence of the passage.
With the Treaty of Westphalia, the papacy had been confined to ecclesiastical functions, and the doctrine of sovereign equality reigned. What political theory could then explain the origin and justify the functions of secular political order? In his Leviathan, published in 1651, three years after the Peace of Westphalia, Thomas Hobbes provided such a theory. He imagined a “state of nature” in the past when the absence of authority produced a “war of all against all.” To escape such intolerable insecurity, he theorized, people delivered their rights to a sovereign power in return for the sovereign’s provision of security for all within the state’s border. The sovereign state’s monopoly on power was established as the only way to overcome the perpetual fear of violent death and war.
1. Thomas Hobbes theorized the emergence of sovereign states based on a transactional relationship between people and sovereign state that was necessitated by a sense of insecurity of the people.
2. Thomas Hobbes theorized the voluntary surrender of rights by people as essential for emergence of sovereign states.
3. Thomas Hobbes theorized the emergence of sovereign states as a form of transactional governance to limit the power of the papacy.
4. Thomas Hobbes theorized that sovereign states emerged out of people’s voluntary desire to overcome the sense of insecurity and establish the doctrine of sovereign equality.
The passage given below is followed by four alternate summaries. Choose the option that best captures the essence of the passage.
All humans make decisions based on one or a combination of two factors. This is either intuition or information. Decisions made through intuition are usually fast, people don’t even think about the problem. It is quite philosophical, meaning that someone who made a decision based on intuition will have difficulty explaining the reasoning behind it. The decision-maker would often utilize her senses in drawing conclusions, which again is based on some experience in the field of study. On the other side of the spectrum, we have decisions made based on information. These decisions are rational — it is based on facts and figures, which unfortunately also means that it can be quite slow. The decision-maker would frequently use reports, analyses, and indicators to form her conclusion. This methodology results in accurate, quantifiable decisions, meaning that a person can clearly explain the rationale behind it.
1. We make decisions based on intuition or information on the basis of the time available.
2. It is better to make decisions based on information because it is more accurate, and the rationale behind it can be explained.
3. Decisions based on intuition and information result in differential speed and ability to provide a rationale.
4. While decisions based on intuition can be made fast, the reasons that led to these cannot be spelt out.
The passage given below is followed by four alternate summaries. Choose the option that best captures the essence of the passage.
The rural-urban continuum and the heterogeneity of urban settings pose an obvious challenge to identifying urban areas and measuring urbanization rates in a consistent way within and across countries. An objective methodology for distinguishing between urban and rural areas that is based on one or two metrics with fixed thresholds may not adequately capture the wide diversity of places. A richer combination of criteria would better describe the multifaceted nature of a city’s function and its environment, but the joint interpretation of these criteria may require an element of human judgment.
1. The difficulty of accurately identifying urban areas means that we need to create a rich combination of criteria that can be applied to all urban areas.
2. With the diversity of urban landscapes, measurable criteria for defining urban areas may need to be supplemented with human judgement.
3. Current methodologies used to define urban and rural areas are no longer relevant to our being able to study trends in urbanisation.
4. Distinguishing between urban and rural areas might call for some judgement on the objective methodology being used to define a city’s functions.
The passage given below is followed by four alternate summaries. Choose the option that best captures the essence of the passage.
Brown et al. (2001) suggest that ‘metabolic theory may provide a conceptual foundation for much of ecology just as genetic theory provides a foundation for much of evolutionary biology’. One of the successes of genetic theory is the diversity of theoretical approaches and models that have been developed and applied. A Web of Science (v. 5.9. Thomson Reuters) search on genetic* + theor* + evol* identifies more than 12000 publications between 2005 and 2012. Considering only the 10 most-cited papers within this 12000 publication set, genetic theory can be seen to focus on genome dynamics, phylogenetic inference, game theory and the regulation of gene expression. There is no one fundamental genetic equation, but rather a wide array of genetic models, ranging from simple to complex, with differing inputs and outputs, and divergent areas of application, loosely connected to each other through the shared conceptual foundation of heritable variation.
1. Genetic theory has a wide range of theoretical approaches and applications and Metabolic theory must have the same in the field of ecology.
2. Genetic theory has evolved to spawn a wide range of theoretical models and applications but Metabolic theory need not evolve in a similar manner in the field of ecology.
3. Genetic theory has a wide range of theoretical approaches and application and is foundational to evolutionary biology and Metabolic theory has the potential to do the same for ecology.
4. Genetic theory provides an example of how a range of theoretical approaches and applications can make a theory successful.
The passage given below is followed by four alternate summaries. Choose the option that best captures the essence of the passage.
The dominant hypotheses in modern science believe that language evolved to allow humans to exchange factual information about the physical world. But an alternative view is that language evolved, in modern humans at least, to facilitate social bonding. It increased our ancestors’ chances of survival by enabling them to hunt more successfully or to cooperate more extensively. Language meant that things could be explained and that plans and past experiences could be shared efficiently.
1. From the belief that humans invented language to process factual information, scholars now think that language was the outcome of the need to ensure social cohesion and thus human survival.
2. Since its origin, language has been continuously evolving to higher forms, from being used to identify objects to ensuring human survival by enabling our ancestors to bond and cooperate.
3. Most believe that language originated from a need to articulate facts, but others think it emerged from the need to promote social cohesion and cooperation, thus enabling human survival.
4. Experts are challenging the narrow view of the origin of language, as being merely used to describe facts and label objects, to being necessary to promote more complex interactions among humans.
The passage given below is followed by four alternate summaries. Choose the option that best captures the essence of the passage.
