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

You have eight brief passages with 10 questions following each passage. Read the passages carefully and choose the best answer to each question out of the four alternatives 

Time was when people looked heavenward and prayed, “Ye Gods, give us rain, keep drought away.” Today there are those who pray. “Give us rain, keep El Nino away.” 

El Nino and its atmospheric equivalent, called the Southern Oscillation, are together referred to as ENSO, and are household words today. Meteorologists recognize it as often being responsible for natural disaster worldwide. But this wisdom dawned only after countries suffered, first from the lack of knowledge, and then from the lack of coordination between policy making and the advances in scientific knowledge. 

Put simply, El Nino is a weather event restricted to certain tropical shores, especially the Peruvian coast. The event has diametrically opposite impacts on the land and sea. The Peruvian shore is a desert. But every few years, an unusually warm ocean current - El Nino - warms up the normally cold surface-waters off the Peruvian coast, causing very heavy rains in the early half of the year, 

And then, miraculously, the desert is matted green. Crops like cotton, coconuts and banana grow on the otherwise stubbornly barren land. These are the Peruvians’ anos de abundencia or years of abundance. The current had come to be termed El Nino, or the Christ Child because it usually appears as an enhancement if a mildly warm current that normally occurs here around every Christmas. 

But this boon on land is accompanied by oceanic disasters. Normally, the waters off the South American coast are among the most productive in the world because of a constant upwelling of nutrient rich cold waters from the ocean depths. During an El Nino, however waters are stirred up only from near the surface. The nutrient-crunch pushes down primary production, disrupting the food chain. Many marine species, including anchoveta (anchovies) temporarily disappear. 

This is just one damning effect of El Nino. Over the years its full impact has been studied and what the Peruvians once regarded as manna, is now seen as a major threat. 

El Nino in a layman language is  

Directions: In the following passage, there are blanks, each of which has been numbered. Against every five words are suggested one of which fits the blank appropriately. Find out the appropriate word in each case.

The world of finance can be __(A)_, but understanding key concepts and strategies can help investors make __(B)_ decisions. One important concept is the time value of money, which refers to the fact that a dollar today is worth more than a dollar in the future. This is because money can be invested and earn _(C)__ over time, meaning that a dollar today has the potential to grow into more than a dollar in the future. Risk tolerance is another important consideration when it comes to investing. The level of risk an investor is willing to take on should be carefully __(D)_ against the potential for return. Generally, the higher the risk of an investment, the higher the potential return, but also the higher the potential for loss.

When investing in the stock market, investors have several strategies to choose from. Value investing involves looking for stocks that are trading at a lower price than their intrinsic value, while growth investing involves looking for companies that are expected to grow at a faster rate than the overall market. Regardless of the strategy chosen, it's important to __(E)_ a portfolio across different asset classes to reduce overall risk and maximize potential gains.

Which of the following words most appropriately fits the blank labelled (D)?

Directions : Read the following passages carefully and choose the best answer to each question out of the four alternatives. 

For months the old tanker, African Queen , lay turned over on her side, stuck fast in the sands off the coast of Maryland. She had run aground so badly that her owners had decided to leave her to her fate. It was considered impossible to refloat her and the ship began to rust and sink deeper and deeper into the sands. Men frequently came out in small boats and removed any parts that could be sold-until two men decided to attempt the impossible : to float the African Queen once more. Both men were engineers and had no experience of ships so that few people thought they could succeed. 

The men began by studying the exact state of the African Queen and came to the conclusion that she would float again if air was pumped into the tanks which were now full of sea-water. A diver was sent down to examine the underside of the ship. In the cold, dark water he found an enormous hole in her side which had been torn when the ship ran aground. It was plain that nothing could be done until the hole was repaired. As no single sheet of steel would cover it, the men were obliged to order a great number of sheets which had to be joined together. For several weeks divers worked continually to close the hole. At times, the sea was so rough that it was difficult to go down; and on more than one occasion, they had to contend with sharks. 

At last the hole was covered and the men began to pump the sea-water out of the ship’s tanks. It seemed as if they were bound to succeed, for when the tanks were full of air, the African Queen began to stir in the water. The men could not understand why she still would not float until they discovered that her rudder was embedded in mud. Huge cranes were brought to haul the sunken rudder out and the ship was again afloat. By this time, the men were almost exhausted. They had worked ceaselessly for three months to save the African Queen and had succeeded when everyone thought they would fail. Now they stood on the bridge of the ship, tired but proud, as tugs brought the African Queen into the harbour. 

Men frequently went out to the African Queen because 

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

What is mean by 'Programmed our lives’?
 
