Para Jumbles & Completion, method + real CAT PYQs

Select the best sequence.
A. The age of pragmatism is here, whether we like it or not.
B. The staple rhetoric that was for so long dished out, also belongs to the bipolar world of yesterday.
C. The old equations, based on the cold war and on non-alignment no longer hold good.
D. But contrary to much of what is being said and written, it is a multipolar rather than unipolar world that appears to be emerging out of recent events.

• (1) ABCD
• (2) ACBD
• (3) ADBC
• (4) ADCB

Arrange A-D between 1 and 6.
1. Amount of published information available varies widely by industry.
A. Unfortunately for the researcher, many industries do not meet these criteria, and there may be little published information available.
B. Generally, the problem the researcher will face in using published data for analysing an economically meaningful industry is that they are too broad or too arranged to fit the industry.
C. However, it is always possible to gain some important information about an industry from published sources and these sources should be aggressively pursued.
D. Larger the industry, the older it is, and the slower the rate of technological change, better is the available published information.
6. If a researcher starts searching for data with this reality in mind, the uselessness of broad data will be better recognized and the tendency to give up will be avoided.

• (1) ACBD
• (2) CBAD
• (3) DACB
• (4) BDAC

Arrange A-D between 1 and 6.
1. The main source of power in industrial undertaking is electricity.
A. Electricity from water also requires enormous river valley projects involving huge expenditure.
B. In contrast, electricity from atomic power stations will result in a tremendous saving in expenditure.
C. Besides, the mineral resources of the world required for generation of electricity are being rapidly depleted.
D. But the production of electricity needs huge quantities of coal.
6. The installation of atomic plants will help in meeting the shortage of these resources.

• (1) ABDC
• (2) CBAD
• (3) DABC
• (4) BCAD

Arrange A-D between 1 and 6.
1. What does the state do in a country where tax is very low?
A. It tries to spy upon the taxpayers.
B. It investigates income sources and spending patterns.
C. Exactly what the tax authority tries to do now even if inconsistently.
D. It could also encourage people to denounce to the tax authorities any conspicuously prosperous neighbours who may be suspected of not paying their taxes properly.
6. The ultimate solution would be an Orwellian System.

• (1) BADC
• (2) DBAC
• (3) ABCD
• (4) DCBA

Arrange A-D between 1 and 6.
1. The New Economic Policy comprises the various policy measures and changes introduced since July 1991.
A. There is a common thread running through all these measures.
B. The objective is simple to improve the efficiency of the system.
C. The regulator mechanism involving multitude of controls has fragmented the capacity and reduced competition even in the private sector.
D. The thrust of the new policy is towards creating a more competitive environment as a means to improving the productivity and efficiency of the economy.
6. This is to be achieved by removing the barriers and restrictions on the entry and growth of firms.

• (1) DCAB
• (2) ABCD
• (3) BDAC
• (4) CDBA

Key in the correct sequence of five numbers.
(1) The process of handing down implies not a passive transfer, but some contestation in defining what exactly is to be handed down.
(2) Wherever Western scholars have worked on the Indian past, the selection is even more apparent and the inventing of a tradition much more recognizable.
(3) Every generation selects what it requires from the past and makes its innovations, some more than others.
(4) It is now a truism to say that traditions are not handed down unchanged, but are invented.
(5) Just as life has death as its opposite, so is tradition by default the opposite of innovation.

Key in the correct sequence of five numbers.
(1) Scientists have for the first time managed to edit genes in a human embryo to repair a genetic mutation, fuelling hopes that such procedures may one day be available outside laboratory conditions.
(2) The cardiac disease causes sudden death in otherwise healthy young athletes and affects about one in 500 people overall.
(3) Correcting the mutation in the gene would not only ensure that the child is healthy but also prevents transmission of the mutation to future generations.
(4) It is caused by a mutation in a particular gene and a child will suffer from the condition even if it inherits only one copy of the mutated gene.
(5) In results announced in Nature this week, scientists fixed a mutation that thickens the heart muscle, a condition called hypertrophic cardiomyopathy.

Key in the correct sequence of five numbers.
(1) The study suggests that the disease did not spread with such intensity, but that it may have driven human migrations across Europe and Asia.
(2) The oldest sample came from an individual who lived in southeast Russia about 5,000 years ago.
(3) The ages of the skeletons correspond to a time of mass exodus from today's Russia and Ukraine into western Europe and central Asia, suggesting that a pandemic could have driven these migrations.
(4) In the analysis of fragments of DNA from 101 Bronze Age skeletons for sequences from Yersinia pestis, the bacterium that causes the disease, seven tested positive.
(5) DNA from Bronze Age human skeletons indicate that the black plague could have emerged as early as 3,000 BCE, long before the epidemic that swept through Europe in the mid-1300s.

