Reading Comprehension Questions for IIFT PDF
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Instructions
Read passage carefully. Answer the questions by selecting the most appropriate option (with reference to the passage).
PASSAGE 1
We use the word culture quite casually when referring to a variety of thoughts and actions. I would like to begin my attempt to define cultures by a focus on three of its dictionary meanings that I think are significant to our understanding of the general term-culture. We often forget that it’s more essential usage is as a verb rather than as a noun, since the noun follows froth the activities involved in the verb. Thus the verb, to culture, means to cultivate. This can include at least three activities: to artificially grow microscopic organisms; to improve and refine the customs, manners and activities of one’s life; to give attention to the mind as part of what goes into the making of what we call civilization, or what was thought to be the highest culture. In short, one might argue that culture is the intervention of human effort in refining and redefining that which is natural, but that it gradually takes on other dimensions in the life of the individual, and even more in the interface between the individual and society. When speaking of society, this word also requires defining. Society, it has been said, is what emerges from a network of interactions between people that follow certain agreed upon and perceptible patterns. These arc determined by ideas of status, hierarchy and a sense of community governing the network. They are often, but not invariably, given a direction by those who control the essentials in how a society functions, as for instance, its economic resources, its technology and its value systems. The explanation and justification for who controls these aspects of a society introduces the question of its ideology and often its form.
The resulting patterns that can be differentiated from segment to segment of the society are frequently called its cultures. Most early societies register inequalities, The access of their members to wealth and status varies. The idea of equality therefore has many dimensions. All men and women may be said to be equal in the eyes of god, but may at the same time be extremely differentiated in terms of income and social standing, and therefore differentiated in the eyes of men and women. This would not apply to the entire society. There may be times when societies conform to a greater degree of equality, but such times may be temporary. It has been argued that on a pilgrimage, the status of every pilgrim is relatively similar but at the end returns to inequalities. Societies are not static and change their forms and their rules of functioning. Cultures are reflections of these social patterns, so they also change. My attempt in this introduction is to explain how the meaning of a concept such as culture has changed in recent times and has come to include many more facets than it did earlier. What we understand as the markers of culture have gone way beyond what we took them to be a century or two ago. Apart from items of culture, which is the way in which culture as heritage was popularly viewed, there is also the question of the institutions and social codes that determine the pattern of living, and upon which pattern a culture is constructed. Finally, there is the process of socialization into society and culture through education. There is a historical dimension to each of these as culture and history are deeply intertwined. There is also an implicit dialogue between the present and the past reflected in the way in which the readings of the past changed over historical periods.
Every. society has its cultures, namely, the patterns of how the people of that society live. In varying degrees this would refer to broad categories that shape life, such as the environment that determines the relationship with the natural world, technology that enables a control over the natural world, political-economy that organizes the larger vision of a society as a community or even as a state, structures of social relations that ensure its networks of functioning, religion that appeals to aspirations and belief, mythology that may get transmuted into literature and philosophy that teases the mind and the imagination with questions. The process of growth is never static therefore there are mutations and changes within the society. There is communication and interaction with other societies through which cultures evolve and mutate. There is also the emergence of subcultures that sometimes take the form of independent and dominant cultures or amoeba-like breakaway to form new cultures. Although cultures coincide with history and historical change, the consciousness of a category such as culture, in the emphatic sense in which the term is popularly used these days, emerges in the eighteenth century in Europe. The ideal was the culture of elite groups, therefore sometimes a distinction is made between what carne to be called ‘high culture’ that of the elite, and low culture’ that of those regarded as not being of the elite, and sometimes described as ‘popular’. Historical records of elite cultures in forms such as texts and monuments for instance, received larger patronage and symbolized the patterns of life of dominant groups. They were and are more readily available as heritage than the objects of the socially lower groups in society whose less durable cultural manifestations often do not survive. This also predisposed people to associate culture as essentially that of the elite.
Question 1: What is the central idea of the passage?
a) The author has explained the importance of religion and equality before God
b) The author has defined culture and its sub-elements
c) The author has explained the social inequalities existing in a society
d) The author has explained the contextual metamorphosis of culture in different contexts
Question 2: According to the author what are the characteristics of ‘Society’?
a) Society consists of rich and poor
b) Society consists of relationships between people who have agreed to follow certain social norms
c) Society consists of inequalities between people who have access to and control over resources
d) Society consists of people who go on pilgrimage together
Question 3: With reference to the above passage, what are the important elements of ‘Culture’?
a) Social inequalities, wealth, status, social norms
b) High culture elite and low culture popular
c) History, education, religion, beliefs, social patterns
d) Growth, civilisation, communication, texts and monuments
Instructions
Read the following passages carefully and identify most appropriate answer to the questions given at the end of each passage.
Groupon is one of the fastest-growing companies of all time. Its name comes from “group coupons,” an ingenious idea that has spawned an entire industry of social commerce imitators. However, it didn’t start out successful. When customers took Groupon up on its first deal, a whopping twenty people bought two-for-one pizza in a restaurant on the first floor of the company’s Chicago offices-hardly a world-changing event. ln fact, Groupon wasn’t originally meant to be about commerce at all. The founder, Andrew Mason, intended his company to become a “collective activism platform” called The Point. Its goal was to bring people together to solve problems they couldn’t solve on their own, such as fund-raising for a cause or boycotting a certain retailer. The Point’s early results were disappointing, however, and at the end of 2008 the founders decided to try something new. Although they still had grand ambitions, they were determined to keep the new product simple. They built a minimum viable product. Does this sound like a billion-dollar company to you? Mason tells the story: “We took a Word Press Blog and we skinned it to say Groupon and then every day we would do a new post. It was totally ghetto. We would sell T-shirts on the first version of Groupon. We’d say in the write-up, ”This T-shirt will come in the colour red, size large. If you want a different colour or size, e-mail that to us.” We didn’t have a form to add that stuff. lt was just so cobbled together. It was enough to prove the concept and show that it was something that people really liked: The actual coupon generation that we were doing was all File Maker. We would run a script that would e-mail the coupon PDF to people. It got to the point where we’d sell 500 sushi coupons in a day, and we’d send 500 PDFs to people with Apple Mail at the same time. Really until July of the first year it was just a scrambling to grab the tiger by the tail. It was trying to catch up and reasonably piece together a product. “Handmade PDFs, a pizza coupon, and simple blog were enough to launch Groupon into-breaking success; it is on pace to become the fastest company in history to achieve $1 billion in sales. It is revolutionizing the way local businesses find new custmors, offering special deals to consumers in more than 375 cities worldwide. A minimum viable product (MVP) helps enterpremuers start the process of learning as quickly as possible. “It is not necessarily the smallest product imaginable, though; it is simply the fastest way to get through the Build-Measure-Learn feedback loop with the minimum amount of effort. Contrary to traditional product development, which usually involves a long, thoughtful incubation period and strives for product perfection, the goal of the MVP is to begin the process of learning, not end it, Unlike a prototype or concept test, an MVP is designed not just to answer product design or technical questions. Its goal is to test fundamental business hypotheses.
