SECTION A MULTIPLE-CHOICE QUESTIONS
In this section there are several passages followed by fourteen multiple choice questions. For each multiple choice question, there are four suggested answers marked A, B, C and D. Choose the one that you think is the best answer and mark your answers on ANSWER SHEET TWO.
PASSAGE ONE
Education is an important theme in youth athletics in the US. Young kids, energetic, rambunctious, cooped up in class, yearn for the relative freedom of the football field, the basketball court, the baseball diamond. They long to kick and throw things and tackle each other, and the fields of organized play offer a place in which to act out these impulses. Kids are basically encouraged, to beat each other up on the football field. Yet for all the chaos, adult guidance and supervision are never far off, and time spent on the athletic fields is meant to be productive. Conscientious coaches seek to impart lessons in teamwork, self-sacrifice, competition, gracious winning and losing. Teachers at least want their students worn out so they"ll sit still in reading class.
By the time children start competing for spots on junior high soccer teams or tennis squads, the kid gloves have come off to some extent. The athletic fields become less a place to learn about soft values like teamwork than about hard self-discipline and competition. Competitiveness, after all, is prized highly by Americans, perhaps more so than by other peoples. For a child, being cut from the hockey team or denied a spot on the swimming is a grave disappointment—and perhaps an opportunity for emotional or spiritual growth.
High school basketball or football teams are places where the ethos of competition is given still stronger emphasis. Although high school coaches still consider themselves educators, the sports they oversee are not simple extensions of the classroom. They are important social institutions, for football games bring people together. In much of the US they are events where young people and their elders mingle and see how the community is evolving.
For the best players, the progression from little league to junior high to high school leads to a scholarship at a big-name college and maybe, one day, a shot at the pros. College athletes are ostensibly student-athletes, an ideal that suggests a balance between the intellectual rigors of the university and the physical rigors of the playing field. The reality is skewed heavily in favor of athletics. One would be hard-pressed to show that major US college sports are about education. Coaches require far too much of players" time to be truly concerned with anything other than performance in sport. Too often, the players they recruit seem to care little about school themselves.
This was not always the case. Universities—Princeton, Harvard, Rutgers, and Yale—were the birthplaces of American football and baseball; education—the formation of "character"—was an important part of what those coaches and players thought they were achieving. In 1913, when football was almost outlawed in the US, the game"s most prominent figures traveled to Washington and argued successfully that football was an essential part of the campus experience and that the nation would be robbed of its boldest young men, its best potential leaders, if the game were banned.
The idea that competitive sports build character, a Western tradition dating from ancient Greece, has evidently fallen out of fashion in today"s U.S. Educators, now prone to see the kind of character shaped by football and basketball in a dark light, have challenged the notion that college sports produce interesting people. Yet, prominent athletes, such as boxer Muhammad All and basketball star Charles Barkley, deliberately distanced themselves from the earlier ideal of the athlete as a model figure. Today"s US athlete is thus content to be an entertainer. Trying to do something socially constructive, like being a role model, will make you seem over earnest and probably hurt your street credibility.
When I was a kid, my heroes played on Saturdays: they were high school players and college athletes. Pro football games, broadcast on Sunday afternoons, were dull and uninspiring by comparison. After all, why would God schedule anything important for Sunday You"ve got school the next day.
Although I certainly couldn"t have articulated it at the time, I think I must already have sensed that throwing a ball or catching passes was a fairly pointless thing to be good at. In the grand scheme, it was a silly preparation for a job. Yet playing sports was not pointless; the point, however, was that you were learning something—a disposition, a certain virtue, a capacity for arduous endeavor—that might be of value when you later embarked upon a productive career as a doctor or a schoolteacher or a businessman. The optimism of those Saturday afternoons was contagious. I still feel that way today.
PASSAGE TWO
Mohamed Nasheed, the dapper young president of the Maldives, thinks the jasmine revolutionaries of the Arab world may have something to learn from his own small country"s transition to democracy. The Indian Ocean archipelago, which has historical ties to the Arab world, saw the ouster of its own strongman, Maumoon Abdul Gayoom, just two years ago. Mr. Gayoom had ruled as president for three decades, jailing and torturing his opponents along the way, until he was eventually persuaded in 2008, after popular protests, to hold a free election—and then to respect its result, which brought the opposition to power.
The relatively orderly transition did not produce an entirely smooth outcome. Opposition lawmakers have since been able to block the government"s policies, leading to the resignation of the cabinet in protest. But even such disagreements are resolved peacefully. "We are in the process of consolidating our democracy" says Mr. Nasheed, on a visit to Delhi for a conference on promoting liberal governance in South Asia.
