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1.
In the annals of investing, Warren Buffett stands alone. Starting from scratch, simply by picking stocks and companies for investment, Buffett amassed one of the epochal fortunes of the twentieth century. Over a period of four decades more than enough to iron out the effects of fortuitous rolls of the dice, Buffett outperformed the stock market, by a stunning margin and without taking undue risks or suffering a single losing year. Buffett did this in markets bullish and bearish and through economies fat and lean, from the Eisenhower years to Bill Clinton, from the l950s to the l990s, from saddle shoes and Vietnam to junk bonds and the information age. Over the broad sweep of postwar America, as the major stock averages advanced by 11 percent or so a year, Buffett racked up a compounded annual gain of 29.2 percent. The uniqueness of this achievement is more significant in that it was the fruit of old-fashioned, long-term investing. Wall Street’s modern financiers got rich by exploiting their control of the public's money: their essential trick was to take in and sell out the public at opportune moments. Buffett shunned this game, as well as the more venal excesses for which Wall Street is deservedly famous. In effect, he rediscovered the art of pure capitalism, a cold-blooded sport, but a fair one. Buffett began his career, working out his study in Omaha in 1956. His grasp of simple verities gave rise to a drama that would recur throughout his life. Long before those pilgrimages to Omaha, long before Buffett had a record, he would stand in a comer at college parties, baby-faced and bright-eyed, holding forth on the universe as a dozen or two of his older, drunken fraternity brothers crowded around. A few years later, when these friends had metamorphosed into young associates starting out on Wall Street, the ritual was the same. Buffett, the youngest of the group, would plop himself in a big, broad club chair and expound on finance while the others sat at his feet. On Wall Street, his homespun manner made him a cult figure. Where finance was so forbiddingly complex, Buffett could explain it like a general-store clerk discussing the weather. He never forgot that underneath each stock and bond, no matter how arcane, there lay a tangible, ordinary business. Beneath the jargon of Wall Street, he seemed to unearth a street from small-town America. In such a complex age, what was stunning about Buffett was his applicability. Most of what Buffett did was imitable by the average person (this is why the multitudes flocked to Omaha). It is curious irony that as more Americans acquired an interest in investing, Wall Street became more complex and more forbidding than ever. Buffett was born in the midst of depression. The depression cast a long shadow on Americans, but the post war prosperity eclipsed it. Unlike the modern portfolio manager, whose mindset is that of a trader, Buffett risked his capital on the long term growth of a few select businesses. In this, he resembled the magnates of a previous age, such as J P Morgan Sr.
As Jack Newfield wrote of Robert Kennedy, Buffett was not a hero, only a hope; not a myth, only a man. Despite his broad wit, he was strangely stunted. When he went to Paris, his only reaction was that he had no interest in sight-seeing and that the food was better in Omaha. His talent sprang from his unrivaled independence of mind and ability to focus on his work and shut out the world, yet those same qualities exacted a toll. Once, when Buffett was visiting the publisher Katharine Graham on Martha’s Vineyard, a friend remarked on the beauty of the sunset. Buffett replied that he hadn't focused on it, as though it were necessary for him to exert a deliberate act of concentration to "focus" on a sunset. Even at his California beachfront vacation home, Buffett would work every day for weeks and not go near the water. Like other prodigies, he paid a price. Having been raised in a home with more than its share of demons, he lived within an emotional fortress. The few people who shared his office had no knowledge of the inner man, even after decades. Even his children could scarcely recall a time when he broke through his surface calm and showed some feeling. Though part of him is a showman or preacher, he is essentially a private person. Peter Lynch, the mutual-fund wizard, visited Buffett in the 1980s and was struck by the tranquility in his inner sanctum. His archives, neatly alphabetized in metal filing cabinets, looked as files had in another era. He had no armies of traders, no rows of electronic screens, as Lynch did. Buffett had no price charts, no computer - only a newspaper clipping from 1929 and an antique ticker under a glass dome. The two of them paced the floor, recounting their storied histories, what they had bought, what they had sold. Where Lynch had kicked out his losers every few weeks, Buffett had owned mostly the same few stocks for years and years. Lynch felt a pang, as though he had traveled back in time. Buffett’s one concession to modernity is a private jet. Otherwise, he derives little pleasure from spending his fabulous wealth. He has no art collection or snazzy car, and he has never lost his taste for hamburgers. He lives in a commonplace house on a tree-lined block, on the same street where he works. His consuming passion - and pleasure - is his work, or, as he calls it, his canvas. It is there that he revealed the secrets of his trade, and left a self-portrait.
