Verbal Ability & Reading Comprehension (VARC) Test - 14

Read the passage carefully and answer the questions that follow:

Chalk up yet another win for Einstein. A twist in the fabric of spacetime — predicted by the physicist’s theory of general relativity — is causing the orbit of one stellar corpse to teeter around another stellar corpse, researchers report. And the relativistic corkscrew is helping astronomers reconstruct the final days of these two long-dead stars. According to general relativity, any spinning mass drags spacetime around with it, like a hand mixer in molasses. One way to see this “frame dragging” is to keep a careful eye on anything circling the spinning object on a tilted orbit — the spacetime maelstrom will make the orbit wobble, or process.

For the last 20 years, researchers have been using radio telescopes to track the motion of a pulsar, the dense remains of a massive star that went supernova, as it orbits a spinning white dwarf, the core of a lighter star that died less violently. The pulsar, dubbed PSR J1141-6545, emits a steady beat of radio waves as it spins, and by recording the arrival times of those pulses, researchers can tell when the pulsar is moving toward and away from Earth.

Over those two decades, the orbit of the pulsar has been slowly precessing, astronomers report. The precession isn’t much — the orbit’s tilt drifts by just 0.0004 degrees per year. But it matches what researchers expect if the neighbouring white dwarf whips up spacetime as it spins. Vivek Venkatraman Krishnan, an astrophysicist at the Max Planck Institute for Radio Astronomy in Bonn, Germany, and colleagues report the results in the Jan. 31 Science.

This finding isn’t the first time that researchers have observed frame dragging. Satellites in Earth’s orbit have captured the relatively puny effect around our planet. And astronomers also have observed fluctuations in the frequency of X-ray light coming from a black hole, where frame dragging should be quite intense, suggesting that gas may be precessing around it.

The new observation “is much more direct than mine,” says Adam Ingram, an astrophysicist at the University of Oxford who studied the black hole. “I can only infer that something is precessing in black hole systems, whereas the precision radio observations presented here leave little room for ambiguity.” The pulsar precession helps researchers piece together the final moments in the lives of both stars.

Relativistic wobbling occurs only if the orbit of the pulsar and the spin of the white dwarf are misaligned, something which is usually smoothed over by an exchange of mass between the dying stars. “This immediately tells us that the orbit was tilted due to the supernova explosion that produced the pulsar,” Venkatraman Krishnan says.  Normally, the supernova would go off, and then the progenitor of the white dwarf would dump gas on the pulsar after the explosion, aligning spin to orbit. But in this case, the opposite happened: The pulsar’s progenitor dumped gas on the white dwarf, and then the supernova occurred.

Read the passage carefully and answer the questions that follow:

Chalk up yet another win for Einstein. A twist in the fabric of spacetime — predicted by the physicist’s theory of general relativity — is causing the orbit of one stellar corpse to teeter around another stellar corpse, researchers report. And the relativistic corkscrew is helping astronomers reconstruct the final days of these two long-dead stars. According to general relativity, any spinning mass drags spacetime around with it, like a hand mixer in molasses. One way to see this “frame dragging” is to keep a careful eye on anything circling the spinning object on a tilted orbit — the spacetime maelstrom will make the orbit wobble, or process.

For the last 20 years, researchers have been using radio telescopes to track the motion of a pulsar, the dense remains of a massive star that went supernova, as it orbits a spinning white dwarf, the core of a lighter star that died less violently. The pulsar, dubbed PSR J1141-6545, emits a steady beat of radio waves as it spins, and by recording the arrival times of those pulses, researchers can tell when the pulsar is moving toward and away from Earth.

Over those two decades, the orbit of the pulsar has been slowly precessing, astronomers report. The precession isn’t much — the orbit’s tilt drifts by just 0.0004 degrees per year. But it matches what researchers expect if the neighbouring white dwarf whips up spacetime as it spins. Vivek Venkatraman Krishnan, an astrophysicist at the Max Planck Institute for Radio Astronomy in Bonn, Germany, and colleagues report the results in the Jan. 31 Science.

This finding isn’t the first time that researchers have observed frame dragging. Satellites in Earth’s orbit have captured the relatively puny effect around our planet. And astronomers also have observed fluctuations in the frequency of X-ray light coming from a black hole, where frame dragging should be quite intense, suggesting that gas may be precessing around it.

The new observation “is much more direct than mine,” says Adam Ingram, an astrophysicist at the University of Oxford who studied the black hole. “I can only infer that something is precessing in black hole systems, whereas the precision radio observations presented here leave little room for ambiguity.” The pulsar precession helps researchers piece together the final moments in the lives of both stars.

Relativistic wobbling occurs only if the orbit of the pulsar and the spin of the white dwarf are misaligned, something which is usually smoothed over by an exchange of mass between the dying stars. “This immediately tells us that the orbit was tilted due to the supernova explosion that produced the pulsar,” Venkatraman Krishnan says.  Normally, the supernova would go off, and then the progenitor of the white dwarf would dump gas on the pulsar after the explosion, aligning spin to orbit. But in this case, the opposite happened: The pulsar’s progenitor dumped gas on the white dwarf, and then the supernova occurred.