Aesthetic political representation urges us to realize that ‘the representative has autonomy with regard to the people represented’ but autonomy then is not an excuse to abandon one’s responsibility. Aesthetic autonomy requires cultivation of ‘disinterestedness’ on the part of actors which is not indifference. To have disinterestedness, that is, to have comportment towards the beautiful that is devoid of all ulterior references to use – requires a kind of aesthetic commitment; it is the liberation of ourselves for the release of what has proper worth only in itself.
1. Disinterestedness is different from indifference as the former means a non-subjective evaluation of things which is what constitutes aesthetic political representation.
2. Aesthetic political representation advocates autonomy for the representatives manifested through disinterestedness which itself is different from indifference.
3. Disinterestedness, as distinct from indifference, is the basis of political representation.
4. Aesthetic political representation advocates autonomy for the representatives drawing from disinterestedness, which itself is different from indifference
The passage given below is followed by four alternate summaries. Choose the option that best captures the essence of the passage.
Vance Packard’s The Hidden Persuaders alerted the public to the psychoanalytical techniques used by the advertising industry. Its premise was that advertising agencies were using depth interviews to identify hidden consumer motivations, which were then used to entice consumers to buy goods. Critics and reporters often wrongly assumed that Packard was writing mainly about subliminal advertising. Packard never mentioned the word subliminal, however, and devoted very little space to discussions of “subthreshold” effects. Instead, his views largely aligned with the notion that individuals do not always have access to their conscious thoughts and can be persuaded by supraliminal messages without their knowledge.
The passage given below is followed by four alternate summaries. Choose the option that best captures the essence of the passage.
A distinguishing feature of language is our ability to refer to absent things, known as displaced reference. A speaker can bring distant referents to mind in the absence of any obvious stimuli. Thoughts, not limited to the here and now, can pop into our heads for unfathomable reasons. This ability to think about distant things necessarily precedes the ability to talk about them. Thought precedes meaningful referential communication. A prerequisite for the emergence of human-like meaningful symbols is that the mental categories they relate to can be invoked even in the absence of immediate stimuli.
The passage given below is followed by four alternate summaries. Choose the option that best captures the essence of the passage.
Physics is a pure science that seeks to understand the behavior of matter without regard to whether it will afford any practical benefit. Engineering is the correlative applied science in which physical theories are put to some specific use, such as building a bridge or a nuclear reactor. Engineers obviously rely heavily on the discoveries of physicists, but an engineer's knowledge of the world is not the same as the physicist's knowledge. In fact, an engineer's know-how will often depend on physical theories that, from the point of view of pure physics, are false. There are some reasons for this. First, theories that are false in the purest and strictest sense are still sometimes very good approximations to the true ones, and often have the added virtue of being much easier to work with. Second, sometimes the true theories apply only under highly idealized conditions which can only be created under controlled experimental situations. The engineer finds that in the real world, theories rejected by physicists yield more accurate predictions than the ones that they accept
The passage given below is followed by four alternate summaries. Choose the option that best captures the essence of the passage.
Language is an autapomorphy found only in our lineage, and not shared with other branches of our group such as primates. We also have no definitive evidence that any species other than Homo sapiens ever had language. However, it must be noted straightaway that ‘language’ is not a monolithic entity, but rather a complex bundle of traits that must have evolved over a significant time frame…. Moreover, language crucially draws on aspects of cognition that are long established in the primate lineage, such as memory: the language faculty as a whole comprises more than just the uniquely linguistic features.
The passage given below is followed by four alternate summaries. Choose the option that best captures the essence of the passage.
Social movement organizations often struggle to mobilize supporters from allied movements in their efforts to achieve critical mass. Organizations with hybrid identities—those whose organizational identities span the boundaries of two or more social movements, issues, or identities—are vital to mobilizing these constituencies. Studies of the post-9/11 U.S. antiwar movement show that individuals with past involvement in non-anti-war movements are more likely to join hybrid organizations than are individuals without involvement in non-anti-war movements. In addition, they show that organizations with hybrid identities occupy relatively more central positions in inter-organizational contact networks within the antiwar movement and thus recruit significantly more participants in demonstrations than do nonhybrid organizations.
The passage given below is followed by four alternate summaries. Choose the option that best captures the essence of the passage.
Privacy-challenged office workers may find it hard to believe, but open-plan offices and cubicles were invented by architects and designers who thought that to break down the social walls that divide people, you had to break down the real walls, too. Modernist architects saw walls and rooms as downright fascist. The spaciousness and flexibility of an open plan would liberate homeowners and office dwellers from the confines of boxes. But companies took up their idea less out of a democratic ideology than a desire to pack in as many workers as they could. The typical open-plan office of the first half of the 20th century was a white-collar assembly line. Cubicles were interior designers’ attempt to put some soul back in.
The passage given below is followed by four summaries. Choose the option that best captures the author’s position.
Artificial embryo twinning is a relatively low-tech way to make clones. As the name suggests, this technique mimics the natural process that creates identical twins. In nature, twins form very early in development when the embryo splits in two. Twinning happens in the first days after egg and sperm join, while the embryo is made of just a small number of unspecialized cells. Each half of the embryo continues dividing on its own, ultimately developing into separate, complete individuals. Since they developed from the same fertilized egg, the resulting individuals are genetically identical.
The passage given below is followed by four summaries. Choose the option that best captures the author’s position.
Production and legitimation of scientific knowledge can be approached from a number of perspectives. To study knowledge production from the sociology of professions perspective would mean a focus on the institutionalization of a body of knowledge. The professions-approach informed earlier research on managerial occupation, business schools and management knowledge. It however tends to reify institutional power structures in its understanding of the links between knowledge and authority. Knowledge production is restricted in the perspective to the selected members of the professional community, most notably to the university faculties and professional colleges. Power is understood as a negative mechanism, which prevents the non-professional actors from offering their ideas and information as legitimate knowledge.