Early adopters use their imagination to fill in what a product is missing. They prefer that state of affairs, because what they care about above all is being the first one to use or adopt a new product or technology. In consumer products, it’s often the thrill of being the first one on the block to show off a new basketball shoe, music player, or cool phone. In enterprise products, it’s often about gaining a competitive advantage by taking a risk with something new that competitors don’t have yet. Early adopters are suspicious of something that is too polished if it’s ready for everyone to adopt, how much advantage cart one get by being early? As a result, additional features or polish beyond what early adopters demand is a form of wasted resources and time. This is a hard truth for many entrepreneurs to accept. After all, the vision entrepreneurs keep in their beads is of a high-quality mainstream product that will change the world, not one used by a small niche of people who are willing to give it a shot before it’s ready. That world-changing product is polished, slick, and ready for prime time. It wins awards at trade shows and, most of all, is something you can proudly show Mom and Dad: An early, buggy, incomplete product feels like an unacceptable compromise. How many of us were raised with the expectation that we would put our best work forward? As one manager put it to me recently, “I know for me, the MVP feels a little dangerous in a good way-since I have always been such a perfectionist.” Minimum viable products range in complexity from extremely simple smoke tests (little more than an advertisement) to actual early prototypes complete with problems and missing features. Deciding exactly how complex an MVP needs to be cannot be done using formulas. It requires judgment. Luckily, this judgment is not difficult to develop: most entrepreneurs and product development people dramatically over estimate how many features are needed in an MVP. When in doubt simplify. For example, consider a service sold with a one-month free trial. Before a customer can use the service, he or she has to sign up for the trial. One obvious assumption, then, of the business model is that customers will sign up for a free trial once they have a certain amount of information about the service. A critical question to consider is whether customers will in fact signup for the free trial given a certain number of promised features (the value hypothesis). Somewhere in the business model, probably buried in a single cell in a spreadsheet, it specifies the “percentage of customers whose the free trial offer who then sign up.” Maybe in our projections we say that this number should be 10 percent. lf you think about it, this is a leap-of-faith question. It really should be represented in giant letters in a bold red font: WE ASSUME 10 PERCENT OF CUSTOMERS WILL SIGN UP.
Most entrepreneurs approach a question like this by building the product and then checking to see how customers react to it. I consider this to be exactly backward because it can lead to a lot of waste. First,if it turns out that we’re building something nobody wants, the whole exercise will be an avoidable expense of time and money. If customers won’t sign up for the free trial, they’ll never get to experience the amazing features that await them. Even if they do sign up, there are many other opportunities for waste. For example, how many features do we really need to include to appeal to early adopters? Every extra feature is a form of waste, and if we delay the test for these extra features, it comes with a tremendous potential cost in terms of learning and cycle time. The lesson of the MVP is that any additional work beyond what was required to start learning is waste, no matter how important it might have seemed at the time.
Question 4: What is the central idea of the passage?
a) Entrepreneurs should strive to make complete polished products ready for everyone to adopt
b) Entrepreneurs should start with a simple idea or product to avoid wastage, learn from user experience and build on it
c) Entrepreneurs should concentrate on saving cost and not spend time and energy on quality
d) Entrepreneurs should make world changing products that users want and which have many features
Question 5: According to the Author, what do early adopters want?
a) Early adopters want products that are readily available at low cost and bigb visibility
b) Early adopters want high quality, polished products that are ready to use
c) Early adopters want products with free trials with certain number of promised features
d) Early adopters want products that are new, incomplete and offer competitive advantage
Question 6: What does the author seek to imply by quoting “I know for me, the MVP feels a little dangerous-in a good way-since I have always been such a perfectionist”?
a) It implies more value for people as the entrepreneur works towards perfecting the quality of products which reduces the danger for the consumer
b) It implies that there is a risk associated with the product which enables entrepreneurs to achieve perfection in the product
c) It implies that the incomplete nature is associated with a certain amount of risk drawing entrepreneurs out of their comfort zone .
d) It implies that if entrepreneurs make products that are less than perfect it is dangerous for the consumer
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Instructions
Read the following passages carefully and answer the questions given at the end of each passage.
PASSAGE 4
The Cyclopses according to mythology were a race of
bad tempered and rather stupid one eyed giants. Not perhaps a great
portend for a new generation of robots. But Andrew Davison a computer
scientist at Imperial College, London, thinks one eye is enough for a
robot, provided its brain can think fast enough. For a robot to work
autonomously it has to understand its environment. Stereoscopic vision,
integrating the images from two eyes looking at the same thing from
different angles is one approach to achieve this, but it involves a lot
of complicated computer processing. The preferred method these days
therefore is Simultaneous Localisation and Mapping (SLAM) which uses
sensors such as laser based range finders that see by bouncing beams of
light off their surroundings and timing the return. Dr. Davison however
wants to replace the range finders which are expensive and fiddly with a
digital camera, which is small, cheap, and well understood. With this
in mind he is developing ways to use a single moving video camera to
create continually updated 3D maps that can guide even the most
hyperactive robots on its explorations. His technique involves
collecting and integrating images taken from different angles as the
camera goes on its travels. The trick is to manage to do this in real
time, at frame rates of 100-1,000 per second. The shape of the world
pops out easily from laser data because it represents a direct contour
map of the surrounding area. A camera captures this geometry indirectly
and so needs more (and smarter) computation if it is to generate
something good enough for a self – directing robot. The answer is a form
of triangulation, tracking features such as points and edges from one
frame to the next. With enough measurements of the same set of features
from different viewpoints, it is possible if you have a fast enough
computer program to estimate their positions and thus by inference the
location of the moving camera. However, developing such a program is no
mean feat. In the milliseconds between successive frames, relevant
information from each fresh image must be extracted and fused with the
current map to produce an updated version. The higher the frame rate,
the less time there is to do this work.
