CAT JUMBLED PARAGRAPHS: 1999—2006
CAT JUMBLED PARAGRAPHS: 1999—2006
one kind of :parajumbles practice questions
TYPE I: Four/Five/Six Sentences
Directions for Questions 1 to 41: The sentences given in each question, when properly
sequenced, form a coherent paragraph. Each sentence is labelled with a letter.
Choose the most logical order of sentences from among the given choices to
construct a coherent paragraph.
1.
A. The two neighbours never
fought each other.
B. Fights involving three male fiddler crabs
have been recorded, but the status of the participants was unknown.
C. They pushed or grappled only with the
intruder.
D. We recorded 17 cases in which a resident
that was fighting an intruder was joined by an immediate neighbour, an ally.
E. We
therefore tracked 268 intruder males until we saw them fighting a resident
male.
1. BEDAC 2. DEBAC 3. BDCAE 4. BCEDA
2. A. He felt justified in bypassing Congress
altogether on a variety of moves.
B. At times he was fighting the entire
Congress.
C. Bush felt he had a mission to restore
power to the presidency.
D. Bush was not fighting just the democrats.
E.
Representative democracy is a messy business, and a CEO of the White
House does not like a legislature of second guessers and time wasters.
1. CAEDB 2. DBAEC 3. CEADB 4. ECDBA
3. A. In the west, Allied Forces had fought their
way through southern Italy
as far as Rome .
B. In June 1944 Germany ’s military position in
World War Two appeared hopeless.
C. In Britain , the task of amassing the
men and materials for the liberation of northern Europe
had been completed.
D. The Red Army was poised to drive the
Nazis back through Poland .
E. The situation on the eastern front was
catastrophic.
1. EDACB 2. BEDAC 3. BDECA 4. CEDAB
4. A.
Experts such as Larry Burns, head of research at GM, reckon that only
such a full hearted leap will allow the world to cope with the mass
motorisation that will one day come to China or India .
B.
But once hydrogen is being produced from biomass or extracted from
underground coal or made from water, using nuclear or renewable electricity,
the way will be open for a huge reduction in carbon emissions from the whole
system.
C.
In theory, once all the bugs have been sorted out, fuel cells should
deliver better total fuel economy than any existing engines.
D.
That is twice as good as the internal combustion engine, but only five
percentage points better than a diesel hybrid.
E.
Allowing for the resources needed to extract hydrogen from hydrocarbon,
oil, coal or gas, the fuel cell has an efficiency of 30 %.
1. CEDBA 2. CEBDA 3. AEDBC 4. ACEBD
5. A.
But this does not mean that death was the Egyptians’ only preoccupation.
B.
Even papyri come mainly from pyramid temples.
C.
Most of our traditional sources of information about the Old Kingdom are monuments of the rich like pyramids and
tombs.
D.
Houses in which ordinary Egyptians lived have not been preserved, and
when most people died they were buried in simple graves.
E.
We know infinitely more about the wealthy people of Egypt than we
do about the ordinary people, as most monuments were made for the rich.
1. CDBEA 2. ECDAB 3. EDCBA 4. DECAB
6. A.
To much of the Labour movement, it symbolises the brutality of the upper
classes.
B.
And to everybody watching, the current mess over foxhunting symbolises
the government’s weakness.
C.
To foxhunting’s supporters, Labour’s 1991 manifesto commitment to ban it
symbolises the party’s metropolitan roots and hostility to the countryside.
D.
Small issues sometimes have large symbolic power.
E. To those who enjoy thundering across the
countryside in red coats after foxes, foxhunting symbolises the ancient roots
of rural lives.
1. DEACB 2. ECDBA 3. CEADB 4. DBAEC
7. A.
In the case of King Merolchazzar’s courtship of the Princess of the
Outer Isles, there occurs a regrettable hitch.
B.
She acknowledges the gifts, but no word of a meeting date follows.
C.
The monarch, hearing good
reports of a neighbouring princess, dispatches messengers with gifts to her
court, beseeching an interview.
D.
