Read the following passage and answer the questions that follow-
Parents all over Iceland’s capital Reykjavik embark on a two-hour evening walk around their neighbourhood every weekend, checking on youth hangouts as a 10 pm curfew approaches.The walk in Reykjavik is one step toward Iceland’s success into turning around a crisis in teenage drinking.Focusing on local participation and promoting more music and sports options for students, the island nation in the North Atlantic has dried up a teenage culture of drinking and smoking. Icelandic teenagers now have one of the lowest rates of substance abuse in Europe.The Icelandic Centre for Social Research and Analysis, the institute pioneering the project for the past two decades, says it currently advises 100 communities in 23 countries, from Finland to Chile, on cutting teenage substance abuse. “The key to success is to create healthy communities and by that get healthy individuals, ” said Inga Dora Sigfusdottir, a sociology professor who founded the Youth of Iceland programme, which now has rebranded as Planet Youth.The secret, she says, is to keep young people busy and parents engaged without talking much about drugs or alcohol. That stands in sharp contrast to other anti-abuse programmes which try to sway teenagers with school lectures and scary, disgusting ads showing smokers’ rotten lungs or eggs in a frying pan to represent an intoxicated brain.
“Telling teenagers not to use drugs can backlash and actually get them curious to try them,” Ms Sigfusdottir said. In 1999, when thousands of teenagers would gather in Reykjavik every weekend, surveys showed 56% of Icelandic 16-year-olds drank alcohol and about as many had tried smoking.
Years later, Iceland has the lowest rates for drinking and smoking among the 35 countries measured in the 2015 European School Survey Project on Alcohol and Other Drugs. On average, 80% of European 16-year-olds have tasted alcohol at least once, compared with 35% in Iceland, the only country where more than half of those students completely abstains from alcohol.
Denmark, another wealthy Nordic country, has the highest rates of teenage drinking, along with Greece, Hungary and the Czech Republic, where 92% to 96% have consumed alcohol. In the US, teen drinking is a significant health concern, because many US teenagers are driving cars and do not have access to good public transport like teenagers in Europe.
Reykjavik mayor Dagur B. Eggertsson said the Icelandic plan “is all about society giving better options” for teens than substance abuse. He believes the wide variety of opportunities that now keep students busy and inspired has dramatically altered the country’s youth culture. Local municipalities like Reykjavik have invested in sport halls, music schools and youth centres.To make the programmes widely available, parents are offered a 500 US dollar
annual voucher toward sports or music programmes for their children.

Researchers say the Planet Youth prevention model is evolving constantly because it is based on annual surveys to detect trends and measure policy effectiveness. By law, introduced when Icelandic police routinely dealt with alcohol-fuelled street gatherings, children under 12 are not allowed to be outside after 8pm without parents and those 13 to 16 not past 10pm. “We tell the kids if they are out too late, polite and nice, and then they go home,” said Heidar Atlason, a veteran member of the patrol. Over Iceland’s harsh winter, one parent admits, evenings sometimes pass without running into any students.

Teenage drinking in many countries like Denmark, Greece, Hungary, etc has been reported as

Directions : You have a passage with 10 questions. Read the passage carefully and choose the best answer to each question out of the four alternatives.

Long ago men spent most of their time looking for food. They ate anything they could find. Some lived mostly on plants. They ate the fruit, stems, and leaves of some plants and the roots of others. When food was scarce, they ate the bark of trees. If they were lucky, they would find a bird’s nest with eggs. People who lived near the water ate fish or anything that washed ashore, even rotten whales. Some people also ate insects and small animals like lizards that were easy to kill.

Later, men learned to make weapons. With weapons, they could kill larger animals for meat. These early people had big appetites. If they killed an animal, they would drink the blood, eat the meat, and chew the bones. When they finished the meal, there was nothing left.

At first men wandered from place to place to find their food. But when they began to grow plants, they stayed in one place and ate what they could grow. They tamed animals, trained them to work, and killed them for meat. Life was a little better then, but there was still not much variety in their meals. Day after day people ate the same food.

Gradually men began to travel greater distances. The explorers who sailed unknown seas found new lands. And in these lands they found new food and spices and took them back home.

The Portuguese who sailed around the stormy Cape of Good Hope to reach China took back “Chinese apples”, the fruit we call oranges today. Later, Portuguese colonists carried orange seeds to Brazil. From Brazil oranges were brought to California, the first place to grow oranges in the United States. Peaches and melons also came from China. So did a new drink, tea.

At first men wandered from place to place to find their food. Then some of them began to stay in one place. Why?

