List of top Verbal Ability & Reading Comprehension (VARC) Questions

Men have preserved their foods from ancient times in order to keep the results of harvesting for winter months, for resale, for storage, and for transporting from sea to inland, overseas, or cross-country. To do so, they generally used nature's methods, which are drying, parching and fermenting. Parching is the most natural method, but for many thousands of years, others have also been used. Direct fermentation of liquids, usually by the introduction of yeast, has not only preserved liquids but also enhanced their quality, the same of course applying to salting. Smoking has preserved, and sometimes improved both fish and meat. Hickory wood is generally used for the fires, and natural juices are contained by a slight coating of wood creosote.
It was not until recently that the causes of rottenness were understood, these being the reactions of bacteria, moulds, yeasts and micro-organisms. Some fermentation and moulds are, of course, necessary in the production of food and drink; moulds, for example, being used in cheese-making. But the real 'breakthrough' in preservation against the causes of rottenness came, when it was learnt how to deal with the micro-organisms present in all foods and drinks, and which react chemically over a period to produce unpalatable or poisonous food or drink.

There are two types of diabetes, insulin-dependent and non-insulin-dependent. Between 90–95% of the estimated 13–14 million people in the United States with diabetes have non-insulin-dependent, or Type II, diabetes. Because this form of diabetes usually begins in adults over the age of 40 and is most common after the age of 55, it used to be called adult-onset diabetes. Its symptoms often develop gradually and are hard to identify at first; therefore, nearly half of all people with diabetes do not know they have it. For instance, someone who has developed Type II diabetes may feel tired or ill without knowing why. This can be particularly dangerous because untreated diabetes can cause damage to the heart, blood vessels, eyes, kidneys, and nerves. While the causes, short-term effects, and treatments of the two types of diabetes differ, both types can cause the same long-term health problems.
Most importantly, both types affect the body's ability to use digested food for energy. Diabetes does not interfere with digestion, but it does prevent the body from using an important product of digestion, glucose (commonly known as sugar), for energy. After a meal, the normal digestive system breaks some food down into glucose. The blood carries the glucose or sugar throughout the body, causing blood glucose levels to rise. In response to this rise, the hormone insulin is released into the bloodstream and signals the body tissues to metabolize or burn the glucose for fuel, which causes blood glucose levels to return to normal. The glucose that the body does not use right away is stored in the liver, muscle, or fat.
In both types of diabetes, however, this normal process malfunctions. A gland called the pancreas, found just behind the stomach, makes insulin. In people with insulin-dependent diabetes, the pancreas does not produce insulin at all. This condition usually begins in childhood and is known as Type I (formerly called juvenile-onset) diabetes. These patients must have daily insulin injections to survive. People with non-insulin-dependent diabetes usually produce some insulin in their pancreas, but their body tissues do not respond well to the insulin signal and, therefore, do not metabolize the glucose properly, a condition known as insulin resistance.
Insulin resistance is an important factor in non-insulin-dependent diabetes, and scientists are searching for the causes of insulin resistance. They have identified two possibilities. The first is that there could be a defect in the insulin receptors on cells. Like an appliance that needs to be plugged into an electrical outlet, insulin has to bind to a receptor in order to function. Several things can go wrong with receptors. For example, there may not be enough receptors to which insulin may bind, or a defect in the receptors may prevent insulin from binding. The second possible cause of insulin resistance is that, although insulin may bind to the receptors, the cells do not read the signal to metabolize the glucose. Scientists continue to study these cells to see why this might happen.
There's no cure for diabetes yet. However, there are ways to alleviate its symptoms. The National Institute of Health panel of experts recommended that the best treatment for non-insulin-dependent diabetes is a diet that helps one maintain a normal weight and pays particular attention to a proper balance of the different food groups. Many experts, including those in the American Diabetes Association, recommend that 50–60% of daily calories come from carbohydrates, 12–20% from protein, and no more than 30% from fat. Foods that are rich in carbohydrates, like breads, cereals, fruits, and vegetables, break down into glucose during digestion, causing blood glucose to rise. Additionally, studies have shown that cooked foods raise blood glucose higher than raw, unpeeled foods. A doctor or nutritionist should always be consulted for more of this kind of information and for help in planning a diet to offset the effects of this form of diabetes.

