Reading Comprehension Test 14

[passage-header]Read the tale of Bibi and answer the question that follows:[/passage-header]This is the story of Bibi the butterfly - not just any butterfly, but an adventure-loving butterfly full of the __1__ born of youth. Yes, she was the quintessential __2__ butterfly. Today in a fit of temper, she had left home and flown a long distance without thought of rest or sleep, over green gardens and frolicking farms in search of the sweetest nectar. Her __3__ wings were tired and __4__. She drank the juice from a rose here and a daffodil there. A strange drowsiness __5__ her. She curled up on the sturdy __6__ of a leaf and fell fast asleep. And as is the case when anyone sleeps, she had the strangest dream. 

[passage-header]Read the following passage carefully and answer the question that follows:
[/passage-header]A recent report in news week says that in American Colleges students of Asian origin outperform not only the minority group students but the majority whites as well. Many of these students must be of Indian origin, and their achievement is something we can be proud of. It is unlikely that these talented youngsters will come back to India, and that is the familiar brain drain problem.
However, recent statements by the nation's policy makers indicate that the perception of this issue is changing. 'Brain bank' and not 'brain drain' is the more appropriate idea, they suggest, since the expertise of Indians abroad is only deposited in other places and not lost.
This may be so but this brain bank, like most other banks, is one that primarily serves customers in its neighborhood. The skills of the Asians now excelling in America's colleges will mainly help the U.S.A. No matter how significant, what non-resident Indians do for India and what their counterparts do for other Asian lands is only a by-product.
But it is also necessary to ask, or be reminded, why Indians study fruitfully when abroad. Newsweek records would have probably had a very different tale if they had studied in India. In America, they found elbow room, books, and other facilities not available and not likely to be available here. The need to prove themselves in their new country and the competition of an international standard they faced there must have cured mental & physical laziness. But other things helping them in America can be obtained here if we achieve a change in social attitudes, especially towards the youth.
We need to learn to value individuals & their unique qualities more than conformity and respectability. We need to learn the language of encouragement to add to our skill in flattery. We might also learn to be less liberal with blame & less tight-fisted with appreciation.

[passage-header]Read the passage and answer the question that follows:[/passage-header]    Among the old Tedas, it was customary for certain tribesmen to dress in the skins of the beasts they had slain, and thus to give themselves a fearsome air of brutality, which was calculated to strike dread into the hearts of their foes. Of course, it's a fair guess that a cheetah or bison skin would make a warm, comfortable outer coat for a man whose life was in the most brutal of conditions atop ridges.
    Many legends tell of these cavemen-like soldiers, also known as Badangas, and folklore has it that they were physically transformed into the beasts whose skins they wore. The most common animals that the warriors were transformed into were the bull-tiger and leopard. Rumours suggest that the skins carried the power of the beasts and, when worn, turned the wearer into that animal at the height of its capabilities. The fact is that no one has ever set sight on a Badanga in the flesh.
    The Badanga was an object of sheer horror, as his life's object was to challenge quiet villagers to a duel. As the then law of the land stood in the Teda tribe, a man who declined to accept a challenge from a Badanga forfeited all his worldly possessions, even his wife, over to the hands of his challenger. Therefore, the Badanga had any man he challenged at his mercy. If the Badanga slews him, the farmer's possessions became his, and if the poor fellow declined to fight, he lost all legal right to his property anyway. A Badanga would invite himself to any feast and contribute to the hilarity of the entertainment by killing in gory fashion any merrymaker who displeased him. He might even single one out to murder for no other reason than to practice his combat skills.
    It is not difficult to imagine that popular superstition went along with the popular dread of these animal-skinned aggressors and that they were believed to be filled with the force, as they certainly were with the ferocity, of the beasts whose skins they wore.
    In the unlikely event of a villager slaying a Badanga warrior, he was revered as a divine savior and had a temple devoted to him. It wasn't easy. Fire merely singed, a scythe landed a mere scratch, and a venomous spear just put him to sleep - what it took was a club made of the betel tree stump to fell this fiery warrior. Of course, it comes as no surprise that no one has heard of one such village victory yet. 