[1] “Saddle shoes and Vietnam”, as expressed in the passage, refers to:
I. Denier cri and Vietnam war
II. Growth of leather footwear industry and Vietnam shoe controversy
III. Modern U.S. population and traditional expatriates
IV. Industrial revolution and Vietnam Olympics
V. Fashion and Politics
(1) I and V
(2) II and IV
(3) III and V
(4) II and III
[2] Identify the correct sequence:
I. Depression -> Eisenhower -> Microsoft
II. California -> New York -> Omaha
III. J.P.Morgan -> Buffett -> Bill Gates
IV. Mutual funds -> Hedge funds -> Brokers
(1) I and II
(2) I and III
(3) II and IV
(4) III and IV[3] Choose the most appropriate answer: according to the author, Warren Buffett was
I. Simple and outmoded
II. Against planned economy and technology
III. Deadpan
IV. Spiritually raw
(1) I and IV
(2) II and IV
(3) III and IV
(4) I and IIIasked in IIFT
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2.
When people react to their experiences with particular authorities, those authorities and the organizations or institutions that they represent often benefit if the people involved begin with high levels of commitment to the organization or institution represented by the authorities. First, in his studies of people's attitudes toward political and legal institutions, Tyler found that attitudes after an experience with the institution were strongly affected by prior attitudes. Single experiences influence postexperience loyalty but certainly do not overwhelm the relationship between pre-experience and postexperience loyalty. Thus, the best predictor of loyalty after an experience is usually loyalty before that experience. Second, people with prior loyalty to the organization or institution judge their dealings with the organization’s or institution's authorities to be fairer than do those with less prior loyalty, either because they are more fairly treated or because they interpret equivalent treatment as fairer.
Although high levels of prior organizational or institutional commitment are generally beneficial to the organization or institution, under certain conditions high levels of prior commitment may actually sow the seeds of reduced commitment. When previously committed individuals feel that they were treated unfavourably or unfairly during some experience with the organization or institution, they may show an especially sharp decline in commitment. Two studies were designed to test this hypothesis, which, if confirmed, would suggest that organizational or institutional commitment has risks, as well as benefits. At least three psychological models offer predictions of how individuals’ reactions may vary as a function of (1) their prior level of commitment and (2) the favorability of the encounter with the organization or institution. Favorability of the encounter is determined by the outcome of the encounter and the fairness or appropriateness of the procedures used to allocate outcomes during the encounter. First, the instrumental prediction is that because people are mainly concerned with receiving desired outcomes from their encounters with organizations, changes in their level of commitment will depend primarily on the favorability of the encounter. Second, the assimilation prediction is that individuals' prior attitudes predispose them to react in a way that is consistent with their prior attitudes.
The third prediction, derived from the group-value model of justice, pertains to how people with high prior commitment will react when they feel that they have been treated unfavorably or unfairly during some encounter with the organization or institution. Fair treatment by the other party symbolizes to people that they are being dealt with in a dignified and respectful way, thereby bolstering their sense of self-identity and self-worth. However, people will become quite distressed and react quite negatively if they feel that they have been treated unfairly by the other party to the relationship. The group-value model suggests that people value the information they receive that helps them to define themselves and to view themselves favorably. According to the instrumental viewpoint, people are primarily concerned with the more material or tangible resources received from the relationship. Empirical support for the group-value model has implications for a variety of important issues, including the determinants of commitment, satisfaction, organizational citizenship, and rule following. Determinants of procedural fairness include structural or interpersonal factors. For example, structural determinants refer to such things as whether decisions were made by neutral, fact-finding authorities who used legitimate decision-making criteria. The primary purpose of the study was to examine the interactive effect of individuals (1) commitment to an organization or institution prior to some encounter and (2) perceptions of how fairly they were treated during the encounter, on the change in their level of commitment. A basic assumption of the group-value model is that people generally value their relationships with people, groups, organizations, and institutions and therefore value fair treatment from the other party to the relationship. Specifically, highly committed members should have especially negative reactions to feeling that they were treated unfairly, more so than (1) lesscommitted group members or (2) highly committed members who felt that they were fairly treated.
The prediction that people will react especially negatively when they previously felt highly committed but felt that they were treated unfairly also is consistent with the literature on psychological contracts. Rousseau suggested that, over time, the members of work organizations develop feelings of entitlement, i.e., perceived obligations that their employers have toward them. Those who are highly committed to the organization believe that they are fulfilling their contract obligations. However, if the organization acted unfairly, then highly committed individuals are likely to believe that the organization did not live up to its end of the bargain.
[1] The hypothesis mentioned in the passage tests at least one of the following ideas.
(1) People continue to show loyalty only if they were initially committed to the organization.
