CAT and Other MBA Exams: Study Notes || VARC || Reading Comprehension

TEST-READING COMPREHENSION 01

No. of Questions-15
Time- 30 minutes
Passage 1

All of the cells in a particular plant start out with the same complement of genes. How then can these cells differentiate and form structures as different as roots, stems, leaves, and fruits? The answer is that only a small subset of the genes in a particular kind of cell are expressed, or turned on, at a given time. This is accomplished by a complex system of chemical messengers that in plants include hormones and other regulatory molecules. Five major hormones have been identified: auxin, abscisic acid, cytokinin, ethylene, and gibberellin. Studies of plants have now identified a new class of regulatory molecules called oligosaccharins.

Unlike the oligosaccharins, the five well-known plant hormones are pleiotropic rather than specific, that is, each has more than one effect on the growth and development of plants. They have so many simultaneous effects that they are not very useful in artificially controlling the growth of crops. Auxin, for instance, stimulates the rate of cell elongation, causes shoots to grow up and roots to grow down, and inhibits the growth of lateral shoots. Auxin also causes the plant to develop a vascular system, to form lateral roots, and to produce ethylene.

The pleiotropy of the five well-studied plant hormones is somewhat analogous to that of certain hormones in animal. For example, hormones from the hypothalamus in the brain stimulate the anterior lobe of the pituitary gland to synthesize and release many different hormones, one of which stimulates the release of hormones from the adrenal cortex. These hormones have specific effects on target organs all over the body. One hormone stimulates the thyroid gland, for example, another the ovarian follicle cells, and so forth. In other words, there is a hierarchy of hormones.

Such a hierarchy may also exist in plants. Oligosaccharins are fragments of the cell wall released by enzymes: different enzymes release different oligosaccharins. There are indications that pleiotropic plant hormones may actually function by activating the enzymes that release these other, more specific chemical messengers from the cell wall.

According to the passage, the five well-known plant hormones are not useful in controlling the growth of crops because

(A) It is not known exactly what functions the hormones perform

(B) Each hormone has various effects on plants

(D) Each hormone has different effects on different kinds of plants

(E) Each hormone works on only a small subset of a cell’s genes at any particular time

The passage suggests that the place of hypothalamic hormones in the hormonal hierarchies of animals is similar to the place of which of the following in plants?

(A) Plant cell walls

(B) The complement of genes in each plant cell

(D) The five major hormones

(E) The oligosaccharins

The passage suggests that which of the following is a function likely to be performed by an oligosaccharin?

(A) To stimulate a particular plant cell to become part of a plant’s root system

(B) To stimulate the walls of a particular cell to produce other oligosaccharins

(D) To duplicate the gene complement in a particular plant cell

(E) To produce multiple effects on a particular subsystem of plant cells

The author mentions specific effects that auxin has on plant development in order to illustrate the

(A) Point that some of the effects of plant hormones can be harmful

(B) Way in which hormones are produced by plants

(D) Differences among the best-known plant hormones

(E) Concept of pleiotropy as it is exhibited by plant hormones

According to the passage, which of the following best describes a function performed by oligosaccharins?

(A) Regulating the daily functioning of a plant’s cells

(B) Interacting with one another to produce different chemicals

(D) Producing the hormones that cause plant cells to differentiate to perform different functions

(E) Influencing the development of a plant’s cells by controlling the expression of the cells’ genes

The passage suggests that, unlike the pleiotropic hormones, oligosaccharins could be used effectively to

(A) Trace the passage of chemicals through the walls of cells

(B) Pinpoint functions of other plant hormones

(D) Alter the complement of genes in the cells of plants

(E) Alter the effects of the five major hormones on plant development
Passage 2

Two recent publications offer different assessment of the career of the famous British nurse Florence Nightingale. A book by Anne Summers seeks to debunk the idealizations and present a reality at odds with Nightingale’s heroic reputation. According to Summers, Nightingale’s importance during the Crimean War has been exaggerated: not until near the war’s end did she become supervisor of the female nurses. Additionally, Summers writes that the contribution of the nurses to the relief of the wounded was at best marginal. The prevailing problems of military medicine were caused by army organizational practices, and the addition of a few nurses to the medical staff could be no more than symbolic. Nightingale’s place in the national pantheon, Summers asserts, is largely due to the propagandistic efforts of contemporary newspaper reporters.

By contrast, the editors of a new volume of Nightingale’s letters view Nightingale as a person who Significantly influenced not only her own age but also subsequent generations. They highlight her ongoing efforts to reform sanitary conditions after the war. For example, when she learned that peacetime living conditions in British barracks were so horrible that the death rate of enlisted men far exceeded that of neighboring civilian populations, she succeeded in persuading the government to establish a Royal Commission on the Health of the Army. She used sums raised through public contributions to found a nurses’ training hospital in London. Even in administrative matters, the editors assert, her practical intelligence was formidable: as recently as 1947 the British Army’s medical services were still using the cost-accounting system she had devised in the 1860’s.