The princess names a date, and a formal meeting takes place; after that
everything buzzes along pretty smoothly.
E. Royal love affairs in olden days were
conducted on the correspondence method.
1. ACBDE 2. ABCDE 3. ECDAB 4. ECBAD
8. A.
Who can trace to its first beginnings the love of Damon for Pythias, of
David for Jonathan, of Swan for Edgar?
B.
Similarly with men.
C.
There is about great friendships between man and man a certain
inevitability that can only be compared with the age-old association of ham and
eggs.
D.
One simply feels that it is one of the things that must be so.
E. No one can say what was the mutual
magnetism that brought the deathless partnership of these wholesome and
palatable foodstuffs about.
1. ACBED 2. CEDBA 3. ACEBD 4. CEABD
9. A. Events intervened, and in the late 1930s
and 1940s, Germany
suffered from “over-branding”.
B. The British used to be fascinated by the
home of Romanticism.
C. But reunification and the federal
government’s move to Berlin
have prompted Germany
to think again about its image.
D. The first foreign package holiday was a
tour of Germany
organized by Thomas Cook in 1855.
E.
Since then, Germany
has been understandably nervous about promoting itself abroad.
1. ACEBD 2. DECAB 3. BDAEC 4. DBAEC
10. A. The wall does not simply divide Israel from a
putative Palestinian state on the basis of the 1967 borders.
B. A chilling omission from the road map is
the gigantic ‘separation wall’ now being built in the West
Bank by Israel .
C. It is surrounded by trenches, electric
wire and moats; there are watchtowers at regular intervals.
D. It actually takes in new tracts of
Palestinian land, sometimes five or six kilometres at a stretch.
E. Almost a decade after the end of South
African apartheid, this ghastly racist wall is going up with scarcely a peep
from Israel ’s
American allies who are going to pay for most of it.
1. EBCAD 2. BADCE 3. AEDCB 4. ECADB
11. A.
Luckily the tide of battle moved elsewhere after the American victory at
Midway and an Australian victory over Japan at Milne Bay .
B.
It could have been no more than a delaying tactic.
C.
The Australian military, knowing the position was hopeless, planned to
fall back to the south-east in the hope of defending the main cities.
D.
They had captured most of the Soloman
Islands and much of New Guinea , and
seemed poised for an invasion.
E. Not many people outside Australia
realize how close the Japanese got.
1. EDCBA 2. ECDAB 3. ADCBE 4. CDBAE
12. A.
Call it the third wave sweeping the Indian media.
B.
Now, they are starring in a new role, as suave dealmakers who are in a
hurry to strike alliances and agreements.
C.
Look around and you will find a host of deals that have been inked or
are ready to be finalized.
D.
Then the media barons wrested back control from their editors, and
turned marketing warriors with the brand as their missile.
E. The first came with those magnificent men
in their mahogany chambers who took on the world with their mighty fountain
pens.
1. ACBED 2. CEBDA 3. CAEBD 4. AEDBC
13. A.
The celebrations of economic recovery in Washington may be as premature as that
“Mission Accomplished” banner hung on the USS Abraham Lincoln to hail the end
of the Iraq
war.
B.
Meanwhile, in the real world, the struggles of families and communities
continue unabated.
C.
Washington
responded to the favorable turn in economic news with enthusiasm.
D.
The celebrations and high-fives up and down Pennsylvania Avenue are not to be found
beyond the Beltway.
E.
When the third quarter GDP showed growth of 7.2% and the monthly
unemployment rate dipped to 6%, euphoria gripped the US capital.
1. ACEDB 2. CEDAB 3. ECABD 4. ECBDA
14. A. Four days later, Oracle announced its own
bid for PeopleSoft, and invited the firm’s board to a discussion.
B.
Furious that his own plans had been endangered, PeopleSoft’s boss, Craig
Conway, called Oracle’s offer “diabolical”, and its boss, Larry Ellison, a
“sociopath”.
C.
In early June, PeopleSoft said that it would buy J.D. Edwards, a smaller
rival.
D.