The passage given below is followed by four summaries. Choose the option that best captures the author’s position.
The conceptualization of landscape as a geometric object first occurred in Europe and is historically related to the European conceptualization of the organism, particularly the human body, as a geometric object with parts having a rational, three-dimensional organization and integration. The European idea of landscape appeared before the science of landscape emerged, and it is no coincidence that Renaissance artists such as Leonardo da Vinci, who studied the structure of the human body, also facilitated an understanding of the structure of landscape. Landscape which had been a subordinate background to religious or historical narratives, became an independent genre or subject of art by the end of sixteenth century or the beginning of the seventeenth century.
The passage given below is followed by four summaries. Choose the option that best captures the author’s position.
Should the moral obligation to rescue and aid persons in grave peril, felt by a few, be enforced by the criminal law? Should we follow the lead of a number of European countries and enact bad Samaritan laws? Proponents of bad Samaritan laws must overcome at least three different sorts of obstacles. First, they must show the laws are morally legitimate in principle, that is, that the duty to aid others is a proper candidate for legal enforcement. Second, they must show that this duty to aid can be defined in a way that can be fairly enforced by the courts. Third, they must show that the benefits of the laws are worth their problems, risks and costs.
The passage given below is followed by four summaries. Choose the option that best captures the author’s position.
A Japanese government panel announced that it recommends regulating only genetically modified organisms that have had foreign genes permanently introduced into their genomes and not those whose endogenous genes have been edited. The only stipulation is that researchers and businesses will have to register their modifications to plants or animals with the government, with the exception of microbes cultured in contained environments. Reactions to the decision are mixed. While lauding the potential benefits of genome editing, an editorial opposes acrossthe-board permission. Unforeseen risks in gene editing cannot be ruled out. All genetically modified products must go through the same safety and labeling processes regardless of method.
The passage given below is followed by four summaries. Choose the option that best captures the author’s position.
The early optimism about sport's deterrent effects on delinquency was premature as researchers failed to find any consistent relationships between sports participation and deviance. As the initial studies were based upon cross-sectional data and the effects captured were short-term, it was problematic to test and verify the temporal sequencing of events suggested by the deterrence theory. The correlation between sport and delinquency could not be disentangled from class and cultural variables known. Choosing individuals to play sports in the first place was problematic, which became more acute in the subsequent decades as researchers began to document just how closely sports participation was linked to social class indicators.
Answer the following question based on the information given below.
Do sports mega events like the Summer Olympic Games benefit the host city economically? It depends, but the prospects are less than rosy. The trick is converting… several billion dollars in operating costs during the 17-day fiesta of the games into a basis for long-term economic returns. These days, the Summer Olympic games themselves generate total revenue of 5 billion, but the lion’s share of this goes to the International Olympics Committee, the National Olympics Committees and the International sports Federations. Any economic benefit would have to flow from the value of the Games as an advertisement for the city, the new transportation and communications infrastructure that was created for the Games, or the ongoing use of the new facilities.
Evidence suggests that the advertising effect is far from certain. The infrastructure benefit depends on the initial condition of the city and the effectiveness of the planning. The facilities benefits is dubious at best for buildings such as velodromes or natatoriums and problematic for 100,000-seat Olympic stadiums. The latter require a conversion plan for future use, the former are usually doomed to near vacancy. Hosting the summer Games generally requires 30-plus sports venues and dozens of training centers. Today, the bird’s Nest in Beijing sits virtually empty, while the Olympic stadium in Sydney costs some $30 million a year to operate.
Part of the problem is that Olympics planning takes place in a frenzied and time-pressured atmosphere of intense competition with the other prospective host cities – not optimal conditions for contemplating the future shape of an urban landscape. Another part of the problem is that urban land is generally scarce and growing scarcer. The new facilities often stand for decades or longer. Even if they have future use, are they the best use of precious urban real estate?Further, cities must consider the human cost, Residential areas often are razed and citizens relocated (without adequate preparation or compensation). Life is made more hectic and congested. There are, after all, other productive uses that can be made of vanishing fiscal resources.
The passage given below is followed by four summaries. Choose the option that best captures the author’s position.
To me, a “classic” means precisely the opposite of what my predecessors understood: a work is classical by reason of its resistance to contemporaneity and supposed universality, by reason of its capacity to indicate human particularity and difference in that past epoch. The classic is not what tells me about shared humanity–or, more truthfully put, what lets me recognize myself as already present in the past, what nourishes in me the illusion that everything has been like me and has existed only to prepare the way for me. Instead, the classic is what gives access to radically different forms of human consciousness for any given generation of readers, and thereby expands for them the range of possibilities of what it means to be a human being.
Answer the following question based on the information given below.
Do sports mega events like the Summer Olympic Games benefit the host city economically? It depends, but the prospects are less than rosy. The trick is converting… several billion dollars in operating costs during the 17-day fiesta of the games into a basis for long-term economic returns. These days, the Summer Olympic games themselves generate total revenue of 5 billion, but the lion’s share of this goes to the International Olympics Committee, the National Olympics Committees and the International sports Federations. Any economic benefit would have to flow from the value of the Games as an advertisement for the city, the new transportation and communications infrastructure that was created for the Games, or the ongoing use of the new facilities.
Evidence suggests that the advertising effect is far from certain. The infrastructure benefit depends on the initial condition of the city and the effectiveness of the planning. The facilities benefits is dubious at best for buildings such as velodromes or natatoriums and problematic for 100,000-seat Olympic stadiums. The latter require a conversion plan for future use, the former are usually doomed to near vacancy. Hosting the summer Games generally requires 30-plus sports venues and dozens of training centers. Today, the bird’s Nest in Beijing sits virtually empty, while the Olympic stadium in Sydney costs some $30 million a year to operate.
