CAT Verbal Mock Test - 3 - CAT MCQ

DIRECTIONS for questions: The passage given below is accompanied by a set of six questions. Choose the best answer to each question.

The Outer Space Treaty – written in 1967 and signed by all the major world powers – is the closest thing we have to a constitution for space. For a document conceived before the moon landing, it’s remarkably forward-looking: it declares “celestial bodies” like the moon and asteroids off-limits for private development and requires countries authorize and continually supervise companies’ activities in space. It also says that space exploration should be carried out for the benefit of all peoples.

But even with that impressive scope of vision, the treaty’s authors could never have imagined where we’d be now. Currently there are 1,738 man-made satellites in orbit around our planet. As they become more affordable to build and launch, they’ll no doubt proliferate and vie for valuable real estate there with space stations, space tourists, space colonists, space miners, military spacecraft, and thousands of derelict satellites and other immobile debris.

So far no one has any idea how to deal with the scientific and engineering challenges – let alone the political, legal, and business ones – involved in sustainably managing orbital debris and mining celestial objects. That’s why Aaron Boley and at least six other space scientists, policy experts, and legal scholars are putting together the world’s first Institute for the Sustainable Development of Space – essentially a space-focused think tank. The experts aim to find long-term solutions so that future generations of space explorers can continue where today’s leaves off.

With their focus on sustainable development, Boley and his team come across as a band of space environmentalists who want to treat space like a global common, something that can be used but also must be protected, so that today’s space activities don’t compromise future ones. Earthly analogues include conflicts over forests or oceans, where people or even nations on their own might think they’re having a minimal impact – but their combined extractions of resources or pollution result in overfished or threatened species. Sustainably-fished species can survive indefinitely, while some practices, like fish trawling or proposed seafloor mining, could cause more lasting damage.

Space activities that threaten to fill up low Earth orbit could be similarly scrutinized. Boley and his colleagues believe that orbital debris is the most pressing and formidable problem facing space development today. It will only worsen as we witness the commercialization of low Earth orbit in the next decade or two, they say. If one day a collision begets another and another, it could produce an impenetrable ring of debris that effectively prevents future space activities for everyone else. Until unproven technologies for vacuuming, netting, or harpooning debris become viable, temporary solutions are needed.

Currently each satellite has to have its own debris mitigation plan, which usually means falling back to Earth within 25 years or boosting up higher into a “graveyard orbit” (where there’s still a risk of collision, albeit a much smaller one).

Constant monitoring of so many objects seems a daunting task, with swarms of small satellites now more affordable to send up into space than their larger, traditional counterparts.

For example, at any one time, San Francisco-based Planet Labs, a private Earth imaging company, has some 200 orbiting satellites between the size of a shoe box and a washing machine. They generally fly at altitudes of 500 kilometres, which is below the densest regions and makes it easier for the satellites’ orbits to naturally decay over a few years’ time, upon which they fall and burn up in re-entry.

But what if not everyone acts in everyone’s best interest? No one has taken responsibility for a plethora of unidentified and unmaneuverable debris already polluting the atmosphere. There’s no overarching authority. What we can do is get together around a table.

Q. The author mentions the example of San Francisco-based Planet Labs to demonstrate which of the following points?

DIRECTIONS for questions: The passage given below is accompanied by a set of six questions. Choose the best answer to each question.

The Outer Space Treaty – written in 1967 and signed by all the major world powers – is the closest thing we have to a constitution for space. For a document conceived before the moon landing, it’s remarkably forward-looking: it declares “celestial bodies” like the moon and asteroids off-limits for private development and requires countries authorize and continually supervise companies’ activities in space. It also says that space exploration should be carried out for the benefit of all peoples.

But even with that impressive scope of vision, the treaty’s authors could never have imagined where we’d be now. Currently there are 1,738 man-made satellites in orbit around our planet. As they become more affordable to build and launch, they’ll no doubt proliferate and vie for valuable real estate there with space stations, space tourists, space colonists, space miners, military spacecraft, and thousands of derelict satellites and other immobile debris.

So far no one has any idea how to deal with the scientific and engineering challenges – let alone the political, legal, and business ones – involved in sustainably managing orbital debris and mining celestial objects. That’s why Aaron Boley and at least six other space scientists, policy experts, and legal scholars are putting together the world’s first Institute for the Sustainable Development of Space – essentially a space-focused think tank. The experts aim to find long-term solutions so that future generations of space explorers can continue where today’s leaves off.

With their focus on sustainable development, Boley and his team come across as a band of space environmentalists who want to treat space like a global common, something that can be used but also must be protected, so that today’s space activities don’t compromise future ones. Earthly analogues include conflicts over forests or oceans, where people or even nations on their own might think they’re having a minimal impact – but their combined extractions of resources or pollution result in overfished or threatened species. Sustainably-fished species can survive indefinitely, while some practices, like fish trawling or proposed seafloor mining, could cause more lasting damage.

Space activities that threaten to fill up low Earth orbit could be similarly scrutinized. Boley and his colleagues believe that orbital debris is the most pressing and formidable problem facing space development today. It will only worsen as we witness the commercialization of low Earth orbit in the next decade or two, they say. If one day a collision begets another and another, it could produce an impenetrable ring of debris that effectively prevents future space activities for everyone else. Until unproven technologies for vacuuming, netting, or harpooning debris become viable, temporary solutions are needed.

Currently each satellite has to have its own debris mitigation plan, which usually means falling back to Earth within 25 years or boosting up higher into a “graveyard orbit” (where there’s still a risk of collision, albeit a much smaller one).

Constant monitoring of so many objects seems a daunting task, with swarms of small satellites now more affordable to send up into space than their larger, traditional counterparts.

For example, at any one time, San Francisco-based Planet Labs, a private Earth imaging company, has some 200 orbiting satellites between the size of a shoe box and a washing machine. They generally fly at altitudes of 500 kilometres, which is below the densest regions and makes it easier for the satellites’ orbits to naturally decay over a few years’ time, upon which they fall and burn up in re-entry.

But what if not everyone acts in everyone’s best interest? No one has taken responsibility for a plethora of unidentified and unmaneuverable debris already polluting the atmosphere. There’s no overarching authority. What we can do is get together around a table.

Q. From the evidence in the first para, which assumption is the author making in the line, ‘For a document conceived before the moon-landing, it’s remarkably forward-looking’?

DIRECTIONS for questions: The passage given below is accompanied by a set of six questions. Choose the best answer to each question.

The Outer Space Treaty – written in 1967 and signed by all the major world powers – is the closest thing we have to a constitution for space. For a document conceived before the moon landing, it’s remarkably forward-looking: it declares “celestial bodies” like the moon and asteroids off-limits for private development and requires countries authorize and continually supervise companies’ activities in space. It also says that space exploration should be carried out for the benefit of all peoples.

But even with that impressive scope of vision, the treaty’s authors could never have imagined where we’d be now. Currently there are 1,738 man-made satellites in orbit around our planet. As they become more affordable to build and launch, they’ll no doubt proliferate and vie for valuable real estate there with space stations, space tourists, space colonists, space miners, military spacecraft, and thousands of derelict satellites and other immobile debris.