Moreover, said Mr. Conway, “he could imagine no price nor combination of
price and other conditions to recommend accepting the offer.”
E.
On June 12th, PeopleSoft turned Oracle down.
1. CABDE 2. CADBE 3. CEDAB 4. CAEBD
15. A.
A few months ago I went to Princeton
University to see what
the young people who are going to be running our country in a few decades are
like.
B.
I would go to sleep in my hotel room around midnight each night, and when I awoke, my mailbox would be
full of replies—sent at 1:15 a.m. ,
2:59 a.m. , 3:23 a.m.
C.
One senior told me that she went to bed around two and woke up each
morning at seven; she could afford that much rest because she had learned to
supplement her full day of work by studying in her sleep.
D.
Faculty members gave me the names of a few dozen articulate students,
and I sent them e-mails, inviting them out to lunch or dinner in small groups.
E.
As she was falling asleep she would recite a math problem or a paper
topic to herself; she would then sometimes dream about it, and when she woke
up, the problem might be solved.
1. DABCE 2.
DACEB 3. ADBCE 4. AECBD
16. A.
I am much more intolerant of a human being’s shortcomings than I am of
an animal’s, but in this respect I have been lucky, for most of the people I
have come across have been charming.
B.
Then you come across the unpleasant human animal—the District Officer
who drawled, “We chaps are here to help you chaps,’ and then proceeded to be as
obstructive as possible.
C.
In these cases of course, the fact that you are an animal collector
helps; people always seem delighted to meet someone with such an unusual
occupation and go out of their way to assist you.
D.
Fortunately, these types are rare, and the pleasant ones I have met more
than compensated for them—but even so, I think I will stick to animals.
E.
When you travel round the world collecting animals you also, of
necessity, collect human beings.
1. EACBD 2. ABDCE 3. ECBDA 4. ACBDE
17. A.
Surrendered, or captured, combatants cannot be incarcerated in razor
wire cages; this ‘war’ has a dubious legality.
B.
How can then one characterize a conflict to be waged against a
phenomenon as war?
C.
The phrase ‘war against terror’, which has passed into the common
lexicon, is a huge misnomer.
D.
Besides, war has a juridical meaning in international law, which has
codified the laws of war, imbuing them with a humanitarian content.
E.
Terror is a phenomenon, not an entity—either State or non-State.
1. ECDBA 2. BECDA 3. EBCAD 4. CEBDA
18. A. To avoid this, the QWERTY layout put the
keys most likely to be hit in rapid succession on opposite sides. This made the
keyboard slow, the story goes, but that was the idea.
B.
A different layout, which had been patented by August Dvorak in 1936,
was shown to be much faster.
C.
The QWERTY design (patented by Christopher Sholes in 1868 and sold to
Remington in 1873) aimed to solve a mechanical problem of early typewriters.
D.
Yet the Dvorak layout has never been widely adopted, even though (with
electric typewriters and then PCs) the anti-jamming rationale for QWERTY has
been defunct for years.
E.
When certain combinations of keys were struck quickly, the type bars
often jammed.
1. BDACE
2. CEABD 3. BCDEA 4. CAEBD
19. A.
Branded disposable diapers are available at many supermarkets and drug
stores.
B.
If one supermarket sets a higher price for a diaper, customers may buy
that brand elsewhere.
C.
By contrast, the demand for private-label products may be less price
sensitive since it is available only at a corresponding supermarket chain.
D.
So, the demand for branded diapers at any particular store may be quite
price sensitive.
E.
For instance, only SavOn Drugs stores sell SavOn Drugs diapers.
F.
Then, stores should set a higher incremental margin percentage for
private-label diapers.
1. ABCDEF 2.
ABCEDF 3.
ADBCEF 4. AEDBCF
20. A.
Having a strategy is a matter of discipline.
B.
It involves the configuration of a tailored value chain that enables a
company to offer unique value.
C.
It requires a strong focus on profitability and a willingness to make
tough tradeoffs in choosing what not to do.
D.