Key in the correct sequence of five numbers.
(1) This visual turn in social media has merely accentuated this announcing instinct of ours, enabling us with easy-to-create, easy-to-share, easy-to-store and easy-to-consume platforms, gadgets and apps.
(2) There is absolutely nothing new about us framing the vision of who we are or what we want, visually or otherwise, in our Facebook page, for example.
(3) Turning the pages of most family albums, which belong to a period well before the digital dissemination of self-created and self-curated moments and images, would reconfirm the basic instinct of documenting our presence in a particular space, on a significant occasion, with others who matter.
(4) We are empowered to book our faces and act as celebrities within the confinement of our respective friend lists, and communicate our activities, companionship and locations with minimal clicks and touches.
(5) What is unprecedented is not the desire to put out newsfeeds related to the self, but the ease with which this broadcast operation can now be executed, often provoking (un)anticipated responses from beyond one's immediate location.

Key in the correct sequence of four numbers.
(1) Impartiality and objectivity are fiendishly difficult concepts that can cause all sorts of injustices even if transparently implemented.
(2) It encourages us into bubbles of people we know and like, while blinding us to different perspectives, but the deeper problem of 'transparency' lies in the words "…and much more".
(3) Twitter's website says that "tweets you are likely to care about most will show up first in your timeline…based on accounts you interact with most, tweets you engage with, and much more."
(4) We are only told some of the basic principles, and we can't see the algorithm itself, making it hard for citizens to analyse the system sensibly or fairly or be convinced of its impartiality and objectivity.

Key in the correct sequence of four numbers.
(1) The woodland's canopy receives most of the sunlight that falls on the trees.
(2) Swifts do not confine themselves to woodlands, but hunt wherever there are insects in the air.
(3) With their streamlined bodies, swifts are agile flyers, ideally adapted to twisting and turning through the air as they chase flying insects - the creatures that form their staple diet.
(4) Hundreds of thousands of insects fly in the sunshine up above the canopy, some falling prey to swifts and swallows.

Key in the correct sequence of four numbers.
(1) It was his taxpayers who had to shell out as much as $1.6bn over 10 years to employees of failed companies.
(2) Companies in many countries routinely engage in such activities which means that the employees are left with unpaid entitlements.
(3) Deliberate and systematic liquidation of a company to avoid liabilities and then restarting the business is called phoenixing.
(4) The Australian Minister for Revenue and Services discovered in an audit that phoenixing had cost the Australian economy between $2.9bn and $5.1bn last year.

Key in the correct sequence of four numbers.
(1) Tensions and sometimes conflict remain an issue in and between the 11 states in South East Asia (Brunei Darussalam, Cambodia, Indonesia, Laos, Malaysia, Myanmar, the Philippines, Singapore, Thailand, Timor-Leste and Vietnam).
(2) China's rise as a regional military power and its claims in the South China Sea have become an increasingly pressing security concern for many South East Asian states.
(3) Since the 1990s, the security environment of South East Asia has seen both continuity and profound changes.
(4) These concerns cause states from outside the region to take an active interest in South East Asian security.

Key in the correct sequence of four numbers.
(1) Man has used poison for assassination purposes ever since the dawn of civilization, against individual enemies but also occasionally against armies.
(2) These dangers were soon recognized, and resulted in two international declarations, in 1874 in Brussels and in 1899 in the Hague, that prohibited the use of poisoned weapons.
(3) The foundation of microbiology by Louis Pasteur and Robert Koch offered new prospects for those interested in biological weapons because it allowed agents to be chosen and designed on a rational basis.
(4) Though treaties were all made in good faith, they contained no means of control, and so failed to prevent interested parties from developing and using biological weapons.

Key in the correct sequence of four numbers.
(1) It also has four movable auxiliary telescopes 1.8 m in diameter.
(2) Completed in 2006, the Very Large Telescope (VLT) has four reflecting telescopes, 8.2 m in diameter that can observe objects 4 billion times weaker than can normally be seen with the naked eye.
(3) This configuration enables one to distinguish an astronaut on the Moon.
(4) When these are combined with the large telescopes, they produce what is called interferometry: a simulation of the power of a mirror 16 m in diameter and the resolution of a telescope of 200 m.

Key in the correct sequence of four numbers.
(1) A popular response is the exhortation to plant more trees.
(2) It seems all but certain that global warming will go well above two degrees-quite how high no one knows yet.
(3) Burning them releases it, which is why the scale of forest fires in the Amazon basin last year garnered headlines.
(4) This is because trees sequester carbon by absorbing carbon dioxide.

