Advertisements
Advertisements
Question
How do the following avoid giving anything to the traveller?
Motiram
(Answer in one or two lines.)
Advertisements
Solution
He tells the traveller that dinner was over and nothing was left. He tells the traveller to try elsewhere.
RELATED QUESTIONS
Read the passage given below and answer the questions that follow:
1. Air pollution is an issue which concerns us all alike. One can willingly choose or reject a food, a drink or a life comfort, but unfortunately there is little choice for the air we breathe. All, what is there in the air is inhaled by one and all living in those surroundings.
2. Air pollutant is defined as a substance which is present while normally it is not there or present in an amount exceeding the normal concentrations. It could either be gaseous or a particulate matter. The important and harmful polluting gases are carbon monoxide, carbon dioxide, ozone and oxides of sulphur and nitrogen. The common particulate pollutants are the dusts of various inorganic or organic origins. Although we often talk of the outdoor air pollutions caused by industrial and vehicular exhausts, the indoor pollution may prove to be as or a more important cause of health problems.
3. Recognition of air pollution is relatively recent. It is not uncommon to experience a feeling of 'suffocation' in a closed environment. It is often ascribed to the lack of oxygen. Fortunately, however, the composition of air is remarkably constant all over the world. There is about 79 per cent nitrogen and 21 per cent oxygen in the air − the other gases forming a very small fraction. It is true that carbon dioxide exhaled out of lungs may accumulate in a closed and over-crowded place. But such an increase is usually small and temporary unless the room is really air-tight. Exposure to poisonous gases such as carbon monoxide may occur in a closed room, heated by burning coal inside. This may also prove to be fatal.
4. What is more common in a poorly ventilated home is a vague constellation of symptoms described as the sick-building syndrome. It is characterized by a general feeling of malaise, head-ache, dizziness and irritation of mucous membranes. It may also be accompanied by nausea, itching, aches, pains and depression. Sick building syndrome is getting commoner in big cities with the small houses, which are generally over-furnished. Some of the important pollutants whose indoor concentrations exceed those of the outdoors include gases such as carbon monoxide, carbon dioxide, oxides of nitrogen and organic substances like spores, formaldehydes, hydrocarbon aerosols and allergens. The sources are attributed to a variety of construction materials, insulations, furnishings, adhesives, cosmetics, house dusts, fungi and other indoor products.
5. By-products of fuel combustion are important in houses with indoor kitchens. It is not only the brining of dried dung and fuelwood which is responsible, but also kerosene and liquid petroleum gas. Oxides of both nitrogen and sulphur are released from their combustion.
6. Smoking of tobacco in the closed environment is an important source of indoor pollution. It may not be high quantitatively, but significantly hazardous for health. It is because of the fact that there are over 3000 chemical constituents in tobacco smoke, which have been identified. These are harmful for human health.
7. Micro-organisms and allergens are of special significance in the causation and spread of diseases. Most of the infective illnesses may involve more persons of a family living in common indoor environment. These include viral and bacterial diseases like tuberculosis.
8. Besides infections, allergic and hypersensitivity disorders are spreading fast. Although asthma is the most common form of respiratory allergic disorders, pneumonias are not uncommon, but more persistent and serious. These are attributed to exposures to allergens from various fungi, molds, hay and other organic materials. Indoor air ventilation systems, coolers, air-conditioners, dampness, decay, pet animals, production or handling of the causative items are responsible for these hypersensitivity − diseases.
9. Obviously, the spectrum of pollution is very wide and our options are limited. Indoor pollution may be handled relatively easily by an individual. Moreover, the good work must start from one’s own house
(Extracted from the Tribune)
(a) (i) What is an air pollutant? (1)
(ii) In what forms are the air pollutants present? (2)
(iii) Why do we feel suffocated in a closed environment? (1)
(iv) What is sick building syndrome? How is it increasing? (2)
(v) How is indoor smoking very hazardous? (1)
(vi) How can one overcome the dangers of indoor air pollution? (2)
(b) Find the words from the above passage which mean the same as the following: (3)
(i) giddiness (para 4)
(ii) constant (para 8)
(iii) humidity (para 8)
Read the text below and summarise it.
The Great Desert Where Hippos Once Wallowed
The Sahara sets a standard for dry land. It’s the world’s largest desert. Relative humidity can drop into the low single digits. There are places where it rains only about once a century. There are people who reach the end of their lives without ever seeing water come from the sky.
Yet beneath the Sahara are vast aquifers of fresh water, enough liquid to fill a small sea. It is fossil water, a treasure laid down in prehistoric times, some of it possibly a million years old. Just 6,000 years ago, the Sahara was a much different place.
It was green. Prehistoric rock art in the Sahara shows something surprising: hippopotamuses, which need year-round water.
“We don’t have much evidence of a tropical paradise out there, but we had something perfectly liveable,” says Jennifer Smith, a geologist at Washington University in St Louis.
The green Sahara was the product of the migration of the paleo-monsoon. In the same way that ice ages come and go, so too do monsoons migrate north and south. The dynamics of earth’s motion are responsible. The tilt of the earth’s axis varies in a regular cycle — sometimes the planet is more tilted towards the sun, sometimes less so. The axis also wobbles like a spinning top. The date of the earth’s perihelion — its closest approach to the sun — varies in cycle as well.
At times when the Northern Hemisphere tilts sharply towards the sun and the planet makes its closest approach, the increased blast of sunlight during the north’s summer months can cause the African monsoon (which currently occurs between the Equator and roughly 17°N latitude) to shift to the north as it did 10,000 years ago, inundating North Africa.
Around 5,000 years ago the monsoon shifted dramatically southward again. The prehistoric inhabitants of the Sahara discovered that their relatively green surroundings were undergoing something worse than a drought (and perhaps they migrated towards the Nile Valley, where Egyptian culture began to flourish at around the same time).
“We’re learning, and only in recent years, that some climate changes in the past have been as rapid as anything underway today,” says Robert Giegengack, a University of Pennsylvania geologist.
As the land dried out and vegetation decreased, the soil lost its ability to hold water when it did rain. Fewer clouds formed from evaporation. When it rained, the water washed away and evaporated quickly. There was a kind of runaway drying effect. By 4,000 years ago the Sahara had become what it is today.
No one knows how human-driven climate change may alter the Sahara in the future. It’s something scientists can ponder while sipping bottled fossil water pumped from underground.
“It’s the best water in Egypt,” Giegengack said — clean, refreshing mineral water. If you want to drink something good, try the ancient buried treasure of the Sahara.
Staff Writer, Washington Post
Tick the statement that is true.
The story tries to relate history to Science.
Tick the item that is closest in meaning to the following phrase.
to give vent to
Write 3 to 4 lines about the following in your own words.
First Cardiac Surgery
What do fairy-tale witches do?
Comment on the versatility and the aptness of the stage settings, as per the requirement of the play “A Midsummer-Night’s Dream!”
Present any one of the speeches given above.
Identify the character or speaker.
I will soon move you.
Sea turtles come to rest on land.
