Test: Reading Comprehension - 1 - Class 1 MCQ

Direction: Read the passage and answer the questions given below. Some words may be highlighted. Read carefully. 

The purpose of Artificial Intelligence(AI) is to aid human capabilities and help us make advanced decisions with far-reaching consequences. That’s the answer from a technical standpoint. From a philosophical perspective, Artificial Intelligence has the potential to help humans live more meaningful lives devoid of hard labour, and help manage the complex web of interconnected individuals, companies, states, and nations to function in a manner that’s beneficial to all of humanity.
Currently, the purpose of Artificial Intelligence is shared by all the different tools and techniques that we’ve invented over the past thousand years – to simplify human effort, and to help us make better decisions. Artificial Intelligence has also been touted as our Final Invention, a creation that would invent ground-breaking tools and services that would exponentially change how we lead our lives, by hopefully removing strife, inequality, and human suffering.
That’s all in the far future though – we’re still a long way from those kinds of outcomes. Currently, Artificial Intelligence is being used mostly by companies to improve their process efficiencies, automate resource-heavy tasks, and to make business predictions based on hard data rather than gut feelings. As all technology that has come before this, the research and development costs need to be subsidized by corporations and government agencies before it becomes accessible to everyday laymen.

The purpose of philosophy for humans is to help us understand our actions, their consequences, and how we can make better decisions. Modern intelligent systems can be built by following the different approaches of philosophy that will enable these systems to make the right decisions, mirroring the way that an ideal human being would think and behave. Philosophy would help these machines think and understand about the nature of knowledge itself. It would also help them make the connection between knowledge and action through goal-based analysis to achieve desirable outcomes.

If there is a synergy between man and machine, if they are able to work fully in tandem, this world will undergo a sea change and our everyday lives would be completely transformed. 

Q. What is the antonym of strife?

Direction: Read the passage carefully and answer the questions that follow.

A golden age for Western schools in China may be coming to an end in the face of a new Government clampdown. China has been a happy hunting ground for Western schools in the recent years, as a burgeoning middle class looks to equip their children with the qualifications to get into a Western university, as well as the skills to join a global workforce.

The last five years have seen a 64% increase in the number of students enrolled in international schools in China. But from the next year, schools will have to select their students via a lottery, rather than being able to pick and choose from among the applicants. The crackdown has been prompted by fears that foreign-owned schools are poaching the brightest children. The move follows changes introduced last year requiring international schools to teach the Chinese curriculum alongside other national programs.

There is a backlash against the rapid increase in private schools in China, particularly from the big public schools where it’s perceived that they have been simply poaching off the best kids. The Chinese government was also concerned at the number of students heading abroad to study, both at school and universities. 

The international schools market has exploded in China in recent years after the authorities relaxed regulations for Chinese children attending foreign-owned schools. Until then, international schools almost entirely served the children of foreign nationals, but opening them up to Chinese children revealed a massive and previously untapped demand. For the growing Chinese middle class, the schools provided a more reliable route than Chinese national schools for getting into highly-regarded universities in the West, particularly those in the U.S. and U.K. These students, in turn, represent a lucrative source of income, for both the schools themselves and for Western universities. 

China is the largest source of international students at U.K. universities, accounting for more than one in five at undergraduate and postgraduate level. Some of the most prestigious private schools have sought to capitalize on their brand by opening branches in China in recent years. A record 14 British international schools have opened or are due to open in China this year. Despite the increased ____, there are still opportunities for international schools to open in China, given the "massive demand" among Chinese families. There is a deep desire amongst the wealthy, middle class and young Chinese parents for a Western-style of education. Parents want an international education but also want their children to retain their culture and identity as well as excellent exam results and "places at the top universities."

Q. Choose the most appropriate word which is opposite in meaning to crackdown?

Direction: Read the passage carefully and answer the questions which follow. Some words may be highlighted for you.