Key in the correct sequence of four numbers.
(1) Look forward a few decades to an invention which can end the energy crisis, change the global economy and curb climate change at a stroke: commercial fusion power.
(2) To gain meaningful insights, logic has to be accompanied by asking probing questions of nature through controlled tests, precise observations and clever analysis.
(3) The greatest of all inventions is the über-invention that has provided the insights on which others depend: the modern scientific method.
(4) This invention is inconceivable without the scientific method; it will rest on the application of a diverse range of scientific insights, such as the process transforming hydrogen into helium to release huge amounts of energy.

Key in the correct sequence of four numbers.
(1) Businesses find automation, such as robotic employees, a big asset in terms of productivity and efficiency.
(2) But in recent years, robotics has had increasing impacts on unemployment, not just of manual labour, as computers are rapidly handling some white-collar and service-sector work.
(3) For years politicians have promised workers that they would bring back their jobs by clamping down on trade, offshoring and immigration.
(4) Economists, based on their research, say that the bigger threat to jobs now is not globalisation but automation.

Key in the correct sequence of four numbers.
(1) Fish skin collagen has excellent thermo-stability and tensile strength making it ideal for use as bandage that adheres to the skin and adjusts to body movements.
(2) Collagen, one of the main structural proteins in connective tissues in the human body, is well known for promoting skin regeneration.
(3) Diseases and bacteria that affect fish are different from most human pathogens, and fish skin is also a cheap and readily available material.
(4) The risk of introducing disease agents into other species through the use of pig and cow collagen proteins for wound healing has inhibited its broader applications in the medical field.

Key in the correct sequence of four numbers.
(1) The creative element in product design has become of paramount importance as it is one of the few ways a firm or industry can sustain a competitive advantage over its rivals.
(2) In fact, the creative element in the value of world industry would be larger still, if we added the contribution of the creative element in other industries, such as the design of tech accessories.
(3) The creative industry is receiving a lot of attention today as its growth rate is faster than that of the world economy as a whole.
(4) It is for this reason that today's trade issues are increasingly involving intellectual property, as Western countries have an interest in protecting their revenues along with freeing trade in non-tangibles.

Key in the correct sequence of four numbers.
(1) Some company leaders are basing their decisions on locating offices to foster innovation and growth, as their best-performing inventors suffered the greatest productivity losses when their commutes grew longer.
(2) Shorter commutes support innovation by giving employees more time in the office and greater opportunities for in-person collaboration, while removing the physical strain of a long commute.
(3) This is not always the case: remote work does not automatically lead to greater creativity and productivity as office water-cooler conversations are also very important for innovation.
(4) Some see the link between long commutes and productivity as support for work-from-home scenarios, as many workers have grown accustomed to their commute-free arrangements during the pandemic.

Key in the correct sequence of four numbers.
(1) Women may prioritise cooking because they feel they alone are responsible for mediating a toxic and unhealthy food system.
(2) Food is commonly framed through the lens of individual choice: you can choose to eat healthily.
(3) This is particularly so in a neoliberal context where the state has transferred the responsibility for food onto individual consumers.
(4) The individualised framing of choice appeals to a popular desire to experience agency, but draws away from the structural obstacles that stratify individual food choices.

Key in the correct sequence of four numbers.
(1) From chemical pollutants in the environment to the damming of rivers to invasive species transported through global trade and travel, every environmental issue is different and there is no single tech solution that can solve this crisis.
(2) Discourse on the threat of environmental collapse revolves around cutting down emissions, but biodiversity loss and ecosystem collapse are caused by myriad and diverse reasons.
(3) This would require legislation that recognises the rights of future generations and other species that allows the judiciary to uphold a much higher standard of environmental protection than currently possible.
(4) Clearly, our environmental crisis requires large political solutions, not minor technological ones, so, instead of focusing on infinite growth, we could consider a path of stable-state economies, while preserving markets and healthy competition.

Key in the correct sequence of four numbers.
(1) Various industrial sectors including retail, transit systems, enterprises, educational institutions, event organising, finance, travel, etc. have now started leveraging these beacons solutions to track and communicate with their customers.
(2) A beacon fixed on to a shop wall enables the retailer to assess the proximity of the customer, and come up with a much targeted or personalised communication like offers, discounts and combos on products in each shelf.
(3) Smart phones or other mobile devices can capture the beacon signals, and distance can be estimated by measuring the received signal strength.
(4) Beacons are tiny and inexpensive, micro-location-based technology devices that can send radio frequency signals and notify nearby Bluetooth devices of their presence and transmit information.

Key in the correct sequence of four numbers.
(1) If I wanted to sit indoors and read, or play Sonic the Hedgehog on a red-hot Sega Mega Drive, I would often be made to feel guilty about not going outside to "enjoy it while it lasts."
(2) My mum, quite reasonably, wanted me and my sister out of the house, in the sun.
(3) Tales of my mum's idyllic-sounding childhood in the Sussex countryside, where trees were climbed by 8 am and streams navigated by lunchtime, were passed down to us like folklore.
(4) To an introverted kid, that felt like a threat - and the feeling has stayed with me.