[passage-header]Read the passage and answer the question that follows:[/passage-header]    Among the old Tedas, it was customary for certain tribesmen to dress in the skins of the beasts they had slain, and thus to give themselves a fearsome air of brutality, which was calculated to strike dread into the hearts of their foes. Of course, it's a fair guess that a cheetah or bison skin would make a warm, comfortable outer coat for a man whose life was in the most brutal of conditions atop ridges.
    Many legends tell of these cavemen-like soldiers, also known as Badangas, and folklore has it that they were physically transformed into the beasts whose skins they wore. The most common animals that the warriors were transformed into were the bull-tiger and leopard. Rumours suggest that the skins carried the power of the beasts and, when worn, turned the wearer into that animal at the height of its capabilities. The fact is that no one has ever set sight on a Badanga in the flesh.
    The Badanga was an object of sheer horror, as his life's object was to challenge quiet villagers to a duel. As the then law of the land stood in the Teda tribe, a man who declined to accept a challenge from a Badanga forfeited all his worldly possessions, even his wife, over to the hands of his challenger. Therefore, the Badanga had any man he challenged at his mercy. If the Badanga slews him, the farmer's possessions became his, and if the poor fellow declined to fight, he lost all legal right to his property anyway. A Badanga would invite himself to any feast and contribute to the hilarity of the entertainment by killing in gory fashion any merrymaker who displeased him. He might even single one out to murder for no other reason than to practice his combat skills.
    It is not difficult to imagine that popular superstition went along with the popular dread of these animal-skinned aggressors and that they were believed to be filled with the force, as they certainly were with the ferocity, of the beasts whose skins they wore.
    In the unlikely event of a villager slaying a Badanga warrior, he was revered as a divine savior and had a temple devoted to him. It wasn't easy. Fire merely singed, a scythe landed a mere scratch, and a venomous spear just put him to sleep - what it took was a club made of the betel tree stump to fell this fiery warrior. Of course, it comes as no surprise that no one has heard of one such village victory yet. 

[passage-header]Read the following passage and answer the question that follows:[/passage-header]New research findings on the ability of a fetus to recognize its mother's voice and even distinguish it from other female voices confirm what the scientists have speculated about for more than twenty years, that experiences in the womb help shape newborn preferences and behavior.

Dr. Barbara Kisilevsky, a Queen's University professor of nursing, along with a team of psychologists at Queen's and obstetricians in Hangzhou, China, found that fetuses are capable of learning in the womb and can remember and recognize their mother's voice before they are even born. Their research findings are published in the international journal Psychological Science. 

While previous research on infant development has demonstrated that newborns prefer to listen to their own mother's voice than to that of a female stranger and will even change their behavior to elicit their mother's voice, Dr. Kisilevsky's research proves that this 'preference/recognition' begins before birth. 

"This is an extremely exciting finding that provides evidence of sustained attention, memory, and learning by the fetus," says Dr. Kisilevsky. "The fetuses learn about their mother's voice in the womb and then prefer it, after birth. Our findings provide evidence that in-utero experience has an impact on newborn infant behavior and development and that voice recognition may play a role in mother-infant attachment."

The findings also suggest that the foundation for speech perception and language acquisition is laid before birth, says Dr. Kisilevsky. Therefore, the precocious language processing abilities observed in newborns and young infants may not be due to a hardwired speech processing module in the brain as has been assumed, but may instead stem from the interaction of the fetus with its environment.

Along with researchers at Zhejiang University, China, Dr. Kisilevsky tested 60 fetuses. Thirty fetuses were played a two-minute audiotape of their own mother reading a poem and 30 fetuses were played the voice of a female stranger reading the poem. The researchers found that the fetuses responded to their own mother's voice with heart-rate acceleration and to the stranger's voice with a heart-rate deceleration. The responses lasted during the two-minute tape as well as for at least two minutes after the offset of the voices.

"These results tell us that the fetuses heard and responded to both voices and that there was sustained attention to both voices," notes Dr. Kisilevsky. "But, because they responded differently to the two voices, we know they had to recognize their own mother's voice. We believe they are probably already learning about language in general and their own language specifically."

