Reading Comprehension Test 70

[passage-header]Read the paragraph and complete the sentence given below:[/passage-header]Insects, by far the most abundant creatures on earth, might have taken over long ago if hordes of them weren't eaten away every day by birds, frogs or spiders. But these tiny, six-legged invertebrates have many ways of protecting themselves: a speedy get away, venomous stings, repugnant odours, poisonous flesh or irritating hairs. However, camouflage is the most spectacular form of insect trickery. Some deceive their enemies by taking on the appearance of a dreaded species. This is called mimesis. It's how small wasp moths imitate wasps, thanks to the black and yellow rings on their armour, their diaphanous wings and irregular flight. Some butterflies simply disappear by becoming exactly the colour of their host plant. Others disguise, their shape with disruptive patterns of colours -the principle used to design military uniforms.

[passage-header]Read the passage and answer the question that follows:
[/passage-header]SIR EDWARD TRENCHARD: Good morning, Coyle, good morning (with affected ease). There is a chair, Coyle. (They sit.) So you see those infernal tradespeople are pretty troublesome.
COYLE: My agent's letter this morning announces that Walter and Brass have got 69978judgement and execution on their amount for repairing your townhouse last season. Boquet and Barker announce their intention of taking this same course with the wine account. Handmarth is preparing for a settlement of his heavy demand for the stables. Then there is Temper for pictures and other things and Miss Florence Trenchard's account with Madame Pompon, and-
SIR EDWARD: 85932Confound it, why harass me with details, these 42791infernal particulars? Have you made out the total?
COYLE: Four thousand, eight hundred and thirty pounds, nine shilling and sixpence.
SIR EDWARD: Well, of course, we must find means of settling this 72231extortion.
COYLE: Yes, Sir Edward, if possible.

SIR EDWARD: If possible?
COYLE: I, as your agent, must stoop to detail, you must allow me to repeat, if possible.

SIR EDWARD: Why, you don't say there will be any difficulty in raising the money?
COYLE: What means would you suggest, Sir Edward?

SIR EDWARD: That, sir, is tour business.
COYLE: A foretaste on the interest on the Fanhille & Ellenthrope mortgages, you are aware both are in the arrears. The mortgagees, in fact, write here to announce their intentions to foreclose. (Shows papers.)

SIR EDWARD: Curse your 59501impudence, pay them off.
COYLE: How, Sir Edward?

SIR EDWARD: Confound it, sir, which of us is the agent? Am I to find you brains for your own business?
COYLE: No, Sir Edward, I can furnish the brains, but what I ask of you is to furnish the money.

SIR EDWARD: There must be money somewhere, I came into possession of one of the finest properties in Hampshire only twenty-six years ago, and now you mean to tell me I can't raise 4,000 pounds?
COYLE: The fact is distressing, Sir Edward, but so it is.
SIR EDWARD: There's the Ravensdale property 82233unencumbered.

COYLE: There, Sir Edward, you are under a mistake. The Ravensdale property is deeply encumbered, to nearly its full value.
SIR EDWARD(Springing up.): Good heavens.
COYLE: I have found among my father's papers a mortgage of that very property to him.

SIR EDWARD: To your father! My father's agent? Sir, do you know that if this be true I am something like a beggar, and your father something like a thief.
COYLE: I see the first plainly, Sir Edward, but do not the second.
SIR EDWARD: Do you forget, sir, that your father was a charity boy, fed, clothed by my father?

SIR EDWARD: And do you mean to tell me, sir, that your father repaid that kindness by robbing his benefactor?
COYLE: Certainly not, but by advancing money to that benefactor when he wanted it, and by taking the 17056security of one of his benefactor's estates as any prudent man would under the circumstances. 

SIR EDWARD: Why, then, sir, the benefactor's property is yours.
COYLE: I see one means, at least, of keeping the Ravensdale estate in the family.

SIR EDWARD: What is it?
COYLE: By marrying your daughter to the mortgagee.

SIR EDWARD: To you?
COYLE: I am prepared to settle the estate of Miss Trenchard the day she becomes Mrs. Richard Coyle.

SIR EDWARD (Springing up.): You insolent scoundrel, how dare you insult me in my own house, sir. Leave it, sir, or I will have you kicked out by my servants.
COYLE: I never take an angry man at his word, Sir Edward. Give a few moments reflection to my offer. You can have me kicked out afterwards.