Key in the correct sequence of four numbers.
(1) The more we are able to accept that our achievements are largely out of our control, the easier it becomes to understand that our failures, and those of others, are too.
(2) But the raft of recent books about the limits of merit is an important correction to the arrogance of contemporary entitlement and an opportunity to reassert the importance of luck, or grace, in our thinking.
(3) Meritocracy as an organising principle is an inevitable function of a free society, as we are designed to see our achievements as worthy of reward.
(4) And that, in turn, should increase our humility and the respect with which we treat our fellow citizens, helping ultimately to build a more compassionate society.

Key in the correct sequence of four numbers.
(1) What precisely are the "unusual elements" that make a particular case so attractive to a certain kind of audience?
(2) It might be a particularly savage or unfathomable level of depravity, very often it has something to do with the precise amount of mystery involved.
(3) Unsolved, and perhaps unsolvable cases offer something that "ordinary" murder does not.
(4) Why are some crimes destined for perpetual re-examination and others locked into permanent obscurity?

Key in the correct sequence of four numbers.
(1) Algorithms hosted on the internet are accessed by many, so biases in AI models have resulted in much larger impact, adversely affecting far larger groups of people.
(2) Though "algorithmic bias" is the popular term, the foundation of such bias is not in algorithms, but in the data; algorithms are not biased, data is, as algorithms merely reflect persistent patterns that are present in the training data.
(3) Despite their widespread impact, it is relatively easier to fix AI biases than human-generated biases, as it is simpler to identify the former than to try to make people unlearn behaviors learnt over generations.
(4) The impact of biased decisions made by humans is localised and geographically confined, but with the advent of AI, the impact of such decisions is spread over a much wider scale.

Key in the correct sequence of four numbers.
(1) Centuries later formal learning is still mostly based on reading, even with the widespread use of other possible education-affecting technologies such as film, radio, and television.
(2) One of the immediate and recognisable impacts of the printing press was on how people learned; in the scribal culture it primarily involved listening, so memorisation was paramount.
(3) The transformation of learners from listeners to readers was a complex social and cultural phenomenon, and it was not until the industrial era that the concept of universal literacy took root.
(4) The printing press shifted the learning process, as listening and memorisation gradually gave way to reading and learning no longer required the presence of a mentor; it could be done privately.

Key in the correct sequence of four numbers.
(1) Veena Sahajwalla, a materials scientist at the University of New South Wales, believes there is a new way of solving this problem.
(2) Her vision is for automated drones and robots to pick out components, put them into a small furnace and smelt them at specific temperatures to extract the metals one by one before they are sent off to manufacturers for reuse.
(3) E-waste contains huge quantities of valuable metals, ceramics and plastics that could be salvaged and recycled, although currently not enough of it is.
(4) She plans to build microfactories that can tease apart the tangle of materials in mobile phones, computers and other e-waste.

Four sentences form a paragraph; key in the number of the odd one out.
(1) People who study children's language spend a lot of time watching how babies react to the speech they hear around them.
(2) They make films of adults and babies interacting, and examine them very carefully to see whether the babies show any signs of understanding what the adults say.
(3) They believe that babies begin to react to language from the very moment they are born.
(4) Sometimes the signs are very subtle, slight movements of the baby's eyes or the head or the hands.
(5) You'd never notice them if you were just sitting with the child, but by watching a recording over and over, you can spot them.

Four sentences form a paragraph; key in the number of the odd one out.
(1) The water that made up ancient lakes and perhaps an ocean was lost.
(2) Particles from the Sun collided with molecules in the atmosphere, knocking them into space or giving them an electric charge that caused them to be swept away by the solar wind.
(3) Most of the planet's remaining water is now frozen or buried, but clues over the past decade suggested that some liquid water, a presumed necessity for life, might survive in underground aquifers.
(4) Data from NASA's MAVEN orbiter show that solar storms stripped away most of Mars's once-thick atmosphere.
(5) A recent study reveals how Mars lost much of its early water, while another indicates that some liquid water remains.

Four sentences form a paragraph; key in the number of the odd one out.
(1) Although we are born with the gift of language, research shows that we are surprisingly unskilled when it comes to communicating with others.
(2) We must carefully orchestrate our speech if we want to achieve our goals and bring our dreams to fruition.
(3) We often choose our words without thought, oblivious of the emotional effects they can have on others.
(4) We talk more than we need to, ignoring the effect we are having on those listening to us.
(5) We listen poorly, without realizing it, and we often fail to pay attention to the subtle meanings conveyed by facial expressions, body gestures, and the tone and cadence of our voice.