Part of the problem is that Olympics planning takes place in a frenzied and time-pressured atmosphere of intense competition with the other prospective host cities – not optimal conditions for contemplating the future shape of an urban landscape. Another part of the problem is that urban land is generally scarce and growing scarcer. The new facilities often stand for decades or longer. Even if they have future use, are they the best use of precious urban real estate?Further, cities must consider the human cost, Residential areas often are razed and citizens relocated (without adequate preparation or compensation). Life is made more hectic and congested. There are, after all, other productive uses that can be made of vanishing fiscal resources.
The passage given below is followed by four summaries. Choose the option that best captures the author’s position.
A translator of literary works needs a secure hold upon the two languages involved, supported by a good measure of familiarity with the two cultures. For and Indian translating works in an Indian language into English, finding satisfactory equivalents in a generalized western culture of practices and symbols in the original would be less difficult than gaining fluent control of contemporary English. When a westerner works on texts in Indian languages the interpretation of cultural elements will be the major challenge, rather than control over the grammar and essential vocabulary of the language concerned. It is much easier to remedy lapses in language in a text translated into English, than flaws of content. Since it is easier for an Indian to learn the English language than it is for a Briton or American to comprehend Indian culture, translations of Indian texts is better left to Indians.
Answer the following question based on the information given below.
Do sports mega events like the Summer Olympic Games benefit the host city economically? It depends, but the prospects are less than rosy. The trick is converting… several billion dollars in operating costs during the 17-day fiesta of the games into a basis for long-term economic returns. These days, the Summer Olympic games themselves generate total revenue of 5 billion, but the lion’s share of this goes to the International Olympics Committee, the National Olympics Committees and the International sports Federations. Any economic benefit would have to flow from the value of the Games as an advertisement for the city, the new transportation and communications infrastructure that was created for the Games, or the ongoing use of the new facilities.
Evidence suggests that the advertising effect is far from certain. The infrastructure benefit depends on the initial condition of the city and the effectiveness of the planning. The facilities benefits is dubious at best for buildings such as velodromes or natatoriums and problematic for 100,000-seat Olympic stadiums. The latter require a conversion plan for future use, the former are usually doomed to near vacancy. Hosting the summer Games generally requires 30-plus sports venues and dozens of training centers. Today, the bird’s Nest in Beijing sits virtually empty, while the Olympic stadium in Sydney costs some $30 million a year to operate.
Part of the problem is that Olympics planning takes place in a frenzied and time-pressured atmosphere of intense competition with the other prospective host cities – not optimal conditions for contemplating the future shape of an urban landscape. Another part of the problem is that urban land is generally scarce and growing scarcer. The new facilities often stand for decades or longer. Even if they have future use, are they the best use of precious urban real estate?Further, cities must consider the human cost, Residential areas often are razed and citizens relocated (without adequate preparation or compensation). Life is made more hectic and congested. There are, after all, other productive uses that can be made of vanishing fiscal resources.
The passage given below is followed by four summaries. Choose the option that best captures the author’s position.
For each of the past three years, temperatures have hit peaks not seen since the birth of meteorology, and probably not for more than 110,000 years. The amount of carbon dioxide in the air is at its highest level in 4 million years. This does not cause storms like Harvey – there have always been storms and hurricanes along the Gulf of Mexico – but it makes them wetter and more powerful. As the seas warm, they evaporate more easily and provide energy to storm fronts. As the air above them warms, it holds more water vapour. For every half a degree Celsius in warming, there is about a 3% increase in atmospheric moisture content. Scientists call this the Clausius–Clapeyron equation. This means the skies fill more quickly and have more to dump. The storm surge was greater because sea levels have risen 20 cm as a result of more than 100 years of human – related global warming which has melted glaciers and thermally expanded the volume of seawater.
Answer the following questions based on the information given below.
Despite their fierce reputation, Vikings may not have always been the plunderers and pillagers popular culture imagines them to be. In fact, they got their start trading in northern European markets, researchers suggest.
Combs carved from animal antlers, as well as comb manufacturing waste and raw antler material has turned up at three archaeological sites in Denmark, including a medieval marketplace in the city of Ribe. A team of researchers from Denmark and U.K.hoped to identify the species of animal to which the antlers once belonged by analyzing collagen proteins in the samples and comparing them across the animal kingdom, Laura Geggel reports for liveScience.
Somewhat surprisingly, molecular analysis of the artifacts revealed that some combs and other material had been carved from reindeer antlers…. Given that reindeer (Rangifer tarandus) don’t live in Denmark, the researchers posit that it arrived on Viking ships from Norway. Antler craftsmanship, in the form of decorative combs, was part of Viking culture. Such combs served as symbols of good health, Geggel writes. The fact that the animals shed their antlers also made them easy to collect from the large herds that inhabited Norway.
Since the artifacts were found in marketplace areas at each site it’s more likely that the Norsemen came to trade rather than pillage. Most of the artifacts also date to the 780s, but some are as old as 725. That predates the beginning of Viking raids on great Britain by about 70 years. (Traditionally, the so-called “Viking Age” began with these raids in 793 and ended with Norman conquest of Great Britain in 1066.) Archaeologists had suspected that the Viking had experience with ling maritime voyages [that] might have preceded their raiding days. Beyond Norway, these combs would have been a popular industry in Scandinavia as well. It’s possible that the antler comb’s represent a larger trade network, where the Norsemen supplied raw material to craftsmen in Denmark and elsewhere.