Read the passage carefully and answer the questions that follow:

Chalk up yet another win for Einstein. A twist in the fabric of spacetime — predicted by the physicist’s theory of general relativity — is causing the orbit of one stellar corpse to teeter around another stellar corpse, researchers report. And the relativistic corkscrew is helping astronomers reconstruct the final days of these two long-dead stars. According to general relativity, any spinning mass drags spacetime around with it, like a hand mixer in molasses. One way to see this “frame dragging” is to keep a careful eye on anything circling the spinning object on a tilted orbit — the spacetime maelstrom will make the orbit wobble, or process.

For the last 20 years, researchers have been using radio telescopes to track the motion of a pulsar, the dense remains of a massive star that went supernova, as it orbits a spinning white dwarf, the core of a lighter star that died less violently. The pulsar, dubbed PSR J1141-6545, emits a steady beat of radio waves as it spins, and by recording the arrival times of those pulses, researchers can tell when the pulsar is moving toward and away from Earth.

Over those two decades, the orbit of the pulsar has been slowly precessing, astronomers report. The precession isn’t much — the orbit’s tilt drifts by just 0.0004 degrees per year. But it matches what researchers expect if the neighbouring white dwarf whips up spacetime as it spins. Vivek Venkatraman Krishnan, an astrophysicist at the Max Planck Institute for Radio Astronomy in Bonn, Germany, and colleagues report the results in the Jan. 31 Science.

This finding isn’t the first time that researchers have observed frame dragging. Satellites in Earth’s orbit have captured the relatively puny effect around our planet. And astronomers also have observed fluctuations in the frequency of X-ray light coming from a black hole, where frame dragging should be quite intense, suggesting that gas may be precessing around it.

The new observation “is much more direct than mine,” says Adam Ingram, an astrophysicist at the University of Oxford who studied the black hole. “I can only infer that something is precessing in black hole systems, whereas the precision radio observations presented here leave little room for ambiguity.” The pulsar precession helps researchers piece together the final moments in the lives of both stars.

Relativistic wobbling occurs only if the orbit of the pulsar and the spin of the white dwarf are misaligned, something which is usually smoothed over by an exchange of mass between the dying stars. “This immediately tells us that the orbit was tilted due to the supernova explosion that produced the pulsar,” Venkatraman Krishnan says.  Normally, the supernova would go off, and then the progenitor of the white dwarf would dump gas on the pulsar after the explosion, aligning spin to orbit. But in this case, the opposite happened: The pulsar’s progenitor dumped gas on the white dwarf, and then the supernova occurred.

Read the passage carefully and answer the questions that follow:

Chalk up yet another win for Einstein. A twist in the fabric of spacetime — predicted by the physicist’s theory of general relativity — is causing the orbit of one stellar corpse to teeter around another stellar corpse, researchers report. And the relativistic corkscrew is helping astronomers reconstruct the final days of these two long-dead stars. According to general relativity, any spinning mass drags spacetime around with it, like a hand mixer in molasses. One way to see this “frame dragging” is to keep a careful eye on anything circling the spinning object on a tilted orbit — the spacetime maelstrom will make the orbit wobble, or process.

For the last 20 years, researchers have been using radio telescopes to track the motion of a pulsar, the dense remains of a massive star that went supernova, as it orbits a spinning white dwarf, the core of a lighter star that died less violently. The pulsar, dubbed PSR J1141-6545, emits a steady beat of radio waves as it spins, and by recording the arrival times of those pulses, researchers can tell when the pulsar is moving toward and away from Earth.

Over those two decades, the orbit of the pulsar has been slowly precessing, astronomers report. The precession isn’t much — the orbit’s tilt drifts by just 0.0004 degrees per year. But it matches what researchers expect if the neighbouring white dwarf whips up spacetime as it spins. Vivek Venkatraman Krishnan, an astrophysicist at the Max Planck Institute for Radio Astronomy in Bonn, Germany, and colleagues report the results in the Jan. 31 Science.

This finding isn’t the first time that researchers have observed frame dragging. Satellites in Earth’s orbit have captured the relatively puny effect around our planet. And astronomers also have observed fluctuations in the frequency of X-ray light coming from a black hole, where frame dragging should be quite intense, suggesting that gas may be precessing around it.

The new observation “is much more direct than mine,” says Adam Ingram, an astrophysicist at the University of Oxford who studied the black hole. “I can only infer that something is precessing in black hole systems, whereas the precision radio observations presented here leave little room for ambiguity.” The pulsar precession helps researchers piece together the final moments in the lives of both stars.

Relativistic wobbling occurs only if the orbit of the pulsar and the spin of the white dwarf are misaligned, something which is usually smoothed over by an exchange of mass between the dying stars. “This immediately tells us that the orbit was tilted due to the supernova explosion that produced the pulsar,” Venkatraman Krishnan says.  Normally, the supernova would go off, and then the progenitor of the white dwarf would dump gas on the pulsar after the explosion, aligning spin to orbit. But in this case, the opposite happened: The pulsar’s progenitor dumped gas on the white dwarf, and then the supernova occurred.

