Read the passage: The platypus, found in rivers and streams of eastern Australia, is one of only a handful of mammals that lay eggs. Along with the echidnas, it belongs to a group called monotremes. A female platypus usually lays one or two small eggs and curls around them until they hatch, after which she feeds the young with milk. The animal hunts underwater with its eyes, ears and nostrils closed. Instead of sight, it relies on its soft, sensitive bill, which can detect the tiny electrical signals produced by the muscles of shrimps, worms and insect larvae. Male platypuses also carry a sharp spur on each hind leg that can deliver a painful venom, an unusual feature for a mammal.
Correct answerD. By sensing tiny electrical signals with its bill
Read the passage: When Mr Khalid became head teacher of a government school in Peshawar, the library was a single dusty cupboard holding about forty outdated textbooks. He asked parents, former pupils and local shopkeepers to donate books, and within a year the collection had grown to more than two thousand titles. Older students volunteered to catalogue the books and run a lending desk during lunch breaks. Teachers noticed that pupils who borrowed regularly began to write longer and more confident essays. The initiative proved so successful that two neighbouring schools sent staff to observe how it worked. Mr Khalid insists that the credit belongs to the community, which responded far more generously than he had dared to hope.
Correct answerC. A new plan or project started to improve something
Read the passage: Antibiotics have transformed medicine, turning once deadly infections into conditions that can be cured in a few days. Yet their success carries a hidden danger. Each time antibiotics are used, bacteria that happen to survive can multiply and pass on their resistance. Taking these medicines for viral illnesses such as colds, where they have no effect, or stopping a course early without medical advice, gives resistant bacteria more chances to spread. Already, some infections that were easily treated a generation ago now require stronger drugs, and a few respond to almost none. Unless doctors, patients and farmers use antibiotics more carefully, we risk returning to a time when a simple cut or a routine operation could once again be life-threatening.
Read the passage: A rainbow appears when sunlight shines on falling raindrops while the sun is behind the observer. As a ray of light enters a drop, it bends, or refracts, and the different colours that make up white light bend by slightly different amounts. The light then reflects off the back of the drop and bends again as it leaves. Because each colour emerges at a slightly different angle, the colours separate into a band, with red on the outer edge of the arc and violet on the inner edge. This is also why no two people see exactly the same rainbow: the drops sending light into one person's eyes are not the same drops sending light to someone standing nearby.
Read the passage: Neha sells handmade cotton bags through a small website she built herself. For two years most of her customers lived in Bengaluru, where she packed and delivered orders personally on weekends. Last month a popular blogger featured one of her designs, and orders suddenly arrived from Delhi, Kolkata and even Guwahati. Neha signed up with a courier company, but within weeks several buyers complained that parcels had arrived late or damaged. She has now started wrapping every bag in an extra layer of cardboard and is comparing the rates of two other courier firms. She has also added a note to her website asking customers outside Bengaluru to allow ten days for delivery.
Correct answerD. Her business had grown faster than her delivery arrangements could handle.
Read the passage: Photosynthesis is the process by which green plants, algae and some bacteria capture energy from sunlight and store it in the form of sugar. Inside a leaf, a green pigment called chlorophyll absorbs light. The plant uses that energy to combine carbon dioxide taken in from the air with water drawn up from its roots, producing glucose. Oxygen is released as a by-product and passes out through tiny pores in the leaf. The glucose may be used straight away for energy, turned into starch for storage, or built into cellulose for new cell walls. Because animals eat plants, or eat other animals that do, almost all the food energy on Earth can be traced back to this process.
Correct answerB. How plants use sunlight to make food and why this matters to other living things
Read the passage: In March 1876 Alexander Graham Bell, a Scottish-born teacher of the deaf working in the United States, was granted a patent for a device that could transmit speech electrically. A few days later he spoke the first clear words over his new telephone to his assistant, Thomas Watson, who was waiting in another room. Bell's claim did not go unchallenged. Other inventors, including Elisha Gray, had been working on similar ideas, and the question of who deserved the credit led to years of legal battles. Bell's company won most of these cases. Within a decade, telephone lines connected thousands of homes and businesses, and the device began to change how people conducted trade and kept in touch.
Correct answerA. To show that others were working on similar ideas and disputed Bell's claim
Read the passage: During a long summer water shortage in Karachi, the Siddiqui family decided to track how much water they used. Bilal, the eldest son, fixed a small meter to the tank and recorded the readings every evening. The family discovered that a leaking toilet cistern was wasting more water than all their cooking put together. After a plumber repaired it, their daily use fell by almost a fifth. They also began collecting the water used to rinse vegetables and pouring it on the potted plants on their balcony. Bilal's younger sister made a chart for the kitchen wall showing each day's figure, and the family now treats beating the previous week's total as a friendly challenge.
Read the passage: Camels are famous for surviving in deserts, but their humps do not hold water, as many people believe. Instead, a hump stores fat, which the animal can break down for energy when food is scarce. The camel's real secret lies in how carefully it uses water. Its body temperature is allowed to rise by several degrees during the hot day, so it begins sweating only when it becomes very warm. Its kidneys produce concentrated urine, and its droppings are so dry that they can be used as fuel almost immediately. When a thirsty camel finally reaches water, it can drink a very large amount in just a few minutes, quickly restoring what it has lost.
Correct answerB. Letting its body heat up during the day helps a camel lose less water through sweating.
Read the passage: Residents of a housing society in Lahore used to put all their kitchen waste into plastic bags for the municipal lorry. Two years ago a retired engineer, Mrs Farzana Iqbal, suggested building composting bins in an unused corner of the park. Families now separate vegetable peelings, tea leaves and eggshells from other rubbish and empty them into the bins every morning. A gardener turns the heaps once a week, and after about three months the waste becomes dark, crumbly compost. The society uses it on its lawns and flower beds and gives the rest to residents for their pots. The amount of rubbish collected from the society has dropped noticeably, and the park's flowers have never looked healthier.
Correct answerC. Turning Kitchen Waste into Garden Gold