The passage given below is followed by four summaries. Choose the option that best captures the author’s position.
North American walnut sphinx moth caterpillars (Amorpha juglandis ) look like easy meals for birds, but they have a trick up their sleeves- they produce whistles that sound like bird alarm calls, scaring potential predators away. At first, scientists suspected birds were simply started by the loud noise. But a new study suggests a more sophisticated mechanism the caterpillar’s whistle appears to mimic a bird alarm call, sending avian predators scrambling for cover. When pecked by a bird, the caterpillars whistle by compressing their bodies like an accordion and forcing air out through specialized holes in their sides. The whistles are impressively loud-they have been measured at over 80 dB from 5cm away from the caterpillar-considering they are made by a two-inch long insect.
Answer the following questions based on the information given below.
Despite their fierce reputation, Vikings may not have always been the plunderers and pillagers popular culture imagines them to be. In fact, they got their start trading in northern European markets, researchers suggest.
Combs carved from animal antlers, as well as comb manufacturing waste and raw antler material has turned up at three archaeological sites in Denmark, including a medieval marketplace in the city of Ribe. A team of researchers from Denmark and U.K.hoped to identify the species of animal to which the antlers once belonged by analyzing collagen proteins in the samples and comparing them across the animal kingdom, Laura Geggel reports for liveScience.
Somewhat surprisingly, molecular analysis of the artifacts revealed that some combs and other material had been carved from reindeer antlers…. Given that reindeer (Rangifer tarandus) don’t live in Denmark, the researchers posit that it arrived on Viking ships from Norway. Antler craftsmanship, in the form of decorative combs, was part of Viking culture. Such combs served as symbols of good health, Geggel writes. The fact that the animals shed their antlers also made them easy to collect from the large herds that inhabited Norway.
Since the artifacts were found in marketplace areas at each site it’s more likely that the Norsemen came to trade rather than pillage. Most of the artifacts also date to the 780s, but some are as old as 725. That predates the beginning of Viking raids on great Britain by about 70 years. (Traditionally, the so-called “Viking Age” began with these raids in 793 and ended with Norman conquest of Great Britain in 1066.) Archaeologists had suspected that the Viking had experience with ling maritime voyages [that] might have preceded their raiding days. Beyond Norway, these combs would have been a popular industry in Scandinavia as well. It’s possible that the antler comb’s represent a larger trade network, where the Norsemen supplied raw material to craftsmen in Denmark and elsewhere.
The passage given below is followed by four summaries. Choose the option that best captures the author’s position.
Both Socrates and Bacon were very good at asking useful questions. In fact, Socrates is largely credited with coming up with a way of asking questions, ‘the Socratic method’, which itself is at the core of the ‘scientific method’, popularized by Bacon. The Socratic method disproves arguments by finding exceptions to them, and can therefore lead your opponent to a point where they admit something that contradicts their original position. In common with Socrates, Bacon stressed it was as important to disprove a theory as it was to prove one-and real-world observation and experimentation were key to achieving both aims Bacon also saw science as a collaborative affair, with scientists working together, challenging each other.
Answer the following questions based on the information given below.
Despite their fierce reputation, Vikings may not have always been the plunderers and pillagers popular culture imagines them to be. In fact, they got their start trading in northern European markets, researchers suggest.
Combs carved from animal antlers, as well as comb manufacturing waste and raw antler material has turned up at three archaeological sites in Denmark, including a medieval marketplace in the city of Ribe. A team of researchers from Denmark and U.K.hoped to identify the species of animal to which the antlers once belonged by analyzing collagen proteins in the samples and comparing them across the animal kingdom, Laura Geggel reports for liveScience.
Somewhat surprisingly, molecular analysis of the artifacts revealed that some combs and other material had been carved from reindeer antlers…. Given that reindeer (Rangifer tarandus) don’t live in Denmark, the researchers posit that it arrived on Viking ships from Norway. Antler craftsmanship, in the form of decorative combs, was part of Viking culture. Such combs served as symbols of good health, Geggel writes. The fact that the animals shed their antlers also made them easy to collect from the large herds that inhabited Norway.
Since the artifacts were found in marketplace areas at each site it’s more likely that the Norsemen came to trade rather than pillage. Most of the artifacts also date to the 780s, but some are as old as 725. That predates the beginning of Viking raids on great Britain by about 70 years. (Traditionally, the so-called “Viking Age” began with these raids in 793 and ended with Norman conquest of Great Britain in 1066.) Archaeologists had suspected that the Viking had experience with ling maritime voyages [that] might have preceded their raiding days. Beyond Norway, these combs would have been a popular industry in Scandinavia as well. It’s possible that the antler comb’s represent a larger trade network, where the Norsemen supplied raw material to craftsmen in Denmark and elsewhere.
The passage given below is followed by four summaries. Choose the option that best captures the author’s position.
A fundamental property of language is that it is slippery and messy and more liquid than solid, a gelatinous mass that changes shape of fit. As Wittgenstein would remind us, “usage has no sharp boundary”.
Oftentimes, the only way to determine the meaning of a word is to examine how it is used. This insight is often described as the “meaning is use” doctrine. There are differences between the “meaning is use” doctrine and a dictionary-first theory of meaning. “The dictionary’s careful fixing of words to definitions, like butterflies pinned under glass, can suggest that this is how language works. The definitions can seem to ensure and fix the meaning of words, just as the gold standard can back a country’s currency”. What Wittgenstein found in the circulation of ordinary language, however, was a free-floating currency of meaning. The value of each word arises out of the exchange. The lexicographer abstracts a meaning from that exchange, which is then set within the conventions of the dictionary definition.
Fill up the blanks A, B, C ... F, in the two passages below with the most appropriate word from the options given for each blank.