So far no one has any idea how to deal with the scientific and engineering challenges – let alone the political, legal, and business ones – involved in sustainably managing orbital debris and mining celestial objects. That’s why Aaron Boley and at least six other space scientists, policy experts, and legal scholars are putting together the world’s first Institute for the Sustainable Development of Space – essentially a space-focused think tank. The experts aim to find long-term solutions so that future generations of space explorers can continue where today’s leaves off.

With their focus on sustainable development, Boley and his team come across as a band of space environmentalists who want to treat space like a global common, something that can be used but also must be protected, so that today’s space activities don’t compromise future ones. Earthly analogues include conflicts over forests or oceans, where people or even nations on their own might think they’re having a minimal impact – but their combined extractions of resources or pollution result in overfished or threatened species. Sustainably-fished species can survive indefinitely, while some practices, like fish trawling or proposed seafloor mining, could cause more lasting damage.

Space activities that threaten to fill up low Earth orbit could be similarly scrutinized. Boley and his colleagues believe that orbital debris is the most pressing and formidable problem facing space development today. It will only worsen as we witness the commercialization of low Earth orbit in the next decade or two, they say. If one day a collision begets another and another, it could produce an impenetrable ring of debris that effectively prevents future space activities for everyone else. Until unproven technologies for vacuuming, netting, or harpooning debris become viable, temporary solutions are needed.

Currently each satellite has to have its own debris mitigation plan, which usually means falling back to Earth within 25 years or boosting up higher into a “graveyard orbit” (where there’s still a risk of collision, albeit a much smaller one).

Constant monitoring of so many objects seems a daunting task, with swarms of small satellites now more affordable to send up into space than their larger, traditional counterparts.

For example, at any one time, San Francisco-based Planet Labs, a private Earth imaging company, has some 200 orbiting satellites between the size of a shoe box and a washing machine. They generally fly at altitudes of 500 kilometres, which is below the densest regions and makes it easier for the satellites’ orbits to naturally decay over a few years’ time, upon which they fall and burn up in re-entry.

But what if not everyone acts in everyone’s best interest? No one has taken responsibility for a plethora of unidentified and unmaneuverable debris already polluting the atmosphere. There’s no overarching authority. What we can do is get together around a table.

Q. Which of the following, if proven false, will negate the author’s conclusion in the line, ‘It will only worsen as we witness the commercialization of low Earth orbit in the next decade or two, they say’?

1. No solution to permanently clean up the space debris will be implemented in the next decade or two.

2. Currently, we don’t have any solution for cleaning up the space debris.

3. Commercialization of low earth orbit could contribute to a lot of space debris.

4. Debris not in the low Earth orbit doesn’t pose much of a challenge.

DIRECTIONS for questions: The passage given below is accompanied by a set of six questions. Choose the best answer to each question.

Gastronomy is the science of pain. Professional cooks belong to a secret society whose ancient rituals derive from the principles of stoicism in the face of humiliation, injury, fatigue, and the threat of illness, while being confined for most of their waking hours in hot, airless spaces, and ruled by despotic leaders.

A good deal has changed since Orwell’s memoir of the months he spent as a dishwasher. Gas ranges and exhaust fans have gone a long way toward increasing the life span of the working culinarian. Nowadays, most aspiring cooks come into the business because they want to: they have chosen this life, studied for it. Today’s top chefs are like star athletes. They bounce from kitchen to kitchen – free agents in search of more money, more acclaim.

I love the sheer weirdness of the kitchen life: the dreamers, the crackpots, the refugees, and the sociopaths with whom I continue to work; the ever-present smells of roasting bones, searing fish, and simmering liquids; the noise and clatter, the hiss and spray, the flames, the smoke, and the steam. Admittedly, it’s a life that grinds you down. Most of us who live and operate in the culinary underworld are in some fundamental way dysfunctional. We’ve all chosen to turn our backs on the nine-to-five, on ever having a Friday or Saturday night off, on ever having a normal relationship with a non-cook.

Being a chef is a lot like being an air-traffic controller: you are constantly dealing with the threat of disaster. You’ve got to be Mom and Dad, drill sergeant, detective, psychiatrist, and priest to a crew of opportunistic, mercenary hooligans, whom you must protect from the nefarious and often foolish strategies of owners. Year after year, cooks contend with bouncing pay checks, irate purveyors, desperate owners looking for the masterstroke that will cure their restaurant’s ills.

In America, the professional kitchen is the last refuge of the misfit. It’s a place for people with bad pasts to find a new family.

It’s a haven for foreigners – Ecuadorians, Mexicans, Chinese, Senegalese, Egyptians, Poles. I’ve been a chef in New York for more than ten years, and, for the decade before that, a dishwasher, a prep drone, a line cook, and a sous-chef. I came into the business when cooks still smoked on the line and wore headbands. A few years ago, I wasn’t surprised to hear rumours of a study of the nation’s prison population which reportedly found that the leading civilian occupation among inmates before they were put behind bars was “cook.” As most of us in the restaurant business know, there is a powerful strain of criminality in the industry, ranging from the dope-dealing busboy with beeper and cell phone to the restaurant owner who has two sets of accounting books. In fact, it was the unsavoury side of professional cooking that attracted me to it in the first place. In the early seventies, I dropped out of college and transferred to the Culinary Institute of America. I wanted it all: the cuts and burns on hands and wrists, the ghoulish kitchen humour, the free food, the pilfered booze, the camaraderie that flourished within rigid order and nerve-shattering chaos. I would climb the chain of command from mal carne (meaning “bad meat,” or “new guy”) to chefdom – doing whatever it took until I ran my own kitchen and had my own crew of cutthroats, the culinary equivalent of “The Wild Bunch.”

Q. Which of the following can be understood from the passage?

DIRECTIONS for questions: The passage given below is accompanied by a set of six questions. Choose the best answer to each question.

Gastronomy is the science of pain. Professional cooks belong to a secret society whose ancient rituals derive from the principles of stoicism in the face of humiliation, injury, fatigue, and the threat of illness, while being confined for most of their waking hours in hot, airless spaces, and ruled by despotic leaders.

A good deal has changed since Orwell’s memoir of the months he spent as a dishwasher. Gas ranges and exhaust fans have gone a long way toward increasing the life span of the working culinarian. Nowadays, most aspiring cooks come into the business because they want to: they have chosen this life, studied for it. Today’s top chefs are like star athletes. They bounce from kitchen to kitchen – free agents in search of more money, more acclaim.

I love the sheer weirdness of the kitchen life: the dreamers, the crackpots, the refugees, and the sociopaths with whom I continue to work; the ever-present smells of roasting bones, searing fish, and simmering liquids; the noise and clatter, the hiss and spray, the flames, the smoke, and the steam. Admittedly, it’s a life that grinds you down. Most of us who live and operate in the culinary underworld are in some fundamental way dysfunctional. We’ve all chosen to turn our backs on the nine-to-five, on ever having a Friday or Saturday night off, on ever having a normal relationship with a non-cook.