Read the given passage and answer the questions that follow:

What we mean by 'knowing', this question is not so easy as might be supposed. At first sight, we might imagine that knowledge could be defined as 'true belief'. When what we believe is true, it might be supposed that we had achieved a knowledge of what we believe. But this would not accord with how the word is commonly used. 

To take a very trivial instance: If a man believes that the late Prime Minister's last name began with a B, he believes what is true, since the late Prime Minister was Sir Henry Campbell Bannerman. But if he believes that Mr Balfour was the late Prime Minister, he will still believe that the late Prime Minister's last name began with a B, yet this belief, though true, would not be thought to constitute knowledge.

If a newspaper, by an intelligent anticipation, announces the result of a battle before any telegram giving the result has been received, it may by good fortune announce what afterwards turns out to be the right result, and it may produce belief in some of its less experienced readers. But in spite of the truth of their belief, they cannot be said to have knowledge. Thus it is clear that a true belief is not knowledge when it is deduced from a false belief.

In like manner, a true belief cannot be called knowledge when it is deduced by a fallacious process of reasoning, even if the premises from which it is deduced are true. If I know that all Greeks are men and that Socrates was a man, and I infer that Socrates was a Greek, I cannot be said to know that Socrates was a Greek, because, although my premises and my conclusion are true, the conclusion does not follow from the premises.

But are we to say that nothing is knowledge except what is validly deduced from true premises? Obviously, we cannot say this. Such a definition is at once too wide and too narrow. In the first place, it is too wide, because it is not enough that our premises should be true, they must also be known. The man who believes that Mr Balfour was the late Prime Minister may proceed to draw valid deductions from the true premise that the late Prime Minister's name began with a B, but he cannot be said to know the conclusions reached by these deductions. Thus we shall have to amend our definition by saying that knowledge is what is validly deduced from known premises. 

This, however, is a circular definition: it assumes that we already know what is meant by 'known premises'. It can, therefore, at best, define one sort of knowledge, the sort we call derivative, as opposed to intuitive knowledge. We may say: 'Derivative knowledge is what is validly deduced from premises known intuitively'. In this statement, there is no formal defect, but it leaves the definition of intuitive knowledge still to seek.

.....

Read the given passage and answer the questions that follow:

What we mean by 'knowing', this question is not so easy as might be supposed. At first sight, we might imagine that knowledge could be defined as 'true belief'. When what we believe is true, it might be supposed that we had achieved a knowledge of what we believe. But this would not accord with how the word is commonly used. 

To take a very trivial instance: If a man believes that the late Prime Minister's last name began with a B, he believes what is true, since the late Prime Minister was Sir Henry Campbell Bannerman. But if he believes that Mr Balfour was the late Prime Minister, he will still believe that the late Prime Minister's last name began with a B, yet this belief, though true, would not be thought to constitute knowledge.

If a newspaper, by an intelligent anticipation, announces the result of a battle before any telegram giving the result has been received, it may by good fortune announce what afterwards turns out to be the right result, and it may produce belief in some of its less experienced readers. But in spite of the truth of their belief, they cannot be said to have knowledge. Thus it is clear that a true belief is not knowledge when it is deduced from a false belief.

In like manner, a true belief cannot be called knowledge when it is deduced by a fallacious process of reasoning, even if the premises from which it is deduced are true. If I know that all Greeks are men and that Socrates was a man, and I infer that Socrates was a Greek, I cannot be said to know that Socrates was a Greek, because, although my premises and my conclusion are true, the conclusion does not follow from the premises.

But are we to say that nothing is knowledge except what is validly deduced from true premises? Obviously, we cannot say this. Such a definition is at once too wide and too narrow. In the first place, it is too wide, because it is not enough that our premises should be true, they must also be known. The man who believes that Mr Balfour was the late Prime Minister may proceed to draw valid deductions from the true premise that the late Prime Minister's name began with a B, but he cannot be said to know the conclusions reached by these deductions. Thus we shall have to amend our definition by saying that knowledge is what is validly deduced from known premises. 

This, however, is a circular definition: it assumes that we already know what is meant by 'known premises'. It can, therefore, at best, define one sort of knowledge, the sort we call derivative, as opposed to intuitive knowledge. We may say: 'Derivative knowledge is what is validly deduced from premises known intuitively'. In this statement, there is no formal defect, but it leaves the definition of intuitive knowledge still to seek.

.....

Read the given passage and answer the questions that follow:

What we mean by 'knowing', this question is not so easy as might be supposed. At first sight, we might imagine that knowledge could be defined as 'true belief'. When what we believe is true, it might be supposed that we had achieved a knowledge of what we believe. But this would not accord with how the word is commonly used. 

To take a very trivial instance: If a man believes that the late Prime Minister's last name began with a B, he believes what is true, since the late Prime Minister was Sir Henry Campbell Bannerman. But if he believes that Mr Balfour was the late Prime Minister, he will still believe that the late Prime Minister's last name began with a B, yet this belief, though true, would not be thought to constitute knowledge.