SIR EDWARD: (Pacing Stage): 43305A beggar, Sir Edward Trenchard a beggar, see my children reduced to labor for their bread, to misery perhaps; but the alternative, Florence detests him, still the match would save her, at least, from ruin. He might take the family name, I might retrench, retire, to the continent for a few years. Florence's health might serve as a pretense. Repugnant as the alternative is, yet it deserves consideration54806.
COYLE: (who has watched.): Now, Sir Edward, shall I ring for the servants to kick me out?
[passage-footer]The extract is from Our American Cousin, by Tom Taylor.[/passage-footer]

[passage-header][/passage-header]  A Quick Fix in a Throwaway Culture
  Planned obsolescence, a practice [1] at which products are designed to have a limited period of [2] usefulness, has been a cornerstone of manufacturing strategy for the past 80 years. This approach increases sales, but it also stands in [3] austere contrast to a time when goods were produced to be durable. Planned obsolescence wastes materials as well as energy in making and shipping new products. It also reinforces the belief that it is easier to replace goods than to mend them, as repair shops are rare and [4] repair methods are often specialized. In 2009,  an enterprising movement, the Repair Cafe, challenged this widely accepted belief.
   (a) More like a [5] fair than an actual cafe, the first Repair Cafe took place in Amsterdam, the Netherlands. (b) It was the brainchild of former journalist Martine Postma, [6] wanting to take a practical stand in a throwaway culture. (c) Her goals were [7] straightforward, however: reduce waste, maintain and perpetuate knowledge and skills, and strengthen community. (d) Participants bring all manner of damaged articles - clothing, appliances, furniture, and more - to be repaired by a staff of volunteer specialists including tailors, electricians, and carpenters. (e) Since the inaugural Repair Cafe, others have been hosted in theater foyers, community centers, hotels, and auditoriums. (f) While [8] they await for service, patrons can enjoy coffee and snacks and mingle with their neighbors in need. [9] 

[passage-header]Read the passage and answer the question that follows:
[/passage-header]   The year was 2081, and everybody was finally equal. 87835They weren't only equal before God and the law. They were equal every which way. Nobody was smarter than anybody else. Nobody was better looking than anybody else82926. Nobody was stronger or quicker than anybody else. All this equality was due to the 211th, 212th, and 213th Amendments to the Constitution, and to the unceasing vigilance of agents of the U.S. Handicapper General.[passage-footer]This passage is from "Harrison Bergeron," a short story in Kurt Vonnegut's collection of short stories Welcome to the Monkey House.[/passage-footer]

[passage-header]Read the passage given below and answer the question that follows:[/passage-header]Biologists have advanced two theories to explain why schooling of fish occurs in so many fish species. Because schooling is particularly widespread among species of small fish, both theories assume that schooling offers the advantage of some protection from predators. Proponents of theory dispute the assumption that a school of thousands of fish is highly visible. Experiments have shown that any fish can be seen, even in very clear water, only within a sphere of 200 meters in diameter. When fish are in a compact group, the spheres of visibility overlap. Thus the chance of a predator finding the school is only slightly greater than the chance of the predator finding a single fish swimming alone. Schooling is advantageous to the individual fish because a predator's chance of finding any particular fish swimming in the school is much smaller than its chance of finding at least one of the same group of fish if the fish were dispersed throughout an area.
However, critics of theory A point out that some fish form schools even in areas where predators are abundant and thus little possibility of escaping detection exists. They argue that the school continues to be of value to its members even after detection. They advocate theory B, the "confusion effect," which can be explained in two different ways.
Sometimes, proponents argue, predators simply cannot decide which fish to attack. This indecision supposedly results from a predator's preference for striking prey that is distinct from the rest of the school in appearance. In many schools, the fish are almost identical in appearance, making it difficult for a predator to select one. The second explanation for the "confusion effect" has to do with the sensory confusion caused by a large number of prey moving around the predator. Even if the predator makes the decision to attack a particular fish, the movement of other prey in the school can be distracting. The predator's difficulty can be compared to that of a tennis player trying to hit a tennis ball when two are approaching simultaneously.

[passage-header]Read the passage given below and answer the question that follows:[/passage-header]Early in the careers of most novelists, the critics nag and carp; later, the cold eye of reassessment is cast over their life work at the peak of a writing career, which is where Doris Lessing now stands, the years of solid achievement command maximum respect.

