Verbal Section-Test 1

Directions: For the given question, select one entry for the blank from the given choices, to best complete the text.

For as long as the culture of business has been an integral part of American life, it has also been frowned upon by important sectors of our society. Among our intellectuals especially, the business world has been the subject of many __________, portraying corporations large and small, and the people who run them, as heartless, soulless agents of greed. Not to be left behind, the Church has called them (the corporations) the agents of devil.

Which of the following, if true, would most strengthen the premise that viruses have evolved from bacteria?

Directions: Answer the given question based on the following passage:

One of the theories that have been under the serious consideration of the scientists and immunologists is that viruses have evolved from bacteria. Although viruses do not exist in fossilized form, and all our knowledge about the life form comes only from what we have come to know of them in the twentieth century, the view is not without merit. The bacteria origin theory, which states that the viruses evolved from bacteria that did not need to survive outside the host cell, and hence lost much of the genetic material needed for the same,  fills in some of the unexplained blanks in human knowledge.  Another theory states that viruses may have evolved from the ‘escaped bits and pieces of’ the DNA and the RNA of larger organisms.
Once a virus attaches itself to a specific molecule on the surface of the host cell, it penetrates the host cell by fusing with it or by another technique called endocytosis. Since a virus needs specific molecules to attach itself to, it means that its host selection is very specific. Once inside the host cell, the virus loses its capsid, or the outer shell, either by self generated enzymes or by enzymes secreted by the host and exposes its core viral nucleic acid. Since living cells produce all the necessary proteins from the various amino acids that are a part of the food supply, viruses take the host cell hostage and force it to synthesize proteins that the host cell does not need. Once synthesized, these new proteins come together later to form new virus cells. Once an army of invasive viruses is ready, enzymes produced by them usually burst the cell wall of the host cell, and the viruses release themselves into the body of the organism. Usually, the host cell death in cases of infections takes place by a process called apoptosis or cell suicide in which the phagocytic bodies produced by the immune system of the host organism are able to engulf the fragments of the host cell before the damage spreads to surrounding cells. However, some cells seemingly remain healthy and carry latent viruses and show few or no signs of infection for months or even years.

How are the two paragraphs related to each other?

Directions: Answer the given question based on the following passage:

Family support could not always be counted upon for providing sustenance to people who had lived too long and had exhausted their life savings. Up until a few centuries ago, societies had not evolved enough to handle the issue of citizens that had grown to be a liability for them. The sick, the needy, and the destitute would be dependent upon various religious organizations, the sympathy of the neighbors and the largesse of those who wanted an easy passage into the next life. In some ancient civilizations there existed an elementary form of social security in which individuals, known to each other, would come together to form a kind of a mutual fund wherein each member would contribute a fixed weekly amount in a common pool of resources. The resources thus collected would be used to pay for the burial expenses of the members of the informal trust, or, in case of the member living beyond working age, cover part of his living expenses.
Modern actuarial science did not have its genesis till late in the seventeenth century when the first life table, or the pattern of predictability of the life span, of the members of a cohort was first devised. Insurance companies used the table to find out the financial feasibility and the costs of insuring different cohorts. Today, the field is ranked among the top three most valuable fields for humanity. Though initial application was more or less limited to insurance companies, today the science finds application in the business of governance as well. Today, using an amalgam of various disciplines such as economics, mathematics, probabilities and statistics, actuarial sciences help in predicting consumer behavior, asset management, and many other fields.

Increase in errors in our weather computing patterns is most parallel to which of the following:

Directions: Answer the given question based on the following passage:

Numerical weather prediction was a field initiated by Lewis Richardson in 1920s to forecast weather prediction. However, with the calculation of the weather pattern of one day took him more than fifteen weeks of preparation! It was in the 1950s, after the development of supercomputers, that the science of numerical weather prediction gained ground. With technology evolving at breakneck speed, the more powerful supercomputers are now able to compute millions of inputs and datasets to further increase the odds of weather prediction. However, because the formulae used in such calculations have innate imperfections, the errors resulting from the increasing inputs and datasets also grow along with our knowledge of the weather patterns.
Atmosphere is always in a state of flux, and that, in itself lengthens the odds of weather predictions being spot on. The atmospheric predictions are based upon a process that takes a sample of the fluid and by using thermodynamics equations, fluid dynamics, and millions of databases, estimates the state of the fluid at a time in the future. Since the sample of the fluid is taken as, but mathematically is not, the perfect representative of the state of the entire fluid, the long shot becomes an even longer shot.