If a newspaper, by an intelligent anticipation, announces the result of a battle before any telegram giving the result has been received, it may by good fortune announce what afterwards turns out to be the right result, and it may produce belief in some of its less experienced readers. But in spite of the truth of their belief, they cannot be said to have knowledge. Thus it is clear that a true belief is not knowledge when it is deduced from a false belief.

In like manner, a true belief cannot be called knowledge when it is deduced by a fallacious process of reasoning, even if the premises from which it is deduced are true. If I know that all Greeks are men and that Socrates was a man, and I infer that Socrates was a Greek, I cannot be said to know that Socrates was a Greek, because, although my premises and my conclusion are true, the conclusion does not follow from the premises.

But are we to say that nothing is knowledge except what is validly deduced from true premises? Obviously, we cannot say this. Such a definition is at once too wide and too narrow. In the first place, it is too wide, because it is not enough that our premises should be true, they must also be known. The man who believes that Mr Balfour was the late Prime Minister may proceed to draw valid deductions from the true premise that the late Prime Minister's name began with a B, but he cannot be said to know the conclusions reached by these deductions. Thus we shall have to amend our definition by saying that knowledge is what is validly deduced from known premises. 

This, however, is a circular definition: it assumes that we already know what is meant by 'known premises'. It can, therefore, at best, define one sort of knowledge, the sort we call derivative, as opposed to intuitive knowledge. We may say: 'Derivative knowledge is what is validly deduced from premises known intuitively'. In this statement, there is no formal defect, but it leaves the definition of intuitive knowledge still to seek.

.....

Read the given passage and answer the questions that follow:

What we mean by 'knowing', this question is not so easy as might be supposed. At first sight, we might imagine that knowledge could be defined as 'true belief'. When what we believe is true, it might be supposed that we had achieved a knowledge of what we believe. But this would not accord with how the word is commonly used. 

To take a very trivial instance: If a man believes that the late Prime Minister's last name began with a B, he believes what is true, since the late Prime Minister was Sir Henry Campbell Bannerman. But if he believes that Mr Balfour was the late Prime Minister, he will still believe that the late Prime Minister's last name began with a B, yet this belief, though true, would not be thought to constitute knowledge.

If a newspaper, by an intelligent anticipation, announces the result of a battle before any telegram giving the result has been received, it may by good fortune announce what afterwards turns out to be the right result, and it may produce belief in some of its less experienced readers. But in spite of the truth of their belief, they cannot be said to have knowledge. Thus it is clear that a true belief is not knowledge when it is deduced from a false belief.

In like manner, a true belief cannot be called knowledge when it is deduced by a fallacious process of reasoning, even if the premises from which it is deduced are true. If I know that all Greeks are men and that Socrates was a man, and I infer that Socrates was a Greek, I cannot be said to know that Socrates was a Greek, because, although my premises and my conclusion are true, the conclusion does not follow from the premises.

But are we to say that nothing is knowledge except what is validly deduced from true premises? Obviously, we cannot say this. Such a definition is at once too wide and too narrow. In the first place, it is too wide, because it is not enough that our premises should be true, they must also be known. The man who believes that Mr Balfour was the late Prime Minister may proceed to draw valid deductions from the true premise that the late Prime Minister's name began with a B, but he cannot be said to know the conclusions reached by these deductions. Thus we shall have to amend our definition by saying that knowledge is what is validly deduced from known premises. 

This, however, is a circular definition: it assumes that we already know what is meant by 'known premises'. It can, therefore, at best, define one sort of knowledge, the sort we call derivative, as opposed to intuitive knowledge. We may say: 'Derivative knowledge is what is validly deduced from premises known intuitively'. In this statement, there is no formal defect, but it leaves the definition of intuitive knowledge still to seek.

.....

Read the passage carefully and answer the questions that follow:

When a factory in Rwanda’s capital of Kigali debuted Africa’s first made-in-Africa mobile phones in October, their provenance wasn’t the only surprise: The devices also came loaded with higher-end features like fingerprint sensors for unlocking the screen that many rival phones used across the continent lack. It wasn’t just a push for African tech but also African quality.

The factory, owned by Rwandan company Mara Group, was a significant milestone for Kigali, which has spent a generation emerging from the ashes of the nation’s genocide in 1994 by refashioning itself as a tech hub. Already, the city is home to several tech incubators, a Carnegie Mellon University engineering campus, and local startups that produce such items as drones and cashless payment systems. Another noteworthy initiative is the establishment of Rwanda university in the city of Butare, which hosts the Rwandan National Institute of Scientific Research.
“It boils down to our turbulent past, being left with nothing, and using ashes as a construction tool for unity,” says Paula Ingabire, Rwanda’s tech minister.

Hamstrung by poverty and the legacies of the slave trade and colonialism, Africa had, until recently, been mainly left behind by the global tech boom. But increasingly, it’s having success nurturing tech startups and attracting major foreign tech companies.
In November 2019, Visa invested $200 million in Nigerian payments firm Interswitch at around the same time that OPay, a Norwegian-owned but Lagos-based mobile payment service, raised $120 million from high-profile investors including Sequoia Capital China and SoftBank Ventures Asia. Meanwhile, in May, Microsoft opened offices in Kenya and Nigeria for engineers working on artificial intelligence, machine learning, and mixed reality. A month earlier, Google opened an A.I. lab in Ghana.  In another sign of Africa’s growing tech buzz, Jack Dorsey, CEO of Twitter and payment-terminal maker Square, tweeted in November that he would spend up to six months in 2020 living on the continent. “Africa will define the future,” he said.