"Between the year 1946 and the year 1955, I did not file any income tax returns". With that ______A______ statement, Ramesh embarked on an account of his encounter with the Income Tax Department. "I originally owed Rs. 20,000 in unpaid taxes. With _____B________ and _______C______, the 20,000 became 60,000. The Income Tax Department then went into action, and I learned firsthand just how much power the Tax Department wields. Royalties and trust funds can be ______D_______; automobiles may be _______E______, and auctioned off. Nothing belongs to the ______F_______ until the case is settled."
Each of the questions below contains a paragraph followed by alternative summaries. Choose the option that best captures the essence of the paragraph.
You seemed at first to take no notice of your school-fellows, or rather to set yourself against them because they were strangers to you. They knew as little of you as you did of them; this would have been the reason for their keeping aloof from you as well, which you would have felt as a hardship. Learn never to conceive a prejudice against others because you know nothing of them. It is bad reasoning, and makes enemies of half the world. Do not think ill of them till they behave ill to you; and then strive to avoid the faults which you see in them. This will disarm their hostility sooner than pique or resentment or complaint.
Fill up the blanks A, B, C ... F, in the two passages below with the most appropriate word from the options given for each blank.
"Between the year 1946 and the year 1955, I did not file any income tax returns". With that ______A______ statement, Ramesh embarked on an account of his encounter with the Income Tax Department. "I originally owed Rs. 20,000 in unpaid taxes. With _____B________ and _______C______, the 20,000 became 60,000. The Income Tax Department then went into action, and I learned firsthand just how much power the Tax Department wields. Royalties and trust funds can be ______D_______; automobiles may be _______E______, and auctioned off. Nothing belongs to the ______F_______ until the case is settled."
Each of the questions below contains a paragraph followed by alternative summaries. Choose the option that best captures the essence of the paragraph.
The human race is spread all over the world, from the polar regions to the tropics. The people of whom it is made up eat different kinds of food, partly according to the climate in which they live, and partly according to the kind of food which their country produces. In hot climates, meat and fat are not much needed; but in the Arctic regions they seem to be very necessary for keeping up the heat of the body. Thus, in India, people live chiefly on different kinds of grains, eggs, milk, or sometimes fish and meat. In Europe, people eat more meat and less grain. In the Arctic regions, where no grains and fruits are produced, the Eskimo and other races live almost entirely on meat and fish.
The passage given below is followed by a set of questions. Choose the most appropriate answer to each question.
Fifty feet away three male lions lay by the road. They didn't appear to have a hair on their heads. Noting the colour of their noses (leonine noses darken as they age, from pink to black), Craig estimated that they were six years old—young adults. "This is wonderful!" he said, after staring at them for several moments. "This is what we came to see. They really are mane less." Craig, a professor at the University of Minnesota, is arguably the leading expert on the majestic Serengeti lion, whose head is mantled in long, thick hair. He and Peyton West, a doctoral student who has been working with him in Tanzania, had never seen the Tsavo lions that live some 200 miles east of the Serengeti. The scientists had partly suspected that the mane less males were adolescents mistaken for adults by amateur observers. Now they knew better.
The Tsavo research expedition was mostly Peyton's show. She had spent several years in Tanzania, compiling the data she needed to answer a question that ought to have been answered long ago: Why do lions have manes? It's the only cat, wild or domestic, that displays such ornamentation. In Tsavo she was attacking the riddle from the opposite angle. Why do its lions not have manes? (Some "mane less" lions in Tsavo East do have partial manes, but they rarely attain the regal glory of the Serengeti lions'.) Does environmental adaptation account for the trait? Are the lions of Tsavo, as some people believe, a distinct subspecies of their Serengeti cousins?
The Serengeti lions have been under continuous observation for more than 35 years, beginning with George Schaller's pioneering work in the 1960s. But the lions in Tsavo, Kenya's oldest and largest protected ecosystem, have hardly been studied. Consequently, legends have grown up around them. Not only do they look different, according to the myths, they behave differently, displaying greater cunning and aggressiveness. "Remember too," Kenya: The Rough Guide warns, "Tsavo's lions have a reputation of ferocity." Their fearsome image became well-known in 1898, when two males stalled construction of what is now Kenya railways by allegedly killing and eating 135 Indian and African labourers. A British Army officer in charge of building a railroad bridge over the Tsavo River, Lt. Col. J. H. Patterson, spent nine months pursuing the pair before he brought them to bay and killed them. Stuffed and mounted, they now glare at visitors to the Field Museum in Chicago. Patterson's account of the leonine reign of terror, The Man-Eaters of Tsavo, was an international best-seller when published in 1907. Still in print, the book has made Tsavo's lions notorious. That annoys some scientists. "People don't want to give up on mythology,” Dennis King told me one day. The zoologist has been working in Tsavo off and on for four years. "I am so sick of this man-eater business. Patterson made a helluva lot of money off that story, but Tsavo's lions are no more likely to turn man-eater than lions from elsewhere."
But tales of their savagery and wiliness don't all come from sensationalist authors looking to make a buck. Tsavo lions are generally larger than lions elsewhere, enabling them to take down the predominant prey animal in Tsavo, the Cape buffalo, one of the strongest, most aggressive animals of Earth. The buffalo don't give up easily: They often kill or severely injure an attacking lion, and a wounded lion might be more likely to turn to cattle and humans for food.
And other prey is less abundant in Tsavo than in other traditional lion haunts. A hungry lion is more likely to attack humans. Safari guides and Kenya Wildlife Service rangers tell of lions attacking Land Rovers, raiding camps, stalking tourists. Tsavo is a tough neighbourhood, they say, and it breeds tougher lions.