Strategy goes far beyond the pursuit of best practices.
E.
A company must stay the course even during times of upheaval, while
constantly improving and extending its distinctive positioning.
F.
When a company’s activities fit together as a self-reinforcing system,
any competitor wishing to imitate a strategy must replicate the whole system.
1. ACEDBF 2. ACBDEF 3.
DCBEFA 4. ABCEDF
21. A. As officials, their vision of a country
shouldn’t run too far beyond that of the local people with whom they have to
deal.
B. Ambassadors have to choose their words.
C. To say what they feel they have to say,
they appear to be denying or ignoring part of what they know.
D. So, with ambassadors as with other
expatriates in black Africa , there appears at
a first meeting a kind of ambivalence.
E. They do a specialized job and it is
necessary for them to live ceremonial lives.
1. BCEDA 2. BEDAC 3. BEADC 4. BCDEA
22. A.
“This face off will continue for several months given the strong
convictions on either side,” says a senior functionary of the high-powered task
force on drought.
B.
During the past week-and-half, the Central Government has sought to deny
some of the earlier apprehensions over the impact of drought.
C.
The recent revival of the rains had led to the emergence of a line of
divide between the two.
D.
The state governments, on the other hand, allege that the Centre is
downplaying the crisis only to evade its full responsibility of financial
assistance that is required to alleviate the damage.
E.
Shrill alarm about the economic impact of an inadequate monsoon had been
sounded by the Centre as well as most of the states, in late July and early
August.
1. EBCDA
2. DBACE 3. BDCAE 4. ECBDA
23. A.
This fact was established in the 1730s by French survey expeditions to
Equador near the Equator and Lapland in the Arctic , which found that around the middle of the earth
the arc was about a kilometer shorter.
B.
One of the unsettled scientific questions in the late 18th
century was the exact nature of the shape of the earth.
C.
The length of one-degree arc would be less near the equatorial latitudes
than at the poles.
D.
One way of doing that is to determine the length of the arc along a
chosen longitude or meridian at one-degree latitude separation.
E.
While it was generally known that the earth was not a sphere but an ‘oblate
spheroid’, more curved at the equator and flatter at the poles, the question of
‘how much more’ was yet to be established.
1. BECAD 2. BEDCA 3. EDACB 4.
EBDCA
24. A.
Although there are large regional variations, it is not infrequent to
find a large number of people sitting here and there and doing nothing.
B.
Once in office, they receive friends and relatives who feel free to call
any time without prior appointment.
C.
While working, one is struck by
the slow and clumsy actions and reactions, indifferent attitudes, procedure
rather than outcome orientation, and the lack of consideration for others.
D.
Even those who are employed often come late to the office and leave
early unless they are forced to be punctual.
E.
Work is not intrinsically valued in India .
F.
Quite often people visit ailing friends and relatives or go out of their
way to help them in their personal matters even during office hours.
1. ECADBF 2.
EADCFB 3. EADBFC 4.
ABFCDE
25. A.
But in the industrial era, if you need to destroy the enemy’s productive
capacity means bombing the factories which are located in the cities.
B.
So in the agrarian era, if you need to destroy the enemy’s productive
capacity, what you want to do is burn his fields, or if you’re really vicious,
salt them.
C.
Now in the information era, destroying the enemy’s productive capacity
means destroying the information infrastructure.
D.
How do you battle with your enemy?
E.
The idea is to destroy the enemy’s productive capacity, and depending
upon the economic foundation, that productive capacity is different in each
case.
F.
With regard to defence, the purpose of the military is to defend the
nation and be prepared to do battle with its enemy.
1. FDEBAC 2.
FCABED 3. DEBACF 4.
DFEBAC
26. A.
Michael Hofman, a poet and translator, accepts this sorry fact without
approval or complaint.
B.
But thanklessness and impossibility do not daunt him.
C.
He acknowledges too—in fact he returns to the point often—that best
translators of poetry always fail at some level.
D.
Hofman feels passionately about his work, and this is clear from his
writings.
E.