Question 7: What is the main message of the above passage?
a) To explain the technique of SLAM
b) To discuss techniques for increasing efficiency of self-guided robots
c) To advocate the use of digital cameras
d) To highlight the work of the scientist in the area of robotics
Question 8: What message is the author conveying by drawing attention to a mythical figure and a one eyed robot?
a) A robot is uglier than the mythical figure and also less efficient
b) Unlike the robot, the mythical figure is uglier but more efficient than the robot because it is one eyed
c) Unlike the mythical figure, having one eye does not affect the performance of the robot
d) Having both eyes will make the mythical figure less uglier and stupid than the robot
Instructions
Read the following passages carefully and answer the questions given at the end of each passage
Because of the critical role played by steel in economic development, the steel industry is often considered, especially by the governments, which traditionally owned it, to be an indicator of economic prowess. World production has grown exponentially, but there were big highs and equally big lows all through the 1990s and up to 2002. Recovery from the two World Wars and the Great Depression of the 1930s caused massive disruption and lay-offs. Over-capacity and low steel prices continued to play havoc through the 1970s and 1980s and politicians began to lose their belief that the wealth of a nation was directly coupled to its steel production.
This led to a wave of privatisations, as state-owned enterprises shed their financial liabilities to hungry capitalists. A whole new breed of steel-makers came into being using a new technology, the mini-mill. This used a smaller electric-arc furnace fed that just melts down ‘cold’ scrap. It was a cheaper process than the traditional ‘hot metal integrated mills’ with their mountains of ore and coal and monumental machinery, but it was used almost exclusively for lower-grade building and other ‘long’ products.
By the beginning of 2005, the world steel industry was on a high, after decades of moving from apocalypse to break-even and then back to apocalypse. Since 2003, when a staggering 960 million tonnes were produced-compared to 21.9 million tonnes for aluminium-there had been unprecedented demand, mainly from China and India. China was both the biggest producer, the first country to exceed 200 million tonnes of crude steel in a year, and also its biggest consumer at 244 million tonnes. The global economy was also booming, but this was creating production bottlenecks for all steel-makers and by 2004 steel had for the first time hit an average of $650 per tonne shipped. Profit margins were better, but where was the growth to come from? In tandem, the costs of essential raw materials for steel-making – iron ore coking coal-had gone through the roof, along with bulk shipping costs. The key to future growth was to secure plants in emerging markets where ore and coal were close to production sites, labour costs were much lower and where technology and investment could spur greater savings.
But the central issue was that globally the industry remained a very fragmented one. No single company was producing 100 million tonnes a year, or 10 per cent of total world production. The name of the game was consolidation into fewer, bigger players. With this would come the chance for steel-makers to gain greater pricing power, increasing their profitability and the value of their shares.
Two groups had begun to move ahead of the pack. One was Mittal Steel with its operational headquarters in London’s prestigious Berkeley Square. Mittal Steel was the world’s biggest producer of ‘long’ products. It was young, aggressive, fast, and a big risk-taker, fuelled by its founder Lakshmi Mittal’s visionary zeal to consolidate the industry. It’s nearest rival, Arcelor- the world’s most profitable steel company, focusing on ‘flat’ products-was headed by the Frenchman Guy Dolle, and was a combination of three former state-owned European steel plantsa: Arbed of Luxembourg, Usinor from France and Spain’s Aceralia. These three were now merged, restructured and administered from the grandiose, chateau-like former Arbed headquarters in Luxembourg’s Avenue de la Liberte.
Both groups were passionate about steel. Mittal, already dubbed ‘the Carnegie from Calcutta’, had a clearer vision of the need to streamline steel, but Arcelor was determined to become the biggest as well as the best. Dominating the market would enable either firm to increase its pricing position with customers, the car-makers, ship-builders and construction firms, as well as chasing growth in the new markets of Asia, South America and Eastern Europe.
Guy Dolle could hear the clump of Mittal’s feet marching ahead, and it hurt. Arcelor was Europe’s reigning steel champion and was arrogantly proud of it. It had a commanding market share of the specialised high-strength steel supplied to European car-makers, and a total overall production approaching 50 million tonnes a year, all with state-of-the-art technology. The group had repaired its consolidated balance sheet, ravished by decades of downturns and continual restructuring costs. It had invested heavily in the quest for best technology and had also acquired companies in Brazil, set up joint ventures in Russia, Japan and China and now was eagerly eyeing gateways to the North American car market. And to its long-suffering shareholders, starved of decent dividends, Arcelor was at last moving in the right direction, after the blood, sweat and tears of shifting from public to private sector. The Luxembourg group was clearly on a wake-up call, gunning to overtake Mittal Steel and keep it at bay.
By 2005, the battle for supremacy had begun to heat up. Two projected state sell-offs by public auction, in Turkey and Ukraine, were particularly attractive commercially. Both auctions were taking place in October, within three weeks of each other. The first, in Turkey, was for the 46.3 percent of government-owned shares in Erdemir, a steel-maker producing 3.5 million tonnes a year for car-makers and other industrial clients in a country of seventy million people shaping up to join the European Union. Mittal and Arcelor both already owned minitory stakes in the Turkish company and were eager to get majority control.
Question 9: Which of the following statements is true?
a) In 2003, China consumed more steel than it produced
b) Mittal steel was the world’s most profitable steel company in mid 2000s
c) Arcelor was a bigger producer of steel than Mittal
d) All of the above
Question 10: Which among the following is the common objective both Mittal and Arcelor had for aspiring to become bigger steel-makers?
a) To consolidate the rather fragmented steel industry
b) To facilitate privatisation initiatives of the government
c) To have 10% of the industry share
d) To increase pricing position with customers
Question 11: From the above passage, it clearly emerges that:
a) Arcelor had delivered good returns to its shareholders
b) Mittal steel was Arcelor’s nearest competitor
c) By 2005, steel industry was in recession
d) A nation’s steel production continues to be a good indicator of its wealth
Instructions
Read carefully the four passages that follow and answer the questions given at the end of each passage:
PASSAGE I
The most important task is revitalizing the institution of independent directors. The independent directors of a company should be faithful fiduciaries protecting, the long-term interests of shareholders while ensuring fairness to employees, investor, customer, regulators, the government of the land and society. Unfortunately, very often, directors are chosen based of friendship and, sadly, pliability. Today, unfortunately, in the majority of cases, independence is only true on paper.