 

Read the given passage and answer the questions that follow.
There are five basic features of services. These features distinguish them from goods. The first is that services are intangible. They are experiential in nature. One cannot taste a doctor’s treatment, or touch entertainment. One can only experience it. An important implication of this is that quality of the offer can often not be determined before consumption or before purchase. It is, therefore, important for the service providers that they consciously work on creating a desired service so that the customer undergoes a favourable experience. The second important characteristic of services is inconsistency. Since there is no standard tangible product, services have to be performed exclusively each time. Different customers have different demands and expectations. Service providers need to have an opportunity to alter their offer to closely meet the requirements of the customers. Another important characteristic of services is the simultaneous activity of production and consumption being performed. This makes the production and consumption of services inseparable. While we can manufacture a car today and sell it after, say, a month; this is often not possible with services that have to be consumed as and when they are produced. For example, the services of a teacher, doctor or lawyer. Service providers may design a substitute for the person by using appropriate technology but the interaction with the customer remains a key feature of services. Automated Teller Machines (ATMs) may replace the banking clerk for the front office activities like cash withdrawal and cheque deposit. But, at the same time, the presence of the customer, is required and his/her interaction with the process has to be managed. Services have little or no tangible components and, therefore, cannot be stored for a future use. That is, services are perishable and providers can, at best, store some associated goods but not the service itself. This means that the demand and supply needs to be managed as the service has to be performed as and when the customer asks for it. They cannot be performed earlier to be consumed at a later date. For example, a railway ticket can be stored but the railway journey will be experienced by a traveller only when the railways provide it.

Entertainment is an intangible service because it can only be:

Among Nature’s most intriguing phenomena are the partnerships formed by any different species. The name used for these relationships, Symbiosis, comes from Greek meaning "living together". Not all symbiotic relationships are the same. There are some called commensal relationships, in which one partner gains a benefit while the other gains little or none but is not harmed. One example is the relationship between two types of fish remoras and sharks. The remora, which is long and often striped, attaches itself to a shark (sometimes to another type of fish or a whale), using a sucker on its head. When the shark makes a kill, the hitchhiker briefly detaches itself to feed on the scraps. Another type of symbiotic relationship is parasitism, in which one partner benefits at the expense of others. Ticks and tapeworms are among familiar parasites. 

The third type of symbiotic relationship, called mutualism, is a true partnership in which both partners benefit. The relationship may be limited as when zebras and wild best graze together on the vast African grasslands. Each species can survive on its own, but together their chances of detecting predators are improved because each contributes a specially keen sense. (Zebras have the better eyesight;  wild beast, hearing and sense of smell). In a few cases partners are so interdependent that one cannot survive without the other. Most mutualistic relationships probably lie some where in between

The passage talks about how animals 

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

The cyber–world is ultimately ungovernable. This is alarming as well as convenient; sometimes, convenient because alarming. Some Indian politicians use this to great advantage. When there is an obvious failure in governance during a crisis they deflect attention from their own incompetence towards the ungovernable. So, having failed to prevent nervous citizens from fleeing their cities of work by assuring them of proper protection, some national leaders are now busy trying to prove to one another, and to panic-prone Indians, that a mischievous neighbour has been using the internet and social networking sites to spread dangerous rumours. And the Centre's automatic reaction is to start blocking these sites and begin elaborate and potentially endless negotiations with Google, Twitter and Facebook about access to information. If this is the official idea of prompt action at a time of crisis among communities, then Indians have more reason to fear their protectors than the nebulous mischief-makers of the cyber world. Wasting time gathering proof, blocking vaguely suspicious websites, hurling accusations across the border and worrying about bilateral relations are ways of keeping busy with inessentials because one does not quite known what to do about the essentials of a difficult situation. Besides, only a fifth of the 245 websites blocked by the Centre mention the people of the Northeast or the violence in Assam. And if a few morphed images and spurious texts can unsettle an entire nation, then there is something deeply wrong with the nation and with how it is being governed. This is what its leaders should be addressing immediately, rather than making a wrongheaded display of their powers of censorship.
 It is just as absurd, and part of the same syndrome, to try to ban Twitter accounts that parody despatches from the Prime Minister's Office. To describe such forms of humour and dissent as "misrepresenting" the PMO–as if Twitter would take these parodies for genuine despatches from the PMO — makes the PMO look more ridiculous than its parodists manage to. With the precedent for such action set recently by the chief minister of West Bengal, this is yet another proof that what Bengal thinks today India will think tomorrow. Using the cyber–world for flexing the wrong muscles is essentially not funny. It might even prove to be quite dangerously distracting.

The following is a list of statements made by the author of the above passage. Pick the odd one out