In terms of the gap between worth and rewards, translators come
somewhere near nurses and street-cleaners.
1. EACDB 2. ADEBC 3. EACBD 4. DCEAB
27. A.
Passivity is not, of course, universal.
B.
In areas where there are no lords or laws, or in frontier zones where
all men go armed, the attitude of the peasantry may well be different.
C.
So indeed it may be on the fringe of the unsubmissive.
D.
However, for most of the soil-bound peasants the problem is not whether
to be normally passive or active, but when to pass from one state to another.
E.
This depends on an assessment of the political situation.
1. BEDAC 2. CDABE 3. EDBAC 4. ABCDE
28. A.
The situations in which violence occurs and the nature of that violence
tends to be clearly defined at least in theory, as in the proverbial Irishman’s
question: ‘Is this a private fight or can anyone join in?’
B.
So the actual risk to outsiders, though no doubt higher than our
societies, is calculable.
C.
Probably the only uncontrolled applications of force are those of social
superiors to social inferiors and even here there are probably some rules.
D.
However binding the obligation to kill, members of feuding families
engaged in mutual massacre will be genuinely appalled if by some mischance a
bystander or outsider is killed.
1. DABC 2. ACDB 3. CBAD 4. DBAC
29. A.
If caught in the act, they were punished, not for the crime, but for
allowing themselves to be caught another lash of the whip.
B.
The bellicose Spartans sacrificed all the finer things in life for
military expertise.
C.
Those fortunate enough to survive babyhood were taken away from their
mothers at the age of seven to undergo rigorous military training.
D.
This consisted mainly of beatings and deprivations of all kinds like
going around barefoot in winter, and worse, starvation so that they would be
forced to steal food to survive.
E.
Male children were examined at birth by the city council and those
deemed too weak to become soldiers were left to die of exposure.
1. BECDA 2. ECADB
3. BCDAE 4. ECDAB
30. A.
This very insatiability of the photographing eye changes the terms of
confinement in the cave, our world.
B.
Humankind lingers unregenerately in Plato’s cave, still revelling, its
age-old habit, in mere images of truth.
C.
But being educated by photographs is not like being educated by older
images drawn by hand; for one thing, there are a great many more images around,
claiming our attention.
D.
The inventory started in 1939 and since then just about everything has
been photographed, or so it seems.
E.
In teaching us a new visual code, photographs alter and enlarge our
notions of what is worth looking at and what we have a right to observe.
1. EABCD 2. BDEAC 3. BCDAE 4. ECDAB
31. A.
To be culturally literate is to possess the basic information needed to
thrive in the modern world.
B.
Nor is it confined to one social class; quite the contrary.
C.
It is by no means confined to “culture” narrowly understood as an
acquaintance with the arts.
D.
Cultural literacy constitutes the only sure avenue of opportunity for
disadvantaged children, the only reliable way of combating the social
determinism that now condemns them.
E.
The breadth of that information is great, extending over the major
domains of human activity from sports to science.
1. AECBD 2. DECBA 3. ACBED 4. DBCAE
32. A.
Both parties use capital and labour in the struggle to secure property
rights.
B.
The thief spends time and money in his attempt to steal (he buys wire
cutters) and the legitimate property owner expends resources to prevent the
theft (he buys locks).
C.
A social cost of theft is that both the thief and the potential victim
use resources to gain or maintain control over property.
D.
These costs may escalate as a type of technological arms race
unfolds.
E.
A bank may purchase more and more complicated and sophisticated safes,
forcing safecrackers to invest further in safecracking equipment.
1. ABCDE 2. CABDE 3. ACBED
4. CBEDA
33. A.
The likelihood of an accident is determined by how carefully the
motorist drives and how carefully the pedestrian crosses the street.
B.
An accident involving a motorist and a pedestrian is such a case.
C.
Each must decide how much care to exercise without knowing how careful
the other is.
D.
The simplest strategic problem arises when two individuals interact with
each other, and each must decide what to do without knowing what the other is
doing.