Abraham Lincoln served as the 16th President of the United States, yet he never went to college. In fact, Lincoln had nearly no formal education whatsoever, attending schools for less than a year throughout his childhood. Yet this should not be construed to mean that Lincoln was ignorant or unlearned; on the contrary, he was one of the most well-read leaders of the time. The fact is that Abraham Lincoln educated himself by studying books of religion, philosophy, and literature, and he continued his voracious reading throughout his life. A lack of public school education did not prevent Lincoln from becoming a great leader. He led the United States through four years of civil war, which threatened to divide the nation into two separate countries. He was a powerful opponent of slavery, and it was largely through his leadership that slavery was abolished in the country. Lincoln's determination to educate himself through diligent reading also led to his reputation as a great orator—and even today his speeches are quoted and studied worldwide. He serves as an example of a great leader—and a great reader. His love of books and good literature enabled Abraham Lincoln to rise to world renown.

In a recent New York Times Sunday magazine article on school textbooks, writer Robert Reinhold described California’s new history series as “. . . filled with colorful charts, graphs, time lines, maps, photographs in a format suggestive of the newspaper USA Today.” There it is again.
Since when did USA Today become the national design ideal? Everywhere you look you find USA Today used as an analogy to describe a noteworthy design format. Making ideas “accessible” is the operative term for the information age. But too often information is drained of its significance in the name of accessibility.
Some things are designed for reading: scholarly journals, literary reviews, financial pages, and their ilk are fairly impenetrable to the casual page flipper. Other objects like USA Today, annual reports, fashion magazines, and so on are for looking. (Haven’t you heard in the course of a design project someone say, only half in jest, “No one actually reads the copy, just make it look good.”) Then there are the gray areas. These include newsmagazines and textbooks, which imply reading but are increasingly about looking. If you compare Time or Newsweek or a fifth grade schoolbook of twenty years ago to their present incarnations, the change is remarkable. The headlines are bigger, the captions are bigger, and the photographs, charts and call-outs are all bigger. Something had to go, someone must have decided, and what went was the text.

Although cynics may like to see the government’s policy for women in terms of the party’s internal power struggles, it will nevertheless be churlish to deny that it represents a pioneering effort aimed at bringing about sweeping social reforms. In its language, scope and strategies, the policy document displays a degree of understanding of women’s needs that is uncommon in government pronouncements. This is due in large part to the participatory process that marked its formulation, seeking the active involvement right from the start of women’s groups, academic institutions and non-government organizations with grass roots experience.
The result is not just a lofty declaration of principles but a blueprint for a practical programme of action. The policy delineates a series of concrete measures to accord women a decision-making role in the political domain and greater control over their economic status. Of especially far-reaching impact are the devolution of control of economic infrastructure to women, notably at the gram panchayat level, and the amendments proposed in the Hindu Succession Act of 1956 to give women coparcenary rights.
 An enlightened aspect of the policy is its recognition that actual change in the status of women cannot be brought about by the mere enactment of socially progressive legislation. Accordingly, it focuses on reorienting development programmes and sensitizing administrations to address specific situations as, for instance, the growing number of households headed by women, which is a consequence of rural-urban migration. The proposal to create an equal-opportunity police force and give women greater control of police stations is an acknowledgement of the biases and callousness displayed by the generally all-male lawenforcement authorities in cases of dowry and domestic violence. While the mere enunciation of such a policy has the salutary effect of sensitizing the administration as a whole, it does not make the task of its implementation any easier. 
This is because the changes it envisages in the political and economic status of women strike at the root of power structures in society and the basis of man woman relationships. There is also the danger that reservation for women in public life, while necessary for their greater visibility, could lapse into tokenism or become a tool in the hands of vote seeking politicians. Much will depend on the dissemination of the policy and the ability of elected representatives and government agencies to reorder their priorities.