An American explorer has found plastic waste on the seafloor while breaking the record for the deepest ever dive. Victor Vescovo descended nearly 11km (seven miles) to the deepest place in the ocean - the Pacific Ocean's Mariana Trench. He spent four hours exploring the bottom of the trench in his submersible, built to withstand the immense pressure of the deep. He found sea creatures, but also found a plastic bag and sweet wrappers. It is the third time humans have reached the ocean's extreme depth. The first dive to the bottom of the Mariana Trench took place in 1960 by US Navy lieutenant Don Walsh and Swiss engineer Jacques Piccard in a vessel called the bathyscaphe Trieste. Movie director James Cameron then made a solo plunge half a century later in 2012 in his bright green sub. 

The latest descent, which reached 10,927m (35,849ft) beneath the waves, is now the deepest by 11m - making Victor Vescovo the new record holder. As well as the Mariana Trench in the Pacific, in the last six months dives have also taken place in the Puerto Rico Trench in the Atlantic Ocean (8,376m/27,480ft down), the South Sandwich Trench in the Southern Ocean (7,433m/24,388ft) and the Java Trench in the Indian Ocean (7,192m/23,596ft). The final challenge will be to reach the bottom of the Molloy Deep in the Arctic Ocean, which is currently scheduled for August 2019. The 4.6m-long, 3.7m-high submersible - called the DSV Limiting Factor - was built by the US-based company Triton Submarines, with the aim of having a vessel that could make repeated dives to any part of the ocean. 

After the Five Deeps Expedition is complete later this year, the plan is to pass the submersible onto science institutions so researchers can continue to use it. The challenges of exploring the deep ocean - even with robotic vehicles - has made the ocean trenches one of the last frontiers on the planet. Once thought to be remote, desolate areas, the deep sea teems with life. There is also growing evidence that they are carbon sinks, playing a role in regulating the Earth's chemistry and climate.

Q.What is the synonym of the word 'immense'?

Direction: Read the passage and answer the questions. Some words may be highlighted. Read carefully.

Technology. Whether you find that you embrace every new update, or struggle to keep up with the changes, its effect on our day-to-day lives is unmistakable. Recent technological developments are vastly changing the way we live, and in particular, the way we work. With the job market a competitive and ever-evolving arena, determining your career path is more than just following your passions and skills, it’s about being adaptive in this digital age and understanding what skills and jobs are in high demand, and which are facing potential extinction. It’s important to try not to feel disorientated or uncomfortable with these rapid changes, but instead, change your mindset and embrace the opportunities technology brings and focus on the right skills to increase your employability and succeed in the new tech-savvy work scene. Although technological innovation offers many new and exciting opportunities and career paths, there is also the downside of careers becoming obsolete, leaving people without a job. This is not a recent issue either, we’ve experienced years of machines replacing muscle power as the routine, autonomous tasks are taken over by technology. With the internet serving a plethora of information, jobs like the traditional travel agent have been almost wiped out entirely in favour of online websites that allow us to find the cheapest deals for flights and accommodation with just a click of a button. We are seeing an increase in ‘self-service’ with grocery store check-outs and airport check-ins opting for automation over employees. It’s these entry-level and part-time jobs where we are seeing technological systems making the greatest impact. We’ve also witnessed other societal issues emerging, such as businesses going bust with technology replacing products. Remember going down to the local video store to rent a few DVDs? Or when libraries were a place people actually went to rent a book? In order to keep up to date with the latest trends in IT, businesses are beginning to embrace technology in recruitment, operations, marketing and production. With new IT commodities like Netflix, iTunes and eBooks, products are moving from the tangible to the digital at an alarming rate, causing numerous stores to go out of business. Newspapers and magazines are struggling to sell copies, with many people preferring to use their iPhone or tablet to get the latest headlines and gossip. The music industry has also taken a hit, with the amount of illegal piracy that goes on, resulting in a dramatic decrease in compact disc sales.

However, there are conflicting opinions on this. Study of census results in England and Wales since 1871 finds the rise of machines has been a job creator rather than making working humans obsolete. In the 1800s it was the Luddites smashing weaving machines. These days retail staff worry about automatic checkouts. Sooner or later taxi drivers will be fretting over self-driving cars. The battle between man and machines goes back centuries. Are they taking our jobs? Or are they merely easing our workload? A study by economists at the consultancy Deloitte seeks to shed new light on the relationship between jobs and the rise of technology by trawling through census data for England and Wales going back to 1871. Their conclusion is unremittingly cheerful: rather than destroying jobs, technology has been a “great job-creating machine”. Findings by Deloitte such as a fourfold rise in bar staff since the 1950s or a surge in the number of hairdressers this century suggest to the authors that technology has increased spending power, therefore creating new demand and new jobs. “Machines will take on more repetitive and laborious tasks, but seem no closer to eliminating the need for human labour than at any time in the last 150 years.”- analysts at Deloitte conclude.