The need of the hour is to strengthen the independence of the board. We have to put in place stringent standards for the independence of directors. The board should adopt global standards for director-independence, and should disclose how each independent director meets these standards. It is desirable to have a comprehensive report showing the names of the company employees of fellow board members who are related to each director on the board. This report should accompany the annual report of all listed companies.
Another important step is to regularly assess the board members for performance. The assessment should focus on issues like competence, preparation, participation and contribution. Ideally, this evaluation should be performed by a third party. Underperforming directors should be allowed to leave at the end of their term in a gentle manner so that they do not lose face. Rather than being the rubber stamp of a company’s management policies, the board should become a true active partner of the management. For this, independent directors should be trained in their in their in roles and responsibilities. Independent directors should be trained on the business model and risk model of the company, on the governance practices, and the responsibilities of various committees of the board of the company. The board members should interact frequently with executives to understand operational issues. As part of the board meeting agenda, the independent directors should have a meeting among themselves without the management being present.
The independent board members should periodically review the performance of the company’s CEO, the internal directors and the senior management. This has to be based on clearly defined objective criteria, and these criteria should be known to the CEO and other executive directors well before the start of the evolution period. Moreover, there should be a clearly laid down procedure for communicating the board’s review to the CEO and his/her team of executive directors. Managerial remuneration should be based on such reviews. Additionally, senior management compensation should be determined by the board in a manner that is fair to all stakeholders. We have to look at three important criteria in deciding managerial remuneration-fairness accountability and transparency. Fairness of compensation is determined by how employees and investors react to the compensation of the CEO. Accountability is enhanced by splitting the total compensation into a small fixed component and a large variable component. In other words, the CEO, other executive directors and the senior management should rise or fall with the fortunes of the company. The variable component should be linked to achieving the long-term objectives of the firm. Senior management compensation should be reviewed by the compensation committee of the board consisting of only the independent directors. This should be approved by the shareholders. It is important that no member of the internal management has a say in the compensation of the CEO, the internal board members or the senior management.
The SEBI regulations and the CII code of conduct have been very helpful in enhancing the level of accountability of independent directors. The independent directors should decide voluntarily how they want to contribute to the company. Their performance should decide voluntarily how they want to contribute to the company. Their performance should be appraised through a peer evaluation process. Ideally, the compensation committee should decide on the compensation of each independent director based on such a performance appraisal.
Auditing is another major area that needs reforms for effective corporate governance. An audit is the Independent examination of financial transactions of any entity to provide assurance to shareholder and other stakeholders that the financial statements are free of material misstatement. Auditors are qualified professionals appointed by the shareholders to report on the reliability of financial statements prepared by the management. Financial markets look to the auditor’s report for an independent opinion on the financial and risk situation of a company. We have to separate such auditing form other services. For a truly independent opinion, the auditing firm should not provide services that are perceived to be materially in conflict with the role of the auditor. These include investigations, consulting advice, sub contraction of operational activities normally undertaken by the management, due diligence on potential acquisitions or investments, advice on deal structuring, designing/implementing IT systems, bookkeeping, valuations and executive recruitment. Any departure from this practice should be approved by the audit committee in advance. Further, information on any such exceptions must be disclosed in the company’s quarterly and annual reports. To ensure the integrity of the audit team, it is desirable to rotate auditor partners. The lead audit partner and the audit partner responsible for reviewing a company’s audit must be rotated at least once every three to five years. This eliminates the possibility of the lead auditor and the company management getting into the kind of close, cozy relationship that results in lower objectivity in audit opinions. Further, a registered auditor should not audit a chief accounting office was associated with the auditing firm. It is best that members of the audit teams are prohibited from taking up employment in the audited corporations for at least a year after they have stopped being members of the audit team.
A competent audit committee is essential to effectively oversee the financial accounting and reporting process. Hence, each member of the audit committee must be ‘financially literate’, further, at least one member of the audit committee, preferably the chairman, should be a financial expert-a person who has an understanding of financial statements and accounting rules, and has experience in auditing. The audit committee should establish procedures for the treatment of complaints received through anonymous submission by employees and whistleblowers. These complaints may be regarding questionable accounting or auditing issues, any harassment to an employee or any unethical practice in the company. The whistleblowers must be protected.
Any related-party transaction should require prior approval by the audit committee, the full board and the shareholders if it is material. Related parties are those that are able to control or exercise significant influence. These include; parent- subsidiary relationships; entities under common control; individuals who, through ownership, have significant influence over the enterprise and close members of their families; and dey management personnel.
Accounting standards provide a framework for preparation and presentation of financial statements and assist auditors in forming an opinion on the financial statements. However, today, accounting standards are issued by bodies comprising primarily of accountants. Therefore, accounting standards do not always keep pace with changes in the business environment. Hence, the accounting standards-setting body should include members drawn from the industry, the profession and regulatory bodies. This body should be independently funded.
Currently, an independent oversight of the accounting profession does not exist. Hence, an independent body should be constituted to oversee the functioning of auditors for Independence, the quality of audit and professional competence. This body should comprise a “majority of non- practicing accountants to ensure independent oversight. To avoid any bias, the chairman of this body should not have practiced as an accountant during the preceding five years. Auditors of all public companies must register with this body. It should enforce compliance with the laws by auditors and should mandate that auditors must maintain audit working papers for at least seven years.
To ensure the materiality of information, the CEO and CFO of the company should certify annual and quarterly reports. They should certify that the information in the reports fairly presents the financial condition and results of operations of the company, and that all material facts have been disclosed. Further, CEOs and CFOs should certify that they have established internal controls to ensure that all information relating to the operations of the company is freely available to the auditors and the audit committee. They should also certify that they have evaluated the effectiveness of these controls within ninety days prior to the report. False certifications by the CEO and CFO should be subject to significant criminal penalties (fines and imprisonment, if willful and knowing). If a company is required to restate its reports due to material non-compliance with the laws, the CEO and CFO must face severe punishment including loss of job and forfeiting bonuses or equity-based compensation received during the twelve months following the filing.