Generally, people experience stress in their day-to-day lives, but more than thirty million Americans suffer from something more intense than that. Anxiety disorders are the second-most-common mental health problem in the country, and they can be paralyzing. Sometimes, day-to-day stress and anxiety are hard to tell apart, but the easiest way to distinguish them is that stress is brought on by actual events, and then dissipates, whereas anxiety is a more pervasive worry, that often attaches itself to specific areas of your life, like your relationship, job or health, says psychologist Terry Mooney.
This anxiety does not dissipate, and in fact, it can increase to the level where it begins to change your behavior. That’s when it’s characterized as an anxiety disorder. Anxiety can keep you safe, helping you recognize danger, and cope with it, says Mooney. But if you begin to see danger lurking around every corner, or worry over and over again about the same events, then you might be dealing with something more substantial, like an anxiety disorder. 
People with anxiety disorders often begin to avoid activities or circumstances that make them anxious, said John Forsyth, associate professor of Psychology at the State University of New York at Albany and director of the Anxiety Disorders Research Programme at the university. People may stop driving, or stop going to parties. They may stop travelling or even avoid leaving the house. It’s this curtailing of activities that causes the suffering, Forsyth said, making you feel that ‘life is shrinking around you.’
 Anxiety disorders come in a variety of forms and manifest themselves in different ways. Generalized anxiety disorder is characterized by ongoing worry about everyday tasks, even when there is no clear reason to worry. People with social anxiety disorder experience intense worry over social interactions, and often feel judged by people or worry that they will embarrass themselves. Post-traumatic stress disorder, which is characterized by people re-living a frightening event over and over again, is also considered an anxiety disorder. Obsessive-compulsive disorder is when people take on obsessive rituals that help them maintain the illusion of control. Often repetitive in nature, obsessive compulsive rituals can include cleaning, checking and rechecking something, counting or endlessly reviewing conversations in their mind. Treatment is available for anxiety disorders. People can use a variety of approaches, including therapy, medication and exercise.

I am the family face; flesh perishes. I live on, projecting trait and trace through time to times anon, and leaping from place to place over oblivion.
So wrote Thomas Hardy in his poem, Heredity, describing direct descent of life from one generation to the next. Indeed, the poem reflects the DNA in our genome. Dr.Drew Endy of MIT quoted this when he described how people at the J. Craig Venter Institute (JCVI) bypass nature’s constraint of direct descent. Scientists there have used chemistry and biochemistry to produce the first synthetic genome in the laboratory. They chemically synthesized many fragments of the DNA, encoding the 582,970-units-long genome of a bacterium called Mycoplasma genitalium. Next, they assembled these fragments in perfect order to generate the genome of the bacterium.
The DNA sequence of the synthetic one was confirmed to be identical to the natural one. While the DNA pieces were synthesized chemically, the stitching together was done using the biochemical machinery of a host cell. About 100 pieces of the genome, each 5000-7000 units long in DNA sequence, were first joined to produce 25 sub-assemblies, each about 24000 base pairs long. These were then introduced into the bacterium E. coli to produce sufficient DNA for the next steps. Next, they repeated the procedure to generate large fragments comprising l/4th of the whole genome of M.genitalium.
Now, they used the clever trick of exploiting the process called homologous recombination. This is a basic essential process in every cell, which physically rearranges the two strands of DN The JCVI researchers inserted the synthesized DNA fragments into yeast and utilized its homologous recombination ability to generate the whole 580,000 long genome of M.genitalium in one step. 
This is clearly a landmark work that leads into the brave new world of synthesizing life itself in the laboratory. It was hardly 200 years ago when Friedrich Wohler synthesized urea, an organic molecule, in the chemical laboratory, thus throwing out the notion of ‘vital forces’ involved in the components of living organisms. What is the next step, making life itself in the lab, bypassing nature? With single cell organisms like M.genitalium, it might not be far away. It is now possible in the lab to do so, by inserting the genome into a ‘host’ cell and asking the latter to make the bacterium of your choice. If only we find a way to insert the bacterial genome into this proto-cell, and somehow trigger it to make the bacterium itself! We would have chemically created life in the la This is not a pipedream; JCVI scientists are already on the job, and my bet is they will do it within a few years. 
This surely raises ethical questions, a matter that JCVI is keenly aware of and is already engaged in with ethicists. Even their present work on M.genitalium was done with prior approval of ethical experts. But then, today it is M.genitalium, tomorrow it could be a more advanced, multi-cellular organism, and that could flummox even the ethicist. Assisted reproduction, which is the other side of the coin and truly a recently initiated technology, has become ethically and morally acceptable. Cloning of Dolly, the sheep, has not raised any outrage, but cloning a human certainly does.