(2) Our experiences influence post-experience loyalty but certainly underwhelm the relationship between pre-experience and post-experience loyalty.
(3) Pre-experience commitment always has inverse relationship with the post-experience commitment.
(4) None of these ideas are being tested by the hypothesis.[2] There is only one term in the left column which matches with the options given in the second column. Identify the correct pair from the following table: a Instrumental 1 Better outcome leads to more commitment. b Assimilation 2 Prior belief is instrumental in deciding about the post encounter commitment. c Group-value 3 Sense of value gets jeopardized that leads to negative attitude. d Institutional 4 Deals mainly with tangible outcomes.
(1) a-1 and 4
(2) b-3 and 4
(3) c-2 and 4
(4) d-1 only
[3] For summarizing the passage, which of the following is most appropriate::
(1) The study explored how citizens’ commitment to legal authorities changed as a function of their initial level of commitment and their perceptions of how fairly they were treated in their recent encounters with legal authorities.
(2) The influence of individuals' prior commitment to an institution on their reactions to the perceived fairness of decisions rendered by the institution was examined.
(3) Given the generally positive consequences to organizations of having committed employees, it may be that unfair managerial practices would begin to alienate the very employees that the organization would least wish to alienate.
(4) The passage aims at understanding how people define happiness and these definitions include instrumental view-points.
asked in IIFT
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3.
People are continually enticed by such "hot" performance, even if it lasts for brief periods. Because of this susceptibility, brokers or analysts who have had one or two stocks move up sharply, or technicians who call one turn correctly, are believed to have established a credible record and can readily find market followings. Likewise, an advisory service that is right for a brief time can beat its drums loudly. Elaine Garzarelli gained near immortality when she purportedly "called" the 1987 crash. Although, as the market strategist for Shearson Lehman, her forecast was never published in a research report, nor indeed communicated to its clients, she still received widespread recognition and publicity for this call, which was made in a short TV interview on CNBC. Still, her remark on CNBC that the Dow could drop sharply from its then 5300 level rocked an already nervous market on July 23, 1996. What had been a 40-point gain for the Dow turned into a 40-point loss, a good deal of which was attributed to her comments.
The truth is, market-letter writers have been wrong in their judgments far more often than they would like to remember. However, advisors understand that the public considers short-term results meaningful when they are, more often than not, simply chance. Those in the public eye usually gain large numbers of new subscribers for being right by random luck. Which brings us to another important probability error that falls under the broad rubric of representativeness. Amos Tversky and Daniel Kahneman call this one the "law of small numbers.". The statistically valid "law of large numbers" states that large samples will usually be highly representative of the population from which they are drawn; for example, public opinion polls are fairly accurate because they draw on large and representative groups. The smaller the sample used, however (or the shorter the record), the more likely the findings are chance rather than meaningful. Yet the Tversky and Kahneman study showed that typical psychological or educational experimenters gamble their research theories on samples so small that the results have a very high probability of being chance. This is the same as gambling on the single good call of an advisor. The psychologists and educators are far too confident in the significance of results based on a few observations or a short period of time, even though they are trained in statistical techniques and are aware of the dangers.
Note how readily people over generalize the meaning of a small number of supporting facts. Limited statistical evidence seems to satisfy our intuition no matter how inadequate the depiction of reality. Sometimes the evidence we accept runs to the absurd. A good example of the major overemphasis on small numbers is the almost blind faith investors place in governmental economic releases on employment, industrial production, the consumer price index, the money supply, the leading economic indicators, etc. These statistics frequently trigger major stock- and bond-market reactions, particularly if the news is bad. Flash statistics, more times than not, are near worthless. Initial economic and Fed figures are revised significantly for weeks or months after their release, as new and "better" information flows in. Thus, an increase in the money supply can turn into a decrease, or a large drop in the leading indicators can change to a moderate increase. These revisions occur with such regularity you would think that investors, particularly pros, would treat them with the skepticism they deserve. Alas, the real world refuses to follow the textbooks. Experience notwithstanding, investors treat as gospel all authoritative-sounding releases that they think pinpoint the development of important trends. An example of how instant news threw investors into a tailspin occurred in July of 1996. Preliminary statistics indicated the economy was beginning to gain steam. The flash figures showed that GDP (gross domestic product) would rise at a 3% rate in the next several quarters, a rate higher than expected. Many people, convinced by these statistics that rising interest rates were imminent, bailed out of the stock market that month. To the end of that year, the GDP growth figures had been revised down significantly (unofficially, a minimum of a dozen times, and officially at least twice). The market rocketed ahead to new highs to August l997, but a lot of investors had retreated to the sidelines on the preliminary bad news. The advice of a world champion chess player when asked how to avoid making a bad move. His answer: "Sit on your hands”. But professional investors don't sit on their hands; they dance on tiptoe, ready to flit after the least particle of information as if it were a strongly documented trend. The law of small numbers, in such cases, results in decisions sometimes bordering on the inane. Tversky and Kahneman‘s findings, which have been repeatedly confirmed, are particularly important to our understanding of some stock market errors and lead to another rule that investors should follow.