Being a chef is a lot like being an air-traffic controller: you are constantly dealing with the threat of disaster. You’ve got to be Mom and Dad, drill sergeant, detective, psychiatrist, and priest to a crew of opportunistic, mercenary hooligans, whom you must protect from the nefarious and often foolish strategies of owners. Year after year, cooks contend with bouncing pay checks, irate purveyors, desperate owners looking for the masterstroke that will cure their restaurant’s ills.

In America, the professional kitchen is the last refuge of the misfit. It’s a place for people with bad pasts to find a new family.

It’s a haven for foreigners – Ecuadorians, Mexicans, Chinese, Senegalese, Egyptians, Poles. I’ve been a chef in New York for more than ten years, and, for the decade before that, a dishwasher, a prep drone, a line cook, and a sous-chef. I came into the business when cooks still smoked on the line and wore headbands. A few years ago, I wasn’t surprised to hear rumours of a study of the nation’s prison population which reportedly found that the leading civilian occupation among inmates before they were put behind bars was “cook.” As most of us in the restaurant business know, there is a powerful strain of criminality in the industry, ranging from the dope-dealing busboy with beeper and cell phone to the restaurant owner who has two sets of accounting books. In fact, it was the unsavoury side of professional cooking that attracted me to it in the first place. In the early seventies, I dropped out of college and transferred to the Culinary Institute of America. I wanted it all: the cuts and burns on hands and wrists, the ghoulish kitchen humour, the free food, the pilfered booze, the camaraderie that flourished within rigid order and nerve-shattering chaos. I would climb the chain of command from mal carne (meaning “bad meat,” or “new guy”) to chefdom – doing whatever it took until I ran my own kitchen and had my own crew of cutthroats, the culinary equivalent of “The Wild Bunch.”

Q. Which of the following explains the author’s purpose in mentioning humours of a study of the nation’s prison population which reportedly found that the leading civilian occupation among inmates before they were put behind bars was “cook”?

DIRECTIONS for questions: The passage given below is accompanied by a set of six questions. Choose the best answer to each question.

Gastronomy is the science of pain. Professional cooks belong to a secret society whose ancient rituals derive from the principles of stoicism in the face of humiliation, injury, fatigue, and the threat of illness, while being confined for most of their waking hours in hot, airless spaces, and ruled by despotic leaders.

A good deal has changed since Orwell’s memoir of the months he spent as a dishwasher. Gas ranges and exhaust fans have gone a long way toward increasing the life span of the working culinarian. Nowadays, most aspiring cooks come into the business because they want to: they have chosen this life, studied for it. Today’s top chefs are like star athletes. They bounce from kitchen to kitchen – free agents in search of more money, more acclaim.

I love the sheer weirdness of the kitchen life: the dreamers, the crackpots, the refugees, and the sociopaths with whom I continue to work; the ever-present smells of roasting bones, searing fish, and simmering liquids; the noise and clatter, the hiss and spray, the flames, the smoke, and the steam. Admittedly, it’s a life that grinds you down. Most of us who live and operate in the culinary underworld are in some fundamental way dysfunctional. We’ve all chosen to turn our backs on the nine-to-five, on ever having a Friday or Saturday night off, on ever having a normal relationship with a non-cook.

Being a chef is a lot like being an air-traffic controller: you are constantly dealing with the threat of disaster. You’ve got to be Mom and Dad, drill sergeant, detective, psychiatrist, and priest to a crew of opportunistic, mercenary hooligans, whom you must protect from the nefarious and often foolish strategies of owners. Year after year, cooks contend with bouncing pay checks, irate purveyors, desperate owners looking for the masterstroke that will cure their restaurant’s ills.

In America, the professional kitchen is the last refuge of the misfit. It’s a place for people with bad pasts to find a new family.

It’s a haven for foreigners – Ecuadorians, Mexicans, Chinese, Senegalese, Egyptians, Poles. I’ve been a chef in New York for more than ten years, and, for the decade before that, a dishwasher, a prep drone, a line cook, and a sous-chef. I came into the business when cooks still smoked on the line and wore headbands. A few years ago, I wasn’t surprised to hear rumours of a study of the nation’s prison population which reportedly found that the leading civilian occupation among inmates before they were put behind bars was “cook.” As most of us in the restaurant business know, there is a powerful strain of criminality in the industry, ranging from the dope-dealing busboy with beeper and cell phone to the restaurant owner who has two sets of accounting books. In fact, it was the unsavoury side of professional cooking that attracted me to it in the first place. In the early seventies, I dropped out of college and transferred to the Culinary Institute of America. I wanted it all: the cuts and burns on hands and wrists, the ghoulish kitchen humour, the free food, the pilfered booze, the camaraderie that flourished within rigid order and nerve-shattering chaos. I would climb the chain of command from mal carne (meaning “bad meat,” or “new guy”) to chefdom – doing whatever it took until I ran my own kitchen and had my own crew of cutthroats, the culinary equivalent of “The Wild Bunch.”

Q. Which of the following can be inferred as a difference between chefs of the present age and chefs when the author had just entered the profession?

DIRECTIONS for questions: The passage given below is accompanied by a set of six questions. Choose the best answer to each question.

Gastronomy is the science of pain. Professional cooks belong to a secret society whose ancient rituals derive from the principles of stoicism in the face of humiliation, injury, fatigue, and the threat of illness, while being confined for most of their waking hours in hot, airless spaces, and ruled by despotic leaders.

A good deal has changed since Orwell’s memoir of the months he spent as a dishwasher. Gas ranges and exhaust fans have gone a long way toward increasing the life span of the working culinarian. Nowadays, most aspiring cooks come into the business because they want to: they have chosen this life, studied for it. Today’s top chefs are like star athletes. They bounce from kitchen to kitchen – free agents in search of more money, more acclaim.

I love the sheer weirdness of the kitchen life: the dreamers, the crackpots, the refugees, and the sociopaths with whom I continue to work; the ever-present smells of roasting bones, searing fish, and simmering liquids; the noise and clatter, the hiss and spray, the flames, the smoke, and the steam. Admittedly, it’s a life that grinds you down. Most of us who live and operate in the culinary underworld are in some fundamental way dysfunctional. We’ve all chosen to turn our backs on the nine-to-five, on ever having a Friday or Saturday night off, on ever having a normal relationship with a non-cook.

Being a chef is a lot like being an air-traffic controller: you are constantly dealing with the threat of disaster. You’ve got to be Mom and Dad, drill sergeant, detective, psychiatrist, and priest to a crew of opportunistic, mercenary hooligans, whom you must protect from the nefarious and often foolish strategies of owners. Year after year, cooks contend with bouncing pay checks, irate purveyors, desperate owners looking for the masterstroke that will cure their restaurant’s ills.

In America, the professional kitchen is the last refuge of the misfit. It’s a place for people with bad pasts to find a new family.