The technological trajectory traversed in communications and transport from pigeon mail and pony expressto e-mail and videoconferencing is almost as great as the intellectual space between Noah's Ark and the biotechnological revolution in the preservation and improvement of the species. Dreams are multi-hued today and soar beyond the hitherto accepted bounds of human endeavor.
The first bimolecular motors with tiny metal propellers to reach inside our cells and probe their secrets have been built and pilot-tested and scalpels fitted with probes that can instantly reveal whether cells are cancerous may soon help surgeons operating on tumours to detect cancer at the earliest stages, perhaps even replacing biopsies. That Einstein ousted Gandhi as Time's Man of the Century clearly reflects the Zeitgeist. As Stephen Hawking writes, The world has changed far more in the last 100 years than in any other century in history. The reason is not political or economic, but technological - technologies that flowed directly from advances in basic science.
The reflection of the Zeitgeist, even as it stands witness to the enormity of man's reach, is also a warning: that when man's reach exceeds his grasp, it is time to pause and ponder over priorities. From time to time, a natural disaster might push us back to oil lamps and cooking by wood fire but a baby born a whole hundred hours after the mother was trapped under heavy rubble will also establish the sovereignty of other forces. Baby buying on the Internet illustrates the lowest human motivations at work, but harnessing its reach to attract global aid for earthquake victims reflects higher human impulsions.

Harold Pinter, the British playwright, whose gifts for finding the ominous in the everyday and the noise within silence made him the most influential and imitated dramatist of his generation. In more than 30 plays written between 1957 and 2000 and including masterworks like The Birthday Party, The Caretaker, The Homecoming and Betrayal, Pinter captured the anxiety and ambiguity of life in the second half of the 20th century with terse, hypnotic dialogue filled with gaping pauses and the prospect of imminent violence. Pinter became one of the few modern playwrights whose names instantly evoke a sensibility. The adjective 'Pinteresque' has become part of the cultural vocabulary as a byword for strong and unspecified menace.
An actor, essayist, screenwriter, poet, director and dramatist, Pinter was also publicly outspoken in his views on repression and censorship, at home and abroad. He used his Nobel acceptance speech to denounce Amer- ican foreign policy, saying that the United States had not only lied to justify waging war against Iraq, but that it had also 'supported and in many cases engendered every right-wing military dictatorship' in the last 50 years. His political views were implicit in much of his work. Though his plays deal with the slipperiness of memory and human character, they are also almost always about the struggle for power.
In Pinter's work 'words are weapons that the characters use to discomfort or destroy each other' said Peter Hall, who has staged more of Pinter's plays than any other director. But while Pinter's linguistic agility turned simple, sometimes obscene, words into dark, glittering and often mordantly funny poetry, it is what comes between the words that he is most famous for. And the stage direction 'pause' would haunt him throughout his career.
Intended as an instructive note to actors, the Pinter pause was a space for emphasis and breathing room. But it could also be as threatening as a raised fist. Pinter said that writing the word 'pause' into his first play was 'a fatal error'. It is certainly the aspect of his writing that has been most parodied. But no other playwright has consistently used pauses with such rhythmic assurance and to such fine-tuned manipulative effect. Early in his career, Pinter said his work was about 'the weasel under the cocktail cabinet'. Though he later regretted the image, it holds up as a metaphor for the undertow of danger that pervades his work.
Pinter was born in Hackney on October 10, 1930. With the outbreak of World War II, Harold was evacuated from London to a provincial town in Cornwall. His feelings of loneliness and isolation from that time were to surface later in his plays. Few writers have been so consistent over so many years in the tone and exe- cution of their work. Just before rehearsals began for the West End production of The Birthday Party half a century ago, Pinter sent a letter to his director, Peter Wood. In it he said, "The play is a comedy because the whole state of affairs is absurd and inglorious. It is, however, as you know, a very serious piece of work.'