Q. What is the synonym of 'plethora'?

Directions: Read the passage given below and answer the questions by selecting the correct/most appropriate options:

 Increased time constraints and the need for convenience in raising children appear to offset parents' concerns about the future when it comes to their carbon footprints, according to new research by University of Wyoming economists and a colleague in Sweden.

UW's Jason Shogren and Linda Thunstrom, along with Jonas Nordstrom of the Lund University School of Economics and Management, have documented that two-adult households with children emit over 25 percent more carbon dioxide than two-adult households without children. Their research appears April 15 in PLOS One, a journal published by the Public Library of Science.

"While having children makes people focus more on the future and, presumably, care more about the environment, our study suggests that parenthood does not cause people to become 'greener,'" Shogren and Thunstrom say. "In fact, the difference in CO2 emissions between parents and non-parents is substantial, and that's primarily because of increased transportation and food consumption changes." The study involved an analysis of expenditures on goods and services by households in Sweden. The researchers found that parents with children at home consume goods and services that emit CO2 in the areas of food, such as meat, and transportation, such as gasoline, at higher rates than childless households.

The economists note that time constraints become more binding, and convenience may become more important when people have children." Parents may need to be in more places in one day," resulting in people driving themselves instead of using public transportation or bicycling, the researchers wrote. "They also need to feed more people. Eating more pre-prepared, red meat carbon-intensive meals may add convenience and save time."The disparity in the carbon footprints of Swedish households with and without children is particularly striking, as concerns about climate change are more pronounced in Sweden than most other developed countries. Most Swedes believe climate change is real and have accepted sizable CO2 taxes, and households with children are subsidized, which helps to alleviate some of the time crunches for parents. Sweden has generous parental leave and subsidized daycare, and parents have a legal right to reduced work hours.

"If we're finding these results in Sweden, it's pretty safe to assume that the disparity in carbon footprints between parents and nonparents is even bigger in most other Western countries," Thunstrom says -- though she notes that Sweden also has one of the world's highest female labour participation rates, which may add to the time constraints of household with children. "Becoming a parent can transform a person -- he or she thinks more about the future and worries about future risks imposed on their children and progeny," Shogren says. "But, while having children might be transformational, our results suggest that parents' concerns about climate change do not cause them to be 'greener' than non-parent adults."

Q. Choose the word which is most nearly the OPPOSITE in meaning to the word 'Alleviate' as highlighted in the passage. 

Direction: Read the passage and answer the questions. Some words may be highlighted. Read carefully.

Technology. Whether you find that you embrace every new update, or struggle to keep up with the changes, its effect on our day-to-day lives is unmistakable. Recent technological developments are vastly changing the way we live, and in particular, the way we work. With the job market a competitive and ever-evolving arena, determining your career path is more than just following your passions and skills, it’s about being adaptive in this digital age and understanding what skills and jobs are in high demand, and which are facing potential extinction. It’s important to try not to feel disorientated or uncomfortable with these rapid changes, but instead, change your mindset and embrace the opportunities technology brings and focus on the right skills to increase your employability and succeed in the new tech-savvy work scene. Although technological innovation offers many new and exciting opportunities and career paths, there is also the downside of careers becoming obsolete, leaving people without a job. This is not a recent issue either, we’ve experienced years of machines replacing muscle power as the routine, autonomous tasks are taken over by technology. With the internet serving a plethora of information, jobs like the traditional travel agent have been almost wiped out entirely in favour of online websites that allow us to find the cheapest deals for flights and accommodation with just a click of a button. We are seeing an increase in ‘self-service’ with grocery store check-outs and airport check-ins opting for automation over employees. It’s these entry-level and part-time jobs where we are seeing technological systems making the greatest impact. We’ve also witnessed other societal issues emerging, such as businesses going bust with technology replacing products. Remember going down to the local video store to rent a few DVDs? Or when libraries were a place people actually went to rent a book? In order to keep up to date with the latest trends in IT, businesses are beginning to embrace technology in recruitment, operations, marketing and production. With new IT commodities like Netflix, iTunes and eBooks, products are moving from the tangible to the digital at an alarming rate, causing numerous stores to go out of business. Newspapers and magazines are struggling to sell copies, with many people preferring to use their iPhone or tablet to get the latest headlines and gossip. The music industry has also taken a hit, with the amount of illegal piracy that goes on, resulting in a dramatic decrease in compact disc sales.

