Read the passage and answer the following questions: To better understand how the brain underlies selfhood, we need to understand its complex form; its intricate structure at the level of connections between neurons. After all, understanding biological structure has revealed the nature of many diverse life forms. Plants thrive because their typically broad leaves are perfect for transducing light energy into vital chemical energy. Similarly, eyes, whether human or insect, enable the transduction of light from one’s surroundings into electrical signals within the nervous system. These impulses carry information that represents features of the surrounding environment. But when it comes to the relationship between structure and function, brains have remained an enigma. There’s a lot more to them than to other organs that have specific functions, such as eyes, hearts or even hands. These organs can now be surgically replaced. Yet, even if a brain transplant were possible, you couldn’t just switch your brain with another person’s and maintain the same mind. Upon birth, a person’s brain structure is largely prescribed by experience in the womb and their unique genetic code. As we age, experience continues to imprint unique changes on the brain’s neural connectivity, increasing connections in some areas while decreasing them in others, accumulating reroutes upon reroutes as a person ages and learns, gaining knowledge and experience. Additionally, there are alterations in the strength of existing connections. These processes are especially evident in twins, whose brains are strikingly similar when born. However, as they grow, learn and experience the world, their brains diverge, and their essential selves become increasingly unique. Although there are indeed anatomical regions that appear to serve relatively specific functions, one’s memory is not formed, stored or recalled within the activity of any single brain region. Certain structures, such as the amygdala and the hippocampus, play key roles but trying to find memory in one specific area is simply impossible. It would be like trying to listen to Beethoven’s Fifth but hearing only the strings. Instead, memory, in its broadest sense, lies in the uniqueness of a brain’s entire connective structure, known as the connectome. The connectome consists of its complete network of neurons and all the connections between them, called synapses. It is argued that, fundamentally, ‘you are your connectome’. Mapping a connectome at the level of single neurons, however, is currently impossible in a living animal. Instead, animal brains must be extracted, perfused with a fixative such as formaldehyde and sliced up as many times as possible before being analysed structurally in order to painstakingly find individual neurons and trace their paths. To achieve this, the properties of each new slice are recorded using various microscopy techniques. Once that’s been done, patterns of electrical flow can be estimated from different neuron types and from connections that excite or inhibit other neurons. What’s crucial is that the extracted brain is preserved accurately enough to maintain its intricate, complex connectome before it’s sliced up. Currently, it’s unlikely that any human brain has been preserved with its entire connectome perfectly intact as our brains degrade too quickly after death. The author mentions the example of plants and eyes at the beginning to...

Give the readers an understanding of the underlying structure of such life forms and the associated biological features.

Explain why an understanding of the biological structure always reveals the nature of life forms or biological functions.

Highlight how gaining a deeper awareness of their biological structure enabled a better understanding of their function.

Indicate how we can better understand the brain if we apply the same mechanisms utilised to understand plants or the eyes.