It was a milestone ride to empowerment. A young girl, probably a decade ago, driving a scooter, a little un- steadily, with mom on the pillion. It was the gift of mobility; more significantly, it was a trip to liberation. Now, the girl swings her Scorpio round a dangerous kerb even as mom and a brood of aunt, grandma and nieces squeal in pride. The girl now has a handy tool: her cell phone. Mobility and communication!
Sure, gender cleansing is now a frightening reality. Girls are killed before or at birth, plunging the all-India sex ratio to 927 girls for 1,000 boys. If she survives, the girl cannot assume she'll get a fair share of the family's education budget. Chances are she will drop out; to look after her siblings, to cook at home, to work in the fields, to be married off for money. She might be 'gifted' to a temple. 'Dowry death', a term we gave the English lexicon, is not in danger of fading out. 'The only women likely to keep their daughters are the truly independent-minded, not just the financially independent,' said author Gita Aravamudan. We know of her resilience, ability to raise a family, find happiness somewhere and keep her sanity somehow. All of which is excellent fodder for exploitation.
Out of this tangled mess has emerged the New Woman; a woman 'pushing against the limits society imposed on her'. With an identity no longer defined by domesticity or relationships, she now comes across as a person with a strong sense of self and self worth. A woman taking a tough stand for her rights is no shrew but a woman of substance while a female globetrotter is no adventuress but a woman of spirit. In short, women are going where men fear to tread.
But there are nay-sayers too. "I'm wondering if it is even theoretically possible to define the 'New Woman' in terms of a single set of characteristics. Indian women are so different from each other in terms of their class, caste, regional, linguistic and religious identities that what is 'old' for one is 'new' for the other, and not even on the map for yet another. That said, I think the one thing that has changed is that women are no longer hesitant or apologetic about claiming a share of space and visibility within the family, at work, in public spaces, in the public discourse." said Kalyani Menon Sen of JAGORI. Small concessions to big achievements, she tastes freedom. Her aspirations are taken seriously; count the hailstorm of women-centric TV shows, commercials and food items aimed her way. "It comes with monetary independence," said Usha Srinivasan, HR Consultant.
How is it easier now? Sustained campaigns run by women groups since the national movement. Laws passed to make justice equitable, for corrective surgery of mindsets. Travel, definitely. Her willingness to take up non-traditional workplaces; job opportunities, with IT hiring in bulk. Women began to write and read what other women wrote. And cyberspace, she now blogs and networks, using it for the freedom denied so far to voice her angst, express outrage and disapproval, fulfill the need for acceptance and approval. To speak out.

Power and possession have been central pursuits of modern civilization for a long time. They blocked out or distorted other features of the westernized renaissance (revival), which promised so much for humanity. What people have been and are still being taught to prize is money, success, control over the lives of others; acquisition of more and more objects.
Modern social, political and economic systems, whether capitalist, fascist or communist, reject in their working the basic principle that the free and creative unfoldment of every man, woman and child is the true measure of the worth of any society. Such unfoldment requires understanding and imagination, integrity, compassion and cooperation among people and harmony between the human species and the rest of nature.
Acquisitiveness and the pursuit of power have made modern man an aggressor against everything that is non human, an exploiter and oppressor of those who are poor, meek and unorganized. He has become a pathological type who hates and distrusts the world and suffers from both acute loneliness and false pride.
The need for a new renaissance is deeply felt by those sensitive and conscientious men and women
who not only perceive the dimensions of the crisis of our age but who also realize that only through conscious and cooperative human effort will this crisis be met and probably even overcome.