I believe that the evidence of her letters supports continued respect for Nightingale’s brilliance and creativity. When counseling a village schoolmaster to encourage children to use their faculties of observation, she sounds like a modern educator. Her insistence on classifying the problems of the needy in order to devise appropriate treatments is similar to the approach of modern social workers. In sum, although Nightingale may not have achieved all of her goals during the Crimean War, her breadth of vision and ability to realize ambitious projects have earned her an eminent place among the ranks of social pioneers.

The passage is primarily concerned with evaluating

(A) The importance of Florence Nightingale’s innovations in the field of nursing

(B) Contrasting approaches to the writing of historical biography

(D) The quality of health care in nineteenth-century England

(E) The effect of the Crimean War on developments in the field of health care

According to the passage, the editors of Nightingale’s letters credit her with contributing to which of the following?

(A) Improving of the survival rate for soldiers in British Army hospitals during the Crimean War

(B) The development of a nurses’ training curriculum that was far in advance of its day

(D) Establishment of the first facility for training nurses at a major British university

(E) The creation of an organization for monitoring the peacetime living conditions of British soldiers

The passage suggests which of the following about Nightingale’s relationship with the British public of her day?

(A) She was highly respected, her projects receiving popular and governmental support.

(B) She encountered resistance both from the army establishment and the general public.

(D) She was supported by the military establishment but had to fight the governmental bureaucracy.

(E) After initially being received with enthusiasm, she was quickly forgotten.

The passage suggests which of the following about sanitary conditions in Britain after the Crimean War?

(A) While not ideal, they were superior to those in other parts of the world.

(B) Compared with conditions before the war, they had deteriorated.

(D) They were worse in military camps than in the neighboring civilian populations.

(E) They were uniformly crude and unsatisfactory throughout England.

Which of the following statements regarding the differing interpretations of Nightingale’s importance would the author most likely agree?

(A) Summers misunderstood both the importance of Nightingale’s achievements during the Crimean War and her subsequent influence on British policy.

(B) The editors of Nightingale’s letters made some valid points about her practical achievements, but they still exaggerated her influence on subsequent generations.

(C) Although Summers’ account of Nightingale’s role in the Crimean War may be accurate, she ignored evidence of Nightingales’ subsequent achievement that suggests that her reputation as an eminent social reformer is well deserved.

(D) The editors of Nightingale’s letters mistakenly propagated the outdated idealization of Nightingale that only impedes attempts to arrive at a balance assessment of her true role.

(E) The evidence of Nightingale’s letters supports Summers’ conclusions both about Nightingale’s activities and about her influence.

Which of the following is an assumption underlying the author’s assessment of Nightingale’s creativity?

(A) Educational philosophy in Nightingale’s day did not normally emphasize developing children’s ability to observe.

(B) Nightingale was the first to notice the poor living conditions in British military barracks in peacetime.

(C) No educator before Nightingale had thought to enlist the help of village schoolmasters in introducing new teaching techniques.

(D) Until Nightingale began her work, there was no concept of organized help for the needy in nineteenth-century Britain.

(E) The British Army’s medical services had no cost-accounting system until Nightingale devised one in the 1860’s.

In the last paragraph, the author is primarily concerned with

(A) Summarizing the arguments about Nightingale presented in the first two paragraphs

(B) Refuting the view of Nightingale’s career presented in the preceding paragraph

(D) Citing evidence to support a view of Nightingale’s career

(E) Correcting a factual error occurring in one of the works under review

TEST-READING COMPREHENSION 02

No. of Questions-14
Time- 30 minutes

PASSAGE 1

Theresa Kelley and Thomas Pfau rehearse a debate- I would call it an anxiety-about Romanticism that has inflected culture since its very inception: can the aesthetic, and our critical engagement with the aesthetic, produce meaning that is, well, meaningful? The question begs too many qualifications, of course, not least of which is the often plaintive cry about the contingencies of predication; that is, meaning for whom, for what, and why do we even bother about it in the first place? We cannot predicate sure attributes of cultural purpose because, abstraction that it is, we end in circular claims about the meaning of meaning. We are not quite circus animals chasing our respective tails, I hope, but this problem is consistently played out in the domain of pleasure, or at least of affective responsiveness. For surely we come to ask the question of cultural products only at the point in which we are radically invested in them: we profess in the domain of culture, and few professors in the humanities extricate their own modes of self-understanding from their professional preoccupations.

The issue, that is, defines us in banal ways too: after all the debates about the uses of pleasure, what can be said about our status as professional critics and scholars? (This is partly the issue that Thomas Pfau takes up polemically.) And must this question truly be allied with the more conceptually difficult one about the place of affective experience in aesthetic judgment? Both Pfau and Kelley are concerned to define the place of the aesthetic within a judgment that comprehends a relation between that which is meaningful for our interiority and that which is meaningful from the perspective of the socially iterable. Kelley finds reassurance in Hilary Putnam's recent re-thinking of philosophical realism, in which mind and world may be stitched together more thoroughly. But still more questions arise. Does the potential solipsism necessarily inherent in any aesthetic pleasure find a rapport, or a reciprocal production of meaning, with the empirical world? If Romanticism has a grasp upon the actual (to recall F.R. Leavis's famous indictment of Shelley) that is not merely weak, how do the actual and the pleasure of that aesthetic "grasp" signify to each other? These are the questions that I hope a brief consideration of Romanticism and philosophy in an historical age might open on to. The essays and counter-responses in this volume represent works in progress by Kelley and Pfau, and we invite our readers' input into their respective polemics.

