Direction: In the following questions, you have brief passages with 5/10 questions following each passage. Read the passages carefully and choose the best answer to each question out of the four alternatives.
PASSAGE
The Wright brothers did not have to look far for ideas when building their airplane, they studied birds. The act of copying from nature to address a design problem is not new, but over the last decade the practice has moved from obscure scientific journals to the mainstream. The term ‘biomimicry’, popularized by American natural-sciences writer Janine Benyus in the late 1990s, refers to innovation that take their inspiration from flora and fauna. Biomimicry advocates argue that with 3.8 billion years of research and development, evolution has already solved many of the challenges humans now encounter. Although we often see nature as something we mine for resources, biomimicry views nature as a mentor. From all around the globe, there are countless instances where natural sources have served as inspiration for inventions that promise to transform every sector of society. One such instance occurred in 1941 when Swiss engineer, George de Mestral was out hunting with his dog one day when he noticed sticky burrs, with their hundreds tiny hooks, had attached themselves to his pants and his dog’s fur. These were his inspiration for Velcro.
SOME IMPORTANT WORDS
(1) obscure (Adj.) : not well-known
(2) burrs (N.) : the seed container of some plants which is covered in very small hooks that stick to clothes/ fur

Direction: In the following questions, you have brief passages with 5/10 questions following each passage. Read the passages carefully and choose the best answer to each question out of the four alternatives.
PASSAGE
The world’s largest living organism is not the blue whale which still is the world’s largest living animal-but Australia’s Great Barrier Reef, one of the country’s prime living animals and ‘prime tourist attraction. Sadly, size notwithstanding, it is slowly succumbing to the Killer ‘white syndrome’, a bleaching disease which has invaded 33 of its 48 reefs. Otherwise brilliantly multicoloured and teeming with a Kaleidoscope of life, the affected reefs have acquired a deathly white pallor, the result of dying tissues. The bleaching of the reef happened following the recording of the warmest ever sea water temperature in the area here. Scientists fear that the naturally gorgeous reef-are endangered and the as yet undiscovered animal and plant species would soon suffer irreplaceable damage. This is only because of the rising of water temperature.
SOME IMPORTANT WORDS
(1) succumbing (V.) : not to be able to fight an attack
(2) teeming with (Phr. V.) : to be full of people, animals, etc. moving around
(3) Kaleidoscope (N.) : a situation, pattern, etc. containing a lot of different parts that are always changing
(4) pallor (N.) : pale colouring of the face, especially because of illness/fear
(5) endangered (Adj.) : at risk of no longer existing
(6) hues (N.) : shades (colour)