In 2024, we are celebrating the 50th anniversary of Hawking's groundbreaking formula, a landmark in scientific theory that uncovers the remarkable nature of black holes. When Hawking passed away in March 2018 at the age of 76, his wish was honored, and the formula was inscribed on his tombstone in Westminster Abbey. He donated his office and personal belongings to the nation instead of paying inheritance tax. While sorting through Hawking's possessions, my colleagues at the Science Museum in London discovered the profound impact of the formula, which appeared in his papers, written bets, keepsakes, and even a silver beaker presented to him by the producers of the 2015 Hollywood movie "The Theory of Everything."
The idea behind black holes, which are the focus of this notable equation, was contemplated by theorists long before any tangible proof was found. In 1783, John Michell, a parson in Thornhill near Leeds, speculated about 'dark' stars using Sir Isaac Newton's principles. Newton regarded gravity as a force and light as particle-based. Michell suggested that light particles from a star would slow down due to the star's gravity, akin to how a bullet decelerates when fired into the sky from Earth. If the star’s gravity was intense enough, it would pull the light back to the surface. Although Michell's concept hinted at black holes, he was incorrect in crucial aspects. Albert Einstein’s 1915 theory of general relativity, which posits that the speed of light is constant, redefined gravity not as a force but as a distortion of spacetime, combining space and time. Earth, for example, bends the Universe in this manner, causing satellites to orbit along these curves, which we interpret as gravity.
Soon after Einstein released his theory, Karl Schwarzschild, a German artillery officer and physicist, used Einstein’s equations to propose that a mass could warp spacetime so severely that it would become invisible. However, his conclusions did not gain much recognition. In 1939, American theoretical physicist J. Robert Oppenheimer, who would later become famous for his role in developing the atomic bomb, alongside Hartland Snyder, showed how a spherical dust cloud could collapse into a region from which light could not escape. Their work did not immediately persuade their contemporaries, though astronomers eventually found evidence of extremely dense objects.

In relation to Native American tribes, the idea of sovereign immunity is referred to as "tribal immunity." According to court decisions, Congress cannot have comprehensive jurisdiction over tribes under the Indian Commerce Clause unless it agrees to any litigation against a tribe. However, the concept of tribal immunity was developed by courts rather than politicians.
A Supreme Court justice has questioned whether tribal immunity is still applicable and stated that it would need to be reevaluated in the future, underscoring the need for a more thorough investigation of the idea. The Supreme Court created the idea in the United States v. United States Fidelity and Guaranty Co. ruling, ruling that Indian tribes are exempt from lawsuits unless Congress gives permission. The two main grounds for this exception, according to the Court, are the protection of tribal resources and the recognition of tribes as independent entities.
As the Court has emphasized in recent years, tribes are nonetheless endowed with all sovereign powers until specifically abrogated by Congress or proven to be inconsistent with their status. It is believed that they possess these types of talents naturally because of their restricted sovereignty. The Supreme Court has cited other cases that amply illustrate the crucial notion, even if it did not directly state it as a basis. Unlike the immunity of states, the federal government, and foreign nations, tribal immunity is unrestricted. Courts still use a broad interpretation of this doctrine, often declaring that a defendant—whether a state, local government, the federal government, or a foreign country—would be sued in state or federal courts.
For example, courts have often held that a tribe's immunity can only be waived with the tribe's or Congress's express consent. Implied exemptions are not usually upheld, in contrast to other governments, especially when tribal people do business on or off reservations. Purchasing insurance does not grant immunity as well. Tribal immunity therefore goes beyond that granted to states, the Native American tribes are not treated differently from other sovereign organizations when it comes to their economic or governmental activity. According to court rulings, it makes no difference if a tribe runs governmental, commercial, or private businesses. As such, tribal immunity continues to be more extensive than that of any other sovereign.