It was Foucault, of course, who re-ignited interest in the question, "What is Enlightenment," and the questions, "what is maturity?" and "what is modernity?" followed quick on its heels. But Foucault knew that the "aesthetics of existence" is interrogated precisely in the service of establishing “an ontology of ourselves", and the historicist passage between them must comprehend also the minutiae of expression. We need to know now what a mature reading in this post-enlightenment age of deeply vexed modernity can possibly mean. The access so vital to the final Foucault is an exercise of oneself; and if thought is an activity that yields a "game of truth" by which one undergoes change, then surely an interrogation of the technical "games" of poetics may be said to speak to a vital aspect of human need. Kelley's close analysis of John Clare's poetry is an instructive instance in this regard.

If poetic cadence, for example, resonates-or more to the point, if what we believe about the allure of cadence is that it answers to a rhythm essentially held within us-then we are, it is true, treading on structuralist ground: poetics touches us at the level of resonance sounding deep within us. But determining the historicity of formalist norms (this is just one instance of a possible avenue of exploration) is still fecund scholarly ground. What seems to have needlessly polarized the academy, however, is the assumption that poetic resonance must be interpreted as either ideological or, alternatively, structural in an essentialist, naively psychologised manner. But again, how could a psychological resonance not be, at least in some manner, participation within a dominant norm? Or at least, in what arenas were such assumptions ever challenged? The genealogy of the ideological ground of aesthetic compulsion still needs to take account of an aesthetic history. In this volume, Pfau and Kelley respond to one another partly in the terms of such issues (a response follows each essay). They help us find a way into a cultural context that does not, as it were, forgive the text merely its social determinations on the one hand, or fetishize its historical contingencies on the other. In some respects, what they articulate about Romanticism is nothing less than the uses (variously conceived) of its pleasures.

This passage could most probably have been sourced from

a) A book written by Kelley and Pfau.
b) A debate on romanticism by Kelley and Pfau.
c) An article which talks about romanticism and culture, and views of different people like Pfau, Kelly on romanticism.
d) A prelude to a composition which links romanticism and philosophy in a historical age.
According to the author, Kelley and Pfau wanted to establish which of the following things:

A) Characterise the position of aesthetic within a judgement
B) How do the actual and the pleasure of that aesthetic "Grasp" signify to each other
C)The uses of the pleasures of Romanticism
D)The place of Affective experience in aesthetic judgement

a) A, B, C & D b) A, B & C c) A, B & D d) A & C
Why does the author use the statement “circus animals chasing our respective tails"

a) The author wants to emphasise that this is a problem played out consistently in the domain of pleasure.
b) The author wants to emphasise that we are facing a problem with a circular claim on the meaning of meaning.
c) The author wants to emphasise that this is a problem played out at least in the domain of affective responsiveness.
d) Both a and c together.
Which of the following is probably not true with respect to the passage?

a) Hilary Putnam supported Kelly’s Thought on aesthetics
b) There were some authors who were criticising Shelley’s thoughts
c) The author supports Kelly’s views of aesthetics position.
d) None of the above
What is the main reason for Poetic cadence dividing the academy?

a) Because Poetic cadence was interpreted as structural in an essentialist manner
b) Because It answered to a rhythm essentially within us.
c) Because it treaded on structuralist ground it was assumed to be structural in a naive manner
d) None of the above
Who reignited the question -"What is maturity?”

a) Kelly & Pfau in their book
b) Foucalt
c) John Clare
d) F.R. Leavis

PASSAGE 2

For the agent, however, reason is the heart of the matter. And the heart of the matter is the reason for the civitas, whether it is vocalized or not. What is at stake in what I do is the kind of person I become. What is at stake in what we do is the kind of city we inhabit. In both the individual and the social variation of that mantra, familiar from virtue ethics, every action is the conclusion of a practical syllogism; it carries with it an argument, and the argument underwrites both character and civitas. The relationship is circular: character forms and is formed by every action, and each action tends to confirm the character of the agent. And the city forms and is formed by the characters it contains. When Paine says that the long habit of not thinking a thing wrong creates the superficial impression of its being right, he brings to our attention the fact that the long habit of not thinking a thing wrong makes it unlikely that we will think to change it. The shape of the city, like the shape of character, is a counterweight to change. On the positive side, this makes cities and characters relatively stable; and it gives us some idea what to expect of them if we have been paying attention. On the negative side, this renders characters and cities largely impervious to reason. Time makes more converts than reason, but time also tends, for better or worse, to confirm reasons of the heart that reason cannot know. What passes as stability may simply be inertia.