1. ABCD 2. ADCB 3. DBCA 4. DBAC
34. A.
In rejecting the functionalism in positivist organization theory, either
wholly or partially, there is often a move towards a political model of
organization theory.
B.
Thus the analysis would shift to the power resources possessed by
different groups in the organization and the way they use these resources in
actual power plays to shape the organizational structure.
C.
At the extreme, in one set of writings, the growth of administrators in
the organization is held to be completely unrelated to the work to be done and
to be caused totally by the political pursuit of self-interest.
D.
The political model holds that individual interests are pursued in
organizational life through the exercise of power and influence.
1. ADBC 2. CBAD 3. DBCA 4. ABDC
35. A.
Group decision making, however, does not necessarily fully guard against
arbitrariness and anarchy, for individual capriciousness can get substituted by
collusion of group members.
B.
Nature itself is an intricate system of checks and balances, meant to
preserve the delicate balance between various environmental factors that affect
our ecology.
C.
In institutions also, there is a need to have in place a system of
checks and balances which inhibits the concentration of power in only some
individuals.
D.
When human interventions alter this delicate balance, the outcomes have
been seen to be disastrous.
1. CBAD 2. BCAD 3. CABD 4. BDCA
36. A.
He was bone-weary and soul-weary, and found himself muttering, “Either I
can’t manage this place, or it’s unmanageable.”
B.
To his horror, he realized that he had become the victim of an
amorphous, unwitting, unconscious conspiracy to immerse him in routine work
that had no significance.
C.
It was one of those nights in the office when the office clock was
moving towards four in the morning and Bennis was still not through with the
incredible mass of paper stacked before him.
D.
He reached for his calendar and ran his eyes down each hour, half-hour,
and quarter-hour, to see where his time had gone that day, the day before, the
month before.
1. ABCD 2. CADB 3. BDCA 4. DCBA
37. A.
With that, I swallowed the shampoo, and obtained most realistic results
on the spot.
B.
The man shuffled away into the back regions to make up a prescription,
and after a moment I got through on the shop-telephone to the Consulate,
intimating my location.
C.
Then, while the pharmacist was wrapping up a six-ounce bottle of the
mixture, I groaned and inquired whether he could give me something for acute
gastric cramp.
D.
I intended to stage a sharp gastric attack, and entering an old-fashioned
pharmacy, I asked for a popular shampoo mixture, consisting of olive and flaked
soap.
1. DCBA 2. DACB 3. BDAC 4. BCDA
38. A.
Since then, intelligence tests have been mostly used to separate dull
children in school from average or bright children, so that special education
can be provided to the dull.
B.
In other words, intelligence tests give us a norm for each age.
C.
Intelligence is expressed as intelligence quotient, and tests are
developed to indicate what an average child of a certain age can do: what a
5-year-old can answer, but a 4-year-old cannot, for instance.
D.
Binet developed the first set of such tests in the early 1900s to find
out which children in school needed special attention.
E.
Intelligence can be measured by tests.
1.
CDABE 2. DECAB 3. EDACB 4. CBADE
39. A.
This is now orthodoxy to which I subscribe— up to a point.
B.
It emerged from the mathematics of chance and statistics
C.
Therefore the risk is measurable and manageable.
D.
The fundamental concept: Prices are not predictable, but the
mathematical laws of chance can describe their fluctuations.
E. This is how what business schools now
call modern finance was born.
1. ADCBE 2. EBDCA 3. ABDCE 4. DCBEA
40. A. Similarly, turning to caste, even though
being lower caste is undoubtedly a separate cause of disparity, its impact is
all the greater when the lower-caste families also happen to be poor.
B. Belonging to a privileged class can help
a woman to overcome many barriers that obstruct women from less thriving
classes.
C. It is the interactive presence of these
two kinds of deprivation—being low class and being female—that massively
impoverishes women from the less privileged classes.
D. A congruence of class deprivation and
gender discrimination can blight the lives of poorer women very severely.
E. Gender is certainly a contributor to
societal inequality, but it does not act independently of class.