It’s a haven for foreigners – Ecuadorians, Mexicans, Chinese, Senegalese, Egyptians, Poles. I’ve been a chef in New York for more than ten years, and, for the decade before that, a dishwasher, a prep drone, a line cook, and a sous-chef. I came into the business when cooks still smoked on the line and wore headbands. A few years ago, I wasn’t surprised to hear rumours of a study of the nation’s prison population which reportedly found that the leading civilian occupation among inmates before they were put behind bars was “cook.” As most of us in the restaurant business know, there is a powerful strain of criminality in the industry, ranging from the dope-dealing busboy with beeper and cell phone to the restaurant owner who has two sets of accounting books. In fact, it was the unsavoury side of professional cooking that attracted me to it in the first place. In the early seventies, I dropped out of college and transferred to the Culinary Institute of America. I wanted it all: the cuts and burns on hands and wrists, the ghoulish kitchen humour, the free food, the pilfered booze, the camaraderie that flourished within rigid order and nerve-shattering chaos. I would climb the chain of command from mal carne (meaning “bad meat,” or “new guy”) to chefdom – doing whatever it took until I ran my own kitchen and had my own crew of cutthroats, the culinary equivalent of “The Wild Bunch.”

Q. Which of the following possibly explains the relationship the author seemed to have shared with ‘his crew’?

DIRECTIONS for questions: The passage given below is accompanied by a set of six questions. Choose the best answer to each question.

Gastronomy is the science of pain. Professional cooks belong to a secret society whose ancient rituals derive from the principles of stoicism in the face of humiliation, injury, fatigue, and the threat of illness, while being confined for most of their waking hours in hot, airless spaces, and ruled by despotic leaders.

A good deal has changed since Orwell’s memoir of the months he spent as a dishwasher. Gas ranges and exhaust fans have gone a long way toward increasing the life span of the working culinarian. Nowadays, most aspiring cooks come into the business because they want to: they have chosen this life, studied for it. Today’s top chefs are like star athletes. They bounce from kitchen to kitchen – free agents in search of more money, more acclaim.

I love the sheer weirdness of the kitchen life: the dreamers, the crackpots, the refugees, and the sociopaths with whom I continue to work; the ever-present smells of roasting bones, searing fish, and simmering liquids; the noise and clatter, the hiss and spray, the flames, the smoke, and the steam. Admittedly, it’s a life that grinds you down. Most of us who live and operate in the culinary underworld are in some fundamental way dysfunctional. We’ve all chosen to turn our backs on the nine-to-five, on ever having a Friday or Saturday night off, on ever having a normal relationship with a non-cook.

Being a chef is a lot like being an air-traffic controller: you are constantly dealing with the threat of disaster. You’ve got to be Mom and Dad, drill sergeant, detective, psychiatrist, and priest to a crew of opportunistic, mercenary hooligans, whom you must protect from the nefarious and often foolish strategies of owners. Year after year, cooks contend with bouncing pay checks, irate purveyors, desperate owners looking for the masterstroke that will cure their restaurant’s ills.

In America, the professional kitchen is the last refuge of the misfit. It’s a place for people with bad pasts to find a new family.

It’s a haven for foreigners – Ecuadorians, Mexicans, Chinese, Senegalese, Egyptians, Poles. I’ve been a chef in New York for more than ten years, and, for the decade before that, a dishwasher, a prep drone, a line cook, and a sous-chef. I came into the business when cooks still smoked on the line and wore headbands. A few years ago, I wasn’t surprised to hear rumours of a study of the nation’s prison population which reportedly found that the leading civilian occupation among inmates before they were put behind bars was “cook.” As most of us in the restaurant business know, there is a powerful strain of criminality in the industry, ranging from the dope-dealing busboy with beeper and cell phone to the restaurant owner who has two sets of accounting books. In fact, it was the unsavoury side of professional cooking that attracted me to it in the first place. In the early seventies, I dropped out of college and transferred to the Culinary Institute of America. I wanted it all: the cuts and burns on hands and wrists, the ghoulish kitchen humour, the free food, the pilfered booze, the camaraderie that flourished within rigid order and nerve-shattering chaos. I would climb the chain of command from mal carne (meaning “bad meat,” or “new guy”) to chefdom – doing whatever it took until I ran my own kitchen and had my own crew of cutthroats, the culinary equivalent of “The Wild Bunch.”

Q. Which of the following best summarises the usage of the analogy by the author: ‘Being a chef is a lot like being an air traffic controller’?

DIRECTIONS for questions: The passage given below is accompanied by a set of six questions. Choose the best answer to each question.

Gastronomy is the science of pain. Professional cooks belong to a secret society whose ancient rituals derive from the principles of stoicism in the face of humiliation, injury, fatigue, and the threat of illness, while being confined for most of their waking hours in hot, airless spaces, and ruled by despotic leaders.

A good deal has changed since Orwell’s memoir of the months he spent as a dishwasher. Gas ranges and exhaust fans have gone a long way toward increasing the life span of the working culinarian. Nowadays, most aspiring cooks come into the business because they want to: they have chosen this life, studied for it. Today’s top chefs are like star athletes. They bounce from kitchen to kitchen – free agents in search of more money, more acclaim.

I love the sheer weirdness of the kitchen life: the dreamers, the crackpots, the refugees, and the sociopaths with whom I continue to work; the ever-present smells of roasting bones, searing fish, and simmering liquids; the noise and clatter, the hiss and spray, the flames, the smoke, and the steam. Admittedly, it’s a life that grinds you down. Most of us who live and operate in the culinary underworld are in some fundamental way dysfunctional. We’ve all chosen to turn our backs on the nine-to-five, on ever having a Friday or Saturday night off, on ever having a normal relationship with a non-cook.

Being a chef is a lot like being an air-traffic controller: you are constantly dealing with the threat of disaster. You’ve got to be Mom and Dad, drill sergeant, detective, psychiatrist, and priest to a crew of opportunistic, mercenary hooligans, whom you must protect from the nefarious and often foolish strategies of owners. Year after year, cooks contend with bouncing pay checks, irate purveyors, desperate owners looking for the masterstroke that will cure their restaurant’s ills.

In America, the professional kitchen is the last refuge of the misfit. It’s a place for people with bad pasts to find a new family.

It’s a haven for foreigners – Ecuadorians, Mexicans, Chinese, Senegalese, Egyptians, Poles. I’ve been a chef in New York for more than ten years, and, for the decade before that, a dishwasher, a prep drone, a line cook, and a sous-chef. I came into the business when cooks still smoked on the line and wore headbands. A few years ago, I wasn’t surprised to hear rumours of a study of the nation’s prison population which reportedly found that the leading civilian occupation among inmates before they were put behind bars was “cook.” As most of us in the restaurant business know, there is a powerful strain of criminality in the industry, ranging from the dope-dealing busboy with beeper and cell phone to the restaurant owner who has two sets of accounting books. In fact, it was the unsavoury side of professional cooking that attracted me to it in the first place. In the early seventies, I dropped out of college and transferred to the Culinary Institute of America. I wanted it all: the cuts and burns on hands and wrists, the ghoulish kitchen humour, the free food, the pilfered booze, the camaraderie that flourished within rigid order and nerve-shattering chaos. I would climb the chain of command from mal carne (meaning “bad meat,” or “new guy”) to chefdom – doing whatever it took until I ran my own kitchen and had my own crew of cutthroats, the culinary equivalent of “The Wild Bunch.”