Before Joseph Glatthaar's "Forged in Battle," there had been several exceptional studies focusing on Black soldiers and their White commanders during the Civil War. However, Glatthaar's work distinguishes itself by utilizing a substantial collection of soldier letters and diaries, including rare documents from Black soldiers, and focusing on the interactions between Black and White soldiers within Black regiments. The book’s title succinctly encapsulates Glatthaar’s thesis: the shared perils faced by Black troops and their White officers in combat forged bonds of loyalty and respect between them.
Glatthaar thoroughly examines the government's biased treatment of Black soldiers, focusing on disparities in pay, promotion opportunities, medical care, and job assignments. He underscores the relentless efforts of Black soldiers and their officers to secure combat roles, despite army policies that largely confined Black units to rear-echelon positions and labor battalions. As a result, although Black units had a combat death rate that was only one-third of that of White units, their mortality rate from disease—a major cause of death during the war—was twice as high. Nevertheless, the valor and effectiveness demonstrated by several Black units in combat gradually won the respect of initially skeptical or hostile White soldiers. As one White officer remarked, "They have fought their way into the respect of all the army."
However, in his attempt to illustrate the extent of this shift in attitude, Glatthaar seems to overstate the prewar racism of the White men who became officers in Black regiments. He claims that “virtually all of them held powerful racial prejudices” before the war. While this might be true for those who joined Black units for personal gain, it misrepresents the many abolitionists who became officers in these regiments. These abolitionists, who had spent years fighting against the pervasive racial prejudice in American society, eagerly participated in this military experiment with the hope that it would advance African Americans' freedom and postwar civil equality. By contemporary standards of racial equality, their paternalism might be seen as racist. However, to describe their attitudes as "powerful racial prejudices" is to apply modern standards to a different historical context, which can lead to misinterpretation of their motives and actions.

The Impressionists openly rejected any philosophical connotations, although their avant-garde approach to painting had important philosophical implications. By drastically diverging from the conventional perspectives of artists on visual reality, they created a logical new mode of artistic expression. Greek painters even made the connection between abstract ideas and concrete shapes, demonstrating their concrete comprehension of the cosmos. This materialistic perspective dominated painting far into the nineteenth century. By contrast, the Impressionists felt that the fundamental element of visual reality was light, not substance. This viewpoint is aptly expressed by the philosopher Taine, who said, "The chief 'person' in a picture is the light in which everything is bathed."
The Impressionists held that all solid objects were connected by light and that any divisions between them were artificial. Solid objects were merely surfaces reflecting light. This alteration altered how color and outline were handled. It was discovered that color resulted from light vibrations on a colorless surface, refuting the earlier belief that color was an intrinsic feature of objects. Originally intended to indicate the edges of an item, outline is currently only used to indicate the boundaries of often overlapping patterns. Impressionist paintings saw the world as a sequence of surfaces reacting to light, rather than as a collection of distinct objects. Filtered light frequently produces the mosaic of colors seen in an Impressionist painting.According to Mauclair, "light becomes the sole subject of the picture," with the objects it illuminates playing a supporting role. This shift means that painting is no longer only a visual art form.
This ground-breaking new approach to art appreciation ignored all external ideas, whether they were moral, spiritual, or psychological, as well as any emotions that went beyond the purely aesthetic. The subjects of Impressionist paintings—people, places, and things—did not convey deeper meanings or tell tales. Instead, they merely served as elements of a light pattern that the painter used as inspiration from nature to create on canvas.