Question 12: The author of the passage does not advocate:
a) Increased activism of independent directors
b) Measures to improve the independence of auditors
c) Framing the accounting standards in the light of changing business conditions
d) Active intervention by the regulators in the day-to- day functioning of the company
Instructions
The broad scientific understanding today is that our planet is experiencing a warming trend over and above natural and normal variations that is almost certainly due to human activities associated with large-scale manufacturing. The process began in the late 1700s with the Industrial Revolution, when manual labor, horsepower, and water power began to be replaced by or enhanced by machines. This revolution, over time, shifted Britain, Europe, and eventually North America from largely agricultural and trading societies to manufacturing ones, relying on machinery and engines rather than tools and animals.
The Industrial Revolution was at heart a revolution in the use of energy and power. Its beginning is usually dated to the advent of the steam engine, which was based on the conversion of chemical energy in wood or coal to thermal energy and then to mechanical work primarily the powering of industrial machinery and steam locomotives. Coal eventually supplanted wood because, pound for pound, coal contains twice as much energy as wood (measured in BTUs, or British thermal units, per pound) and because its use helped to save what was left of the world’s temperate forests. Coal was used to produce heat that went directly into industrial processes, including metallurgy, and to warm buildings, as well as to power steam engines. When crude oil came along in the mid- 1800s, still a couple of decades before electricity, it was burned, in the form of kerosene, in lamps to make light replacing whale oil. It was also used to provide heat for buildings and in manufacturing processes, and as a fuel for engines used in industry and propulsion.
In short, one can say that the main forms in which humans need and use energy are for light, heat, mechanical work and motive power, and electricity which can be used to provide any of the other three, as well as to do things that none of those three can do, such as electronic communications and information processing. Since the Industrial Revolution, all these energy functions have been powered primarily, but not exclusively, by fossil fuels that emit carbon dioxide (CO2), To put it another way, the Industrial Revolution gave a whole new prominence to what Rochelle Lefkowitz, president of Pro-Media Communications and an energy buff, calls “fuels from hell” – coal, oil, and natural gas. All these fuels from hell come from underground, are exhaustible, and emit CO2 and other pollutants when they are burned for transportation, heating, and industrial use. These fuels are in contrast to what Lefkowitz calls “fuels from heaven” -wind, hydroelectric, tidal, biomass, and solar power. These all come from above ground, are endlessly renewable, and produce no harmful emissions.
Meanwhile, industrialization promoted urbanization, and urbanization eventually gave birth to suburbanization. This trend, which was repeated across America, nurtured the development of the American car culture, the building of a national highway system, and a mushrooming of suburbs around American cities, which rewove the fabric of American life. Many other developed and developing countries followed the American model, with all its upsides and downsides. The result is that today we have suburbs and ribbons of highways that run in, out, and around not only America s major cities, but China’s, India’s, and South America’s as well. And as these urban areas attract more people, the sprawl extends in every direction.
All the coal, oil, and natural gas inputs for this new economic model seemed relatively cheap, relatively inexhaustible, and relatively harmless-or at least relatively easy to clean up afterward. So there wasn’t much to stop the juggernaut of more people and more development and more concrete and more buildings and more cars and more coal, oil, and gas needed to build and power them. Summing it all up, Andy Karsner, the Department of Energy’s assistant secretary for energy efficiency and renewable energy, once said to me: “We built a really inefficient environment with the greatest efficiency ever known to man.”
Beginning in the second half of the twentieth century, a scientific understanding began to emerge that an excessive accumulation of largely invisible pollutants-called greenhouse gases – was affecting the climate. The buildup of these greenhouse gases had been under way since the start of the Industrial Revolution in a place we could not see and in a form we could not touch or smell. These greenhouse gases, primarily carbon dioxide emitted from human industrial, residential, and transportation sources, were not piling up along roadsides or in rivers, in cans or empty bottles, but, rather, above our heads, in the earth’s atmosphere. If the earth’s atmosphere was like a blanket that helped to regulate the planet’s temperature, the CO2 buildup was having the effect of thickening that blanket and making the globe warmer.
Those bags of CO2 from our cars float up and stay in the atmosphere, along with bags of CO2 from power plants burning coal, oil, and gas, and bags of CO2 released from the burning and clearing of forests, which releases all the carbon stored in trees, plants, and soil. In fact, many people don’t realize that deforestation in places like Indonesia and Brazil is responsible for more CO2 than all the world’s cars, trucks, planes, ships, and trains combined – that is, about 20 percent of all global emissions. And when we’re not tossing bags of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, we’re throwing up other greenhouse gases, like methane (CH4) released from rice farming, petroleum drilling, coal mining, animal defecation, solid waste landfill sites, and yes, even from cattle belching. Cattle belching? That’s right-the striking thing about greenhouse gases is the diversity of sources that emit them. A herd of cattle belching can be worse than a highway full of Hummers. Livestock gas is very high in methane, which, like CO2, is colorless and odorless. And like CO2, methane is one of those greenhouse gases that, once released into the atmosphere, also absorb heat radiating from the earth’s surface. “Molecule for molecule, methane’s heat-trapping power in the atmosphere is twenty-one times stronger than carbon dioxide, the most abundant greenhouse gas..” reported Science World (January 21, 2002). “With 1.3 billion cows belching almost constantly around the world (100 million in the United States alone), it’s no surprise that methane released by livestock is one of the chief global sources of the gas, according to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency … ‘It’s part of their normal digestion process,’ says Tom Wirth of the EPA. ‘When they chew their cud, they regurgitate [spit up] some food to rechew it, and all this gas comes out.’ The average cow expels 600 liters of methane a day, climate researchers report.”
What is the precise scientific relationship between these expanded greenhouse gas emissions and global warming? Experts at the Pew Center on Climate Change offer a handy summary in their report “Climate Change 101. ” Global average temperatures, notes the Pew study, “have experienced natural shifts throughout human history. For example; the climate of the Northern Hemisphere varied from a relatively warm period between the eleventh and fifteenth centuries to a period of cooler temperatures between the seventeenth century and the middle of the nineteenth century. However, scientists studying the rapid rise in global temperatures during the late twentieth century say that natural variability cannot account for what is happening now.” The new factor is the human factor-our vastly increased emissions of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases from the burning of fossil fuels such as coal and oil as well as from deforestation, large-scale cattle-grazing, agriculture, and industrialization.