Four sentences form a paragraph; key in the number of the odd one out.
(1) As India looks to increase the number of cities, our urban planning must factor in potential natural disasters and work out contingencies in advance.
(2) Authorities must revise data and upgrade infrastructure and mitigation plans even if their local area hasn't been visited by a natural calamity yet.
(3) Extreme temperatures, droughts, and forest fires have more than doubled since 1980.
(4) There is no denying the fact that our baseline normal weather is changing.
(5) It is no longer a question of whether we will be hit by nature's fury but rather when.

Four sentences form a paragraph; key in the number of the odd one out.
(1) There is a dark side to academic research, especially in India, and at its centre is the phenomenon of predatory journals.
(2) But in truth, as long as you pay, you can get anything published.
(3) In look and feel thus, they are exactly like any reputed journal.
(4) They claim to be indexed in the most influential databases, say they possess editorial boards that comprise top scientists and researchers, and claim to have a rigorous peer-review structure.
(5) But a large section of researchers and scientists across the world are at the receiving end of nothing short of an academic publishing scam.

In which blank (1, 2, 3 or 4) does this sentence best fit?
Sentence: Having made citizens more and less knowledgeable than their predecessors, the Internet has proved to be both a blessing and a curse.
Paragraph: Never before has a population, nearly all of whom has enjoyed at a least a secondary school education, been exposed to so much information, whether in newspapers and magazines or through YouTube, Google, and Facebook. ___(1)___. Yet, it is not clear that people today are more knowledgeable than their barely literate predecessors. Contemporary advances in technology offered more serious and inquisitive students access to realms of knowledge previously unimaginable and unavailable. ___(2)___. But such readily available knowledge leads many more students away from serious study, the reading of actual texts, and toward an inability to write effectively and grammatically. ___(3)___. It has let people choose sources that reinforce their opinions rather than encouraging them to question inherited beliefs. ___(4)___.

• (1) Option 1
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In which blank (1, 2, 3 or 4) does this sentence best fit?
Sentence: Easing the anxiety and pressure of having a "big day" is part of the appeal for many couples who marry in secret.
Paragraph: Wedding season is upon us and - after two years of Covid chaos that saw nuptials scaled back- you may think the temptation would be to go all out. ___(1)___. But instead of expanding the guest list, many couples are opting to have entirely secret ceremonies. With Covid case numbers remaining high and the cost of living crisis meaning that many couples are feeling the pinch, it's no wonder that some are less than eager to send out invites. ___(2)___. Plus, it can't hurt that in celebrity circles getting married in secret is all the rage. ___(3)___. "I would definitely say that secret weddings are becoming more common," says Landis Bejar, the founder of a therapy practice, which specialises in helping brides and grooms manage wedding stress. "People are looking for ways to get out of the spotlight and avoid the pomp and circumstance of weddings. ___(4)___. They just want to get to the part where they are married."

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In which blank (1, 2, 3 or 4) does this sentence best fit?
Sentence: This was years in the making but fast-tracked during the pandemic, when "people started being more mindful about their food," he explained.
Paragraph: For millennia, ghee has been a venerated staple of the subcontinental diet, but it fell out of favour a few decades ago when saturated fats were largely considered to be unhealthy. ___(1)___ But more recently, as the thinking around saturated fats is shifting globally, Indians are finding their own way back to this ingredient that is so integral to their cuisine. ____(2)____ For Karmakar, a renewed interest in ghee is emblematic of a return-to-basics movement in India. ____(3)____ This movement is also part of an overall trend towards "slow food". In keeping with the movement's philosophy, ghee can be produced locally (even at home) and has inextricable cultural ties. ____(4)____ At a basic level, ghee is a type of clarified butter believed to have originated in India as a way to preserve butter from going rancid in the hot climate.

• (1) Option 1
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In which blank (1, 2, 3 or 4) does this sentence best fit?
Sentence: Most were first-time users of a tablet and a digital app.
Paragraph: Aage Badhein's USP lies in the ethnographic research that constituted the foundation of its development process. Customisations based on learning directly from potential users were critical to making this self-paced app suitable for both a literate and non-literate audience. ____(1)____ The user interface caters to a Hindi-speaking audience who have minimal to no experience with digital services and devices. ____(2)____ The content and functionality of the app are suitable for a wide audience. This includes youth preparing for an independent role in life or a student ready to create a strong foundation of financial management early in her life. ____(3)____ Household members desirous of improving their family's financial strength to reach their aspirations can also benefit. We piloted Aage Badhein in early 2021 with over 400 women from rural areas. ____(4)____ The digital solution generated a large amount of interest in the communities.