Q. Which of the following is the author least likely to agree with about the professional cooking industry?

DIRECTIONS for questions: The passage given below is accompanied by a set of six questions. Choose the best answer to each question.

This is going to be awkward, but someone has to tell you, so it may as well be me: your kind of a loser. You know that feeling you sometimes have that your friends have more friends than you? You're right. They do. And you know how almost everyone at the gym seems in better shape than you, and how everyone at your book club seems better read? Well, they are.

If you're single, it's probably a while since you dated – what with you being such a loser – but when you did, do you recall thinking the other person was more romantically experienced than you? I'm afraid it was probably true.

The only consolation in all this is that it's nothing personal: it's a bizarre statistical fact that almost all of us have fewer friends than our friends, more flab than our fellow gym-goers, and so on. In other words, you're a loser, but it's not your fault: it's just maths. (I mean, it's probably just maths. You might be a catastrophic failure as a human being, for all I know. But let's focus on the maths.)

To anyone not steeped in statistics, this seems crazy. Friendship is a two-way street, so you'd assume things would average out: any given person would be as likely to be more popular than their friends as less. But as the sociologist Scott Feld showed, in a 1991 paper bluntly entitled Why Your Friends Have More Friends Than You Do, this isn't true. If you list all your friends, and then ask them all how many friends they have, their average is very likely to be higher than your friend count.

The reason is bewilderingly simple: "You are more likely to be friends with someone who has more friends than with someone who has fewer friends," as the psychologist Satoshi Kanazawa puts it. You're more likely to know more popular people, and less likely to know less popular ones. Some people may be completely friendless, but you're not friends with any of them.

Researchers have since observed the so-called ‘Friendship Paradox’ in a wide variety of situations. The implications of this seeming paradox cascade through daily life. People at your gym tend to be fitter than you because you tend not to encounter the ones who rarely go; “If your lover only had one lover," Kanazawa writes, "you are probably not him or her." This is also why people think of certain beaches or museums or airports as usually busier than they actually are: by definition, most people aren't there when they're less crowded. So, if you’re an active Facebook user feeling inadequate and unhappy because your friends seem to be doing better than you are, remember that almost everybody else on the network is in a similar position.

This takes some mental gymnastics to appreciate, but it's deeply reassuring. We're often told that comparing yourself with others is a fast track to misery; but the usual explanation is that we choose to compare ourselves with the wrong people: we pick the happiest, wealthiest, most talented people, and ignore how much better off we are than most.

Feld's work, though, suggests that this is only half of the problem. When it comes to those people we know well, the field from which we're choosing our comparisons is statistically skewed against us to begin with. So next time you catch yourself feeling self-pityingly inferior to almost everyone you know, take heart: you're right, but then, it's the same for them, too.

Q. Which of the following best explains why the author feels that the result of the ‘mental gymnastics’ is reassuring?

DIRECTIONS for questions: The passage given below is accompanied by a set of six questions. Choose the best answer to each question.

This is going to be awkward, but someone has to tell you, so it may as well be me: you're kind of a loser. You know that feeling you sometimes have that your friends have more friends than you? You're right. They do. And you know how almost everyone at the gym seems in better shape than you, and how everyone at your book club seems better read? Well, they are.

If you're single, it's probably a while since you dated – what with you being such a loser – but when you did, do you recall thinking the other person was more romantically experienced than you? I'm afraid it was probably true.

The only consolation in all this is that it's nothing personal: it's a bizarre statistical fact that almost all of us have fewer friends than our friends, more flab than our fellow gym-goers, and so on. In other words, you're a loser, but it's not your fault: it's just maths. (I mean, it's probably just maths. You might be a catastrophic failure as a human being, for all I know. But let's focus on the maths.)

To anyone not steeped in statistics, this seems crazy. Friendship is a two-way street, so you'd assume things would average out: any given person would be as likely to be more popular than their friends as less. But as the sociologist Scott Feld showed, in a 1991 paper bluntly entitled Why Your Friends Have More Friends Than You Do, this isn't true. If you list all your friends, and then ask them all how many friends they have, their average is very likely to be higher than your friend count.

The reason is bewilderingly simple: "You are more likely to be friends with someone who has more friends than with someone who has fewer friends," as the psychologist Satoshi Kanazawa puts it. You're more likely to know more popular people, and less likely to know less popular ones. Some people may be completely friendless, but you're not friends with any of them.

Researchers have since observed the so-called ‘Friendship Paradox’ in a wide variety of situations. The implications of this seeming paradox cascade through daily life. People at your gym tend to be fitter than you because you tend not to encounter the ones who rarely go; “If your lover only had one lover," Kanazawa writes, "you are probably not him or her." This is also why people think of certain beaches or museums or airports as usually busier than they actually are: by definition, most people aren't there when they're less crowded. So, if you’re an active Facebook user feeling inadequate and unhappy because your friends seem to be doing better than you are, remember that almost everybody else on the network is in a similar position.

This takes some mental gymnastics to appreciate, but it's deeply reassuring. We're often told that comparing yourself with others is a fast track to misery; but the usual explanation is that we choose to compare ourselves with the wrong people: we pick the happiest, wealthiest, most talented people, and ignore how much better off we are than most.

Feld's work, though, suggests that this is only half of the problem. When it comes to those people we know well, the field from which we're choosing our comparisons is statistically skewed against us to begin with. So next time you catch yourself feeling self-pityingly inferior to almost everyone you know, take heart: you're right, but then, it's the same for them, too.

Q. Which of the following is the author’s primary point of view in the passage?

DIRECTIONS for questions: The passage given below is accompanied by a set of six questions. Choose the best answer to each question.

This is going to be awkward, but someone has to tell you, so it may as well be me: you're kind of a loser. You know that feeling you sometimes have that your friends have more friends than you? You're right. They do. And you know how almost everyone at the gym seems in better shape than you, and how everyone at your book club seems better read? Well, they are.

If you're single, it's probably a while since you dated – what with you being such a loser – but when you did, do you recall thinking the other person was more romantically experienced than you? I'm afraid it was probably true.

The only consolation in all this is that it's nothing personal: it's a bizarre statistical fact that almost all of us have fewer friends than our friends, more flab than our fellow gym-goers, and so on. In other words, you're a loser, but it's not your fault: it's just maths. (I mean, it's probably just maths. You might be a catastrophic failure as a human being, for all I know. But let's focus on the maths.)

To anyone not steeped in statistics, this seems crazy. Friendship is a two-way street, so you'd assume things would average out: any given person would be as likely to be more popular than their friends as less. But as the sociologist Scott Feld showed, in a 1991 paper bluntly entitled Why Your Friends Have More Friends Than You Do, this isn't true. If you list all your friends, and then ask them all how many friends they have, their average is very likely to be higher than your friend count.

The reason is bewilderingly simple: "You are more likely to be friends with someone who has more friends than with someone who has fewer friends," as the psychologist Satoshi Kanazawa puts it. You're more likely to know more popular people, and less likely to know less popular ones. Some people may be completely friendless, but you're not friends with any of them.