Read the following passage carefully and answer the given questions.
It is impossible for a well-educated, intellectual or brave man to make money the chief object of his thought, just as it is for him to make his dinner the principal object of them. All healthy people like their dinners, but their dinner is not the main object of their lives. So all healthy-minded people like making money-ought to like it, and to enjoy the sensation of winning it, but the main object of their life is not money, it is something better than money. A good soldier, for instance mainly wishes to do his fighting well. He is glad of his pay, very properly so, and justly grumbles when you keep him ten years without it - still his main notion of life is to win battles not to be paid for winning them. So of the doctor. They like fees, no doubt, ought to like them, yet if they are brave and well-educated, the entire object of their lives is not fees. They, on the whole, desire to cure the sick, and if they are good doctors, and the choice were fairly put to them, they would rather cure their patient, and lose the fees, than kill him and get it. And so with all other brave and rightly trained men, their work is first, their fees second - very important, no doubt, but still second. But in every nation, there are a vast number of people who are ill-educated, cowardly and stupid. And with these people, just as certainly the fee is first and work second, as with brave people the work is first and fee second.

The writer’s attitude towards people who prefer money to work is -

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Poverty can be defined as a social phenomenon in which a section of the society is unable to fulfil even its basic necessities of life. When a substantial segment of the society is deprived of the minimum level of living and continues at a bare subsistence level, that society is said to be plagued with mass poverty. The countries of the third world exhibit invariably the existence of mass poverty, although pockets of poverty exist even in the developed countries of Europe and America.

Attempts have been made in all societies to define poverty, but all of them are conditioned by the vision of minimum or good life obtaining in society. For instance, the concept of the poverty in the U.S.A. would be significantly different from that in India because the average man is able to afford a much higher level of living in the United States. There is an effort in all definitions of poverty to approach the average level of living in a society and as such these definitions reflect the coexistence of inequalities in a society and the extent to which different societies are prepared to tolerate them. For instance, inn India, the generally accepted definition of poverty emphasizes minimum level of living rather than a reasonable level of living. This attitude is borne out of a realization that it would not be possible to provide even a minimum quantum of basic needs for some decades and therefore, to talk about a reasonable level of living or good life may appear to be wishful thinking at the present stage. Thus, political considerations enter the definitions of poverty because programmes of alleviating poverty may become prohibitive as the vision of a good life widens.

What conditions the various attempts to define poverty?

Directions :Read the given passage carefully and answer the following questions. Certain parts have been highlighted to help answer the questions.
  Every year, around one million people die of mosquitoborne diseases according to the World Health Organization (WHO). This is why mosquitoes are considered one of the deadliest living creatures on the planet — not because they are lethal themselves, but because many of the viruses and parasites they transmit are
 In the absence of an effective vaccine for dengue fever, Zika fever, chikungunya and other mosquito-borne diseases, researchers have developed genetic strategies to reduce mosquito populations. One such strategy involves the release into the wild of genetically modified (GM) mosquitoes that express a lethal gene — a strategy believed to have little impact on the overall DNA of wild populations of mosquitoes
 The transfer of new genes from GM organisms to wild or domesticated non-GM populations is a key criticism of GM crops like soybean and corn. There are concerns that the introduction of GM genes into non-target species could have negative consequences for both human and environmental health.
 Oxitec, a company that spun out of research at Oxford University in the early 2000s, developed and trademarked GM Friendly™ mosquitoes (also known as strain OX513A of Aedes aegypti). These male GM mosquitoes have what the company describes as a “self-limiting” gene, which means that when these so-called friendly mosquitoes’ mate, their offspring inherit the self-limiting gene which is supposed to prevent them surviving into adulthood.
 In theory, when these mosquitoes are released in high numbers, a dramatic reduction in the mosquito population should follow. According to research published by Oxitec researchers in 2015, field trials involving recurring releases of Friendly™ mosquitoes demonstrated a reduction of nearly 95 per cent of target populations in Brazil. In these field trials, experiments were not performed to assess whether GM mosquitoes might persist in the wild.
 A recent study from the Powell lab at Yale University has since confirmed that some of the offspring of the GM mosquitoes didn’t succumb to the self-limiting lethal gene and survived to adulthood. They were able to breed with native mosquitoes and thereby introduce some of their genes into the wild population
 Meanwhile, the impact of mosquitoes carrying these new genes remains largely unknown. One significant worry is that a new breed of mosquito might emerge that is more difficult to control. These new genes could also potentially alter evolutionary pressures on viruses carried by mosquitoes, like dengue fever, in unpredictable ways. This includes potentially increasing their virulence or changing their host-insect interactions. These are hypothetical risks that have been raised by scientists, and reflect the need for further study.

Which of the following word is similar to deadliest as mentioned in the passage given?

Read the passage carefully and answer the question accordingly. 