Still, Africa’s growing tech scene remains small and, in many ways, limited by some very stark realities on the ground. Nearly 600 million Africans lack electricity, including as many as two-thirds of sub-Saharans, and 85% of the continent’s residents live on less than $5.50 a day. Such challenges are compounded by the inevitable operational problems that all startups face, regardless of their location. For example, Nigerian online retailer Jumia Technologies, which in April became Africa’s first tech company to hold an initial public offering on the New York Stock Exchange, recently shuttered its e-commerce operations in Tanzania and Cameroon, along with its food delivery service in Rwanda. As of mid-December, its shares had plummeted nearly 87% from their peak.

On the bright side, access to venture capital is growing. Investors poured $1.2 billion into African startups in 2018, more than triple the amount of two years earlier.  Of all the African countries pushing into tech, Rwanda stands out. A hilly nation of 12 million that’s similar in size to Maryland, its effort is centred on Kigali, named “world’s cleanest city” by the World Economic Forum. The drive has already attracted Co-Creation Hub, a design lab from Lagos; Norrsken, a coworking space and investment fund from Stockholm; and Carnegie Mellon University, which opened its campus for 300 graduate students in 2011 and upgraded to a new campus in November.

Read the passage carefully and answer the questions that follow:

When a factory in Rwanda’s capital of Kigali debuted Africa’s first made-in-Africa mobile phones in October, their provenance wasn’t the only surprise: The devices also came loaded with higher-end features like fingerprint sensors for unlocking the screen that many rival phones used across the continent lack. It wasn’t just a push for African tech but also African quality.

The factory, owned by Rwandan company Mara Group, was a significant milestone for Kigali, which has spent a generation emerging from the ashes of the nation’s genocide in 1994 by refashioning itself as a tech hub. Already, the city is home to several tech incubators, a Carnegie Mellon University engineering campus, and local startups that produce such items as drones and cashless payment systems. Another noteworthy initiative is the establishment of Rwanda university in the city of Butare, which hosts the Rwandan National Institute of Scientific Research.
“It boils down to our turbulent past, being left with nothing, and using ashes as a construction tool for unity,” says Paula Ingabire, Rwanda’s tech minister.

Hamstrung by poverty and the legacies of the slave trade and colonialism, Africa had, until recently, been mainly left behind by the global tech boom. But increasingly, it’s having success nurturing tech startups and attracting major foreign tech companies.
In November 2019, Visa invested $200 million in Nigerian payments firm Interswitch at around the same time that OPay, a Norwegian-owned but Lagos-based mobile payment service, raised $120 million from high-profile investors including Sequoia Capital China and SoftBank Ventures Asia. Meanwhile, in May, Microsoft opened offices in Kenya and Nigeria for engineers working on artificial intelligence, machine learning, and mixed reality. A month earlier, Google opened an A.I. lab in Ghana.  In another sign of Africa’s growing tech buzz, Jack Dorsey, CEO of Twitter and payment-terminal maker Square, tweeted in November that he would spend up to six months in 2020 living on the continent. “Africa will define the future,” he said.

Still, Africa’s growing tech scene remains small and, in many ways, limited by some very stark realities on the ground. Nearly 600 million Africans lack electricity, including as many as two-thirds of sub-Saharans, and 85% of the continent’s residents live on less than $5.50 a day. Such challenges are compounded by the inevitable operational problems that all startups face, regardless of their location. For example, Nigerian online retailer Jumia Technologies, which in April became Africa’s first tech company to hold an initial public offering on the New York Stock Exchange, recently shuttered its e-commerce operations in Tanzania and Cameroon, along with its food delivery service in Rwanda. As of mid-December, its shares had plummeted nearly 87% from their peak.

On the bright side, access to venture capital is growing. Investors poured $1.2 billion into African startups in 2018, more than triple the amount of two years earlier.  Of all the African countries pushing into tech, Rwanda stands out. A hilly nation of 12 million that’s similar in size to Maryland, its effort is centred on Kigali, named “world’s cleanest city” by the World Economic Forum. The drive has already attracted Co-Creation Hub, a design lab from Lagos; Norrsken, a coworking space and investment fund from Stockholm; and Carnegie Mellon University, which opened its campus for 300 graduate students in 2011 and upgraded to a new campus in November.

Read the passage carefully and answer the questions that follow:

When a factory in Rwanda’s capital of Kigali debuted Africa’s first made-in-Africa mobile phones in October, their provenance wasn’t the only surprise: The devices also came loaded with higher-end features like fingerprint sensors for unlocking the screen that many rival phones used across the continent lack. It wasn’t just a push for African tech but also African quality.