1. EABDC 2. EBDCA 3. DAEBC 4. BECDA
41. A. When identity is thus ‘defined by
contrast’, divergence with the West becomes central.
B. Indian religious literature such as the Bhagavad Gita or the Tantric texts,
which are identified as differing from secular writings seen as ‘western’,
elicits much greater interest in the West than do other Indian writings,
including India’s long history of heterodoxy.
C. There is a similar neglect of Indian writing
on non-religious subjects, from mathematics, epistemology and natural science
to economics and linguistics.
D. Through selective emphasis that point up
differences with the West, other civilizations can, in this way, be redefined
in alien terms, which can be exotic and charming, or else bizarre and
terrifying, or simply strange and engaging.
E. The exception is the Kamasutra in which western readers have managed to cultivate an
interest.
1. BDACE 2. DEABC 3.
BDECA 4. BCEDA
TYPE II:
Six Sentences—First and Last Sentences Fixed
Directions
for Questions 42 to 51: Sentences
given in each question, when properly sequenced, form a coherent paragraph. The
first and last sentences are 1 and 6, and the four in between are labelled A,
B, C and D. Choose the most logical order of these four sentences from among
the four given choices to construct a coherent paragraph from sentences 1 to 6.
42. 1.
Security inks exploit the same principle that causes the vivid and
constantly changing colours of a film of oil on water.
A.
When two rays of light meet each other after being reflected from these
different surfaces, they have each travelled slightly different distances.
B.
The key is that the light is
bouncing off two surfaces, that of the oil and that of the water layer below
it.
C.
The distance the two rays travel determines which wavelengths, and hence
colours, interfere constructively and look bright.
D.
Because light is an electromagnetic wave, the peaks and troughs of each
ray then interfere either constructively, to appear bright, or destructively,
to appear dim.
6.
Since the distance the rays travel changes with the angle as you look at
the surface, different colours look bright from different viewing angles.
1. ABCD 2. BADC 3. BDAC 4. DCAB
43. 1.
Commercially reared chicken can be unusually aggressive, and are often
kept in darkened sheds to prevent them pecking at each other.
A.
The birds spent far more of their time—up to a third—pecking at the
inanimate objects in the pens, in contrast to birds in other pens which spent a
lot of time attacking others.
B.
In low light conditions, they behave less belligerently, but are more
prone to ophthalmic disorders and respiratory problems.
C.
In an experiment, aggressive head-pecking was all but eliminated among
birds in the enriched environment.
D.
Altering the birds’ environment, by adding bales of wood-shavings to
their pens, can work wonders.
6.
Bales could diminish aggressiveness and reduce injuries; they might even
improve productivity, since a happy chicken is a productive chicken.
1. DCAB 2. CDBA 3. DBAC 4. BDCA
44. 1.
The concept of a ‘nation-state’ assumes a complete correspondence
between the boundaries of the nation and the boundaries of those who live in a
specific state.
A.
Then there are members of national collectivities who live in other
countries, making a mockery of the concept.
B.
There are always people living in particular states who are not
considered to be (and often do not consider themselves to be) members of the
hegemonic nation.
C.
Even worse, there are nations which never had a state or which are
divided across several states.
D.
This, of course, has been subject to severe criticism and is virtually
everywhere a fiction.
6.
However, the fiction has been, and continues to be, at the basis of
nationalist ideologies.
1. DBAC 2. ABCD 3. BACD 4. DACB
45. 1.
In the sciences, even questionable examples of research fraud are
harshly punished.
A.
But no such mechanism exists in the humanities—much of what humanities
researchers call research does not lead to results that are replicable by other
scholars.
B.
Given the importance of interpretation in historical and literary
scholarship, humanities researchers are in a position where they can explain
away deliberate and even systematic distortion.
C.
Mere suspicion is enough for funding to be cut off; publicity guarantees
that careers can be effectively ended.
D.
Forgeries which take the form of pastiches in which the forger
intersperses fake and real parts can be defended as mere mistakes or aberrant
misreading.
6.
Scientists fudging data have no such defences.