Read the passage and answer the following questions: To better understand how the brain underlies selfhood, we need to understand its complex form; its intricate structure at the level of connections between neurons. After all, understanding biological structure has revealed the nature of many diverse life forms. Plants thrive because their typically broad leaves are perfect for transducing light energy into vital chemical energy. Similarly, eyes, whether human or insect, enable the transduction of light from one’s surroundings into electrical signals within the nervous system. These impulses carry information that represents features of the surrounding environment. But when it comes to the relationship between structure and function, brains have remained an enigma. There’s a lot more to them than to other organs that have specific functions, such as eyes, hearts or even hands. These organs can now be surgically replaced. Yet, even if a brain transplant were possible, you couldn’t just switch your brain with another person’s and maintain the same mind. Upon birth, a person’s brain structure is largely prescribed by experience in the womb and their unique genetic code. As we age, experience continues to imprint unique changes on the brain’s neural connectivity, increasing connections in some areas while decreasing them in others, accumulating reroutes upon reroutes as a person ages and learns, gaining knowledge and experience. Additionally, there are alterations in the strength of existing connections. These processes are especially evident in twins, whose brains are strikingly similar when born. However, as they grow, learn and experience the world, their brains diverge, and their essential selves become increasingly unique. Although there are indeed anatomical regions that appear to serve relatively specific functions, one’s memory is not formed, stored or recalled within the activity of any single brain region. Certain structures, such as the amygdala and the hippocampus, play key roles but trying to find memory in one specific area is simply impossible. It would be like trying to listen to Beethoven’s Fifth but hearing only the strings. Instead, memory, in its broadest sense, lies in the uniqueness of a brain’s entire connective structure, known as the connectome. The connectome consists of its complete network of neurons and all the connections between them, called synapses. It is argued that, fundamentally, ‘you are your connectome’. Mapping a connectome at the level of single neurons, however, is currently impossible in a living animal. Instead, animal brains must be extracted, perfused with a fixative such as formaldehyde and sliced up as many times as possible before being analysed structurally in order to painstakingly find individual neurons and trace their paths. To achieve this, the properties of each new slice are recorded using various microscopy techniques. Once that’s been done, patterns of electrical flow can be estimated from different neuron types and from connections that excite or inhibit other neurons. What’s crucial is that the extracted brain is preserved accurately enough to maintain its intricate, complex connectome before it’s sliced up. Currently, it’s unlikely that any human brain has been preserved with its entire connectome perfectly intact as our brains degrade too quickly after death. Which of the following sentences is/are true as per the passage?

Scientists might be able to transplant a brain if they can establish a relationship between its structure and function.

When twin children grow up, they possess a unique identity due to the different experiences gained over their respective lifetimes.

In the near future, we will be able to preserve the brain precisely enough to keep its connectome intact.

The technology required to map a connectome at the level of single neurons in a living animal is likely to be developed soon.

Read the passage carefully and answer the following questions: We must dispense with the idea that democracy is like a torch that gets passed from one leading society to another. The core feature of democracy - that those who rule can do so only with the consent of the people - wasn’t invented in one place at one time: it evolved independently in a great many human societies. Over several millennia and across multiple continents, early democracy was an institution in which rulers governed jointly with councils and assemblies of the people. Classical Greece provided particularly important instances of this democratic practice, and it’s true that the Greeks gave us a language for thinking about democracy, including the word demokratia itself. But they didn’t invent the practice. The core feature of early democracy was that the people had power, even if multiparty elections didn’t happen. The people, or at least some significant fraction of them, exercised this power in many different ways. In some cases, a ruler was chosen by a council or assembly, and was limited to being first among equals. In other instances, a ruler inherited their position, but faced constraints to seek consent from the people before taking actions both large and small. The first difference between early democracy and our democracies today is that this earlier form of rule was a small-scale phenomenon. In Classical Athens those who had the right to participate in politics tended to do so in a very direct and intensive way, particularly in local assemblies. In modern democracy, participation is very broad, but it’s also not deep; for most of us, it’s limited to voting in elections every few years, and in between these moments others make the decisions. The potential risk of this arrangement, as has been noted by astute observers since the birth of modern republics, is that citizens might grow distrustful of the people who are actually running government on a daily basis and of the special influences to which they might be subject. One way to address the problem of scale is to delegate much more power to states, provinces and localities. But on crucial issues of foreign trade, diplomacy or pressing constitutional questions, it’s impractical for individual states, regions or provinces to set their own policy. If large scale has the potential to lead to distrust and disengagement in a democracy, then a closely related problem is that of polarisation, which can take many forms, such as that involving tensions between different classes of people in the same location, or a difference of opinions between people living in different locations. The absence of a state bureaucracy was a chief reason why early democracy proved to be such a stable form of rule for so many societies. With little autonomous power - apart from the ability to persuade - those who would have liked to rule as autocrats found themselves without the means to do so. The flipside of this was that, in many early democracies, those who were unhappy with a central decision could simply refuse to participate or even decamp to a new locality. Modern democracy lacks the same protections from central power that early democracies enjoyed. At the same time, having a powerful central state can allow a society to achieve goals such as universal education and prosperity, to name but a few. The question then is how to live with a state while preserving democracy. Which of the following is the author of the passage most likely to agree with?