The factory, owned by Rwandan company Mara Group, was a significant milestone for Kigali, which has spent a generation emerging from the ashes of the nation’s genocide in 1994 by refashioning itself as a tech hub. Already, the city is home to several tech incubators, a Carnegie Mellon University engineering campus, and local startups that produce such items as drones and cashless payment systems. Another noteworthy initiative is the establishment of Rwanda university in the city of Butare, which hosts the Rwandan National Institute of Scientific Research.
“It boils down to our turbulent past, being left with nothing, and using ashes as a construction tool for unity,” says Paula Ingabire, Rwanda’s tech minister.

Hamstrung by poverty and the legacies of the slave trade and colonialism, Africa had, until recently, been mainly left behind by the global tech boom. But increasingly, it’s having success nurturing tech startups and attracting major foreign tech companies.
In November 2019, Visa invested $200 million in Nigerian payments firm Interswitch at around the same time that OPay, a Norwegian-owned but Lagos-based mobile payment service, raised $120 million from high-profile investors including Sequoia Capital China and SoftBank Ventures Asia. Meanwhile, in May, Microsoft opened offices in Kenya and Nigeria for engineers working on artificial intelligence, machine learning, and mixed reality. A month earlier, Google opened an A.I. lab in Ghana.  In another sign of Africa’s growing tech buzz, Jack Dorsey, CEO of Twitter and payment-terminal maker Square, tweeted in November that he would spend up to six months in 2020 living on the continent. “Africa will define the future,” he said.

Still, Africa’s growing tech scene remains small and, in many ways, limited by some very stark realities on the ground. Nearly 600 million Africans lack electricity, including as many as two-thirds of sub-Saharans, and 85% of the continent’s residents live on less than $5.50 a day. Such challenges are compounded by the inevitable operational problems that all startups face, regardless of their location. For example, Nigerian online retailer Jumia Technologies, which in April became Africa’s first tech company to hold an initial public offering on the New York Stock Exchange, recently shuttered its e-commerce operations in Tanzania and Cameroon, along with its food delivery service in Rwanda. As of mid-December, its shares had plummeted nearly 87% from their peak.

On the bright side, access to venture capital is growing. Investors poured $1.2 billion into African startups in 2018, more than triple the amount of two years earlier.  Of all the African countries pushing into tech, Rwanda stands out. A hilly nation of 12 million that’s similar in size to Maryland, its effort is centred on Kigali, named “world’s cleanest city” by the World Economic Forum. The drive has already attracted Co-Creation Hub, a design lab from Lagos; Norrsken, a coworking space and investment fund from Stockholm; and Carnegie Mellon University, which opened its campus for 300 graduate students in 2011 and upgraded to a new campus in November.

Read the passage carefully and answer the questions that follow:

When a factory in Rwanda’s capital of Kigali debuted Africa’s first made-in-Africa mobile phones in October, their provenance wasn’t the only surprise: The devices also came loaded with higher-end features like fingerprint sensors for unlocking the screen that many rival phones used across the continent lack. It wasn’t just a push for African tech but also African quality.

The factory, owned by Rwandan company Mara Group, was a significant milestone for Kigali, which has spent a generation emerging from the ashes of the nation’s genocide in 1994 by refashioning itself as a tech hub. Already, the city is home to several tech incubators, a Carnegie Mellon University engineering campus, and local startups that produce such items as drones and cashless payment systems. Another noteworthy initiative is the establishment of Rwanda university in the city of Butare, which hosts the Rwandan National Institute of Scientific Research.
“It boils down to our turbulent past, being left with nothing, and using ashes as a construction tool for unity,” says Paula Ingabire, Rwanda’s tech minister.

Hamstrung by poverty and the legacies of the slave trade and colonialism, Africa had, until recently, been mainly left behind by the global tech boom. But increasingly, it’s having success nurturing tech startups and attracting major foreign tech companies.
In November 2019, Visa invested $200 million in Nigerian payments firm Interswitch at around the same time that OPay, a Norwegian-owned but Lagos-based mobile payment service, raised $120 million from high-profile investors including Sequoia Capital China and SoftBank Ventures Asia. Meanwhile, in May, Microsoft opened offices in Kenya and Nigeria for engineers working on artificial intelligence, machine learning, and mixed reality. A month earlier, Google opened an A.I. lab in Ghana.  In another sign of Africa’s growing tech buzz, Jack Dorsey, CEO of Twitter and payment-terminal maker Square, tweeted in November that he would spend up to six months in 2020 living on the continent. “Africa will define the future,” he said.

Still, Africa’s growing tech scene remains small and, in many ways, limited by some very stark realities on the ground. Nearly 600 million Africans lack electricity, including as many as two-thirds of sub-Saharans, and 85% of the continent’s residents live on less than $5.50 a day. Such challenges are compounded by the inevitable operational problems that all startups face, regardless of their location. For example, Nigerian online retailer Jumia Technologies, which in April became Africa’s first tech company to hold an initial public offering on the New York Stock Exchange, recently shuttered its e-commerce operations in Tanzania and Cameroon, along with its food delivery service in Rwanda. As of mid-December, its shares had plummeted nearly 87% from their peak.