Revolutionary theory turns on this question: is it stability or is it inertia? Either way, change is--and should be--difficult. For conservative theorists such as Burke, this translates into gradualism. The civitas changes in the manner of an organism, maturing in time and evolving across generations. Sudden change is the exception, not the rule. And, to a large extent, revolutionary theorists agree. Jefferson felt obliged to document a long pattern of abuse as justification for a single violent act. David Walker, writing with Jefferson in mind and partly in response to his Notes on the State of Virginia, followed the same pattern. Thoreau urged readers to let the ordinary friction of civil society pass and reserve disobedience for consistent affronts to human dignity. The African National Congress documented centuries of abuse before turning to armed resistance. Jefferson and Mao Zedong both asserted that every generation needed its own revolution, but, even so, they agreed that every revolution required reason. The whole world, for Jefferson, is a court before which the revolutionary has to make a case. That the New Left in the United States took up this Jeffersonian approach is reflected in its most simplified form by the chant "the whole world is watching" that framed demonstrations in Chicago in 1968. That the actions were (and are) called demonstrations suggests, at least, an audience and something to be demonstrated.
Both revolution and war are put forward as rhetorical strategies within an argument that involves the world as a whole. Drawing the whole world into every act of violence may partly explain why "local" wars and revolutions have escalated into global conflicts. But my point here is to focus on rhetorical strategy in the context of an argument. Thoreau was convinced that no act was rhetorically insignificant, and both Gandhi and King followed him in this. The most revolutionary act in Gandhi's account was spinning the thread with which to make the clothes one wore. And this is critical to civil disobedience as a rhetorical strategy.

One common thread in rational justifications for war and revolution is the documentation of violence and abuse against which war or revolution is a reaction. War and revolution are invariably depicted as last resorts: they are justified when there is nothing else to be done. This is hardly surprising, since the strongest argument demonstrates a necessary conclusion. If the conclusion is necessary, then disagreement with it is nonsensical.

In this regard, civil disobedience is a promising variation on a theme that includes the perpetual revolutions of Jefferson and Mao. Perpetual revolution suggests that no revolution is a conclusion: as a step in an argument, it can never be more than provisional. If resort to violence can be justified only by necessity, then it can never be justified. More to the point, it can never be more than provisionally justified. The rhetorical question (and, contrary to popular usage, there is no more important question to ask) is "what next?" Mao and Jefferson suspected that revolution led to revolution. As good revolutionaries, they went into this with their eyes open (at their best) and never let the revolutionary flame die down. In this regard, Tom Paine and Che Guevara were more consistent revolutionaries. But Thoreau was perhaps the most consistent revolutionary of all. Rather than fanning a revolutionary flame, he maintained that every act is part of a political argument. Compliance justifies the political context within which it takes place. Noncompliance undermines it. But while noncompliance undermines the political context within which it takes place, it implies another political context. Consciously and unconsciously, intentionally and unintentionally, it imagines and cultivates another political context. The constitution of the civitas is the ensemble of actions undertaken by those who inhabit it.

7. According to the author, what is the final outcome of a perpetual revolution included in civil disobedience

a) Perpetual revolution led to another revolution as it suggests that Revolution is not a conclusion.
b) The visualization and Nurturing of a new political framework.
c) Perpetual revolution led to another revolution as it suggests that Revolution can never be more than provisionally justified.
d) Both a & c

8. Which of the following examples, if true, closely parallels one of the arguments brought about in the first paragraph of the passage?

a) Sachin has never got out to a short ball. So he thinks he has the right technique to handle short balls and doesn’t want to change it.
b) Dhoni has never missed a stumping while keeping. So he believes that his stance while keeping is correct.
c) Murali has never been called for illegal action by umpires. So he doesn’t want to change his legal action now.
d) Dickie bird has never given a wrong decision. So he sees no reason in changing his decision making process.

9. With which of the following argument is the author non committal in the entire passage?

a) Revolution and war are put forward as rhetorical strategies within an argument
b) Sudden change is not a law but an exemption
c) Perpetual revolution is not a conclusion but a step in the argument
d) Local wars and revolutions escalating into global conflicts.

10. The following statements find support from the lines in the passage except

a) David Walker, a revolutionary like Jefferson agreed with the views of Jefferson
b) Thoreau, the most consistent revolutionary, urged people to reserve disobedience for consistent affronts to human dignity
c) Mao and Jefferson were good revolutionaries who never let the revolutionary flame die down.
d) Since war and revolution was deemed as a necessary conclusion to end violence and abuse disagreement with it was nonsensical.