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In which blank (1, 2, 3 or 4) does this sentence best fit?
Sentence: This has meant a lot of uncertainty around what a wide-scale return to office might look like in practice.
Paragraph: Bringing workers back to their desks has been a rocky road for employers and employees alike. The evolution of the pandemic has meant that best laid plans have often not materialised. __(1)__ The flow of workers back into offices has been more of a trickle than a steady stream. __(2)__ Yet while plenty of companies are still working through their new policies, some employees across the globe are now back at their desks, whether on a full-time or hybrid basis. __(3)__ That means we're beginning to get some clarity on what return-to-office means-what's working, as well as what has yet to be settled. __(4)__

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There is a sentence that is missing in the paragraph below. Look at the paragraph and decide where (option 1, 2, 3, or 4) the following sentence would best fit.

Sentence: Comprehending a wide range of emotions, Renaissance music nevertheless portrayed all emotions in a balanced and moderate fashion.

Paragraph: A volume of translated Italian madrigals were published in London during the year of 1588. This sudden public interest facilitated a surge of English Madrigal writing as well as a spurt of other secular music writing and publication. ___(1)___ This music boom lasted for thirty years and was as much a golden age of music as British literature was with Shakespeare and Queen Elizabeth I. ___(2)___ The rebirth in both literature and music originated in Italy and migrated to England; the English madrigal became more humorous and lighter in England as compared to Italy. Renaissance music was mostly polyphonic in texture. ___(3)___ Extreme use of and contrasts in dynamics, rhythm, and tone colour do not occur. ___(4)___ The rhythms in Renaissance music tend to have a smooth, soft flow instead of a sharp, well-defined pulse of accents.

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There is a sentence that is missing in the paragraph below. Look at the paragraph and decide where (option 1, 2, 3, or 4) the following sentence would best fit.

Sentence: Understanding central Asia's role helps developments make more sense not only across Asia but in Europe, the Americas and Africa.

Paragraph: The nations of the Silk Roads are sometimes called 'developing countries', but they are actually some of the world's most highly developed countries, the very crossroads of civilization, in advanced states of disrepair. ___(1)___ These countries lie at the centre of global affairs: they have since the beginning of history. Running across the spine of Asia, they form a web of connections fanning out in every direction, routes along which pilgrims and warriors, nomads and merchants have travelled, goods and produce have been bought and sold, and ideas exchanged, adapted and refined. ___(2)___ They have carried not only prosperity, but also death and violence, disease and disaster. ___(3)___ The Silk Roads are the world's central nervous system, connecting otherwise far-flung peoples and places. ___(4)___ It allows us to see patterns and links, causes and effects that remain invisible if one looks only at Europe, or North America.

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There is a sentence that is missing in the paragraph below. Look at the paragraph and decide where (option 1, 2, 3, or 4) the following sentence would best fit.

Sentence: The brain isn't organized the way you might set up your home office or bathroom medicine cabinet.

Paragraph: ___(1)___ You can't just put things anywhere you want to. The evolved architecture of the brain is haphazard and disjointed, and incorporates multiple systems, each of which has a mind of its own. ___(2)___ Evolution doesn't design things and it doesn't build systems-it settles on systems that, historically, conveyed a survival benefit. There is no overarching, grand planner engineering the systems so that they work harmoniously together. ___(3)___ The brain is more like a big, old house with piecemeal renovations done on every floor, and less like new construction. ___(4)___

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There is a sentence that is missing in the paragraph below. Look at the paragraph and decide where (option 1, 2, 3, or 4) the following sentence would best fit.

Sentence: Science has officially crowned us superior to our early-rising brethren.

Paragraph: My fellow night owls, grab a strong cup of coffee and gather around: I have great news. ___(1)___ For a long time, our kind has been unfairly maligned. Stereotyped as lazy and undisciplined. Told we ought to be morning larks. Advised to go to bed early so we can wake before 5am and run a marathon before breakfast like all high-flyers seem to do. Now, however, we are having the last laugh. ___(2)___ It may be a tad more complicated than that. A study published last week, which you may have already seen while scrolling at 1am, suggests that staying up late could be good for brain power. ___(3)___ Is this study a thinly veiled PR exercise conducted by a caffeine-pill company? Nope, it's legit. ___(4)___ Research led by academics at Imperial College London studied data on more than 26,000 people and found that 'self-declared night owls' generally tend to have higher cognitive scores'.

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There is a sentence that is missing in the paragraph below. Look at the paragraph and decide where (option 1, 2, 3, or 4) the following sentence would best fit.

Sentence: [T]he Europeans did not invent globalization.

Paragraph: The first phase of globalization occurred long before the introduction of either steam or electric power. Chinese consumers at all social levels consumed vast quantities of spices, fragrant woods and unusual plants. The peoples of Southeast Asia who lived in forests gave up their traditional livelihoods and completely reoriented their economies to supply Chinese consumers. ___(1)___ These exchanges of the year 1000 opened some of the routes through which goods and peoples continued to travel after Columbus traversed the mid-Atlantic. ___(2)___ Yet the world of 1000 differed from that of 1492 in important ways. The travellers who encountered one another in the year 1000 were much closer technologically. ___(3)___ They changed and augmented what was already there since 1000. ___(4)___ If globalization hadn't yet begun, Europeans wouldn't have been able to penetrate the markets in so many places as quickly as they did after 1492.

