1. The crisis begins in the womb with unplanned parenthood. Women with unplanned pregnancies are less likely to seek prenatal care. In the U.S. 80% of teenage pregnancies and 56% of all pregnancies are unplanned. The problems continue after birth where unplanned pregnancies and unstable partnerships often go hand in hand. Since 1950, the number of single-parent families has nearly tripled. More than 25 percent of all births today are to unmarried mothers. As the number of single parent families grows and more women enter the workforce, infants and toddlers are increasingly in the care of people other than their parents. Most disturbingly, recent statistics show that American parents are increasingly neglecting or abusing their children. In only four years from 1987-1991, the number of children in foster care increased by over 50 percent. Babies under the age of one are the fastest growing category of children entering foster care. The crisis affects children under the age of three most severely, the report says. Yet, it is this period from infancy through preschool years that sets the stage for a child’s future.

Ques . What can be the possible reasons for the increasing neglect and abuse of children?

2. Forces other than damaging winds are also at work inside tornadoes. Sometimes, as the writhing, twisting funnel passes over a house, the walls and ceiling burst apart as if a bomb had gone off inside. This explosion is caused by the low air pressure at the center of a tornado.

The pressure at the center of a tornado is usually 13 pounds per square inch. However, inside the house, the air pressure is normal, about 15 pounds per square inch. The difference of 2 pounds per square inch between the inside and outside pressure may not seem like much. But suppose a tornado funnel passes over a small building that measures 20 by 10 by 10 feet. On each square inch of the building, there is 2 pounds of pressure from the inside that is not balanced by air pressure outside the building. On the ceiling, that adds up to an unbalanced pressure of 57, 600 pounds. The pressure on the four walls adds up to 172,800 pounds.

If windows are open in the building, some of the inside air will rush out through them. This will balance the pressure inside and outside the building. But if the windows are shut tightly, the enormous inside pressure may cause the building to burst.

Unfortunately, heavy rain and hail often occur in thunderstorms that later produce tornadoes. So people frequently shut all windows to protect their property. This may cause far worse damage later. For the same reason, tornado cellars must have an air vent. Otherwise, the cellar door might be blown out when a tornado passes over it.

Ques : Which of the following statements can be supported by the information given in the passage?

3. Exposure to high levels of noise can cause permanent hearing loss. Neither surgery nor a hearing aid can help correct this type of hearing loss. Short-term exposure to loud noise can also cause a temporary change in hearing (your ears may feel stuffed up) or a ringing in your ears (tinnitus). These short-term problems may go away within a few minutes or hours after leaving the noise. However, repeated exposures to loud noise can lead to permanent tinnitus and/or hearing loss.

Loud noise can create physical and psychological stress, reduce productivity, interfere with communication and concentration, and contribute to workplace accidents and injuries by making it difficult to hear warning signals. The effects of noise-induced hearing loss can be profound, limiting your ability to hear high-frequency sounds, understand speech, and seriously impairing your ability to communicate.

When sound waves enter the outer ear, the vibrations impact the ear drum and are transmitted to the middle and inner ear. In the middle ear, three small bones called the malleus (or hammer), the incus (or anvil), and the stapes (or stirrup) amplify and transmit the vibrations generated by the sound to the inner ear. The inner ear contains a snail-like structure called Cochlea which is filled with fluid and lined with cells with very fine hairs. These microscopic hairs move with the vibrations and convert the sound waves into nerve impulses–the result is the sounds we hear. Exposure to loud noise can destroy these hair cells and cause hearing loss!

Ques : Which of the following statements about health can be supported by the text?

4. Given the record of our political class, the proposal to give tax rebates for political donations will likely meet a similar fate. Instead of cleaning up political life then, the bill runs the risk of being a godsend for fly-by-night middlemen and fixers, and unscrupulous businessmen. The other objection to the bill is a more traditional one, namely that rather than private donations, the solution is in state funding of parties. This not only ensures that there is some sense of proportion and fairness in the quantum of funding available to different parties, but also that funding does not become a means of determining the political agenda.

Private funding, in this argument, is an unacceptable form of political lobbying which promotes the specific demands of donors apart from generally favoring conservative, mainstream parties, squeezing out those representing minority voices. Whatever its merits, the most serious obstacle to this kind of reasoning comes from the precarious nature of public finance in the country. At a time when the Indian state is already hard-pressed to find resources for education, health, and other social security activities, can there be a case for it to burden itself with a new category of expenses? In purely economic terms too, the proposed tax breaks do not augur well for the savings sector; and this when the sagging savings graph in the economy is already a matter of increasing anxiety.

Ques . Which demands according to the writer of the passage deserve better attention than the political funds?

5. In terrestrial affairs we think of “big” as being complicated; a city is more intricate than a village, an ocean more complicated than a puddle. For the universe, the reverse seems to be the case bigger is simpler Galaxies have some puzzling features, but on the whole, they are scarcely more complicated than the stars that compose them Beyond the galaxies, in the hierarchy of the cosmos, there are clusters of galaxies; these clusters are loosely bound by the gravity of their largest members and tend to look very much the same in all directions. Simplest of all is the universe at large, it is far less complicated than the Earth, one of its most trivial members. The universe consists of billions of galaxies flying apart as if from an explosion that set it in motion, it is not lopsided, nor does it rotate. The more thoroughly scientists investigate the universe, the more clearly its simplicity shines through.

Ques . Which of the following statements can be supported by the text?