[1] Which statement does not reflect the true essence of the passage?
I. Tversky and Kahneman understood that small representative groups bias the research theories to generalize results that can be categorized as meaningful result and people simplify the real impact of passable portray of reality by small number of supporting facts.
II. Governmental economic releases on macroeconomic indicators fetch blind faith from investors who appropriately discount these announcements which are ideally reflected in the stock and bond market prices.
III. Investors take into consideration myopic gain and make it meaningful investment choice and fail to see it as a chance of occurrence.
IV. lrrational overreaction to key regulators expressions is same as intuitive statistician stumbling disastrously when unable to sustain spectacular performance.
(1) Only I
(2) Only IV
(3) II and III
(4) Only III[2] The author of the passage suggests the anomaly that leads to systematic errors in predicting future. Which of the following statements does not best describe the anomaly as suggested in the passage above?
I. The psychological pressures account for the anomalies just like soothsayers warning about the doomsday and natural disasters and market crashes.
II. Contrary to several economic and financial theories investors are not good intuitive statistician, especially under difficult conditions and are unable to calculate the odds properly when making investments choices.
III. Investors are swamped with information and they react to this avalanche of data by adopting shortcuts or rules of thumb rather than formally calculating odds of a given outcome.
IV. The distortions produced by subjectively calculated probabilities are large, systematic and difficult to eliminate even when investors are fully aware of them.
(1) Only I
(2) Only IV
(3) I and III
(4) II and IV
[3] “Tversky and Kahneman’s findings ... lead to another rule that investors should follow”. Which rule is the author talking about?
I. Not to be influenced by short term and occasional record of a money manager, broker, analysts, or advisor, no matter how impressive.
II. To accept cursory economic or investment news without significant substantiation but supported by statistical evidence even if limited in data sufficiency.
III. In making decisions we become overly immersed in the details of a particular situation and consider all the outcomes of similar experience in our past.
IV. None of the above.
(1) Only IV
(2) Only I
(3) Only III
(4) I, II, and III[4] According to the passage which statement written below is farthest in explaining the meaning of the passage above?
I. Market letter writers have been wrong in their judgments many a times but they continue to express their opinion as dramatic predictions and well time call results in huge rewards to analysts, journalist and popular writers.
II. Public opinion polls are fairly accurate because they are based on randomly selected diminutive representative groups and hence are more meaningful than intuitive statistics of an outcome.
III. People generally limit the need for hefty statistical evidence as it satisfies their intuition without reflecting the reality.
IV. None of the above.
(1) Only IV
(2) Only II
(3) II and III
(4) Only Iasked in IIFT
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4.
Kodak decided that traditional film and prints would continue to dominate through the 1980s and that photo finishers, film retailers, and, of course, Kodak itself could expect to continue to occupy their longheld positions until l990. Kodak was right and wrong. The quality of digital cameras greatly improved. Prices plunged because the cameras generally followed Moore's Law, the famous prediction by Intel co-founder Gordon Moore in the l960s that the cost of a unit of computing power would fall by 50 percent every eighteen to twenty-four months. Cameras began to be equipped with what the industry called removable media - those little cards that hold the pictures - so pictures were easier to print or to move to other devices, such as computers. Printers improved. Their costs dropped, too. The Internet caught the popular imagination, and people began emailing each other pictures rather than print them. Kodak did little to ready itself for the onslaught of digital technology because it consistently tried to hold on to the profits from its old technology and underestimated the speed with which the new would take hold. Kodak decided it could use digital technology to enhance film, rather than replace it. Instead of preparing for the digital world, Kodak headed off in a direction that cost it dearly. ln 1988, Kodak bought Sterling Drug for $5.1 billion. Kodak had decided it was really a chemicals business, not a photography company. So, Kodak reasoned, it should move into adjacent chemical markets, such as drugs. Well, chemically treated photo paper really isn’t that similar to hormonal agents and cardiovascular drugs. The customers are different. The delivery channels are different. Kodak lost its shirt. lt sold Sterling in pieces in 1994 for about half the original purchase price. George M. C. Fisher was the new CEO of Kodak in 1993. Fisher’s solution was to hold on to the film business as long as possible, while adding a technological veneer to it. For instance, he introduced the Advantix Preview camera, a hybrid of digital and film technology. Users took pictures the way they always had, and the images were captured on film. Kodak spent more than $500 million developing Advantix, which flopped.