A survey of critical responses to Lessing's books might reveal curious strata of social history. It is hard to remember now that she was once considered very daring and very militant (she insisted that relations between the sexes were difficult and unequal). She has been accused of being a feminist and then accused by feminists of not being a feminist enough. She has been a communist but then moved on from a belief in simplistic political solutions to interest in deeper psychological change, touching on themes of madness and of mystical and extrasensory states of consciousness.

Lessing has written clearly into all her work the conviction that we are moving blindly and inevitably toward global catastrophe. Her message seems to be of complete moral and social bankruptcy, particularly in the relations between men and women. Hers is not an angry feminism, though her men are rather poor creatures compared to her bruised but gritty women. Anger may imply a hope that things could be better if only some sense could be knocked into somebody's head, a hope for a time 'after the revolution.' One does not feel that Lessing sees any hope, only perpetual deadlock.

Certainly, Lessing has earned the respect accorded to a writer 'of her stature and productivity'. Doggedly, she has been writing into her fiction signposts and warnings that we need desperately to be reminded of and writing in a way that has been more persuasive and imaginative than if she had been a pure polemicist. But the critic has the problem of distinguishing between what an author says and the way she says it. The moralist in Lessing, struggling with the very skilled writer, at times, has made her writing prolix, clogged, slow - though in her latest novels she has successfully introduced a leavening of fantasy. The fact is that there are writers who in an economical page or two can make us feel our dilemmas more piercingly than she does in a leisurely fictional experience. Missing from her work is that sense of time and space gathered up for a moment between the hands, that sudden shift from understanding to seeing directly, that we expect at rare moments from our storytellers.

Read the following passage and answer the question that follows:
 Economic growth involves both benefits and costs. The desirability of increasing production has frequently been challenged in recent years and some have even mentioned that economic growth is merely a quantitative enlargement that has no human meaning or value. However, economic growth is an increase in the capacity to produce goods and services that people want. Since the product of economic growth can be measured by its value to someone, it is important to ask whose standard of valuation counts.
  In the U.S., the value of a product is what purchasers pay for it. That is determined by the purchaser's preferences combined with the condition of supply which in turn reflects various other factors, such as natural and technological circumstances of those who supply capital and labor. The value by which we measure a product synthesizes all these factors.
  Gross National Product (GNP) is the market value of the nation's total output of goods and services. GNP is not a perfect measure of all the activities involved in economic output. It does not account for the deterioration or improvement in the environment even when they are, incidentally, results of the production process. On the other hand, it does not count as "Product" many benefits provided as side-effects of the economic process. It does not include productive but unpaid work (such as that done by a home-maker) and it does not reckon with such other factors as the burdensomeness of work, the length of the work, week, and so forth. Nonetheless, the GNP concept makes an important contribution to our understanding of how the economy is working while it is not a complete measure of economic productivity and even less so of "welfare". The level and rate of the increase of GNP are clearly and positively associated with what most people throughout the world see as an improvement in the quality of life. In the long run, the same factor results in a growing GNP and in other social benefits: size and competence of population, state of knowledge, amount of capital and the effectiveness with those are combined and utilized.

[passage-header]Read the passage given below and answer the question that follows:[/passage-header]Early in the careers of most novelists, the critics nag and carp; later, the cold eye of reassessment is cast over their life work at the peak of a writing career, which is where Doris Lessing now stands, the years of solid achievement command maximum respect.

A survey of critical responses to Lessing's books might reveal curious strata of social history. It is hard to remember now that she was once considered very daring and very militant (she insisted that relations between the sexes were difficult and unequal). She has been accused of being a feminist and then accused by feminists of not being a feminist enough. She has been a communist but then moved on from a belief in simplistic political solutions to interest in deeper psychological change, touching on themes of madness and of mystical and extrasensory states of consciousness.

Lessing has written clearly into all her work the conviction that we are moving blindly and inevitably toward global catastrophe. Her message seems to be of complete moral and social bankruptcy, particularly in the relations between men and women. Hers is not an angry feminism, though her men are rather poor creatures compared to her bruised but gritty women. Anger may imply a hope that things could be better if only some sense could be knocked into somebody's head, a hope for a time 'after the revolution.' One does not feel that Lessing sees any hope, only perpetual deadlock.

Certainly, Lessing has earned the respect accorded to a writer 'of her stature and productivity'. Doggedly, she has been writing into her fiction signposts and warnings that we need desperately to be reminded of and writing in a way that has been more persuasive and imaginative than if she had been a pure polemicist. But the critic has the problem of distinguishing between what an author says and the way she says it. The moralist in Lessing, struggling with the very skilled writer, at times, has made her writing prolix, clogged, slow - though in her latest novels she has successfully introduced a leavening of fantasy. The fact is that there are writers who in an economical page or two can make us feel our dilemmas more piercingly than she does in a leisurely fictional experience. Missing from her work is that sense of time and space gathered up for a moment between the hands, that sudden shift from understanding to seeing directly, that we expect at rare moments from our storytellers.