Researchers have since observed the so-called ‘Friendship Paradox’ in a wide variety of situations. The implications of this seeming paradox cascade through daily life. People at your gym tend to be fitter than you because you tend not to encounter the ones who rarely go; “If your lover only had one lover," Kanazawa writes, "you are probably not him or her." This is also why people think of certain beaches or museums or airports as usually busier than they actually are: by definition, most people aren't there when they're less crowded. So, if you’re an active Facebook user feeling inadequate and unhappy because your friends seem to be doing better than you are, remember that almost everybody else on the network is in a similar position.

This takes some mental gymnastics to appreciate, but it's deeply reassuring. We're often told that comparing yourself with others is a fast track to misery; but the usual explanation is that we choose to compare ourselves with the wrong people: we pick the happiest, wealthiest, most talented people, and ignore how much better off we are than most.

Feld's work, though, suggests that this is only half of the problem. When it comes to those people we know well, the field from which we're choosing our comparisons is statistically skewed against us to begin with. So next time you catch yourself feeling self-pityingly inferior to almost everyone you know, take heart: you're right, but then, it's the same for them, too.

Q. Which of the following reiterates the assumption in the line ‘Friendship is a two-way street, so you'd assume things would average out’?

DIRECTIONS for questions: The passage given below is accompanied by a set of six questions. Choose the best answer to each question.

This is going to be awkward, but someone has to tell you, so it may as well be me: you're kind of a loser. You know that feeling you sometimes have that your friends have more friends than you? You're right. They do. And you know how almost everyone at the gym seems in better shape than you, and how everyone at your book club seems better read? Well, they are.

If you're single, it's probably a while since you dated – what with you being such a loser – but when you did, do you recall thinking the other person was more romantically experienced than you? I'm afraid it was probably true.

The only consolation in all this is that it's nothing personal: it's a bizarre statistical fact that almost all of us have fewer friends than our friends, more flab than our fellow gym-goers, and so on. In other words, you're a loser, but it's not your fault: it's just maths. (I mean, it's probably just maths. You might be a catastrophic failure as a human being, for all I know. But let's focus on the maths.)

To anyone not steeped in statistics, this seems crazy. Friendship is a two-way street, so you'd assume things would average out: any given person would be as likely to be more popular than their friends as less. But as the sociologist Scott Feld showed, in a 1991 paper bluntly entitled Why Your Friends Have More Friends Than You Do, this isn't true. If you list all your friends, and then ask them all how many friends they have, their average is very likely to be higher than your friend count.

The reason is bewilderingly simple: "You are more likely to be friends with someone who has more friends than with someone who has fewer friends," as the psychologist Satoshi Kanazawa puts it. You're more likely to know more popular people, and less likely to know less popular ones. Some people may be completely friendless, but you're not friends with any of them.

Researchers have since observed the so-called ‘Friendship Paradox’ in a wide variety of situations. The implications of this seeming paradox cascade through daily life. People at your gym tend to be fitter than you because you tend not to encounter the ones who rarely go; “If your lover only had one lover," Kanazawa writes, "you are probably not him or her." This is also why people think of certain beaches or museums or airports as usually busier than they actually are: by definition, most people aren't there when they're less crowded. So, if you’re an active Facebook user feeling inadequate and unhappy because your friends seem to be doing better than you are, remember that almost everybody else on the network is in a similar position.

This takes some mental gymnastics to appreciate, but it's deeply reassuring. We're often told that comparing yourself with others is a fast track to misery; but the usual explanation is that we choose to compare ourselves with the wrong people: we pick the happiest, wealthiest, most talented people, and ignore how much better off we are than most.

Feld's work, though, suggests that this is only half of the problem. When it comes to those people we know well, the field from which we're choosing our comparisons is statistically skewed against us to begin with. So next time you catch yourself feeling self-pityingly inferior to almost everyone you know, take heart: you're right, but then, it's the same for them, too.

Q. Which of the following needs to be proven wrong to weaken the author’s opinion in ‘You're more likely to know more popular people…but you're not friends with any of them’?

DIRECTIONS for questions: The passage given below is accompanied by a set of six questions. Choose the best answer to each question.

This is going to be awkward, but someone has to tell you, so it may as well be me: your kind of a loser. You know that feeling you sometimes have that your friends have more friends than you? You're right. They do. And you know how almost everyone at the gym seems in better shape than you, and how everyone at your book club seems better read? Well, they are.

If you're single, it's probably a while since you dated – what with you being such a loser – but when you did, do you recall thinking the other person was more romantically experienced than you? I'm afraid it was probably true.

The only consolation in all this is that it's nothing personal: it's a bizarre statistical fact that almost all of us have fewer friends than our friends, more flab than our fellow gym-goers, and so on. In other words, you're a loser, but it's not your fault: it's just maths. (I mean, it's probably just maths. You might be a catastrophic failure as a human being, for all I know. But let's focus on the maths.)

To anyone not steeped in statistics, this seems crazy. Friendship is a two-way street, so you'd assume things would average out: any given person would be as likely to be more popular than their friends as less. But as the sociologist Scott Feld showed, in a 1991 paper bluntly entitled Why Your Friends Have More Friends Than You Do, this isn't true. If you list all your friends, and then ask them all how many friends they have, their average is very likely to be higher than your friend count.

The reason is bewilderingly simple: "You are more likely to be friends with someone who has more friends than with someone who has fewer friends," as the psychologist Satoshi Kanazawa puts it. You're more likely to know more popular people, and less likely to know less popular ones. Some people may be completely friendless, but you're not friends with any of them.

Researchers have since observed the so-called ‘Friendship Paradox’ in a wide variety of situations. The implications of this seeming paradox cascade through daily life. People at your gym tend to be fitter than you because you tend not to encounter the ones who rarely go; “If your lover only had one lover," Kanazawa writes, "you are probably not him or her." This is also why people think of certain beaches or museums or airports as usually busier than they actually are: by definition, most people aren't there when they're less crowded. So, if you’re an active Facebook user feeling inadequate and unhappy because your friends seem to be doing better than you are, remember that almost everybody else on the network is in a similar position.

This takes some mental gymnastics to appreciate, but it's deeply reassuring. We're often told that comparing yourself with others is a fast track to misery; but the usual explanation is that we choose to compare ourselves with the wrong people: we pick the happiest, wealthiest, most talented people, and ignore how much better off we are than most.

Feld's work, though, suggests that this is only half of the problem. When it comes to those people we know well, the field from which we're choosing our comparisons is statistically skewed against us to begin with. So next time you catch yourself feeling self-pityingly inferior to almost everyone you know, take heart: you're right, but then, it's the same for them, too.

Q. Consider the sentence, ‘Feld's work, though, suggests that this is only half of the problem’ in the last para of the passage. Which of the following best illustrates the other half of the problem?

DIRECTIONS for questions: The passage given below is accompanied by a set of six questions. Choose the best answer to each question.

This is going to be awkward, but someone has to tell you, so it may as well be me: you're kind of a loser. You know that feeling you sometimes have that your friends have more friends than you? You're right. They do. And you know how almost everyone at the gym seems in better shape than you, and how everyone at your book club seems better read? Well, they are.

