Reading Comprehension Test 71

$$1$$. Often, we passionately pursue matters that in the future appear to be contradictory to our real intention or nature; and triumph is followed by remorse or regret. There are numerous examples of such a trend in the annals of history and contemporary life.
$$2$$. Alfred Nobel was the son of Immanuel Nobel, an inventor who experimented extensively with explosives. Alfred too carried out research and experiments with a large range of chemicals; he found new methods to blast rocks for the construction of roads and bridges; he was engaged in the development of technology and different weapons; his life revolved around rockets and cannons and gun powder. The ingenuity of the scientist brought him enough wealth to buy the Bofors armament plant in Sweden.
$$3$$. Paradoxically, Nobel's life was a busy one yet he was lonely; and as he grew older, he began suffering from guilt of having invented the dynamite that was being used for destructive purposes. He set aside a huge part of his wealth to institute Nobel Prizes. Besides honouring men and women for their extraordinary achievements in physics, chemistry, medicine and literature, he wished to honour people who worked for the promotion of peace.
$$4$$. It's strange that the very man whose name was closely connected with explosives and inventions that helped in waging wars willed a large part of his earnings for the people who work for the promotion of peace and the benefit of mankind. The Nobel Peace Prize is intended for a person who has accomplished the best work for fraternity among nations, for abolition or reduction of war and for promotion of peace.
$$5$$. Another example that comes to one's mind is that of Albert Einstein. In $$1939$$, fearing that the Nazis would win the race to build the world's first atomic bomb, Einstein urged President Franklin D Roosevelt to launch an American programme on nuclear research. The matter was considered and a project called the Manhattan Project was initiated. The project involved intense nuclear research for the construction of the world's first atomic bomb. All this while, Einstein had the impression that the bomb would be used to protect the world from the Nazis. But in $$1945$$, when Hiroshima was bombed to end World War II, Einstein was deeply grieved and he regretted his endorsement of the need for nuclear research.
$$6$$. He also stated that had he known that the Germans would be unsuccessful in making the atomic bomb, he would have probably never recommended making one. In $$1947$$, Einstein began working for the cause of disarmament. But, Einstein's name still continues to be linked with the bomb. Man's fluctuating thoughts, changing opinions, varying opportunities keep the mind in a state of flux. Hence, the paradox of life: it's certain that nothing is certain in life.

In view of the passage given below, choose the best option for the blank:
     When talks come to how India has done for itself in 50 years of independence, the world has nothing but praise for our success in remaining a democracy. On other fronts, the applause is less loud. In absolute terms, India has not done too badly, of course, life expectancy has increased, so has literacy. Industry, which was barely a fledgling has grown tremendously.
     And as far as agriculture is concerned, India has been transformed from a country perpetual on the edge of starvation into a success story held up for others to emulate. But these are competitive times when change is rapid, and to walk slowly when the rest of the world is running is almost as bad as standing still or walking backward.
     Compared with large chunks of what was then the developing world South Korea, Singapore, Malaysia, Thailand, Indonesia, China and what was till lately a separate Hong Kong-India has fared abysmally. It began with a far better infrastructure than most of these countries had.
     It suffered hardly or not at all during World War II. It had advantages like an English speaking elite quality scientific manpower (including a Nobel laureate and others, who could be ranked among the world's best) and excellent business acumen. Yet today, when countries are ranked according to their global competitiveness, it is tiny Singapore that figures at the top.
     Hong Kong is a powerhouse. So, is Taiwan. If a symbol were needed of how far we have fallen back, note that while Korean Cielos are sold in India no one in South Korea is rushing to buy an Indian car.
     The reasons list themselves. Topmost is economic isolationism. The government discouraged imports and self-sufficiency. Whatever the aim was, the result was the creation of a totally encouraging inefficient industry that failed to keep pace with global trends and therefore, became absolutely uncompetitive. Only, when the trade gates were opened a little did this become apparent.
     The years since then have been spent in merely trying to catch up. That the government actually sheltered its industrialists from foreign competition is a little strange. For in all other respects, it opened under the conviction that businessmen were little more than crooks, who were to be prevented from entering the most important areas of the economy, who were to be hamstrung in as many ways as possible, who were to be tolerated in the same way as an excisable wart.
     The high expropriatory rates taxation, the licensing laws, the reservation of whole swathes of the industry for the public sector and the granting of monopolies to the public sector firms were the principal manifestations of this attitude.
     The government forgot that before wealth could be distributed, it had to be created. The government forgot that it itself could not create, but only squander wealth. Some of the manifestations of the old attitude have changed. Tax rates have fallen. Licensing has been all but abolished. And the gates of global trade have been opened wide.
     But most of these changes were first by circumstances partly by the foreign exchange bankruptcy of 1991 and the recognition that the government could no longer muster the funds to support the public sector, leave alone expand it. Whether the attitude of the government itself or that of more than a handful of ministers has changed, is open to question. In many other ways, however, the government has not changed one with. Business still has to negotiate a welter of negotiations.
     Transparency is still a long way off. And there is no existing policy. In defending the existing policy, politicians betray an inability to see beyond their noses. A no-exit policy for labor is equivalent to a no-entry policy for new business. If one industry is not allowed to retrench labor, other industries will think a hundred times before employing new labor. In other ways too, the government hurts industries.
     Public sector monopolies like the Department of Telecommunications and Videsh Sanchar Nigam Limited make it possible for Indian business to operate only at a cost several times that of their counterparts abroad.
     The infrastructure is in a shambles party because it is unable to formulate a sufficiently remunerative policy for private business and partly because it does not have the stomach to charge market rates for services. After a burst of activity in the early nineties, the government is dragging its feet. At the rate it is going, it will be another fifty years before the government realizes that a pro-business policy is the best pro-people policy. By then, of course, the world would have moved even farther ahead.