[passage-header]Read the passage given below and answer the question that follows:[/passage-header]Scientists have developed a hydrogen-making catalyst that uses cheaper materials and yields much fewer contaminants than do the current processes while extracting the element from common renewable plant sources. Further, the new catalyst lies at the heart of a chemical process the authors say is a significant advance in producing alternate fuels from domestic sources.

In the journal of science, James Dumesic, John Shabaker, and George Huber of the University of Wisconsin at Madison report developing the catalyst from nickel, tin, and aluminum and using it in a process called aqueous-phase reforming (APR), which converts plant by-products into hydrogen. The process performs as well as current methods that use precious metals such as platinum, yet runs at lower temperatures and is much cleaner.

'The APR process can be used on the small scale to produce fuel for portable devices, such as cars, batteries, and military equipment,' said Dumesic. 'But it could also be scaled up as a hydrogen source for industrial applications, such as the production of fertilizers or the removal of sulfur from petroleum products.'

Hydrogen is a 'clean' fuel because when it burns, it combines with oxygen to form water; no toxic by-products or greenhouse gasses are produced in the process. The APR process extracts hydrogen from a variety of biological sources, especially simple carbohydrates, and sugars generated by common plants.

Platinum is known to be an excellent catalyst in a number of chemical reactions. It is one component in a car's catalytic converter, for example, that helps remove toxins from automobile exhaust. Catalytic platinum (Pt) and nickel (Ni) are preferred over other metals because they process reaction molecules much faster. But pure nickel, unlike platinum, recombines the hydrogen product with carbon atoms to make methane, a common greenhouse gas.

Using a specially designed reactor, the team found a match in a modified version of what researchers call a Raney-nickel catalyst. Raney-nickel is a highly porous catalyst made of about 90 percent nickel (Ni) and 10 percent Aluminium (AI).

While Raney-nickel proved somewhat effective at separating hydrogen from biomass-derived molecules, the researchers improved the material's effectiveness by adding more tin (Sn), which stops the production of methane and instead generates more hydrogen. Relative to the other catalysts, the new Raney-NiSn can perform for very long time periods (at least for about 48 hours) and at much lower temperatures (roughly 225 degrees Celsius).

[passage-header]Read the passage given below and answer the question that follows:[/passage-header]Early in the careers of most novelists, the critics nag and carp; later, the cold eye of reassessment is cast over their life work at the peak of a writing career, which is where Doris Lessing now stands, the years of solid achievement command maximum respect.

A survey of critical responses to Lessing's books might reveal curious strata of social history. It is hard to remember now that she was once considered very daring and very militant (she insisted that relations between the sexes were difficult and unequal). She has been accused of being a feminist and then accused by feminists of not being a feminist enough. She has been a communist but then moved on from a belief in simplistic political solutions to interest in deeper psychological change, touching on themes of madness and of mystical and extrasensory states of consciousness.

Lessing has written clearly into all her work the conviction that we are moving blindly and inevitably toward global catastrophe. Her message seems to be of complete moral and social bankruptcy, particularly in the relations between men and women. Hers is not an angry feminism, though her men are rather poor creatures compared to her bruised but gritty women. Anger may imply a hope that things could be better if only some sense could be knocked into somebody's head, a hope for a time 'after the revolution.' One does not feel that Lessing sees any hope, only perpetual deadlock.

Certainly, Lessing has earned the respect accorded to a writer 'of her stature and productivity'. Doggedly, she has been writing into her fiction signposts and warnings that we need desperately to be reminded of and writing in a way that has been more persuasive and imaginative than if she had been a pure polemicist. But the critic has the problem of distinguishing between what an author says and the way she says it. The moralist in Lessing, struggling with the very skilled writer, at times, has made her writing prolix, clogged, slow - though in her latest novels she has successfully introduced a leavening of fantasy. The fact is that there are writers who in an economical page or two can make us feel our dilemmas more piercingly than she does in a leisurely fictional experience. Missing from her work is that sense of time and space gathered up for a moment between the hands, that sudden shift from understanding to seeing directly, that we expect at rare moments from our storytellers.