Fisher also tried to move Kodak’s traditional retail photo-processing systems into digital world and in this regard installed tens of thousands of image magic kiosks. These kiosks came just as numerous companies introduced inexpensive, high-quality photo printers that people could use at home, which, in fact, is where customers preferred to view their images and fiddle with them. Fisher also tried to insert Kodak as an intermediary in the process of sharing images electronically. He formed partnerships that let customers receive electronic versions of their photos by e-mail and gave them access to kiosks that let them manipulate and reproduce old photographs. You don't need Kodak to upload photos to your computer and e-mail them. Fisher also formed a partnership with AOL called "You've Got Pictures." Customers would have their film developed and posted online, where friends and family could view them. Customers would pay AOL $7 for this privilege, on top of the $9 paid for photo processing. However sites like Snapfish were allowing pictures to be posted online free. Fisher promised early on, that Kodak's digital-photography business would be profitable by 1997. lt wasn't. ln 1997 Philippe Kahn lead the advent of cell phone camera. With the cell phone camera market growth Kodak didn't just lose out on more prints. The whole industry lost out on sales of digital cameras, because they became just a feature that was given away free on cell phones. Soon cameras became a free feature on many personal computers, too. What had been so profitable for Kodak for so long- capturing images and displaying them- was going to become essentially free.
In 1999 Fisher resigned and Carp became the new CEO. In 2000, Carp‘s first year as CEO, profit was about flat, at $l.4l billion. Carp, too, retired early, at age fifty-seven. Carp had pursued Fisher's basic strategy of "enhancing" the film business to make it last as long as possible, while trying to figure out some way to get recurring revenue from the filmless, digital world. But the temporizing didn't work any better for Carp than it had for Fisher. Kodak talked, for instance, about getting customers to digitize and upload to the Internet more of the 300 million rolls of film that Kodak processed annually, as of 2000. Instead, customers increasingly skipped the film part. ln 2002, sales of digital cameras in the United States passed those of traditional cameras-even though Kodak in the mid-I990s had projected that it would take twenty years for digital technology to eclipse film. The move to digital in the 2000s happened so fast that, in 2004, Kodak introduced a film camera that won a "camera of the year" award, yet was discontinued by the time Kodak collected the award. Kodak staked out a position as one of the major sellers of digital cameras, but being "one of" is a lot different from owning 70 percent to 80 percent of a market, as Kodak had with film, chemicals, and processing. In 2002 competition in the digital market was so intense that Kodak lost 75 percent of its stockmarket value over the past decade, falling to a level about half of what it was when the reporter suggested to Carp that he might sell the company. As of 2005, Kodak employed less than a third of the number who worked for it twenty years earlier. To see what might have been, look at Kodak’s principal competitors in the film and paper markets. Agfa temporized on digital technology, then sold its film and paper business to private-equity investors in 2004. The business went into bankruptcy proceedings the following year, but that wasn't Agfa's problem. lt had cashed out at a halfway reasonable price.
[1] As per the passage which of the following statements truly reflects the real theme of' the passage?
(1) Moore’s law predicted that cost per unit of computing power would exhibit a standard deviation of 25% per annum.
(2) Popularity of removable media and internet lead to high demand for computers.
(3) Kodak managers were able to predict the flow of digital technology and their critical value drivers.
(4) Kodak did not have a vision to plough back the profits from old technology to research and development in new technology.
[2] Which of the following statements is not true?
I. Kodak bought sterling drug as a strategic choice for a chemical business as it was
already in the business of chemically treated photo paper.
II. The chemical business was in sync with the existing business of Kodak running across the customer segment, delivery channels and the regulatory environment.
III. Kodak committed a mistake by selling sterling in pieces at a loss of 50%.
IV. Kodak’s diversification attempt with purchase of sterling to strengthen its core business and shift to digital world was a shift from its strategic focus.
(1) Only I and II
(2) Only II and III
(3) Only III and IV
(4) Only I, II, III[3] Kodak lost a big piece of its market share to its competitors because of the following best explained reason.
I. When Carp became the CEO the digital Technology eclipsed film technology business and further Carp had been with the company for twenty nine years and had no background in technology.
II. Carp in 2004 introduced a film camera that won camera of the year award, yet it was discontinued by the time Kodak collected the award.
III. Kodak moved from traditional retail photo processing systems into digital world installing several thousands of image magic kiosks that failed to deliver real benefits to the customers.