In the context in which it appears, “largesse” in sentence 3 most nearly means

Directions: Answer the given question based on the following passage:

Family support could not always be counted upon for providing sustenance to people who had lived too long and had exhausted their life savings. Up until a few centuries ago, societies had not evolved enough to handle the issue of citizens that had grown to be a liability for them. The sick, the needy, and the destitute would be dependent upon various religious organizations, the sympathy of the neighbors and the largesse of those who wanted an easy passage into the next life. In some ancient civilizations there existed an elementary form of social security in which individuals, known to each other, would come together to form a kind of a mutual fund wherein each member would contribute a fixed weekly amount in a common pool of resources. The resources thus collected would be used to pay for the burial expenses of the members of the informal trust, or, in case of the member living beyond working age, cover part of his living expenses.
Modern actuarial science did not have its genesis till late in the seventeenth century when the first life table, or the pattern of predictability of the life span, of the members of a cohort was first devised. Insurance companies used the table to find out the financial feasibility and the costs of insuring different cohorts. Today, the field is ranked among the top three most valuable fields for humanity. Though initial application was more or less limited to insurance companies, today the science finds application in the business of governance as well. Today, using an amalgam of various disciplines such as economics, mathematics, probabilities and statistics, actuarial sciences help in predicting consumer behavior, asset management, and many other fields.

All of the following can be inferred about the reproduction of viruses from the passage, except:

Directions: Answer the given question based on the following passage:

One of the theories that have been under the serious consideration of the scientists and immunologists is that viruses have evolved from bacteria. Although viruses do not exist in fossilized form, and all our knowledge about the life form comes only from what we have come to know of them in the twentieth century, the view is not without merit. The bacteria origin theory, which states that the viruses evolved from bacteria that did not need to survive outside the host cell, and hence lost much of the genetic material needed for the same,  fills in some of the unexplained blanks in human knowledge.  Another theory states that viruses may have evolved from the ‘escaped bits and pieces of’ the DNA and the RNA of larger organisms.
Once a virus attaches itself to a specific molecule on the surface of the host cell, it penetrates the host cell by fusing with it or by another technique called endocytosis. Since a virus needs specific molecules to attach itself to, it means that its host selection is very specific. Once inside the host cell, the virus loses its capsid, or the outer shell, either by self generated enzymes or by enzymes secreted by the host and exposes its core viral nucleic acid. Since living cells produce all the necessary proteins from the various amino acids that are a part of the food supply, viruses take the host cell hostage and force it to synthesize proteins that the host cell does not need. Once synthesized, these new proteins come together later to form new virus cells. Once an army of invasive viruses is ready, enzymes produced by them usually burst the cell wall of the host cell, and the viruses release themselves into the body of the organism. Usually, the host cell death in cases of infections takes place by a process called apoptosis or cell suicide in which the phagocytic bodies produced by the immune system of the host organism are able to engulf the fragments of the host cell before the damage spreads to surrounding cells. However, some cells seemingly remain healthy and carry latent viruses and show few or no signs of infection for months or even years.

In the passage given, the two portions in boldface play which of the following roles?

Directions: Answer the given question based on the following passage:

Numerical weather prediction was a field initiated by Lewis Richardson in 1920s to forecast weather prediction. However, with the calculation of the weather pattern of one day took him more than fifteen weeks of preparation! It was in the 1950s, after the development of supercomputers, that the science of numerical weather prediction gained ground. With technology evolving at breakneck speed, the more powerful supercomputers are now able to compute millions of inputs and datasets to further increase the odds of weather prediction. However, because the formulae used in such calculations have innate imperfections, the errors resulting from the increasing inputs and datasets also grow along with our knowledge of the weather patterns.
Atmosphere is always in a state of flux, and that, in itself lengthens the odds of weather predictions being spot on. The atmospheric predictions are based upon a process that takes a sample of the fluid and by using thermodynamics equations, fluid dynamics, and millions of databases, estimates the state of the fluid at a time in the future. Since the sample of the fluid is taken as, but mathematically is not, the perfect representative of the state of the entire fluid, the long shot becomes an even longer shot.

Which of the following is a necessary assumption in the argument above?

Directions: Answer the given question based on the following passage:

Since it was founded in 1996, Al- Jazeera, the Arabic news channel operating out of Doha, has grown by leaps and bounds. The reasons for its success are not hard to find, the fact that it has been pretty much unbiased in its reporting has boosted its credibility among viewers across the globe. Its pro-democracy postulations earned it plaudits in the democratic world, but made some very powerful people in the Middle East its enemies too. Now with the democracy wave in the Middle East having crested, and Al- Jazeera’s success having spawned many other look-alike channels, it is certain that Al-Jazeera’s influence in the Middle East will see a decline.