The passage below is accompanied by a set of questions. Choose the best answer to each question.
Interpretations of the Indian past...were inevitably influenced by colonial concerns and interests,and also by prevalent European ideas about history,civilization and the Orient. Orientalist scholars studied the languages and the texts with selected Indian scholars,but made little attempt to understand the world-view of those who were teaching them. The readings therefore are something of a disjuncture from the traditional ways of looking at the Indian past...
Orientalism [which we can understand broadly as Western perceptions of the Orient] fuelled the fantasy and the freedom sought by European Romanticism, particularly in its opposition to the more disciplined Neo-Classicism. The cultures of Asia were seen as bringing a new Romantic paradigm. Another Renaissance was anticipated through an acquaintance with the Orient,and this,it was thought,would be different from the earlier Greek Renaissance. It was believed that this Oriental Renaissance would liberate European thought and literature from the increasing focus on discipline and rationality that had followed from the earlier Enlightenment...[The Romantic English poets, Wordsworth and Coleridge,] were apprehensive of the changes introduced by industrialization and turned to nature and to fantasies of the Orient.
However,this enthusiasm gradually changed,to conform with the emphasis later in the nineteenth century on the innate superiority of European civilization. Oriental civilizations were now seen as having once been great but currently in decline. The various phases of Orientalism tended to mould European understanding of the Indian past into a particular pattern... There was an attempt to formulate Indian culture as uniform, such formulations being derived from texts that were given priority. The so-called 'discovery' of India was largely through selected literature in Sanskrit. This interpretation tended to emphasize non-historical aspects of Indian culture,for example the idea of an unchanging continuity of society and religion over 3,000 years; and it was believed that the Indian pattern of life was so concerned with metaphysics and the subtleties of religious belief that little attention was given to the more tangible aspects.
German Romanticism endorsed this image of India,and it became the mystic land for many Europeans,where even the most ordinary actions were imbued with a complex symbolism. This was the genesis of the idea of the spiritual east,and also, incidentally,the refuge of European intellectuals seeking to distance themselves from the changing patterns of their own societies. A dichotomy in values was maintained,Indian values being described as 'spiritual' and European values as 'materialistic',with little attempt to juxtapose these values with the reality of Indian society. This theme has been even more firmly endorsed by a section of Indian opinion during the last hundred years.
It was a consolation to the Indian intelligentsia for its perceived inability to counter the technical superiority of the west,a superiority viewed as having enabled Europe to colonize Asia and other parts of the world. At the height of anti-colonial nationalism it acted as a salve for having been made a colony of Britain.

Compare and contrast between Portia and Jessica characters in Merchant of Venice.

Direction for Reading Comprehension: The passages given here are followed by some questions that have four answer choices; read the passage carefully and pick the option whose answer best aligns with the passage
In a low-carbon world, renewable energy technologies are hot business. For investors looking to redirect funds, wind turbines and solar panels, among other technologies, seem a straightforward choice. But renewables need to be further scrutinized before being championed as forging a path toward a low-carbon future. Both the direct and indirect impacts of renewable energy must be examined to ensure that a climate-smart future does not intensify social and environmental harm. As renewable energy production requires land, water, and labor, among other inputs, it imposes costs on people and the environment. Hydropower projects, for instance, have led to community dispossession and exclusion . . .Renewable energy supply chains are also intertwined with mining, and their technologies contribute to growing levels of electronic waste . . . Furthermore, although renewable energy can be produced and distributed through small-scale, local systems, such an approach might not generate the high returns on investment needed to attract capital. Although an emerging sector, renewables are enmeshed in long-standing resource extraction through their dependence on minerals and metals . . . Scholars document the negative consequences of mining . . . even for mining operations that commit to socially responsible practices[:] “many of the world’s largest reservoirs of minerals like cobalt, copper, lithium,[and] rare earth minerals”—the ones needed for renewable technologies— “are found in fragile states and under communities of marginalized peoples in Africa, Asia, and Latin America.” Since the demand for metals and minerals will increase substantially in a renewable-powered future . . . this intensification could exacerbate the existing consequences of extractive activities.
Among the connections between climate change and waste, O’Neill . . . highlights that “devices developed to reduce our carbon footprint, such as lithium batteries for hybrid and electric cars or solar panels[,] become potentially dangerous electronic waste at the end of their productive life.” The disposal of toxic waste has long perpetuated social injustice through the flows of waste to the Global South and to marginalized communities in the Global North . ..
While renewable energy is a more recent addition to financial portfolios, investments in the sector must be considered in light of our understanding of capital accumulation. As agricultural finance reveals, the concentration of control of corporate activity facilitates profit generation. For some climate activists, the promise of renewables rests on their ability not only to reduce emissions but also to provide distributed, democratized access to energy . . .But Burke and Stephens . . . caution that “renewable energy systems offer a possibility but not a certainty for more democratic energy futures.” Small-scale, distributed forms of energy are only highly profitable to institutional investors if control is consolidated somewhere in the financial chain. Renewable energy can be produced at the household or neighborhood level. However, such small-scale, localized production is unlikely to generate high returns for investors. For financial growth to be sustained and expanded by the renewable sector, production and trade in renewable energy technologies will need to be highly concentrated, and large asset management firms will likely drive those developments.