IV. Phillipe Kahn led the advent of cell phone camera and Kodak lost out on the print business and ability to share images became a free feature with no additional charge.
(1) I and II
(2) II and III
(3) I and IV
(4) III and IV
[4] Arrange the given statements in the correct sequence as they appear in the passage.
I. Kodak lost to its competitors a big pie of its market share.
II. Kodak ventured into chemical business to strengthen its digital technology business.
III. Kodak downsized its workforce drastically.
IV. Kodak tied up with business firms for photo processing.
(1) I, II, III, IV
(2) III, IV, II, I
(3) II, IV, I, III
(4) I, III, II, IV[5] Match the following :: 1 Intel a Preview cameras that helped users to immediately see the pictures taken 2 Fisher b Photo processing, developing and posting online photos 3 AOL c Lead to insolvency of digital technology business 4 Agfa d Price of technology product reduces to half every year or two
(1) 1-d, 2-a, 3-b, 4-c
(2) 1-a, 2-d, 3-c, 4-b
(3) 1-c, 2-b, 3-a, 4-d
(4) 1-d, 2-c, 3-a, 4-b
asked in IIFT
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5.
"All raw sugar comes to us this way. You see, it is about the color of maple or brown sugar, but it is not nearly so pure, for it has a great deal of dirt mixed with it when we first get it."
"Where does it come from?" inquired Bob.
"Largely from the plantations of Cuba and Porto Rico. Toward the end of the year we also get raw sugar from Java, and by the time this is refined and ready for the market the new crop from the West Indies comes along. In addition to this we get consignments from the Philippine Islands, the Hawaiian Islands, South America, Formosa, and Egypt. I suppose it is quite unnecessary to tell you young men anything of how the cane is grown; of course you know all that."
"I don't believe we do, except in a general way," Bob admitted honestly. "I am ashamed to be so green about a thing at which Dad has been working for years. I don't know why I never asked about it before. I guess I never was interested. I simply took it for granted."
"That's the way with most of us," was the superintendent's kindly answer. "We accept many things in the world without actually knowing much about them, and it is not until something brings our ignorance before us that we take the pains to focus our attention and learn about them. So do not be ashamed that you do not know about sugar raising; I didn't when I was your age. Suppose, then, I give you a little idea of what happens before this raw sugar can come to us."
"I wish you would," exclaimed both boys in a breath.
"Probably in your school geographies you have seen pictures of sugar-cane and know that it is a tall perennial not unlike our Indian corn in appearance; it has broad, flat leaves that sometimes measure as many as three feet in length, and often the stalk itself is twenty feet high. This stalk is jointed like a bamboo pole, the joints being about three inches apart near the roots and increasing in distance the higher one gets from the ground."
"How do they plant it?" Bob asked.
"It can be planted from seed, but this method takes much time and patience; the usual way is to plant it from cuttings, or slips. The first growth from these cuttings is called plant cane; after these are taken off the roots send out ratoons or shoots from which the crop of one or two years, and sometimes longer, is taken. If the soil is not rich and moist replanting is more frequently necessary and in places like Louisiana, where there is annual frost, planting must be done each year. When the cane is ripe it is cut and brought from the field to a central sugar mill, where heavy iron rollers crush from it all the juice. This liquid drips through into troughs from which it is carried to evaporators where the water portion of the sap is eliminated and the juice left; you would be surprised if you were to see this liquid. It looks like nothing so much as the soapy, bluish-gray dish-water that is left in the pan after the dishes have been washed."
"A tempting picture!" Van exclaimed.
"I know it. Sugar isn't very attractive during its process of preparation," agreed Mr. Hennessey. "The sweet liquid left after the water has been extracted is then poured into vacuum pans to be boiled until the crystals form in it, after which it is put into whirling machines, called centrifugal machines that separate the dry sugar from the syrup with which it is mixed. This syrup is later boiled into molasses. The sugar is then dried and packed in these burlap sacks such as you see here, or in hogsheads, and shipped to refineries to be cleansed and whitened."
"Isn't any of the sugar refined in the places where it grows?" queried Bob.
"Practically none. Large refining plants are too expensive to be erected everywhere; it therefore seems better that they should be built in our large cities, where the shipping facilities are good not only for receiving sugar in its raw state but for distributing it after it has been refined and is ready for sale. Here, too, machinery can more easily be bought and the business handled with less difficulty."[1] Which one of the following is not a essential condition for setting up sugar refining plants?