One should consciously engage in activities that will nourish your soul. Just as we nourish the body, we need to nurture the soul to connect to the creative power of the universe and to manifest joy in our lives. Often, we forget to address the soul, lost as we are in a jungle of material and sensual pleasures. But the more you embrace what feeds your soul, the happier you become. So if you want to enjoy the abundance of life, engage in what enriches your soul. Nurturing the soul is all about finding calm amidst chaos. There are a number of practices that empower people towards this end including silent contemplation, various forms of meditation, yoga and tai chi However, the rigor and discipline involved in the pursuit of such practices often seems to discourage people. Add to this, the temptations of the material world that leave little time and motivation for anyone to pursue the spiritual path. Poet Walt Whitman declared: “Whatever satisfies the soul is truth”. The good news is that simple, everyday activities can also nutrify the soul — like spending time in the midst of nature, dancing in the rain or just putting thoughts on paper. Do whatever is calming and pleases you. Creative pursuits are particularly appealing as inside each one of us, there is an artist craving for release and awaiting an opportunity for expression. One of the ways to indulge the artist within is to get started with the practice of any one or more of the creative art forms such as music, singing, dancing, acting, drawing, painting, sculpting, poetry, fiction or essay writing. 

When you engage in such soul nourishing activities, all thought and energy gets focused toward goal accomplishment. At this point, you will find that even unknown forces of the universe are conniving to assist you in your amateurish but sincere attempts. As you progress, you are motivated to do better. You touch and access a faculty, a part of you that you never knew existed. Your inner artist is unleashed, baring the beauty of your soul that has found a fond medium of expression. For instance, a sculptor’s soul is seen in his artwork; a musician’s in his compositions; an actor’s in his acting, a painter’s in his paintings and so on. It is immaterial whether your effort is an immaculate artwork or just a clumsy attempt by a layperson. The idea is to try, be inspired and to create giving free rein to the mind. As Michelangelo remarked: “I saw the angel in the marble and carved until I set him free”!

According to the passage, what makes us really happy?

Read the given passage and answer the questions that follow.

Pollution befouls the air and poisons water. Pollution induces the release of toxicants into the biosphere which makes the air unsuitable for breathing, harms the quality of water and soil, and causes the emission of substances that may cause damage to humans, plants and animals.
To cater to the needs of an increasing population, agriculture has been intensified through the use of a wide spectrum of fertilizers and pesticides. Diverse industries have been set up to produce chemicals including those that pose a danger to all life forms.

Rapid industrialisation has led to deterioration in the quality of air. Widespread use of coal and fossil fuels in industries and petroleum fuel in motor vehicles has aggravated the air pollution problem. Our atmosphere seems to have become a waste basket into which dust, noxious fumes, toxic gases and other pollutants are callously thrown.

The intensity of air pollution in Indian cities is increasing primarily due to our vintage vehicles and their poor performance. Water pollution, too has increased with the growth of our population and also that of our industries. Water pollution has acquired dangerous dimensions ever since sewage and industrial effluents have started being disposed of into the rivers.

Once considered sacred, the rivers are now turning murky and stink. It is sad that almost three-fourths of our fellow citizens have no choice but to drink filthy water. The severely polluted rivers due to mindless dumping of sewage and industrial wastes are a cause for concern not only to us humans but also to myriads of life forms that exist in water.

On the French and Italian rivier as we can no longer see the sparkling blue waters. The Mediterranean Sea is reported to be turning grey. Rivers and canals pour sewage, detergents and industrial waste into the sea; tankers flush their contents near the river or sea; bottles, rotting garbage and oil slicks are washed into the beaches. The phosphates and nitrates applied to farmlands as inorganic fertilizers, concentrate in lakes and estuaries causing algal blooms due to which wide expanses of water get choked, plants rot, oxygen is used up and fish die.

Deterioration in the quality of air can mainly be attributed to

Read the passage carefully and give the answer of following questions.

Looking back on those days I see myself as a kind of centaur, half boy, half bike, forever wheeling down suburban streets under the poincianas, on my way to football practice or the library or to a meeting of the little group of us, girls and boys, that came together on someone's verandah in the evenings after tea.
I might come across the Professor then on his after dinner stroll; and as often as not, he would be accompanied by my father, who would stop me and demand (partly, I thought, to impress the Professor) where I was off to or where I had been; insisting, with more than his usual force, that I come home right away, with no argument I spent long hours cycling back and forth between our house and Ross McDowell or Jimmy Larwood's, my friends from school, and the Professor's house was always on the route, I was always aboard and waiting for something significant to occur, for life somehow to declare it self and catch me up I rode my bike in slow circles or figures-of-eight, took it for sprints across the gravel of the park, or simply hung motionless in the saddle, balanced and waiting.

The boy's constant bike riding reflects his