On the bright side, access to venture capital is growing. Investors poured $1.2 billion into African startups in 2018, more than triple the amount of two years earlier.  Of all the African countries pushing into tech, Rwanda stands out. A hilly nation of 12 million that’s similar in size to Maryland, its effort is centred on Kigali, named “world’s cleanest city” by the World Economic Forum. The drive has already attracted Co-Creation Hub, a design lab from Lagos; Norrsken, a coworking space and investment fund from Stockholm; and Carnegie Mellon University, which opened its campus for 300 graduate students in 2011 and upgraded to a new campus in November.

Read the passage and answer the questions that follow.

The mid-century cultural critics Theodor Adorno and Daniel Boorstin had a paranoid view: they believed that the media imposed stars on a mindless public. Then in the 1980s and ’90s, the scholars Jackie Stacey and Henry Jenkins saw the public as in charge, making or breaking stars. In prosperous times, celebrity biographies tend to attribute stardom to talent, luck and hard work. In precarious times, we hear more about icons who self-destruct.

All these views assign power to one and only one element in the equation: the media, the public or the stars. All of them are wrong - because all of them are right. No single group has the power to make or break a star. Three equally powerful groups collude and compete to define celebrities: media producers, members of the public and celebrities themselves. None has decisive power, and none is powerless.

The three-way effort to create, define and undo celebrities is tireless. To become famous, the American rapper Cardi B had to do more than record catchy tunes. She had to promote them effectively to people who liked them. She had to be outrageous and self-revealing enough to garner a huge following on Instagram. She had to collaborate with a celebrity band, Maroon 5, and feud with the already-established star rapper Nicki Minaj.

In January 2019, Cardi B won an online battle with Donald Trump when she posted an Instagram video calling his government shutdown ‘crazy’. The Twitter-mad president signalled his defeat with an uncharacteristic response: silence. A month later, Instagram trolls attacked Cardi B for not deserving her Grammy. She left the platform, only to return two days later. The story continues.

Social media amplifies and speeds up interactions between audiences, media and stars, but YouTube and Twitter did not invent modern celebrity culture. That happened more than 150 years ago, thanks to the popular press, commercial photography, railways and steamships, and national postal systems.

All of us, even those who ignore celebrities, are part of a story whose outcome we can influence but never fully predict. Celebrities are neither pawns nor gods. Every time Cardi B releases a new song, poses for a magazine cover or posts on social media, she can gain or lose status. Members of the public are neither passive consumers nor omnipotent creators. They argue among themselves, and each individual’s decision to engage or ignore celebrities helps to make or break stars. Journalists use celebrity coverage to get the public’s attention. Some criticise celebrities; others cater to them.

The resulting pandemonium is celebrity culture - a drama that many help to script but that no one fully controls. If we knew for certain how the story ended, we might lose interest. If we had no role to play in the outcome, we might be less intrigued. The moral of this tale: celebrity culture is neither all good nor all bad. But if you don’t like celebrity culture, don’t blame the internet. Blame everyone.

Read the passage and answer the questions that follow.

The mid-century cultural critics Theodor Adorno and Daniel Boorstin had a paranoid view: they believed that the media imposed stars on a mindless public. Then in the 1980s and ’90s, the scholars Jackie Stacey and Henry Jenkins saw the public as in charge, making or breaking stars. In prosperous times, celebrity biographies tend to attribute stardom to talent, luck and hard work. In precarious times, we hear more about icons who self-destruct.

All these views assign power to one and only one element in the equation: the media, the public or the stars. All of them are wrong - because all of them are right. No single group has the power to make or break a star. Three equally powerful groups collude and compete to define celebrities: media producers, members of the public and celebrities themselves. None has decisive power, and none is powerless.

The three-way effort to create, define and undo celebrities is tireless. To become famous, the American rapper Cardi B had to do more than record catchy tunes. She had to promote them effectively to people who liked them. She had to be outrageous and self-revealing enough to garner a huge following on Instagram. She had to collaborate with a celebrity band, Maroon 5, and feud with the already-established star rapper Nicki Minaj.

In January 2019, Cardi B won an online battle with Donald Trump when she posted an Instagram video calling his government shutdown ‘crazy’. The Twitter-mad president signalled his defeat with an uncharacteristic response: silence. A month later, Instagram trolls attacked Cardi B for not deserving her Grammy. She left the platform, only to return two days later. The story continues.

Social media amplifies and speeds up interactions between audiences, media and stars, but YouTube and Twitter did not invent modern celebrity culture. That happened more than 150 years ago, thanks to the popular press, commercial photography, railways and steamships, and national postal systems.

All of us, even those who ignore celebrities, are part of a story whose outcome we can influence but never fully predict. Celebrities are neither pawns nor gods. Every time Cardi B releases a new song, poses for a magazine cover or posts on social media, she can gain or lose status. Members of the public are neither passive consumers nor omnipotent creators. They argue among themselves, and each individual’s decision to engage or ignore celebrities helps to make or break stars. Journalists use celebrity coverage to get the public’s attention. Some criticise celebrities; others cater to them.