PASSAGE 3

Writers’ invisibility has little or nothing to do with Fame, just as Fame has little or nothing to do with Literature. (Fame merits its capital F for its fickleness, Literature its capital L for its lastingness.) Thespians, celebrities and politicians, whose appetite for bottomless draughts of public acclaim, much of it manufactured, is beyond any normal measure, may feed hotly on Fame – but Fame is always a product of the present culture: topical and variable, hence ephemeral. Writers are made otherwise. What writers’ prize is simpler, quieter and more enduring than clamorous Fame: it is recognition. Fame, by and large, is an accountant’s category, tallied in Amazonian sales. Recognition, hushed and inherent in the silence of the page, is a reader’s category: its stealth is its wealth. And recognition itself can be fragile, a light too easily shuttered. Recall Henry James’s lamentation over his culminating New York Edition, with its considered revisions and invaluable prefaces: the mammoth work of a lifetime unheralded, unread, and unsold. That all this came to be munificently reversed is of no moment: the denizens of Parnassus are deaf to after-the-fact earthly notice; belatedness does them no good. Nothing is more poisonous to steady recognition than death: how often is a writer – lauded, fêted, bemedalled – plummeted into eclipse no more than a year or two after the final departure? Who nowadays speaks of Bernard Malamud, once a diadem in the grand American trinity of Bellow-Roth-Malamud? Who thinks of Lionel Trilling, except with dismissive commemorative contempt? Already Norman Mailer is a distant unregretted noise and William Styron a mote in the middle distance (a phrase the nearly forgotten Max Beerbohm applied to the fading Henry James). As for poor befuddled mystical Jack Kerouac and declamatory fiddle-strumming mystical Allen Ginsberg, both are diminished to Documents of an Era: the stale turf of social historians and tedious professors of cultural studies.
Yet these eruptions of sudden mufflings and posthumous silences must be ranked entirely apart from the forced muteness of living writers who work in minority languages, away from the klieg lights of the lingua franca, and whose oeuvres linger too often untranslated. The invisibility of recently dead writers is one thing, and can even, in certain cases (I would be pleased to name a few), bring relief; but the invisibility of the living is a different matter altogether, crucial to literary continuity. Political shunning – of writers who are made invisible, and also inaudible, by repressive design – results in what might be called public invisibility, rooted in external circumstance: the thuggish prejudices of gangsters who run rotted regimes, the vengeful prejudices of corrupt academics who propose intellectual boycotts, the shallow prejudices of the publishing lords of the currently dominant languages, and finally (reductio ad absurdum!) the ideologically narrow prejudices of some magazine editors. All these are rampant and scandalous and undermining of free expression. But what of an intrinsic, delicate and far more ubiquitous private invisibility?

Vladimir Nabokov was once an invisible writer suffering from three of these unhappy conditions: the public, the private, and the linguistic. As an émigré fleeing the Bolshevik upheavals, and later as a refugee from the Nazis, he escaped the 20th century’s two great tyrannies. And as an émigré writing in Russian in Berlin and Paris, he remained invisible to nearly all but his exiled compatriots. Only on his arrival in America did the marginalising term “émigré” begin to vanish, replaced first by citizen and ultimately by American writer – since it was in America that the invisible became invincible. But Brian Boyd, in his intimate yet panoramic biography, recounts the difficulties, even in welcoming America, of invisible ink’s turning visible – not only in the protracted struggle for the publication of Lolita, but in the most liberal of literary journals.

And here at last is the crux: writers are hidden beings. You have never met one – or, if you should ever believe you are seeing a writer, or having an argument with a writer, or listening to a talk by a writer, then you can be sure it is all a mistake. Inevitably, we are returned to Henry James, who long ago unriddled the conundrum of writers’ invisibility. In a story called “The Private Life”, Clare Vawdrey, a writer burdened by one of those peculiar Jamesian names (rhyming perhaps not accidentally with “tawdry”), is visible everywhere in every conceivable social situation. He is always available for a conversation or a stroll, always accessible, always pleasantly anecdotal, never remote or preoccupied. He has a light-minded bourgeois affability: “He talks, he circulates,” James’s narrator informs us, “he’s awfully popular, he flirts with you.” His work, as it happens, is the very opposite of his
visible character: it is steeped in unalloyed greatness. One evening, while Vawdrey is loitering outdoors on a terrace, exchanging banalities with a companion, the narrator steals into Vawdrey’s room – only to discover him seated at his writing table in the dark, feverishly driving his pen. Since it is physically impossible for a material body to be in two places simultaneously, the narrator concludes that the social Vawdrey is a phantom, while the writer working in the dark is the real Vawdrey. “One is the genius,” he explains, “the other’s the bourgeois, and it’s only the bourgeois whom we personally know.”

11. Which of the following is best exemplified by the character Vawdrey in the passage?

(a) Light-minded bourgeois affability.
(b) Vawdrey is the answer to the writers’ invisibility.
(c) The fact that a writer is the opposite of his perceptible character.
(d) The premise that the writer is an apparition.
(e) The truth that the writer is a brain.

12. According to the passage, the two tyrannies escaped by Nabokov were:

(a) That he was an invisible writer and suffered linguistic problems.
(b) That he fled from the Bolshevik revolution and the Nazi turmoil
(c) That he was welcomed in America but also suffered a rejection.
(d) That his invisibility extended to all and the fact that he wrote in Russian.
(e) That as he began as an émigré and was replaced gradually as an American writer.

13. What, according to the author, is the reason for the invisibility of the living?

a) It hampers literary continuity.
b) The living are shy of the arc lights.
c) Their work is not worthy of consideration.
d) The language is difficult to follow.
e) They are victims of parochialism.

14. The significance of admiration for writers is dissimilar from that of celebrities and politicians because

(a) Fame is transient.
(b) Fame offers immeasurable public approbation.
(c) Writers look for deeper recognition.
(d) Fame is clamorous.
(e) Furtiveness is what the writers prefer.