But are they really tougher? And if so, is there any connection between their mane lessness and their ferocity? An intriguing hypothesis was advanced two years ago by Gnoske and Peterhans: Tsavo lions may be similar to the unmanned cave lions of the Pleistocene. The Serengeti variety is among the most evolved of the species—the latest model, so to speak—while certain morphological differences in Tsavo lions (bigger bodies, smaller skulls, and maybe even lack of a mane) suggest that they are closer to the primitive ancestor of all lions. Craig and Peyton had serious doubts about this idea, but admitted that Tsavo lions pose a mystery to science.
Each of the questions below contains a paragraph followed by alternative summaries. Choose the option that best captures the essence of the paragraph.
Although almost all climate scientists agree that the Earth is gradually warming, they have long been of two minds about the process of rapid climate shifts within larger periods of change. Some have speculated that the process works like a giant oven or freezer, warming or cooling the whole planet at the same time. Others think that shifts occur on opposing schedules in the Northern and Southern Hemispheres, like exaggerated seasons. Recent research in Germany examining climate patterns in the Southern Hemisphere at the end of the last Ice Age strengthens the idea that warming and cooling occurs at alternate times in the two hemispheres. A more definitive answer to this debate will allow scientists to better predict when and how quickly the next climate shift will happen.
The passage given below is followed by a set of questions. Choose the most appropriate answer to each question.
Fifty feet away three male lions lay by the road. They didn't appear to have a hair on their heads. Noting the colour of their noses (leonine noses darken as they age, from pink to black), Craig estimated that they were six years old—young adults. "This is wonderful!" he said, after staring at them for several moments. "This is what we came to see. They really are mane less." Craig, a professor at the University of Minnesota, is arguably the leading expert on the majestic Serengeti lion, whose head is mantled in long, thick hair. He and Peyton West, a doctoral student who has been working with him in Tanzania, had never seen the Tsavo lions that live some 200 miles east of the Serengeti. The scientists had partly suspected that the mane less males were adolescents mistaken for adults by amateur observers. Now they knew better.
The Tsavo research expedition was mostly Peyton's show. She had spent several years in Tanzania, compiling the data she needed to answer a question that ought to have been answered long ago: Why do lions have manes? It's the only cat, wild or domestic, that displays such ornamentation. In Tsavo she was attacking the riddle from the opposite angle. Why do its lions not have manes? (Some "mane less" lions in Tsavo East do have partial manes, but they rarely attain the regal glory of the Serengeti lions'.) Does environmental adaptation account for the trait? Are the lions of Tsavo, as some people believe, a distinct subspecies of their Serengeti cousins?
The Serengeti lions have been under continuous observation for more than 35 years, beginning with George Schaller's pioneering work in the 1960s. But the lions in Tsavo, Kenya's oldest and largest protected ecosystem, have hardly been studied. Consequently, legends have grown up around them. Not only do they look different, according to the myths, they behave differently, displaying greater cunning and aggressiveness. "Remember too," Kenya: The Rough Guide warns, "Tsavo's lions have a reputation of ferocity." Their fearsome image became well-known in 1898, when two males stalled construction of what is now Kenya railways by allegedly killing and eating 135 Indian and African labourers. A British Army officer in charge of building a railroad bridge over the Tsavo River, Lt. Col. J. H. Patterson, spent nine months pursuing the pair before he brought them to bay and killed them. Stuffed and mounted, they now glare at visitors to the Field Museum in Chicago. Patterson's account of the leonine reign of terror, The Man-Eaters of Tsavo, was an international best-seller when published in 1907. Still in print, the book has made Tsavo's lions notorious. That annoys some scientists. "People don't want to give up on mythology,” Dennis King told me one day. The zoologist has been working in Tsavo off and on for four years. "I am so sick of this man-eater business. Patterson made a helluva lot of money off that story, but Tsavo's lions are no more likely to turn man-eater than lions from elsewhere."
But tales of their savagery and wiliness don't all come from sensationalist authors looking to make a buck. Tsavo lions are generally larger than lions elsewhere, enabling them to take down the predominant prey animal in Tsavo, the Cape buffalo, one of the strongest, most aggressive animals of Earth. The buffalo don't give up easily: They often kill or severely injure an attacking lion, and a wounded lion might be more likely to turn to cattle and humans for food.
And other prey is less abundant in Tsavo than in other traditional lion haunts. A hungry lion is more likely to attack humans. Safari guides and Kenya Wildlife Service rangers tell of lions attacking Land Rovers, raiding camps, stalking tourists. Tsavo is a tough neighbourhood, they say, and it breeds tougher lions.
But are they really tougher? And if so, is there any connection between their mane lessness and their ferocity? An intriguing hypothesis was advanced two years ago by Gnoske and Peterhans: Tsavo lions may be similar to the unmanned cave lions of the Pleistocene. The Serengeti variety is among the most evolved of the species—the latest model, so to speak—while certain morphological differences in Tsavo lions (bigger bodies, smaller skulls, and maybe even lack of a mane) suggest that they are closer to the primitive ancestor of all lions. Craig and Peyton had serious doubts about this idea, but admitted that Tsavo lions pose a mystery to science.
Each of the questions below contains a paragraph followed by alternative summaries. Choose the option that best captures the essence of the paragraph.
Modern bourgeois society, said Nietzsche, was decadent and enfeebled - a victim of the excessive development of the rational faculties at the expense of will and instinct. Against the liberal-rationalist stress on the intellect, Nietzsche urged recognition of the dark mysterious world of instinctual desires -the true forces of life. Smother the will with excessive intellectualizing and you destroy the spontaneity that sparks cultural creativity and ignites a zest for living. The critical and theoretical outlook destroyed the creative instincts. For man's manifold potential to be realized, he must forego relying on the intellect and nurture again the instinctual roots of human existence.