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There is a sentence that is missing in the paragraph below. Look at the paragraph and decide where (option 1, 2, 3, or 4) the following sentence would best fit.

Sentence: This reality is putting stress on employees who have to pay for transport, desk lunches, more childcare, clothing and that after-work socialisation - costs they haven't incurred for nearly two years.

Paragraph: ___(1)___ Prices are rising at their fastest rate in 40 years; consequently, return-to-office-related costs have shot up - think petrol and food, for instance. ___(2)___ Yet wages haven't kept up with inflation - even despite the salary growth many workers have enjoyed during a favourable pandemic labour market. ___(3)___ This is especially jarring for workers who were able to save during remote work, when these expenditures weren't a factor. ___(4)___ In April 2022, Umus, a London university lecturer, told BBC Worklife that they were spending nearly a quarter of what they made every day on return-to-work costs.

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There is a sentence that is missing in the paragraph below. Look at the paragraph and decide where (option 1, 2, 3, or 4) the following sentence would best fit.

Sentence: Many have had to leave their homes behind, with more than 1.3 million people being displaced due to the drought.

Paragraph: Somalia has been dealing with an enormous humanitarian catastrophe, driven by the longest and most severe drought the country has experienced in at least 40 years. ___(1)___ Five consecutive rainy seasons have failed, causing more than 8 million people - almost half of the country's population - to experience acute food insecurity. ___(2)___ More than 43,000 people are believed to have lost their lives, with half of the lives lost likely being children under five. The damage the drought has caused is far-reaching. ___(3)___ Farmers have lost all their agricultural income, while pastoralists have lost more than 3 million livestock, impoverishing entire communities, and leaving them on the brink of famine. ___(4)___ Some, like the pastoralists, may never be able to go back as their livelihoods have been irreversibly wiped out.

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There is a sentence that is missing in the paragraph below. Look at the paragraph and decide where (option 1, 2, 3, or 4) the following sentence would best fit.

Sentence: Taken outside the village of Trang Bang on June 8, 1972, the picture captured the trauma and indiscriminate violence of a conflict that claimed, by some estimates, a million or more civilian lives.

Paragraph: The horrifying photograph of children fleeing a deadly napalm attack has become a defining image not only of the Vietnam War but the 20th century. ___(1)___ Dark smoke billowing behind them, the young subjects' faces are painted with a mixture of terror, pain and confusion. ___(2)___ Soldiers from the South Vietnamese Army's 25th Division follow helplessly behind. ___(3)___ The picture was officially titled "The Terror of War," but the photo is better known by the nickname given to the naked 9-year-old at its centre: "Napalm Girl". ___(4)___

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There is a sentence that is missing in the paragraph below. Look at the paragraph and decide where (option 1, 2, 3, or 4) the following sentence would best fit.

Sentence: "Everything is old-world, traditional techniques from Mexico," Ava emphasizes.

Paragraph: The sisters embrace the ways their great-grandfather built and repaired instruments. ___(1)___ When crafting a Mexican guitarron used in mariachi music, they use tacote wood for the top of the instrument. Once the wood is cut, they carve the neck and heel from a single block using tools like hand saws, chisels and sandpaper rather than modern power tools, and believe that this traditional method improves the tone of the instrument. ___(2)___ Their store has a three-year waitlist for instruments that take months to create. ___(3)___ The family's artisanship has attracted stars like Los Lobos, who own custom guitars made by all three generations of the Delgado family. ___(4)___ For the sisters, involvement in the family business started at an early age.

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There is a sentence that is missing in the paragraph below. Look at the paragraph and decide where (option 1, 2, 3, or 4) the following sentence would best fit.

Sentence: Historically, silver has been, and still is, an important element in the business of 'show' visible in private houses, churches, government and diplomacy.

Paragraph: ___(1)___ Timothy Schroder put it succinctly in suggesting that electric light and eating in the kitchen eroded this need. As he explained to the author, 'Silver, when illuminated by flickering candlelight, comes alive and almost dances before the eyes, but when lit by electric light it becomes flat and dead.' ___(2)___ Domestic and economic changes may have worked against the market, but the London silver trade remained buoyant, thanks to the competition of collectors seeking grand display silver at the top end, and the buyers of 'collectables', like spoons and wine labels and 'novelties', at the bottom. ___(3)___ Another factor that came into play was the systematic collection building of certain American museums over the period. Boston, Huntington Art Gallery and Williamsburg, among others, were largely supplied by London dealers. ___(4)___

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There is a sentence that is missing in the paragraph below. Look at the paragraph and decide where (option 1, 2, 3, or 4) the following sentence would best fit.