Solutions

TEST-RC 1

The best answer is B. The passage states each of the five well-know plant hormones ‘has more than one effect on the growth and development of plants” and that, for this reason, “they are not very useful in artificially controlling the growth of crops” .Choice A is not correct because the passage describes some of the functions performed by the hormone auxin. Choice E is consistent with information presented in the passage, but by emphasizing the specific effect hormone have at the cellular level rather than the multiplicity of effects they have on the entire plant, E fails to prove the reason stated in the passage that the five hormones are not useful in controlling the growth of crops. Neither C nor D is suggested by anything in the passage.
The best answer is D. According to the passage, “The pleiotropy of the five well-studies plant hormones is somewhat analogous to that of certain hormones in animals” .The example given involves certain hypothalamic hormones that “stimulate the anterior lobe of the pituitary gland to synthesize and release many different hormones, one of which stimulates the release of hormones from the adrenal cortex”. These hormones in turn “have specific effects on target organs all over the body”. This “hierarchy of hormones,” as the author calls it, “may also exist in plants” (line 35), where the five pleiotropic hormones may “function by activating the enzymes that release … more specific chemical messengers”. Thus, hypothalamic hormones in animals and the five major hormones in plants occupy a similar place in the respective organisms” hormonal hierarchy.
The best answer is A. The last paragraph characterizes oligosaccharins as “specific chemical messengers”. The passage indicates that these chemical messengers are “specific” in that, unlike the pleiotropic hormones, they are likely to have particular effects on particular plant cells. Choice A is correct because it is the only answer choice that describes an effect on a specific aspect of plant growth and development: stimulating a particular plant cell to become part of a plant’s root system. Choice B and C are incorrect because the last paragraph indicates that enzymes activate the release of oligosaccharins. Choice D is incorrect because, although oligosaccharins do affect the activity of the gene complement of a particular cell, they do not duplicate that complement. Choice E is incorrect because the second paragraph indicates that an oligosaccharin has a specific effect rather than multiple effects on plant cells.
The best answer is E. The second paragraph states that the five major plant hormones, including auxin, are pleiotropic and indicates that each pleiotropic hormone has “more than one effect on the growth and development of plants”. The effects of auxin are then listed in detail to provide an example of the different effects a pleiotropic hormone can have on a plant. Thus, the specific effects of auxin are mentioned to illustrate the concept of pleiotropy as it is exhibited by plant hormones. Choice C can be eliminated because the specific effects that auxin has on plant development are not discussed in the context of the hierarchy of hormones. Choice A, B, and D are incorrect because they cite topics that are not discussed in the passage.
The best answer is E. The first paragraph states that plant cells “differentiate and form structures” when a “complex system of chemical messengers” activates a “small subset of the genes in a particular kind of cell” .In the passage, the author elaborates on the hormonal system in plants by indicating that the pleiotropic plant hormones activate enzymes, which in turn release oligosaccharins-the “more specific chemical messengers”. The second paragraph indicated these specific chemical messengers have specific effects on plant development. Thus, the passage indicates that it is the oligosaccharins that directly influence the development of a plant cell by controlling the expression of a plant cell’s genes. Choices C and D are incorrect because the oligosaccharins are themselves specific chemical messengers and are not said to produce any hormones. The passage provides no information to support A or B.
The best answer is C. The passage states that because each pleiotropic hormone has so many different effects on a plant, pleiotropic hormones “are not very useful in artificially controlling the growth of crops”. In contrast, the passage indicates that oligosaccharins have specific effects on the growth and development of plants. Thus, in comparison to the pleiotropic hormones, oligosaccharins could potentially be effective in artificially controlling specific aspects of crop development. Choices A, B, D, and E can be eliminated because they describe functions that are not attributed in the passage either to the pleiotropic hormones or to oligosaccharins.
This question asks you to identify the primary concern of the passage. The best answer is C. According to the first paragraph, the passage is about two different assessments of Florence Nightingale’s career. The first paragraph summarizes one of these assessments; the second paragraph presents a contrasting account of Nightingale’s career that contradicts the central point of the first account. Choice A is incorrect. Although the passage discusses various aspects of Florence Nightingale’s involvement in the field of nursing, it does not mention any innovations that she introduced to that field. Choice B is not correct because the passage does not discuss approaches to the writing of historical biography. Choice D is also incorrect. Although the passage refers to the specific problems of military medicine during the Crimean War and to the poor living conditions of British soldiers after the war, the passage does not discuss the broader, more general issue of the quality of health care in nineteenth-century England. And choice E is not the answer because the passage does not mention the effects of the Crimean War on developments in health care.
This question asks you to identify a contribution that the editors of Nightingale’s letters attribute to her. The best answer is E. In the second paragraph, several of Nightingale’s post-war accomplishments that are highlighted by the editors of her letters are mentioned. In the passage, her contribution to the creation of an organization for monitoring the peacetime living conditions of British soldiers is mentioned as one of these. Choice A is not correct. The editors of Nightingale’s letters cite the relatively high death rate of British soldiers after the Crimean War, but they do not mention their survival rate during the war. Choice B is incorrect, because the passage does not provide any information about the curriculum of the nurses’ training hospital that Nightingale founded. Choice C is also not the correct answer. The passage does not mention women doctors, only women nurses. And choice D is incorrect because there is no indication in the passage that the nurse’s training hospital that Nightingale founded was at a university or that it was the first of its kind.