A. Facilities for transportation of machinery
B. Facilities for import of raw material
C. Facilities for transportation of finished products
D. Proximity to the raw material sources[2] Which of the following is the correct sequence of sugar preparation process?
A. Cutting → Crushing → Evaporation → Boiling → Whirling.
B. Boiling → Crushing → Evaporation → Whirling → Cutting.
C. Cutting → Boiling → Evaporation → Crushing → Whirling.
D. Whirling → Crushing → Boiling → Evaporation → Cutting.[3] Which of the following statements, as per the paragraph, is incorrect?
A. Sugar in its raw from is brownish in colour due to the presence of dirt
B. After evaporation, cane juice looks bluish – gray in colour
C. Molasses is obtained as a bye-product from the process of sugar production
D. Cane plantation and sugar production process is widely and equally spread across the countries.asked in IIFT
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6.
The broad scientific understanding today is that our planet is experiencing a warming trend over and above natural and normal variations that is almost certainly due to human activities associated with large-scale manufacturing. The process began in the late 1700s with the Industrial Revolution, when manual labor, horsepower, and water power began to be replaced by or enhanced by machines. This revolution, over time, shifted Britain, Europe, and eventually North America from largely agricultural and trading societies to manufacturing ones, relying on machinery and engines rather than tools and animals.
The Industrial Revolution was at heart a revolution in the use of energy and power. Its beginning is usually dated to the advent of the steam engine, which was based on the conversion of chemical energy in wood or coal to thermal energy and
then to mechanical work primarily the powering of industrial machinery and steam locomotives. Coal eventually supplanted wood because, pound for pound, coal contains twice as much energy as wood (measured in BTUs, or British thermal units, per pound) and because its use helped to save what was left of the world's temperate forests. Coal was used to produce heat that went directly into industrial processes, including metallurgy, and to warm buildings, as well as to power steam engines. When crude oil came along in the mid- 1800s, still a couple of decades before electricity, it was burned, in the form of kerosene, in lamps to make light replacing whale oil. It was also used to provide heat for buildings and in manufacturing processes, and as a fuel for engines used in industry and propulsion.
In short, one can say that the main forms in which humans need and use energy are for light, heat, mechanical work and motive power, and electricity which can be used to provide any of the other three, as well as to do things that none of those three can do, such as electronic communications and information processing. Since the Industrial Revolution, all these energy functions have been powered primarily, but not exclusively, by fossil fuels that emit carbon dioxide (CO2).
To put it another way, the Industrial Revolution gave a whole new prominence to what Rochelle Lefkowitz, president of Pro-Media Communications and an energy buff, calls "fuels from hell" - coal, oil, and natural gas. All these fuels from hell come from underground, are exhaustible, and emit CO2 and other pollutants when they are burned for transportation, heating, and industrial use. These fuels are in contrast to what Lefkowitz calls "fuels from heaven" -wind, hydroelectric, tidal, biomass, and solar power. These all come from above ground, are endlessly renewable, and produce no harmful emissions.
Meanwhile, industrialization promoted urbanization, and urbanization eventually gave birth to suburbanization. This trend, which was repeated across America, nurtured the development of the American car culture, the building of a national highway system, and a mushrooming of suburbs around American cities, which rewove the fabric of American life. Many other developed and developing countries followed the American model, with all its upsides and downsides. The result is that today we have suburbs and ribbons of highways that run in, out, and around not only America s major cities, but China's, India's, and South America's as well. And as these urban areas attract more people, the sprawl extends in every direction.
All the coal, oil, and natural gas inputs for this new economic model seemed relatively cheap, relatively inexhaustible, and relatively harmless-or at least relatively easy to clean up afterward. So there wasn't much to stop the juggernaut of more people and more development and more concrete and more buildings and more cars and more coal, oil, and gas needed to build and power them. Summing it all up, Andy Karsner, the Department of Energy's assistant secretary for energy efficiency and renewable energy, once said to me: "We built a really inefficient environment with the greatest efficiency ever known to man."
Beginning in the second half of the twentieth century, a scientific understanding began to emerge that an excessive accumulation of largely invisible pollutants-called greenhouse gases - was affecting the climate. The buildup of these greenhouse gases had been under way since the start of the Industrial Revolution in a place we could not see and in a form we could not touch or smell. These greenhouse gases, primarily carbon dioxide emitted from human industrial, residential, and transportation sources, were not piling up along roadsides or in rivers, in cans or empty bottles, but, rather, above our heads, in the earth's atmosphere. If the earth's atmosphere was like a blanket that helped to regulate the planet's temperature, the CO2 buildup was having the effect of thickening that blanket and making the globe warmer.