I reported on the Iraq invasion as a "unilateral" journalist, which meant I rented an SUV from Hertz in Kuwait and sneaked across the border with the first US tanks, I wound up in Baghdad on April 9, 2003, and watched the Marines tear down the iconic statue of Saddam Hussein at Firdos Square. I returned to Iraq on several occasions to work on length stories about the dismal turn of events as the occupation turned into a war of Americans against Iraqis, and Iraqis against Iraqis. The carriage, though heartbreaking, was almost the least shocking experience of my journeys between the war in the Mideast and my home in New York City. While Americans killed and got killed in Iraq, Americans back home shopped at Walmart and watched reality television. I had covered a lot of wars and thought I had grown accustomed to peaceful countries being unconcerned by other people's quarrels. My unsentimental education had begun in the 1990s in Bosnia where I often had a Matrix-like experience. In the morning, I would wake up in Sarajevo or another cursed town that was blasted by bombs, frozen by winter and deprived of food. I would then begin my efforts to get out of the hell. I would hope for a seat on what was known as Maybe Airlines. These were the UN relief flights that brought food into besieged Sarajevo. Maybe the shelling would be light enough for flights to land and take off, maybe not. If the flights were grounded, I could try to escape by driving along Sniper Alley and through a creepy no man's land that constituted the only border that mattered in a nation cut and quartered by war. Distance is small in Europe. By the afternoon, I could be in Vienna or Budapest or London, enjoying the comfortable life that Europe offered many of its citizens: hot showers, good food, clean sheets, the certainty that I would not be killed by a mortar as I slept. I had a hard time believing these altered states existed in such close proximity. The contented Europeans eating apple strudel or shopping at Harrods on those 1990s afternoons- didn't they realize the war was being fought in their backyard? The answer was that they knew and didn't care. Proximity isn't density. Bosnia though close wasn't their home. Other people were killing and dying, not their people. I had understood only half of it and learned the other half a decade later, on my return to America after sojourns in Iraq. Outside the tight-knit community of military families who cared deeply about the wars, nearly everyone in America went about his or her life as though Iraq and Afghanistan didn't matter much. Nor had Americans been asked to change their way of life. It had become possible, I realized, for a nation to be at war without suffering the inconveniences associated with war- including the inconvenience of thinking about it. World War II was a classic war in the sense of rationing, of derives for war bonds, of a draft the elite could not avoid the college deferments and of a ceaseless drumbeat in almost every sector of society that a great conflict as being fought that required great sacrifices if everyone. Even for families spared the loss of a loved one overseas. World War II was a visible - intentionally visible - aspect of life in the homeland; the nation's leaders made it do. Life as it was before the war had to be suspended.

[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 passage given below and answer the question that follows:[/passage-header]AGNI: In February 1994, the Agni was successfully test fired from the interim test range at Chandipur-on-sea near Balasore, Orissa. Agni is a surface-to-surface intermediate range ballistic missile, consisting of a solid propellant first stage and a liquid propellant second stage joined together by district trusses. While the missile is hurled into space by a solid fuel booster, the liquid-fueled second stage leads the missile warhead to its pre-designated target. It has a range of 1000 to 2500 km, a take-off weight of 19 tons and a payload capacity of 1 ton. The length of the missile at the third test was 21 meters, 2 meters more than it was on the maiden test flight in 1989. Agni is capable of carrying a multipurpose payload, indigenously built; one of its unique features is the heat shield of the re-entry vehicle. Made of a carbon-carbon composite, the heat shield is able to withstand temperatures of 5000 degrees Celsius. The heat shield being ablative, it melts and its outer layers peel off, taking away the heating layer by layer.

AKASH: Also launched in February 1994, it is a multi-target surface-to-air missile. Akash was successfully test fired at Chandipur-on-Sea. Its range is 25 km and it can target four to five enemy aircrafts and missiles at a time. Integrated with the indigenously produced Rajendra radar, it is capable of tracking many targets simultaneously. Such integrated rocket technology is better than conventional missile systems. The technology is said to be close to the system of the American Patriot missiles.

[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 following it:[/passage-header]

[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]AGNI: In February 1994, the Agni was successfully test fired from the interim test range at Chandipur-on-sea near Balasore, Orissa. Agni is a surface-to-surface intermediate range ballistic missile, consisting of a solid propellant first stage and a liquid propellant second stage joined together by district trusses. While the missile is hurled into space by a solid fuel booster, the liquid-fueled second stage leads the missile warhead to its pre-designated target. It has a range of 1000 to 2500 km, a take-off weight of 19 tons and a payload capacity of 1 ton. The length of the missile at the third test was 21 meters, 2 meters more than it was on the maiden test flight in 1989. Agni is capable of carrying a multipurpose payload, indigenously built; one of its unique features is the heat shield of the re-entry vehicle. Made of a carbon-carbon composite, the heat shield is able to withstand temperatures of 5000 degrees Celsius. The heat shield being ablative, it melts and its outer layers peel off, taking away the heating layer by layer.

AKASH: Also launched in February 1994, it is a multi-target surface-to-air missile. Akash was successfully test fired at Chandipur-on-Sea. Its range is 25 km and it can target four to five enemy aircrafts and missiles at a time. Integrated with the indigenously produced Rajendra radar, it is capable of tracking many targets simultaneously. Such integrated rocket technology is better than conventional missile systems. The technology is said to be close to the system of the American Patriot missiles.