Public at large should participate sporadically and passively leaving actual governance to experts.

The state bureaucracy should be dismantled to protect the freedoms of the public.

Citizens should be asked to vote for or against every decision the government wishes to make.

The government should make its functional and budgetary details accessible to the public to win their trust.

Read the passage carefully and answer the following questions: Green energy investment is hot again in the U.S. To some, the new boom will raise the specter of the clean-tech bust that followed a streak of exuberance a decade ago. But there are reasons to believe that this time the trend is no bubble or mirage. The most basic reason is that the fundamental underlying technology has matured in a way it simply hadn’t a decade ago. In 2009, the levelized cost of solar photovoltaic electricity was $359 per megawatt-hour — more than four times as expensive as electricity from a natural gas plant. By 2019, solar PV had fallen in price to $40 per megawatt-hour, 28% cheaper than gas. That’s an 89% decline in 10 years, with more cost drops yet to come. Meanwhile, lithium-ion batteries have experienced a similar drop in prices. That order-of-magnitude drop in costs makes all the difference. First of all, it means that solar and wind aren’t risky new technologies. Solyndra, a solar manufacturer, failed in 2011 because it was trying to market an innovative new kind of solar cell, which ended up being too expensive when the tried-and-true design came down in cost. Future investments in solar won’t have to bet on any difficult technological breakthroughs. Batteries might be a different story — lots of money is being thrown at startups trying to create solid-state batteries, which would be a true breakthrough. But Tesla Inc. is doing just fine with the old kind, so that sector is probably going to do OK as well. Venture investing does well when it doesn’t have to bet on “hard tech”, and much of clean tech is no longer hard. Second, cost drops in clean energy mean that success doesn’t depend on government intervention. In the earlier boom, fickle government subsidies were often necessary for capital-intensive energy companies to succeed. Now, even though President Joe Biden is planning a big push into clean-energy investment, the market is investing quite a lot in renewables all on its own. Finally, investors have probably learned their lesson. Clean energy itself was never a good fit for venture. It’s capital intensive, since buying solar panels and wind turbines entails a lot of money up front; venture capital tends to focus on cheap, small investments that scale. And instead of companies creating highly differentiated products and new markets, as in software, clean electricity companies are basically all trying to provide the same commodified product. This time around, venture capitalists are letting bigger investors handle the build out of solar and wind, and finding other niches where low-cost, differentiated startups can add value — such as solar services and financing, lab-grown meat and electric vehicles. Some of those bets are certainly going to fail, but that’s always the case in private equity. The success of Tesla — now with a market cap of almost $700 billion, or 28 times the amount that was lost in the clean-tech bust — demonstrates the time-honored principle that a few big hits can compensate for a lot of little failures. In other words, clean tech is entering the final stage of the famous Gartner Hype Cycle — a pattern that describes the progression of emerging technologies and business models, starting with an innovation that sees expectations climb and then crash, before they finally rise again to sustained productivity. The clean-tech bust, like the dot-com bust in 2000, was a case of investor enthusiasm for a new technology outstripping the technology itself. But just as few today would question the value of companies like Google and Facebook that came into their own during a trough in investor enthusiasm, eventually the value of clean technology won’t be in question. The central idea of the passage is that

Venture capitalists would be better off if they invest in cheap, low-risk, scalable technologies.

The clean-tech industry has matured, entering a new phase of development that justifies the latest burst of investor enthusiasm.

Though clean tech has entered the stage of sustained productivity, the lack of differentiation options has made it an unsuitable investing ground for venture capitalists.

Investor overenthusiasm, rather than deficient technology, leads to bubbles and economic crises.