“Scientists refer to what has been happening in the earth’s atmosphere over the past century as the ‘enhanced greenhouse effect’”, notes the Pew study. By pumping man- made greenhouse gases into the atmosphere, humans are altering the process by which naturally occurring greenhouse gases, because of their unique molecular structure, trap the sun’s heat near the earth’s surface before that heat radiates back into space.
“The greenhouse effect keeps the earth warm and habitable; without it, the earth’s surface would be about 60 degrees Fahrenheit colder on average. Since the average temperature of the earth is about 45 degrees Fahrenheit, the natural greenhouse effect is clearly a good thing. But the enhanced greenhouse effect means even more of the sun’s heat is trapped, causing global temperatures to rise. Among the many scientific studies providing clear evidence that an enhanced greenhouse effect is under way was a 2005 report from NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies. Using satellites, data from buoys, and computer models to study the earth’s oceans, scientists concluded that more energy is being absorbed from the sun than is emitted back to space, throwing the earth’s energy out of balance and warming the globe.”
Question 13: Which of the following statements is incorrect?
a) Natural and controlled greenhouse effect is good for earth
b) As a measure to check global warming, prevention of destruction of forests needs to be given priority over reduction in fuel emission
c) Greenhouse gases trap the sun’s heat from radiating back into the space making the earth surface warmer
d) It is for the first time in human evolution that the global temperatures have started to witness a shift
Instructions
Read the passage carefully and answer the questions given at the end of each passage:
My comrade and I had been quartered in Jamaica, and from there we had been drafting off to the British settlement of Belize, lying away west and north of the Mosquito Coast. At Belize there had been great alarm of one cruel gang of pirates (there were always more pirates than enough in those Caribbean Seas), and as they got the better of our English cruisers by running into out-of-the-way creeks and shallows, and taking the land when they were hotly pressed, the governor of Belize had received orders from home to keep a sharp look-out for them along shore. Now, there was an armed sloop came once a year from Port Royal, Jamaica, to the Island, laden with all manner of necessaries to eat, and to drink, and to wear, and to use in various ways; and it was aboard of that sloop which had touched at Belize, that I was standing, leaning over the bulwarks.
The Island was occupied by a very small English colony. It had been given the name of Silver-Store. The reason of its being so called, was, that the English colony owned and worked a silver-mine over on the mainland, in Honduras, and used this Island as a safe and convenient place to store their silver in, until it was annually fetched away by the sloop. It was brought down from the mine to the coast on the backs of mules, attended by friendly local people and guarded by white men; from thence it was conveyed over to Silver-Store, when the weather was fair, in the canoes of that country; from Silver-Store, it was carried to Jamaica by the armed sloop once a-year, as I have already mentioned; from Jamaica, it went, of course, all over the world.
How I came to be aboard the armed sloop is easily told. Four-and-twenty marines under command of a lieutenant – that officer’s name was Linderwood – had been told off at Belize, to proceed to Silver-Store, in aid of boats and seamen stationed there for the chase of the Pirates. The Island was considered a good post of observation against the pirates, both by land and sea; neither the pirate ship nor yet her boats had been seen by any of us, but they had been so much heard of, that the reinforcement was sent. Of that party, I was one. It included a corporal and a sergeant. Charker was corporal, and the sergeant’s name was Drooce. He was the most tyrannical non- commissioned officer in His Majesty’s service.
The night came on, soon after I had had the foregoing words with Charker. All the wonderful bright colours went out of the sea and sky in a few minutes, and all the stars in the Heavens seemed to shine out together, and to look down at themselves in the sea, over one another’s shoulders, millions deep.
Next morning, we cast anchor off the Island. There was a snug harbour within a little reef; there was a sandy beach; there were cocoa-nut trees with high straight stems, quite bare, and foliage at the top like plumes of magnificent green feathers; there were all the objects that are usually seen in those parts, and I am not going to describe them, having something else to tell about.
Great rejoicings, to be sure, were made on our arrival. All the flags in the place were hoisted, all the guns in the place were fired, and all the people in the place came down to look at us. One of the local people had come off outside the reef, to pilot us in, and remained on board after we had let go our anchor.
My officer, Lieutenant Linderwood, was as ill as the captain of the sloop, and was carried ashore, too. They were both young men of about my age, who had been delicate in the West India climate. I thought I was much fitter for the work than they were, and that if all of us had our deserts, I should be both of them rolled into one. (It may be imagined what sort of an officer of marines I should have made, without the power of reading a written order. And as to any knowledge how to command the sloop—Lord! I should have sunk her in a quarter of an hour!) However, such were my reflections; and when we men were ashore and dismissed, I strolled about the place along with Charker, making my observations in a similar spirit.
It was a pretty place: in all its arrangements partly South American and partly English, and very agreeable to look at on that account, being like a bit of home that had got chipped off and had floated away to that spot, accommodating itself to circumstances as it drifted along. The huts of the local people, to the number of five- and-twenty, perhaps, were down by the beach to the left of the anchorage. On the right was a sort of barrack, with a South American Flag and the Union Jack, flying from the same staff, where the little English colony could all come together, if they saw occasion. It was a walled square of building, with a sort of pleasure-ground inside, and inside that again a sunken block like a powder magazine, with a little square trench round it, and steps down to the door.
Charker and I were looking in at the gate, which was not guarded; and I had said to Charker, in reference to the bit like a powder magazine, “That’s where they keep the silver you see;” and Charker had said to me, after thinking it over, “And silver ain’t gold. Is it, Gill?”
Question 14: Find out the TRUE statement:
a) During the time of the narration, the total number of pirates at Belize was much more than the same in the Caribbean Seas.
b) From the accounts presented here, when the narrator of the passage made the journey he already happened to be an experienced sailor with considerable navigating experiences
c) The author and his friends used to consider Drooce as the most authoritarian non- commissioned officer in Her Majesty’s service.
d) While walking with Charker, the narrator came across a barrack like structure where all the English settlers could assemble and stay together, if there was any necessity for doing so.