1. BDCA 2. ABDC 3. CABD 4. CDBA
46. 1.
Horses and communism were, on the whole, a poor match.
A.
Fine horses bespoke the nobility the party was supposed to despise.
B.
Communist leaders, when they visited villages, preferred to see cows and
pigs.
C.
Although a working horse was just about tolerable, the communists were
right to be wary.
D.
Peasants from Poland
to the Hungarian Pustza preferred their horses to party dogma.
6.
“A farmer’s pride is his horse; his cow may be thin but his horse must
be fat,” went a Slovak saying.
1. ACDB 2. DBCA 3. ABCD 4. DCBA
47. 1.
Making people laugh is tricky.
A.
At times, the intended humour may simply not come off.
B.
Making people laugh while trying to sell them something is a tougher
challenge, since the commercial can fall flat on two grounds.
C.
There are many advertisements which do amuse but do not even begin to
set the cash tills ringing.
D.
Again, it is rarely sufficient for an advertiser simply to amuse the
target audience in order to reap the sales benefit.
6.
There are indications that in substituting the hard sell for a more
entertaining approach, some agencies have rather thrown out the baby with the
bath water.
1. CDBA 2. ABCD 3. BADC 4. DCBA
48. 1.
Picture a termite colony, occupying a tall mud hump on an African plain.
A.
Hungry predators often invade the colony and unsettle the balance.
B.
The colony flourishes only if the proportion of soldiers to workers
remains roughly the same, so that the queen and workers can be protected by the
soldiers, and the queen and soldiers can be serviced by the workers.
C.
But its fortunes are presently restored, because the immobile queen,
walled in well below ground level, lays eggs not only in large enough numbers,
but also in the varying proportions required.
D.
The hump is alive with worker termites and soldier termites going about
their distinct kinds of business.
6.
How can we account for her mysterious ability to respond like this to
events on the distant surface?
1. BADC 2. DBAC 3. ADCB
4. BDCA
49. 1.
According to recent research, the critical period for developing
language skills is between the ages of three and five and a half years.
A.
The read-to child already has a large vocabulary and a sense of grammar
and sentence structure.
B.
Children who are read to in these years have a far better chance of
reading well in school, indeed, of doing well in all their subjects.
C.
And the reason is actually quite simple.
D.
This correlation is far and away the highest yet found between home
influences and school success.
6.
Her comprehension of language is therefore very high.
1. DACB 2. ADCB 3. ABCD 4. BDCA
50. 1.
High-powered outboard motors were considered to be one of the major
threats to the survival of the Beluga whales.
A.
With these, hunters could approach Belugas within hunting range and
profit from its inner skin and blubber.
B.
To escape an approaching motor, Belugas have learned to dive to the
ocean bottom and stay there for up to 20 minutes, by which time the confused
predator has left.
C.
Today, however, even with much more powerful engines, it is difficult to
come close, because the whales seem to disappear suddenly just when you thought
you had them in your sights.
D.
When the first outboard engines arrived in the early 1930s, one came
across 4 and 8 HP motors.
6.
Belugas seem to have used their well-known sensitivity to noise to
evolve an ‘avoidance’ strategy to outsmart hunters and their powerful
technologies.
1. DACB 2. CDAB 3. ADBC 4. BDAC
51. 1.
The reconstruction of history by post-revolutionary science texts
involves more than a multiplication of historical misconstructions.
A.
Because they aim quickly to acquaint the student with what the
contemporary scientific community thinks it knows, textbooks treat the various
experiments, concepts, laws and theories of the current normal science as
separately and as nearly seriatim as possible.
B.
Those misconstructions render revolutions invisible; the arrangement of
the still visible material in science texts implies a process that, if it
existed, would deny revolutions a function.
C.
But when combined with the generally unhistorical air of science writing
and with the occasional systematic misconstruction, one impression is likely to
follow.
D.
As pedagogy this technique of presentation is unexceptionable.
6.
Science has reached its present state by a series of individual
discoveries and inventions that, when gathered together, constitute the modern
body of technical knowledge.