Read the passage carefully and answer the following questions: Green energy investment is hot again in the U.S. To some, the new boom will raise the specter of the clean-tech bust that followed a streak of exuberance a decade ago. But there are reasons to believe that this time the trend is no bubble or mirage. The most basic reason is that the fundamental underlying technology has matured in a way it simply hadn’t a decade ago. In 2009, the levelized cost of solar photovoltaic electricity was $359 per megawatt-hour — more than four times as expensive as electricity from a natural gas plant. By 2019, solar PV had fallen in price to $40 per megawatt-hour, 28% cheaper than gas. That’s an 89% decline in 10 years, with more cost drops yet to come. Meanwhile, lithium-ion batteries have experienced a similar drop in prices. That order-of-magnitude drop in costs makes all the difference. First of all, it means that solar and wind aren’t risky new technologies. Solyndra, a solar manufacturer, failed in 2011 because it was trying to market an innovative new kind of solar cell, which ended up being too expensive when the tried-and-true design came down in cost. Future investments in solar won’t have to bet on any difficult technological breakthroughs. Batteries might be a different story — lots of money is being thrown at startups trying to create solid-state batteries, which would be a true breakthrough. But Tesla Inc. is doing just fine with the old kind, so that sector is probably going to do OK as well. Venture investing does well when it doesn’t have to bet on “hard tech”, and much of clean tech is no longer hard. Second, cost drops in clean energy mean that success doesn’t depend on government intervention. In the earlier boom, fickle government subsidies were often necessary for capital-intensive energy companies to succeed. Now, even though President Joe Biden is planning a big push into clean-energy investment, the market is investing quite a lot in renewables all on its own. Finally, investors have probably learned their lesson. Clean energy itself was never a good fit for venture. It’s capital intensive, since buying solar panels and wind turbines entails a lot of money up front; venture capital tends to focus on cheap, small investments that scale. And instead of companies creating highly differentiated products and new markets, as in software, clean electricity companies are basically all trying to provide the same commodified product. This time around, venture capitalists are letting bigger investors handle the build out of solar and wind, and finding other niches where low-cost, differentiated startups can add value — such as solar services and financing, lab-grown meat and electric vehicles. Some of those bets are certainly going to fail, but that’s always the case in private equity. The success of Tesla — now with a market cap of almost $700 billion, or 28 times the amount that was lost in the clean-tech bust — demonstrates the time-honored principle that a few big hits can compensate for a lot of little failures. In other words, clean tech is entering the final stage of the famous Gartner Hype Cycle — a pattern that describes the progression of emerging technologies and business models, starting with an innovation that sees expectations climb and then crash, before they finally rise again to sustained productivity. The clean-tech bust, like the dot-com bust in 2000, was a case of investor enthusiasm for a new technology outstripping the technology itself. But just as few today would question the value of companies like Google and Facebook that came into their own during a trough in investor enthusiasm, eventually the value of clean technology won’t be in question. The author compares the clean-tech bust to the dot-com bust because

In both cases, the investor enthusiasm stalled the technological progress.

In both cases, the investors were largely incognizant of technological limitations.

In both cases, investor activity exceeded the pace of technological progress.

In both cases, investor interest in a different technology led to the downfall of the original technology.