Instructions
Read the passage carefully and answer the questions given at the end of each passage:
We now come to the second part of our journey under the sea. The first ended with the moving scene in the coral cemetery which left a deep impression on my mind. I could no longer content myself with the theory which satisfied Conseil. That worthy fellow persisted in seeing in the Commander of the Nautilus one of those unknown servants who returns mankind contempt for indifference. For him, he was a misunderstood genius who, tired of earth’s deceptions, had taken refuge in this inaccessible medium, where he might follow his instincts freely. To my mind, this explains but one side of Captain Nemo’s character. Indeed, the mystery of that last night during which we had been chained in prison, the sleep, and the precaution so violently taken by the Captain of snatching from my eyes the glass I had raised to sweep the horizon, the mortal wound of the man, due to an unaccountable shock of the Nautilus, all put me on a new track. No; Captain Nemo was not satisfied with shunning man. His formidable apparatus not only suited his instinct of freedom, but perhaps also the design of some terrible retaliation.
That day, at noon, the second officer came to take the altitude of the sun. I mounted the platform, and watched the operation. As he was taking observations with the sextant, one of the sailors of the Nautilus (the strong man who had accompanied us on our first submarine excursion to the Island of Crespo) came to clean the glasses of the lantern. I examined the fittings of the apparatus, the strength of which was increased a hundredfold by lenticular rings, placed similar to those in a lighthouse, and which projected their brilliance in a horizontal plane. The electric lamp was combined in such a way as to give its most powerful light. Indeed, it was produced in vacuo, which insured both its steadiness and its intensity. This vacuum economized the graphite points between which the luminous arc was developed – an important point of economy for Captain Nemo, who could not easily have replaced them; and under these conditions their waste was imperceptible. When the Nautilus was ready to continue its submarine journey, I went down to the saloon. The panel was closed, and the course marked direct west.
We were furrowing the waters of the Indian Ocean, a vast liquid plain, with a surface of 1,200,000,000 of acres, and whose waters are so clear and transparent that any one leaning over them would turn giddy. The Nautilus usually floated between fifty and a hundred fathoms deep. We went on so for some days. To anyone but myself, who had a great love for the sea, the hours would have seemed long and monotonous; but the daily walks on the platform, when I steeped myself in the reviving air of the ocean, the sight of the rich waters through the windows of the saloon, the books in the library, the compiling of my memoirs, took up all my time, and left me not a moment of ennui or weariness.
From the 21 st to the 23 rd of January the Nautilus went at the rate of two hundred and fifty leagues in twenty- four hours, being five hundred and forty miles, or twenty-two miles an hour. If we recognized so many different varieties of fish, it was because, attracted by the electric light, they tried to follow us; the greater part, however, were soon distanced by our speed, though some kept their place in the waters of the Nautilus for a time. The morning of the 24 th , we observed Keeling Island, a coral formation, planted with magnificent cocos, and which had been visited by Mr. Darwin and Captain Fitzroy. The Nautilus skirted the shores of this desert island for a little distance. Soon Keeling Island disappeared from the horizon, and our course was directed to the north- west in the direction of the Indian Peninsula.
From Keeling Island our course was slower and more variable, often taking us into great depths. Several times they made use of the inclined planes, which certain internal levers placed obliquely to the waterline. I observed that in the upper regions the water was always colder in the high levels than at the surface of the sea. On the 25th of January the ocean was entirely deserted; the Nautilus passed the day on the surface, beating the waves with its powerful screw and making them rebound to a great height. Three parts of this day I spent on the platform. I watched the sea. Nothing on the horizon till about four o’clock then there was a steamer running west on our counter. Her masts were visible for an instant, but she could not see the Nautilus, being too low in the water. I fancied this steamboat belonged to the P.O. Company, which runs from Ceylon to Sydney, touching at King George’s Point and Melbourne.
At five o’clock in the evening, before that fleeting twilight which binds night to day in tropical zones, Conseil and I were astonished by a curious spectacle. It was a shoal of Argonauts travelling along on the surface of the ocean. We could count several hundreds. These graceful molluscs moved backwards by means of their locomotive tube, through which they propelled the water already drawn in. Of their eight tentacles, six were elongated, and stretched out floating on the water, whilst the other two, rolled up flat, were spread to the wing like a light sail. I saw their spiral-shaped and fluted shells, which Cuvier justly compares to an elegant skiff. For nearly an hour the Nautilus floated in the midst of this shoal of molluscs.
The next day, 26 th of January, we cut the equator at the eighty-second meridian and entered the northern hemisphere. During the day a formidable troop of sharks accompanied us. They were “cestracio philippi” sharks, with brown backs and whitish bellies, armed with eleven rows of teeth, their throat being marked with a large black spot surrounded with white like an eye. There were also some Isabella sharks, with rounded snouts marked with dark spots. These powerful creatures often hurled themselves at the windows of the saloon with such violence as to make us feel very insecure. But the Nautilus, accelerating her speed, easily left the most rapid of them behind.
About seven o’clock in the evening, the Nautilus, half- immersed, was sailing in a sea of milk. At first sight the ocean seemed lactified. Was it the effect of the lunar rays? No; for the moon, scarcely two days old, was still lying hidden under the horizon in the rays of the sun. The whole sky, though lit by the sidereal rays, seemed black by contrast with the whiteness of the waters. Conseil could not believe his eyes, and questioned me as to the cause of this strange phenomenon. Happily I was able to answer him.
“It is called a milk sea,” I explained. “A large extent of white waves is often to be seen on the coasts of Amboyna, and in these parts of the sea.” “But, sir,” said Conseil, “can you tell me what causes such an effect? For I suppose the water is not really turned into milk.” “No, my boy; and the whiteness which surprises you is caused only by the presence of myriads of luminous little worm, gelatinous and without colour, of the thickness of a hair, and whose length is not more than seven-thousandths of an inch. These insects adhere to one another sometimes for several leagues.”
“Several leagues!” exclaimed Conseil.
“Yes, my boy; and you need not try to compute the number of these infusoria. You will not be able, for, if I am not mistaken, ships have floated on these milk seas for more than forty miles.”