To answer this question, you must use information contained in the passage to infer something about Nightingale’s relationship with the British public of her day. The best answer is A. Lines refer to Nightingale’s “heroic reputation”; & to “nightingale’s place in the national pantheon”; and the para discusses her persuasiveness with the British government and her fund-raising successes. From this information it can be inferred that Nightingale was highly respected, as evidenced by both popular and governmental support for her projects. Choices B, C, and D are incorrect for the same reason: each one refers to an element of social or governmental opposition or resistance to Nightingale’s ideas, none of which is mentioned or suggested by the passage. Choice E is also incorrect. The information in the passage contradicts the notion that Nightingale was “quickly forgotten.” To the contrary, the passage discusses the “famous British nurse Florence Nightingale”, her “heroic reputation”, and her “place in the national pantheon” , as well as her “eminent place among the ranks of social pioneers” .
The question asks you to draw a conclusion about sanitary conditions in Britain after the Crimean War that is suggested, rather than stated expressly, in the passage. The best answer is D. In the second paragraph Nightingale’s efforts to reform sanitary conditions in Britain are illustrated by her response to the death rate among enlisted men in British barracks, which is described as unusually high relative to that of neighboring civilian populations. From this it can be inferred that sanitary conditions in the barracks were worse than in these civilian populations. Choices A, B and C are incorrect: in each, a comparison is made between sanitary conditions in post-war Britain and sanitary conditions elsewhere or at other times. However, because the passage provides no basis on which to make any of these comparisons, all three of these choices are incorrect. The passage does not mention sanitary conditions “in other parts of the world,” as in Choice A; “before the war,” as in choice B; or in “rural areas” as compared with “urban centers”, as in choice C. Choice E is also incorrect, because the passage provides no information about the general state of sanitary conditions “throughout England”.
This question asks you to select a statement about the two contrasting accounts of Nightingale’s importance with which the author of the passage would be most likely to agree. The best answer is C. In the last paragraph, the author concedes that “Nightingale may not have achieved all of her goals during the Crimean War.” This is consistent with Summers’ view that Nightingale’s importance during the war has been exaggerated ,but the author of the passage nonetheless describes Nightingale as a great social pioneer because of her vision and achievements. These achievements, which the second paragraph states occurred primarily after the Crimean War, apparently did not influence Summers’ interpretation of Nightingale’s importance. Given the author’s favorable assessment of Nightingale’s reputation, it is likely that the author would agree that Summers’ interpretation ignores this important evidence. Choice A is not the correct answer. Although, in the passage, the author concedes that Summers may be correct in her assessment of Nightingale’s wartime achievements, nothing is said in the passage about Summers’ discussion, if any, of Nightingale’s postwar influence or activities. Choice B is also incorrect. The passage cites the editors’ collection of Nightingale’s letters as evidence of Nightingale’s “brilliance and creativity.” In addition, in light of the author’s statement that Nightingale has earned “an eminent place among the ranks of social pioneers”,there is no reason to think the author would agree that the editors exaggerated Nightingale’s influence on later generations. Choice D is not the correct answer. In the last paragraph of the passage, the author refers to Nightingale’s letters as evidence of her “brilliance and creativity” ,and as the basis for a conclusion that Nightingale has earned “an eminent place among the ranks of social pioneers” .It is therefore highly unlikely that the author believes that the editors of these letters have “mistakenly propagated” outdated notions or impeded a balanced assessment of Nightingale’s role. Choice E is also incorrect. In the last paragraph of the passage, the author states that “the evidence of Nightingale’s letters supports continued respect for Nightingale’ brilliance and creativity.” Summers, on the other hand, seeks in her book to “debunk” Nightingale’s “heroic reputation”. Rather than supporting Summers’ conclusions about Nightingale, the evidence of Nightingale’s letters contradicts them.
The best answer is A. In the last paragraph of the passage, the author presents two examples of Nightingale’s “brilliance and creativity.” In the first of these, the author compares Nightingale to “a modern educator” for counseling a village schoolmaster to encourage children’s powers of observation. The fact that the author believes that this is evidence of Nightingale’s creativity suggests that it was unusual at that time to emphasize developing children’s ability to observe. Choice B is not the correct answer. Nightingale’s efforts to improve conditions in British military barracks are not cited as evidence of her creativity, nor is it suggested that Nightingale’s counseling a village schoolmaster, not enlisting schoolmasters’ help ;moreover, nothing in the passage suggests that educators had failed to enlist such help prior to the incident the author describes. Choice D is incorrect: although the author cites Nightingale’s contributions to the care of the needy , the passage does not suggest that no organized help for the needy existed before Nightingale began her work. And choice E is incorrect, because although Nightingale’s cost-accounting system is presented in the passage as having made a lasting contribution to the British Army’s medical services, the passage never suggests that before Nightingale the Army lacked a cost-accounting system.
This question asks you to identify the author’s primary concern in the last paragraph of the passage. The best answer is D. In the last paragraph, the author cites examples of Nightingale’s achievements to support the author’s conclusion that Nightingale’s achievements to support the Author’s conclusion that Nightingale is worthy of respect and has earned “an eminent place among the ranks of social pioneers” Choice A is incorrect. The third paragraph does not summarize the arguments presented in the first two paragraphs. Choice B is also not the correct answer: in the third paragraph, the author expresses essential agreement with the positive view of Nightingale’s career described in the second paragraph. Choice C is incorrect because in the last paragraph the author does not analyze the weakness of any evidence cited elsewhere in the passage. And choice E is not the correct answer because the author does not correct any factual errors in the two works under review.