Those bags of CO2 from our cars float up and stay in the atmosphere, along with bags of CO2 from power plants burning coal, oil, and gas, and bags of CO2 released from the burning and clearing of forests, which releases all the carbon stored in trees, plants, and soil. In fact, many people don't realize that deforestation in places like Indonesia and Brazil is responsible for more CO2 than all the world's cars, trucks, planes, ships, and trains combined - that is, about 20 percent of all global emissions. And when we're not tossing bags of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, we're throwing up other greenhouse gases, like methane (CH4) released from rice farming, petroleum drilling, coal mining, animal defecation, solid waste landfill sites, and yes, even from cattle belching.
Cattle belching? That's right-the striking thing about greenhouse gases is the diversity of sources that emit them. A herd of cattle belching can be worse than a highway full of Hummers. Livestock gas is very high in methane, which, like CO2, is colorless and odorless. And like CO2, methane is one of those greenhouse gases that, once released into the atmosphere, also absorb heat radiating from the earth's surface. "Molecule for molecule, methane's heat-trapping power in the atmosphere is twenty-one times stronger than carbon dioxide, the most abundant greenhouse gas.." reported Science World (January 21, 2002). “With 1.3 billion cows belching almost constantly around the world (100 million in the United States alone), it's no surprise that methane released by livestock is one of the chief global sources of the gas, according to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency ... 'It's part of their normal digestion process,' says Tom Wirth of the EPA. 'When they chew their cud, they regurgitate [spit up] some food to rechew it, and all this gas comes out.' The average cow expels 600 liters of methane a day, climate researchers report."
What is the precise scientific relationship between these expanded greenhouse gas emissions and global warming? Experts at the Pew Center on Climate Change offer a handy summary in their report "Climate Change 101. " Global average temperatures, notes the Pew study, "have experienced natural shifts throughout human history. For example; the climate of the Northern Hemisphere varied from a relatively warm period between the eleventh and fifteenth centuries to a period of cooler temperatures between the seventeenth century and the middle of the nineteenth century. However, scientists studying the rapid rise in global temperatures during the late twentieth century say that natural variability cannot account for what is happening now." The new factor is the human factor-our vastly increased emissions of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases from the burning of fossil fuels such as coal and oil as well as from deforestation, large-scale cattle-grazing, agriculture, and industrialization.
“Scientists refer to what has been happening in the earth‟s atmosphere over the past century as the 'enhanced greenhouse effect'", notes the Pew study. By pumping man-made greenhouse gases into the atmosphere, humans are altering the process by which naturally occurring greenhouse gases, because of their unique molecular structure, trap the sun‟s heat near the earth‟s surface before that heat radiates back into space.
"The greenhouse effect keeps the earth warm and habitable; without it, the earth's surface would be about 60 degrees Fahrenheit colder on average. Since the average temperature of the earth is about 45 degrees Fahrenheit, the natural greenhouse effect is clearly a good thing. But the enhanced greenhouse effect means even more of the sun's heat is trapped, causing global temperatures to rise. Among the many scientific studies providing clear evidence that an enhanced greenhouse effect is under way was a 2005 report from NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies. Using satellites, data from buoys, and computer models to study the earth's oceans, scientists concluded that more energy is being absorbed from the sun than is emitted back to space, throwing the earth's energy out of balance and warming the globe."[1] Which of the following statements is correct?
(I) Greenhouse gases are responsible for global warming. They should be eliminated to save the planet
(II) CO2 is the most dangerous of the greenhouse gases. Reduction in the release of CO2 would surely bring down the temperature
(III) The greenhouse effect could be traced back to the industrial revolution. But the current development and the patterns of life have enhanced their emissions
(IV) Deforestation has been one of the biggest factors contributing to the emission of greenhouse gases
Choose the correct option:
A. I and II
B. II and III
C. II, III, and IV
D. III and IV[2] Which of the following statements is incorrect?
A. Natural and controlled greenhouse effect is good for earth
B. As a measure to check global warming, prevention of destruction of forests needs to be given priority over reduction in fuel emission
C. Greenhouse gases trap the sun‟s heat from radiating back into the space making the earth surface warmer
D. It is for the first time in human evolution that the global temperatures have started to witness a shift[3] Increasing warming of earth has been due to:
(I) Increased manual intervention in the manufacturing process
(II) The fallout of mechanization of production
(III) Industrial revolution
(IV) Over reliance on non- replenishible energy sources
Choose the correct option:
A. I, II, and IV
B. I, III and IV
C. I, II, III, and IV
D. II, III, and IV[4] Which of the following according to the passage are the features of “fuels from heaven”?
(I) Replenishability
(II) Storability
(III) Cost-effectiveness
(IV) Harmlessness
A. I and II
B. II and III
C. III, and IV
D. I and IV
asked in IIFT
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