Towards midnight the sea suddenly resumed its usual colour; but behind us, even to the limits of the horizon, the sky reflected the whitened waves, and for a long time seemed impregnated with the vague glimmerings of an aurora borealis
Question 15: Match the following:
a) 1-ii, 2-iv, 3-i, 4-iii.
b) 1-iii, 2-i, 3- iv, 4-ii.
c) 1-iv, 2-iii, 3-ii, 4-i.
d) 1-iii, 2-ii, 3-iv, 4-i.
Answers & Solutions:
1) Answer (E)
2) Answer (E)
3) Answer (E)
4) Answer (B)
In the second paragraph, the author says, ‘Early adopters are suspicious…………….This is a hard truth for many entrepreneurs to accept’ and hence Option A goes completely against the central idea of the passage.
In the third paragraph, the author says, ‘Most entrepreneurs approach…………… Every extra feature is a form of waste’ we can clearly infer that author wants entrepreneurs to start with a simple idea or product to avoid wastage, learn from user experience and build on it.
Nowhere in the passage, the author has talked about the cost or the quality of the product. In the passage, the author is talking the cost in terms of learning and cycle time and hence option C cannot be inferred and hence, cannot be the central idea of the passage.
In the second paragraph, the author says, ‘This is a hard truth for many………….. give it a shot before it’s ready’. So if the author says that is a hard truth for entrepreneurs to accept because they think of making world-changing products, then the author clearly thinks that the entrepreneurs should concentrate more on making simple products and add the features afterwards. Hence, option D cannot be the central idea of the passage.
5) Answer (D)
In the second paragraph, the author says, ‘Early adopters are suspicious……………what early adopters demand is a form of wasted resources and time’ from this we can clearly infer that the Early adopters want products that are new, incomplete and offer competitive advantage which is what option D states. Option A and B are contradicting this statement and hence cannot be the answer.
In the second paragraph, the author has talked about offering free trials to customers but it nowhere mentions that free trials with certain number of promised features is what ‘Early adopters’ want hence option C also cannot be inferred.
Option D is the correct answer.
6) Answer (C)
Nowhere in the passage, the author talks about dangers to the consumer and hence option A or D cannot be the answer.
We cannot infer option B since nowhere in the passage the author talks about achieving perfection in the product.
The passage talks about making incomplete products, and when the author quotes “I know for me, the MVP feels a little dangerous-in a good way-since I have always been such a perfectionist” he is talking about the risks associated with these incomplete products and hence, drawing entrepreneurs out of their comfort zone. Hence, option C is the correct answer.
7) Answer (B)
Let us check by the options.
Option (A): This is very narrow and doesn’t take the holistic view of the entire passage as whole. Moreover, Dr. Davidson didn’t even use SLAM technique. He intends to improvise on this by replacing range finders with a digital camera. Hence, this option can be rejected.
Option (C): The passage is not advocating the use of digital cameras. Hence, this option can be rejected.
Option (D): To highlight the work of the scientist in the area of robotics. This is very far-fetched and can be ruled out.
Option (B): To discuss techniques for increasing efficiency of self-guided robots. This is exactly what the author has tried to explain in the entire passage. Therefore, option B is the correct answer.
8) Answer (C)
In the first part of the passage author mentions that: “The Cyclopses according to mythology were a race of bad tempered and rather stupid one eyed giants. Not perhaps a great portend for a new generation of robots. But Andrew Davison a computer scientist at Imperial College, London, thinks one eye is enough for a robot. Hence, we can say that author somehow convey the idea that having one eye does not affect the performance of the robot in any manner. Therefore, option C is the correct answer.
9) Answer (A)
Option A: True, In the second paragraph ” China was both the biggest producer, the first country to exceed 200 million tonnes of crude steel in a year, and also its biggest consumer at 244 million tonnes.” Thus Option A is correct.
Option B: False, In the fifth paragraph “It’s nearest rival, Arcelor- the world’s most profitable steel company, focusing on ‘flat’ products-was headed by the Frenchman Guy Dolle” Arcelor was the world’s most profitable steel company.
Option C: False, Never mentioned in the passage.
Option D: False
10) Answer (D)
In the passage it is given “Both groups were passionate about steel……………. Dominating the market would enable either firm to increase its pricing position with customers, the car-makers, ship-builders and construction firms, as well as chasing growth in the new markets of Asia, South America and Eastern Europe. ”
Thus both of them wanted to dominate the market to increase their pricing position with customers.
Hence D is the correct answer.
11) Answer (B)
Option A is false as given in the passage ” And to its long-suffering shareholders, starved of decent dividends, Arcelor was at last moving in the right direction, after the blood, sweat and tears of shifting from public to private sector.” We can infer that Arcelor had not delivered good returns.
Option B is correct as throughout the latter half it is mentioned that Mittal and Arcelor were the only competitors in the market.
Option C is false as in the second paragraph it is given “By the beginning of 2005, the world steel industry was on a high, after decades of moving from apocalypse to break-even and then back to apocalypse. ”
Option D cannot be inferred as “Over-capacity and low steel prices continued to play havoc through the 1970s and 1980s and politicians began to lose their belief that the wealth of a nation was directly coupled to its steel production.”
12) Answer (D)
Option A : Consider the sentence “As part of the board meeting agenda, the independent directors should have a meeting among themselves without the management being present.” The author definitely advocates increased activism by the independent directors.
Option B : Consider the sentence “Hence, an independent body should be constituted to oversee the functioning of auditors for Independence, the quality of audit and professional competence.” The author calls for measures to improve the independence of auditors.
Option C : Consider the sentence “Accounting standards do not always keep pace with changes in the business environment. Hence, the accounting standards-setting body should include members drawn from the industry, the profession and regulatory bodies.” The author says that the accounting standards should be modified based on the changing business conditions.
Hence all these options are advocated by the author.
The author does not advocate option D. Hence option D is the correct answer.
13) Answer (D)
14) Answer (D)
15) Answer (A)
It is given that “These graceful molluscs moved backwards by means of their locomotive tube, through which they propelled the water already drawn in. Of their eight tentacles, six were elongated, and stretched out floating on the water, whilst the other two, rolled up flat, were spread to the wing like a light sail.” Hence, we can say that (1- ii) is a correct combination.
Sharks and snouts are linked in seventh para. Coral formation with cocos is mentioned in the 4th paragraph.
Insufia being colorless is stated in eleventh para. Hence, option A is the correct answer.
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