[passage-header]Read the passage given below and answer the question that follows.[/passage-header]Competitiveness is defined as the ability to add value better than the others in the globalized economic environment. In other words, for the Indian AC&R industry to succeed, it should be able to add value better than its competitors across the globe. Despite the poor infrastructure, there is a growing sentiment that India can do it. We have made rapid strides in manufacturing and service sectors, and the international community is admiring many of our Indian companies. I indeed believe that India can become the global economic powerhouse, and it can rival China as the world's factory. I believe that India can become a major exporter of the AC&R equipment. A recent report by Make-Singh & Company comprehensively addresses the status of the global and local trends, and an action plan for the industry to achieve rapid growth. It also outlines what the Government can do to promote the growth of this vital industry so that it can fulfill its potential to preserve food, increase productivity and contribute to the quality of life. But, the challenges are many. Compared to the stature our industry has in most countries, including the developing Asian countries, the Indian AC&R industry still has a long, long way to go. To become a major exporter, we need, primarily, a scale of manufacture. To acquire scale, we need a large domestic market, which we need to build. We have a long way to go in terms of customer education. The usage and application of products itself are questionable. We come across retailers using deep freezers for storing bottles as well as butter and other products, which are not supposed to be stored in freezers. The consumers do not use several innovative features that are available. The country also lacks standards in terms of building codes such as ceiling heights. It is not only the government which will have to act but also the builders, architects, consultants and industry players. By our working together, this industry can grow at least 3 to 5 times faster than it has grown in the past.

[passage-header]Read the passage given below and answer the question that follows:[/passage-header]The United States must learn to lose this war - a harder task, in many ways, than winning, for it requires admitting mistakes and relinquishing attractive fantasies. This is the true moral mission of our time (well, of the next few years, anyway). The cost of leaving will certainly be high, just not anywhere near as high as trying to 'stay the course', which can only magnify and postpone the disaster. And yet, regrettable to say, even if this difficult step is taken, no one should imagine that democracy will be achieved by this means. The great likelihood is something else - something worse, perhaps a recrudescence of dictatorship or Civil War, or both.  An interim period, probably very brief, of international trusteeship, is the best solution, yet it is unlikely to be a good solution. It is merely better than any other recourse. The good options have probably passed us by. They may never have existed. If the people of Iraq are given back their country, there isn't the slightest guarantee that they will use the privilege to create a liberal democracy. The creation of democracy is an organic process that must proceed from the will of the local people. Sometimes that will is present, more often it is not. Vietnam provides an example. Vietnam today enjoys the self-determination it battled to achieve for so long, but it has not become a democracy. On the other hand, just because Iraq's future remains to be decided by its talented people, it would also be wrong to categorically rule out the possibility that they will escape tyranny and create a democratic government for themselves. The United States and other countries might even find ways of offering modest assistance in the project. It's just that it is beyond the power of the United States to create democracy for them. The matter is not in our hands. It never was.

[passage-header]Read the following passage carefully and answer the question that follows:
[/passage-header]A recent report in news week says that in American Colleges students of Asian origin outperform not only the minority group students but the majority whites as well. Many of these students must be of Indian origin, and their achievement is something we can be proud of. It is unlikely that these talented youngsters will come back to India, and that is the familiar brain drain problem.
However, recent statements by the nation's policy makers indicate that the perception of this issue is changing. 'Brain bank' and not 'brain drain' is the more appropriate idea, they suggest, since the expertise of Indians abroad is only deposited in other places and not lost.
This may be so but this brain bank, like most other banks, is one that primarily serves customers in its neighborhood. The skills of the Asians now excelling in America's colleges will mainly help the U.S.A. No matter how significant, what non-resident Indians do for India and what their counterparts do for other Asian lands is only a by-product.
But it is also necessary to ask, or be reminded, why Indians study fruitfully when abroad. Newsweek records would have probably had a very different tale if they had studied in India. In America, they found elbow room, books, and other facilities not available and not likely to be available here. The need to prove themselves in their new country and the competition of an international standard they faced there must have cured mental & physical laziness. But other things helping them in America can be obtained here if we achieve a change in social attitudes, especially towards the youth.
We need to learn to value individuals & their unique qualities more than conformity and respectability. We need to learn the language of encouragement to add to our skill in flattery. We might also learn to be less liberal with blame & less tight-fisted with appreciation.