The resulting pandemonium is celebrity culture - a drama that many help to script but that no one fully controls. If we knew for certain how the story ended, we might lose interest. If we had no role to play in the outcome, we might be less intrigued. The moral of this tale: celebrity culture is neither all good nor all bad. But if you don’t like celebrity culture, don’t blame the internet. Blame everyone.

Read the passage and answer the questions that follow.

The mid-century cultural critics Theodor Adorno and Daniel Boorstin had a paranoid view: they believed that the media imposed stars on a mindless public. Then in the 1980s and ’90s, the scholars Jackie Stacey and Henry Jenkins saw the public as in charge, making or breaking stars. In prosperous times, celebrity biographies tend to attribute stardom to talent, luck and hard work. In precarious times, we hear more about icons who self-destruct.

All these views assign power to one and only one element in the equation: the media, the public or the stars. All of them are wrong - because all of them are right. No single group has the power to make or break a star. Three equally powerful groups collude and compete to define celebrities: media producers, members of the public and celebrities themselves. None has decisive power, and none is powerless.

The three-way effort to create, define and undo celebrities is tireless. To become famous, the American rapper Cardi B had to do more than record catchy tunes. She had to promote them effectively to people who liked them. She had to be outrageous and self-revealing enough to garner a huge following on Instagram. She had to collaborate with a celebrity band, Maroon 5, and feud with the already-established star rapper Nicki Minaj.

In January 2019, Cardi B won an online battle with Donald Trump when she posted an Instagram video calling his government shutdown ‘crazy’. The Twitter-mad president signalled his defeat with an uncharacteristic response: silence. A month later, Instagram trolls attacked Cardi B for not deserving her Grammy. She left the platform, only to return two days later. The story continues.

Social media amplifies and speeds up interactions between audiences, media and stars, but YouTube and Twitter did not invent modern celebrity culture. That happened more than 150 years ago, thanks to the popular press, commercial photography, railways and steamships, and national postal systems.

All of us, even those who ignore celebrities, are part of a story whose outcome we can influence but never fully predict. Celebrities are neither pawns nor gods. Every time Cardi B releases a new song, poses for a magazine cover or posts on social media, she can gain or lose status. Members of the public are neither passive consumers nor omnipotent creators. They argue among themselves, and each individual’s decision to engage or ignore celebrities helps to make or break stars. Journalists use celebrity coverage to get the public’s attention. Some criticise celebrities; others cater to them.

The resulting pandemonium is celebrity culture - a drama that many help to script but that no one fully controls. If we knew for certain how the story ended, we might lose interest. If we had no role to play in the outcome, we might be less intrigued. The moral of this tale: celebrity culture is neither all good nor all bad. But if you don’t like celebrity culture, don’t blame the internet. Blame everyone.

Read the passage and answer the questions that follow.

The mid-century cultural critics Theodor Adorno and Daniel Boorstin had a paranoid view: they believed that the media imposed stars on a mindless public. Then in the 1980s and ’90s, the scholars Jackie Stacey and Henry Jenkins saw the public as in charge, making or breaking stars. In prosperous times, celebrity biographies tend to attribute stardom to talent, luck and hard work. In precarious times, we hear more about icons who self-destruct.

All these views assign power to one and only one element in the equation: the media, the public or the stars. All of them are wrong - because all of them are right. No single group has the power to make or break a star. Three equally powerful groups collude and compete to define celebrities: media producers, members of the public and celebrities themselves. None has decisive power, and none is powerless.

The three-way effort to create, define and undo celebrities is tireless. To become famous, the American rapper Cardi B had to do more than record catchy tunes. She had to promote them effectively to people who liked them. She had to be outrageous and self-revealing enough to garner a huge following on Instagram. She had to collaborate with a celebrity band, Maroon 5, and feud with the already-established star rapper Nicki Minaj.

In January 2019, Cardi B won an online battle with Donald Trump when she posted an Instagram video calling his government shutdown ‘crazy’. The Twitter-mad president signalled his defeat with an uncharacteristic response: silence. A month later, Instagram trolls attacked Cardi B for not deserving her Grammy. She left the platform, only to return two days later. The story continues.

Social media amplifies and speeds up interactions between audiences, media and stars, but YouTube and Twitter did not invent modern celebrity culture. That happened more than 150 years ago, thanks to the popular press, commercial photography, railways and steamships, and national postal systems.

All of us, even those who ignore celebrities, are part of a story whose outcome we can influence but never fully predict. Celebrities are neither pawns nor gods. Every time Cardi B releases a new song, poses for a magazine cover or posts on social media, she can gain or lose status. Members of the public are neither passive consumers nor omnipotent creators. They argue among themselves, and each individual’s decision to engage or ignore celebrities helps to make or break stars. Journalists use celebrity coverage to get the public’s attention. Some criticise celebrities; others cater to them.

The resulting pandemonium is celebrity culture - a drama that many help to script but that no one fully controls. If we knew for certain how the story ended, we might lose interest. If we had no role to play in the outcome, we might be less intrigued. The moral of this tale: celebrity culture is neither all good nor all bad. But if you don’t like celebrity culture, don’t blame the internet. Blame everyone.