Sentence: While taste relates to judgment, taste retains vital links to pleasure, embodiment, and personal specificity often elided in post-Kantian ideas about judgment.

Paragraph: ___(1)___ Denneny focused on taste rather than judgment to highlight a crucial but neglected historical change. ___(2)___ Over the seventeenth-eighteenth centuries, across Western Europe, the word taste took on new meaning, becoming central to aesthetic and ethical thinking. ___(3)___ Tracing taste history in Spanish, French, and British theory recovers compelling but neglected thinkers. ___(4)___

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There is a sentence that is missing in the paragraph below. Look at the paragraph and decide where (option 1, 2, 3, or 4) the following sentence would best fit.

Sentence: Western customers found it hard believing Dhaka muslin was human-made; rumors claimed mermaids, fairies, even ghosts wove it.

Paragraph: Once upon the silty Meghna banks, a miracle spun-fabric so light called 'baft-hawa,' woven air. This was Dhaka Muslin. ___(1)___ Handspun from rare Phuti Karpas cotton, woven with 16-step sacred ritual. ___(2)___ Every spring, maple-like leaves produced daffodil-yellow flowers yielding snowy cotton. ___(3)___ Spun at dawn by young women, threads were so fine the elderly barely saw them. ___(4)___

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The four sentences (labelled 1, 2, 3 and 4) given below, when properly sequenced, would yield a coherent paragraph. Decide on the proper sequence of the order of the sentences and key in this sequence of four numbers as your answer.
(1) When I ask the distinguished LGBTQ activist and writer Cherie Moraga whether she uses Latinx to refer to herself, she tells me, 'I worked too hard for the "a" in Latina to give it up! I refer to myself as Xicana.'
(2) Of our accumulated ethnic population, only a third use Hispanic to identify themselves, a mere 14 percent use Latino, and less than 2 percent recognize Latinx.
(3) They have done this, although gender in languages is grammatical, not sociological or sexual, and found in linguistic families throughout the world, from French to Russian to Japanese.
(4) More recently, activists seeking to render our name gender neutral, out of respect for our LGBTQ members, have devised yet another name for us: Latinx.

There is a sentence that is missing in the paragraph below. Look at the paragraph and decide where (option 1, 2, 3, or 4) the following sentence would best fit.

Sentence: In each of the affected males, the genetic defect was located to the X chromosome in the region of p11-12.

Paragraph: The first suggested evidence of a human genetic mutation associated with aggressive behaviour came from a study in 1993. ___(1)___ Genetic and metabolic studies were conducted on a large Dutch family in which several of the males has a syndrome of borderline mental retardation and abnormal behaviour. ___(2)___ The undesirable behaviour included impulsive aggression, arson and exhibitionism. ___(3)___ A point mutation was identified in the eighth exon of the monoamine oxidase A (MAOA) structural gene which changes glutamine to a termination codon. ___(4)___

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There is a sentence that is missing in the paragraph below. Look at the paragraph and decide where (option 1, 2, 3, or 4) the following sentence would best fit.

Sentence: Productivity gains, once expected to feed through to broader living standards, now primarily serve to enhance returns to wealth.

Paragraph: Economists now argue that inequality is no longer a by-product of growth but a condition of it. ___(1)___ Unlike wages, wealth reflects not just income but also access to assets, favourable institutional conditions - such as low interest rates - and public policies like low taxes and housing shortages. ___(2)___ In other words, wealth depends on political choices in ways that income currently does not. It's not just the inequality itself that is the issue but the erosion of mechanisms that once constrained it. ___(3)___ Wealth and income inequality are linked, but where wages have stagnated and collective bargaining has weakened, capital income - derived from profits, rents and interest - has been boosted by design. ___(4)___

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The four sentences (labelled 1, 2, 3 and 4) given below, when properly sequenced, would yield a coherent paragraph. Decide on the proper sequence of the order of the sentences and key in this sequence of four numbers as your answer.
(1) The effigy of a candidate establishes a personal link between him and the voters; the candidate does not only offer a programme for judgement, he suggests a physical climate, a set of daily choices expressed in a morphology, a way of dressing, a posture.
(2) Some candidates for Parliament adorn their electoral prospectus with a portrait; this presupposes that photography has a power to convert which must be analysed.
(3) Inasmuch as photography is an ellipse of language and a condensation of an 'ineffable' social whole, it constitutes an anti-intellectual weapon and tends to spirit away 'politics' (that is to say a body of problems and solutions) to the advantage of a 'manner of being', a socio-moral status.
(4) Photography tends to restore the paternalistic nature of elections, whose elitist essence has been disrupted by proportional representation and the rule of parties (the Right seems to use it more than the Left).