However, there are conflicting opinions on this. Study of census results in England and Wales since 1871 finds the rise of machines has been a job creator rather than making working humans obsolete. In the 1800s it was the Luddites smashing weaving machines. These days retail staff worry about automatic checkouts. Sooner or later taxi drivers will be fretting over self-driving cars. The battle between man and machines goes back centuries. Are they taking our jobs? Or are they merely easing our workload? A study by economists at the consultancy Deloitte seeks to shed new light on the relationship between jobs and the rise of technology by trawling through census data for England and Wales going back to 1871. Their conclusion is unremittingly cheerful: rather than destroying jobs, technology has been a “great job-creating machine”. Findings by Deloitte such as a fourfold rise in bar staff since the 1950s or a surge in the number of hairdressers this century suggest to the authors that technology has increased spending power, therefore creating new demand and new jobs. “Machines will take on more repetitive and laborious tasks, but seem no closer to eliminating the need for human labour than at any time in the last 150 years.”- analysts at Deloitte conclude.

Q. What is the overall tone of the passage?

Direction: Read the passage and answer the questions that follow:

Mosquitoes can transmit pathogens that cause many human diseases, such as malaria, yellow fever, dengue fever, chikungunya, and Zika fever. Many of these diseases can be physically devastating and even fatal. For example, according to the World Health Organization (WHO), there are over 200 million new cases of malaria per year worldwide, resulting in over 400,000 deaths, most of them children under the age of 5. Zika fever is caused by a virus transmitted to humans primarily by the bite of Aedes aegypti mosquitoes. Symptoms in infected human adults are typically mild, but if the virus infects a pregnant woman it can be transmitted to the developing fetus and affect brain development, causing a condition called microcephaly. To reduce the number of A. aegypti mosquitoes that may carry Zika virus, researchers at a biotechnology company called Oxitec have produced genetically modified (GM) A. aegypti mosquitoes that when released into the wild, mate with wild mosquitoes, and any offspring produced die before becoming adults.
The fluorescence gene is used to_________ GM mosquitoes. The lethality gene, which is more accurately called tetracycline transcriptional activator variant (or tTAV), encodes a protein that blocks transcription of several other genes that are essential to mosquito development. GM mosquito larvae that produce the tTAV protein die before reaching maturity. However, the tTAV protein cannot prevent the transcription of other genes when it is bound to the antibiotic tetracycline. Therefore, tetracycline acts as a repressor of the lethality gene, or, in other words, its antidote. In the lab, the GM mosquito larvae are reared in water containing tetracycline and develop normally into adult mosquitoes. When adult GM mosquitoes are released into the wild and breed with wild, non-GM mosquitoes, their offspring inherit the lethality gene. Without tetracycline in the environment to protect them, the offspring die. 

In one study, Oxitec scientists released GM mosquitoes into a neighborhood in Brazil. Sustained release over the course of a year led to a reduction of the local Aedes aegypti population by 80% to 95% according to different measures (Carvalho et al., 2015). The scientists chose densely populated neighborhoods for their study because mosquito-borne diseases can spread most easily in areas where lots of humans and mosquitoes are present. They hypothesized that if they could reduce both the population size of the A. aegypti mosquitoes and the mosquito population density, they would reduce the probability that a person becomes infected with a pathogen spread by these mosquitoes. (An activity that shows how scientists measure mosquito density, based on data from Oxitec scientists, is available on the BioInteractive website as “Tracking Genetically Modified Mosquitoes.”) 

Q. Which is the synonym of the word diseases?