If you're single, it's probably a while since you dated – what with you being such a loser – but when you did, do you recall thinking the other person was more romantically experienced than you? I'm afraid it was probably true.

The only consolation in all this is that it's nothing personal: it's a bizarre statistical fact that almost all of us have fewer friends than our friends, more flab than our fellow gym-goers, and so on. In other words, you're a loser, but it's not your fault: it's just maths. (I mean, it's probably just maths. You might be a catastrophic failure as a human being, for all I know. But let's focus on the maths.)

To anyone not steeped in statistics, this seems crazy. Friendship is a two-way street, so you'd assume things would average out: any given person would be as likely to be more popular than their friends as less. But as the sociologist Scott Feld showed, in a 1991 paper bluntly entitled Why Your Friends Have More Friends Than You Do, this isn't true. If you list all your friends, and then ask them all how many friends they have, their average is very likely to be higher than your friend count.

The reason is bewilderingly simple: "You are more likely to be friends with someone who has more friends than with someone who has fewer friends," as the psychologist Satoshi Kanazawa puts it. You're more likely to know more popular people, and less likely to know less popular ones. Some people may be completely friendless, but you're not friends with any of them.

Researchers have since observed the so-called ‘Friendship Paradox’ in a wide variety of situations. The implications of this seeming paradox cascade through daily life. People at your gym tend to be fitter than you because you tend not to encounter the ones who rarely go; “If your lover only had one lover," Kanazawa writes, "you are probably not him or her." This is also why people think of certain beaches or museums or airports as usually busier than they actually are: by definition, most people aren't there when they're less crowded. So, if you’re an active Facebook user feeling inadequate and unhappy because your friends seem to be doing better than you are, remember that almost everybody else on the network is in a similar position.

This takes some mental gymnastics to appreciate, but it's deeply reassuring. We're often told that comparing yourself with others is a fast track to misery; but the usual explanation is that we choose to compare ourselves with the wrong people: we pick the happiest, wealthiest, most talented people, and ignore how much better off we are than most.

Feld's work, though, suggests that this is only half of the problem. When it comes to those people we know well, the field from which we're choosing our comparisons is statistically skewed against us to begin with. So next time you catch yourself feeling self-pityingly inferior to almost everyone you know, take heart: you're right, but then, it's the same for them, too.

Q. Which of the following, if true, does not demonstrate ‘Friendship Paradox’ as explained in the passage?

DIRECTIONS for questions: The passage given below is accompanied by a set of three questions. Choose the best answer to each question.

A ‘Blue Ocean’, is an uncontested market space that makes competition irrelevant, sometimes a previously unknown market space. In Blue Oceans, demand is created rather than fought over. There is ample opportunity for growth that is both profitable and rapid. In Red Oceans – that is, in all the industries already existing – companies compete by grabbing for a greater share of limited demand. As the market space gets more crowded, prospects for profits and growth decline. Products turn into commodities, and increasing competition turns the water bloody.

There are two ways to create Blue Oceans. One is to launch completely new industries, as eBay did with online auctions. But it’s much more common for a Blue Ocean to be created from within a Red Ocean when a company expands the boundaries of an existing industry.

As market power has moved from companies to consumers, and global competition has intensified, managers in almost all industries have come to face steep performance challenges. To turn things around, they need to be more creative in developing and executing their competitive strategies. But long-term success will not be achieved through competitiveness alone. Increasingly, it will depend on the ability to generate new demand and create and capture new markets.

The payoffs of market creation are huge. Just compare the experiences of Apple and Microsoft. Over the past 15 years, Apple has made a series of successful market-creating moves, introducing the iPod, iTunes, the iPhone, the App Store, and the iPad. From the launch of the iPod in 2001 to the end of its 2014 fiscal year, Apple’s market cap surged more than 75-fold as its sales and profits exploded. Over the same period, Microsoft’s market cap crept up by a mere 3% while its revenue went from nearly five times larger than Apple’s to nearly half of Apple’s. With close to 80% of profits coming from two old businesses – Windows and Office – and no compelling market-creating move, Microsoft has paid a steep price.

Q. Which of the following can be understood from the passage?

I. Apple’s market cap surge is because of the new market-creating moves.

II. Companies cannot register high growth in market cap indefinitely by relying on old businesses.

III. Market-creating moves always lead to growth and increase in profits.

DIRECTIONS for questions: The passage given below is accompanied by a set of three questions. Choose the best answer to each question.

A ‘Blue Ocean’, is an uncontested market space that makes competition irrelevant, sometimes a previously unknown market space. In Blue Oceans, demand is created rather than fought over. There is ample opportunity for growth that is both profitable and rapid. In Red Oceans – that is, in all the industries already existing – companies compete by grabbing for a greater share of limited demand. As the market space gets more crowded, prospects for profits and growth decline. Products turn into commodities, and increasing competition turns the water bloody.

There are two ways to create Blue Oceans. One is to launch completely new industries, as eBay did with online auctions. But it’s much more common for a Blue Ocean to be created from within a Red Ocean when a company expands the boundaries of an existing industry.

As market power has moved from companies to consumers, and global competition has intensified, managers in almost all industries have come to face steep performance challenges. To turn things around, they need to be more creative in developing and executing their competitive strategies. But long-term success will not be achieved through competitiveness alone. Increasingly, it will depend on the ability to generate new demand and create and capture new markets.

The payoffs of market creation are huge. Just compare the experiences of Apple and Microsoft. Over the past 15 years, Apple has made a series of successful market-creating moves, introducing the iPod, iTunes, the iPhone, the App Store, and the iPad. From the launch of the iPod in 2001 to the end of its 2014 fiscal year, Apple’s market cap surged more than 75-fold as its sales and profits exploded. Over the same period, Microsoft’s market cap crept up by a mere 3% while its revenue went from nearly five times larger than Apple’s to nearly half of Apple’s. With close to 80% of profits coming from two old businesses – Windows and Office – and no compelling market-creating move, Microsoft has paid a steep price.

Q. All of the following are differences between Blue Oceans and Red Oceans EXCEPT?

DIRECTIONS for questions: The passage given below is accompanied by a set of three questions. Choose the best answer to each question.

A ‘Blue Ocean’, is an uncontested market space that makes competition irrelevant, sometimes a previously unknown market space. In Blue Oceans, demand is created rather than fought over. There is ample opportunity for growth that is both profitable and rapid. In Red Oceans – that is, in all the industries already existing – companies compete by grabbing for a greater share of limited demand. As the market space gets more crowded, prospects for profits and growth decline. Products turn into commodities, and increasing competition turns the water bloody.

There are two ways to create Blue Oceans. One is to launch completely new industries, as eBay did with online auctions. But it’s much more common for a Blue Ocean to be created from within a Red Ocean when a company expands the boundaries of an existing industry.

As market power has moved from companies to consumers, and global competition has intensified, managers in almost all industries have come to face steep performance challenges. To turn things around, they need to be more creative in developing and executing their competitive strategies. But long-term success will not be achieved through competitiveness alone. Increasingly, it will depend on the ability to generate new demand and create and capture new markets.