The passage given below is followed by a set of questions. Choose the most appropriate answer to each question.
Fifty feet away three male lions lay by the road. They didn't appear to have a hair on their heads. Noting the colour of their noses (leonine noses darken as they age, from pink to black), Craig estimated that they were six years old—young adults. "This is wonderful!" he said, after staring at them for several moments. "This is what we came to see. They really are mane less." Craig, a professor at the University of Minnesota, is arguably the leading expert on the majestic Serengeti lion, whose head is mantled in long, thick hair. He and Peyton West, a doctoral student who has been working with him in Tanzania, had never seen the Tsavo lions that live some 200 miles east of the Serengeti. The scientists had partly suspected that the mane less males were adolescents mistaken for adults by amateur observers. Now they knew better.
The Tsavo research expedition was mostly Peyton's show. She had spent several years in Tanzania, compiling the data she needed to answer a question that ought to have been answered long ago: Why do lions have manes? It's the only cat, wild or domestic, that displays such ornamentation. In Tsavo she was attacking the riddle from the opposite angle. Why do its lions not have manes? (Some "mane less" lions in Tsavo East do have partial manes, but they rarely attain the regal glory of the Serengeti lions'.) Does environmental adaptation account for the trait? Are the lions of Tsavo, as some people believe, a distinct subspecies of their Serengeti cousins?
The Serengeti lions have been under continuous observation for more than 35 years, beginning with George Schaller's pioneering work in the 1960s. But the lions in Tsavo, Kenya's oldest and largest protected ecosystem, have hardly been studied. Consequently, legends have grown up around them. Not only do they look different, according to the myths, they behave differently, displaying greater cunning and aggressiveness. "Remember too," Kenya: The Rough Guide warns, "Tsavo's lions have a reputation of ferocity." Their fearsome image became well-known in 1898, when two males stalled construction of what is now Kenya railways by allegedly killing and eating 135 Indian and African labourers. A British Army officer in charge of building a railroad bridge over the Tsavo River, Lt. Col. J. H. Patterson, spent nine months pursuing the pair before he brought them to bay and killed them. Stuffed and mounted, they now glare at visitors to the Field Museum in Chicago. Patterson's account of the leonine reign of terror, The Man-Eaters of Tsavo, was an international best-seller when published in 1907. Still in print, the book has made Tsavo's lions notorious. That annoys some scientists. "People don't want to give up on mythology,” Dennis King told me one day. The zoologist has been working in Tsavo off and on for four years. "I am so sick of this man-eater business. Patterson made a helluva lot of money off that story, but Tsavo's lions are no more likely to turn man-eater than lions from elsewhere."
But tales of their savagery and wiliness don't all come from sensationalist authors looking to make a buck. Tsavo lions are generally larger than lions elsewhere, enabling them to take down the predominant prey animal in Tsavo, the Cape buffalo, one of the strongest, most aggressive animals of Earth. The buffalo don't give up easily: They often kill or severely injure an attacking lion, and a wounded lion might be more likely to turn to cattle and humans for food.
And other prey is less abundant in Tsavo than in other traditional lion haunts. A hungry lion is more likely to attack humans. Safari guides and Kenya Wildlife Service rangers tell of lions attacking Land Rovers, raiding camps, stalking tourists. Tsavo is a tough neighbourhood, they say, and it breeds tougher lions.
But are they really tougher? And if so, is there any connection between their mane lessness and their ferocity? An intriguing hypothesis was advanced two years ago by Gnoske and Peterhans: Tsavo lions may be similar to the unmanned cave lions of the Pleistocene. The Serengeti variety is among the most evolved of the species—the latest model, so to speak—while certain morphological differences in Tsavo lions (bigger bodies, smaller skulls, and maybe even lack of a mane) suggest that they are closer to the primitive ancestor of all lions. Craig and Peyton had serious doubts about this idea, but admitted that Tsavo lions pose a mystery to science.
Each of the questions below contains a paragraph followed by alternative summaries. Choose the option that best captures the essence of the paragraph.
Local communities have often come in conflict with agents trying to exploit resources, at a faster pace, for an expanding commercial-industrial economy. More often than not, such agents of resource-intensification are given preferential treatment by the state, through the grant of generous long leases over mineral or fish stocks, for example, or the provision of raw material at an enormously subsidized price. With the injustice so compounded, local communities at the receiving end of this process have no recourse except direct action, resisting both the state and outside exploiters through a variety of protest techniques. These struggles might perhaps be seen as a manifestation of a new kind of class conflict.
Each of the questions below contains a paragraph followed by alternative summaries. Choose the option that best captures the essence of the paragraph.
- Physically, inertia is a feeling that you just can’t move; mentally, it is a sluggish mind. Even if you try to be sensitive, if your mind is sluggish, you just don’t feel anything intensely. You may even see a tragedy enacted in front of your eyes and not be able to respond meaningfully. You may see one person exploiting another, one group persecuting another, and not be able to get angry. Your energy is frozen. You are not deliberately refusing to act; you just don’t have the capacity.
- Inertia makes your body and mind sluggish. They become insensitive to tragedies, exploitation, and persecution because it freezes your energy and de-capacitates it.
- When you have inertia you don’t act although you see one person exploiting another or one group persecuting another. You don't get angry because you are incapable.
- Inertia is of two types– physical and mental. Physical inertia restricts bodily movements. Mental inertia prevents mental response to events enacted in front of your eyes.
- Physical inertia stops your body from moving; mental inertia freezes your energy, and stops your mind from responding meaningfully to events, even tragedies, in front of you.