Read the passage carefully and answer the following questions: Over the last decade, an increasingly confident right wing has presented disillusioned voters with a simple choice: elitist, neoliberal hyper-globalisation or popular, patriotic nationalism. This new fault-line pits economic and social liberalism against social conservatism and the promise of muscular economic intervention. Despite the defeat of Donald Trump in 2020, progressives have yet to find a strategy to combat this potent—if false—divide. The traditional right-left dividing line—economic liberalism and social conservatism on the right, economic interventionism and social liberalism on the left—forced working-class nationalists to choose between their socially conservative instincts (including hostility to immigration) and their support for state intervention in the economy. In essence, they had to decide which liberalism—social or economic—to reject. The 2016 Brexit referendum freed such voters from this restraint—and it certainly set back the old liberal order. But despite many jumping to the conclusion that fervent nationalism explained the whole Brexit phenomenon, it was not clear which liberalism was being rejected. Many of the towns that repudiated the EU were voting just as much against the deindustrialisation that took place during the years Britain was in the EU as they were voting to restore a supposedly Edenic 1950s. Back in the conventional world of parliamentary elections, in 2017 Labour’s anti-neoliberal economic programme under Jeremy Corbyn added 3.5m votes to its 2015 general election tally. But by 2019, identity trumped economics—on which the Tories, Labour's opponents, had anyway begun to change their tune under Boris Johnson—and the red wall crumbled. The British right was not alone in affecting to spurn both liberalisms. From Warsaw via Workington to Wisconsin, working-class voters received promises from right-wing populists that their economic interests would not be sacrificed on the altar of neoliberalism. Poland’s Law and Justice Party adopted an economic and social programme that would win over “left-behind” Poles. Marine Le Pen’s National Front professed to abandon its fascist past and moved the spotlight onto protecting French industry. Johnson committed his party to an interventionist “levelling-up” agenda. And Trump promised industrial protection against overseas competition, as well as the biggest programme of public works since the New Deal. This new fault-line not only redrew the political map: it fractured the old consensus around core democratic values—stretching from right to left—that had existed since the Second World War. These values were rooted in the French Revolution and European Enlightenment and comprised an alliance of liberty, equality and solidarity, which could accommodate Christian Democrats, liberals, social democrats and orthodox socialists, albeit in different proportions. The nationalist far-right rejects these values. Echoing the rhetorical tropes of anti-democratic forces from the interwar years, populists like Trump promote conspiracy theories in which liberal politicians plot to destroy national sovereignty in the interests of global financial capital. A politics of demonisation, exclusion and “othering” has seeped into mainstream right-wing parties. In the United States, it culminated in Trump’s incitement of his supporters to storm the Capitol on 6th January to overturn the result of the 2020 election. In a recent essay, Timothy Garton Ash argues that “liberals need to join both conservatives and socialists in full-heartedly embracing the value of solidarity.” But for intellectual conservatives like the late Roger Scruton (whom Garton Ash quotes) as well as chauvinist politicians—like Trump, Le Pen, Viktor Orbán and the Italian League’s Matteo Salvini—solidarity always has to rely on an inherently exclusionary notion of identity: we’re who we are because you’re not. Progressive social solidarity is, by contrast, accepting of difference. However, socialists and liberals have much in common in the battle against the far right: together, they can build on the social gains of the Harold Wilson and Tony Blair governments, allying around social and political liberty as well as the economics of equality. Which of the following statements can be inferred from the passage?

Social conservatives believe that religion is the firmest foundation for moral development.

Social liberalists endorse a regulated market economy, whereas economic liberalists advocate total non-interference from the state.

Right-wing populists in many parts of the world today are selectively embracing economic interventionism.

The success of the French Revolution was largely due to both the left and the right concurring on the core values that characterise a democratic society.

The passage given below is followed by four summaries. Choose the option that best captures the author’s position. Language bias in academia is something that researchers have been facing for a long time. Not only are the vast majority of scientific papers published in English, the ‘correctness’ of English used in them is a factor that determines their acceptance into top journals—which, incidentally, also publish exclusively in English. It discourages non-English speaking researchers as it prioritizes the purity of the language over the content of their research. This also puts them at a disadvantage professionally, as they’re robbed of the most common, popular platforms that can further their research and careers. In addition, the overwhelming reliance on, and preference of, English favours only research that looks at the world in specific predisposed ways, brought on by the use of English, such as the tendency to prescribe indigenous knowledge as ‘folklore’ and not something that could have factual validity. It discounts anything that digresses from the norm, even when the information might be highly relevant and important.

Language bias in academia gives rise to discrimination against non-English speaking researchers and their works, which affects their professional life and forces them to abandon relevant research endeavours.

In addition to hindering the career progression of non-English speaking researchers, language bias in academia could sideline valid research information due to certain predispositions.

Language bias in academia denies non-English speaking researchers the opportunity to be recognised and progress professionally and often results in a drop in research quality.

The consequences of language bias in academia are multifold; it puts non-English speaking researchers at a professional disadvantage, sidelines relevant research, and leads to the publication of sub-standard articles.

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