The payoffs of market creation are huge. Just compare the experiences of Apple and Microsoft. Over the past 15 years, Apple has made a series of successful market-creating moves, introducing the iPod, iTunes, the iPhone, the App Store, and the iPad. From the launch of the iPod in 2001 to the end of its 2014 fiscal year, Apple’s market cap surged more than 75-fold as its sales and profits exploded. Over the same period, Microsoft’s market cap crept up by a mere 3% while its revenue went from nearly five times larger than Apple’s to nearly half of Apple’s. With close to 80% of profits coming from two old businesses – Windows and Office – and no compelling market-creating move, Microsoft has paid a steep price.

Q. Which of the following explains the author’s purpose in using the example of Apple and Microsoft?

DIRECTIONS for questions: The passage given below is accompanied by a set of three questions. Choose the best answer to each question.

The wheel forms the basic component of any mechanized system today, be it a watch or a jet engine. The world moves on wheels today and the inception of this technology can be traced back to 3500 BC in Mesopotamia (Sumerian civilization). The Sumerian wheel was invented by joining planks of wood together. However, it is still a mystery as to who actually made the first wheel. The first wheel ever made was not used for any kind of transportation. Rather, it was used by potters to spin clay for making articles like vessels. The first wooden wheel in the world was found in Slovenia and it is more than 5000 years old.

Mesopotamians started using the wheel for transferring goods at a much later period, between 3700 and 3200 BCE. They used it in their chariots and wagons, where four wheels and two axles were included. The Egyptians improvised the wheel further. They made spokes in them and used them in chariots around 2000 BC. During this time, the wheel made its way into Europe where the Greeks ideated to improve the Egyptian wheel. Researchers opine that the wheelbarrow – a hand drawn vehicle with one wheel – was first invented in Greece between the 6th and 4th century BC. It then found its way to China 400 years later, from where it moved to medieval Europe. ... The Romans made a large variety of wheels for chariots, carts, heavy freight wagons, passenger coaches.

In earlier days, circular stones or tree trunks were used as rollers for moving heavy objects. Then people started placing runners below the heavy object and started dragging it like a sledge. Then they combined the sledge and the roller, enabling the arrangement to cover larger distances. Next, the rollers were changed into wheels by cutting out the wood in between the two grooves of the rollers and an axle-like structure was created. Special wooden pegs were used on both sides to keep the runners fastened to the axle. Thus, as the wheel turned, the axle could also turn with it. This was how the first hand-cart was made.

Q. All of the following can be inferred from the passage EXCEPT?

1. The Greeks adopted the idea of wheel-making from the Egyptians and further developed it.

2. The first ever wheel was used for manufacturing purposes, and not for transportation.

3. The earliest wheel was either made of stone or wood.

4. The first hand-cart had only one wheel, allowing transportation of heavy objects quickly and over long distances.

DIRECTIONS for questions: The passage given below is accompanied by a set of three questions. Choose the best answer to each question.

The wheel forms the basic component of any mechanized system today, be it a watch or a jet engine. The world moves on wheels today and the inception of this technology can be traced back to 3500 BC in Mesopotamia (Sumerian civilization). The Sumerian wheel was invented by joining planks of wood together. However, it is still a mystery as to who actually made the first wheel. The first wheel ever made was not used for any kind of transportation. Rather, it was used by potters to spin clay for making articles like vessels. The first wooden wheel in the world was found in Slovenia and it is more than 5000 years old.

Mesopotamians started using the wheel for transferring goods at a much later period, between 3700 and 3200 BCE. They used it in their chariots and wagons, where four wheels and two axles were included. The Egyptians improvised the wheel further. They made spokes in them and used them in chariots around 2000 BC. During this time, the wheel made its way into Europe where the Greeks ideated to improve the Egyptian wheel. Researchers opine that the wheelbarrow – a hand drawn vehicle with one wheel – was first invented in Greece between the 6th and 4th century BC. It then found its way to China 400 years later, from where it moved to medieval Europe. ... The Romans made a large variety of wheels for chariots, carts, heavy freight wagons, passenger coaches.

In earlier days, circular stones or tree trunks were used as rollers for moving heavy objects. Then people started placing runners below the heavy object and started dragging it like a sledge. Then they combined the sledge and the roller, enabling the arrangement to cover larger distances. Next, the rollers were changed into wheels by cutting out the wood in between the two grooves of the rollers and an axle-like structure was created. Special wooden pegs were used on both sides to keep the runners fastened to the axle. Thus, as the wheel turned, the axle could also turn with it. This was how the first hand-cart was made.

Q. The first wheel in the world was invented in?

DIRECTIONS for questions: The passage given below is accompanied by a set of three questions. Choose the best answer to each question.

The wheel forms the basic component of any mechanized system today, be it a watch or a jet engine. The world moves on wheels today and the inception of this technology can be traced back to 3500 BC in Mesopotamia (Sumerian civilization). The Sumerian wheel was invented by joining planks of wood together. However, it is still a mystery as to who actually made the first wheel. The first wheel ever made was not used for any kind of transportation. Rather, it was used by potters to spin clay for making articles like vessels. The first wooden wheel in the world was found in Slovenia and it is more than 5000 years old.

Mesopotamians started using the wheel for transferring goods at a much later period, between 3700 and 3200 BCE. They used it in their chariots and wagons, where four wheels and two axles were included. The Egyptians improvised the wheel further. They made spokes in them and used them in chariots around 2000 BC. During this time, the wheel made its way into Europe where the Greeks ideated to improve the Egyptian wheel. Researchers opine that the wheelbarrow – a hand drawn vehicle with one wheel – was first invented in Greece between the 6th and 4th century BC. It then found its way to China 400 years later, from where it moved to medieval Europe. ... The Romans made a large variety of wheels for chariots, carts, heavy freight wagons, passenger coaches.

In earlier days, circular stones or tree trunks were used as rollers for moving heavy objects. Then people started placing runners below the heavy object and started dragging it like a sledge. Then they combined the sledge and the roller, enabling the arrangement to cover larger distances. Next, the rollers were changed into wheels by cutting out the wood in between the two grooves of the rollers and an axle-like structure was created. Special wooden pegs were used on both sides to keep the runners fastened to the axle. Thus, as the wheel turned, the axle could also turn with it. This was how the first hand-cart was made.

Q. According to the passage, which of the following is true about the earliest wheels produced in Mesopotamia and Egypt?

DIRECTIONS for questions: The sentences given in each of the following questions, when properly sequenced, form a coherent paragraph. Each sentence is labelled with a number. Decide on the proper order for the sentences and key in the sequence of five numbers as your answer, in the input box given below the question.

1. Texting has habituated us to receiving a much quicker response.

2. An appropriate time frame varies from person to person, but it can be anywhere from 10 minutes to an hour to even immediately, depending on the previous communication.

3. Texting is a medium that conditions our minds in a distinctive way, and we expect our exchanges to work differently with messages than they did with phone calls.

4. Before everyone had a cell phone, people could usually wait a while – up to a few days, even – to call back before reaching the point where the other person would get concerned.

5. When we don’t get the quick response, our mind freaks out.

a) 12345

b) 34125

c) 34521

d) 32145