Test-RC 2

Option (d)

The key to this question lies in the last 3 lines of the first paragraph

"These are the questions that I hope a brief consideration of Romanticism and philosophy in an historical age might open on to. The essays and counter-responses in this volume represent works in progress by Kelly and Pfau, and we invite our readers' input into their respective polemics."
Option (d)

The question asks about the opinions of Kelly and Pfau. In the first paragraph look at the line

"Both Pfau and Kelley are concerned to define the place of the aesthetic within a judgment " .Also the last line of last paragraph states that "In some respects, what they articulate about Romanticism is nothing less than the uses (variously conceived) of its pleasures"

These statements are brought in A) and C). Both B) and C) are the views of the author
Option (b)

Please look at these lines in the first paragraph “we end in circular claims about the meaning of meaning. We are not quite circus animals chasing our respective tails" .This clearly gives the answer to the question. All the other 3 options are junk answers.
Option (c)

Option (a) is wrong because of this line in the passage "Kelly finds reassurance in Hilary Putnam's recent re-thinking of philosophical realism"

Option (b) is wrong because of this line in the passage "This is partly the issue that Thomas Pfau takes up polemically."

This indicates that some people/ authors were against Pfau's thoughts.

Option (c) does not find support in the passage. Look at the line "But still more questions arise. Does the potential solipsism necessarily inherent in any aesthetic pleasure find a rapport, or a reciprocal production of meaning, with the empirical world? If Romanticism has a grasp upon the actual that is not merely weak, how do the actual and the pleasure of that aesthetic "grasp" signify to each other? "

It looks as if the author doesn’t fully agree with Kelly's thoughts.
Option (c) gives the perfect answer. The first reason is that poetic cadence treaded on structuralist ground which made many academicians to believe that it was structural.

Look at these lines "it is true, treading on structuralist ground:" and " is the assumption that poetic resonance must be interpreted as either ideological or, alternatively, structural in an essentialist, naively psychologised manner"

All the other answers are not complete.
Option (b). Direct question from the first para.
Option (b) Look at these lines from the last paragraph "civil disobedience is a promising variation on a theme that includes the perpetual revolutions " and "Consciously and unconsciously, intentionally and unintentionally, it imagines and cultivates another political context" The question is what is the final outcome of a perpetual revolution.It finally creates a new political context .

So answer (b) is correct. All the other answer options are the intermediate conclusions and not the final outcome.
Option (c) This question is with reference with the line "When Paine says that the long habit of not thinking a thing wrong creates the superficial impression of its being right, he brings to our attention the fact that the long habit of not thinking a thing wrong makes it unlikely that we will think to change it."

So there are 2 consequences of not thinking a thing wrong

1) You think you are right
2) You are unlikely to change

Murali thinks his action is legal and he doesn’t want to change .Only option c) illustrates both the consequences.
Option (d)

Look at this line in the passage "Drawing the whole world into every act of violence may partly explain why "local" wars and revolutions have escalated into global conflicts. But my point here is to focus on rhetorical strategy in the context of an argument." The author himself doesn’t want to comment on option (D) .Every other option is discussed in the passage by the author with examples.
Option (a)

The author doesn’t state anywhere that David walker is a revolutionary. The only thing the author states is "David Walker, writing with Jefferson in mind and partly in response to his Notes on the State of Virginia, followed the same pattern"
Option (c)

The last paragraph that talks about Vawdrey emphasizes the fact that the writer’s work is steeped in greatness and people get to know of only the outer layer, the real personality of the writers comes through only in their work. This is represented only in option (c). Option (a) talks only about one side of the writer’s character and hence cannot be the answer. Option (b) also talks about only one side of the character. Option (d) does not make any sense. Option (c) is the correct answer
Option (b)

The passage mentions that Nabokov escaped the 20th century’s greatest tyrannies which were the Bolshevik upheavals and the Nazi persecution.
Option (e)

Refer to para 3 where the author feels that the invisibility stems from varied prejudices.
Option (c)

Option (c) can be easily inferred from para 1.

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CAT and Other MBA Exams: Study Notes || VARC || Reading Comprehension - 1

TEST-READING COMPREHENSION 01

TEST-READING COMPREHENSION 01

TEST-READING COMPREHENSION 02

PASSAGE 1

PASSAGE 2

PASSAGE 3

Solutions

TEST-RC 1

Test-RC 2

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