"For so many years Maldivian rulers tried to emulate society in Egypt," he argues; now the Egyptians should return the favour . He urges them not to rush to an election, without first allowing time for the formation of stable political parties. Elections should be held only after a constitution is in place. Mr. Nasheed notes that since its first multi-party presidential elections the Maldives has also held a parliamentary poll and then local elections. "We are a 100% Muslim country. We feel if democracy can survive in the Maldives it can survive in other Islamic countries. Islam and democracy are not in conflict." Asked if Mr. Gayoom, who seems to show an interest in returning to politics, should be prosecuted for previous wrongdoing, Mr. Nasheed disagrees. He reckons that "vengeance" against the previous leader would be counterproductive.
Not all is going swimmingly. Islamic radicals, as in North Africa, are a worry. Individuals from the Maldives—frustrated young men—have been arrested while training with extremists in Pakistan. One of the terrorists who attacked India"s commercial capital, Mumbai, in November 2008, killing some 170 people was rumoured to be Maldivian. (Most of the attackers were Pakistani; Mr. Nasheed says he has seen no evidence to prove there was any Maldivian among them.) But the president argues that the religious extremism which flourished under authoritarian rule is now weakening under democracy. "When political space is available, then liberal forces will be able to organise themselves and win the support of the people."
He points out that in last year"s local elections radical Islamic parties won just 2% of the vote. Next he wants liberal Muslims to take initiatives to outsmart the radicals: it is time for an "ideological confrontation", with South Asian Muslims learning tactics from moderate and liberal Muslims from farther East: Malaysia and Indonesia. Mr. Nasheed plans to play host to a conference on the topic, probably later this year.
It helps that the Maldives also has resources to alleviate poverty. Tourism and the local fishing industry are flourishing. Income per person, at $4,200 per year, is the highest of any country in South Asiaand is enough that the Maldives is no longer classified in the "least developed" category. How much any of its success can be replicated in the larger countries of north Africa or the Persian Gulf is open to debate—the Maldives are home to just 350,000 people, and its democracy cannot be considered to be robust until many years have passed. But even a small example of success should be a welcome model for the revolutionaries on the other side of the Arabian Sea.
PASSAGE THREE
If you want to see what it takes to set up an entirely new financial center (and what is best avoided), head for Dubai. This tiny, sun-baked patch of sand in the midst of a war-torn and isolated region started with few advantages other than a long tradition as a hub for Middle Eastern trade routes.
But over the past few years Dubai has built a new financial center from nothing. Dozens of the world"s leading financial institutions have opened offices in its new financial district, hoping to grab a portion of the $2 trillion-plus investment from the Gulf. Some say there is more hype than business, but few big firms are willing to risk missing out.
Dealmaking in Dubai centers around The Gate, a cube-shaped structure at the heart of the Dubai international Financial Centre (DIFC). A brainchild of the ruling Al-Maktoum family, the DIFC is a tax-free zone for wholesale financial services. Firms licensed for it are not approved to serve the local financial market. The DIFC aims to become the leading wholesale financial centre in the Gulf, offering one-stop shopping for everything from stocks to sukuk (Islamic) bonds, investment banking and insurance. In August the Dubai bourse made a hid for a big stake in OMX, a Scandinavian exchange operator that also sells trading technology to many of the world"s exchanges.
Dubai may have generated the biggest splash thus far, but much of the Gulf region has seen a surge of activity in recent years. Record flows of petrodollars have enabled governments in the area to spend billions on infrastructure projects and development. Personal wealth too is growing rapidly. According to Capgemini and Merrill Lynch, the number of people in the Middle East with more than $1m in financial assets rose by nearly 12% last year, to 300,000.
Qatar, Bahrain and Abu Dhahi also have big aspirations for their financial hubs, though they keep a lower profile than Dubai. They, too, are trying to learn from more established financial centers what they must do to achieve the magic mix of transparent regulation, good infrastructure and low or no taxes. Some of the fiercest competition among them is for talent. Most English-speaking professionals have to be imported.
Each of the Gulf hubs, though, has its own distinct characteristics. Abu Dhabi is trying to present itself as a more cultured, less congested alternative to neighboring Duhai, and is building a huge Guggenheim museum. Energy-rich Qatar is an important hub for infrastructure finance, with ambitions to develop further business in wealth management, private equity, retail banking and insurance. Bahrain is well established in Islamic banking, hut it is facing new competition from London, Kuala Lumpur and other hubs that have caught on to Islamic finance. "If you"ve got one string to your bow and suddenly someone takes it away, you"re in trouble," says Stuart Pearce of the Qatar Financial Centre about Bahrain.
Saudi Arabia, by far the biggest economy in the Gulf, is creating a cluster of its own economic zones, including King Abdullah City, which is aimed at foreign investors seeking a presence in the country. Trying to cut down on the number of "suitcase bankers" who fly in from nearby centers rather than live in the country, the Saudis now require firms working with them to have local business licenses. Yet the bulk of the region"s money is still flowing to established financial centers in Europe, America and other parts of Asia.
The financial hubs there offer lessons for aspiring centers in other parts of the developing world. Building the confidence of financial markets takes more than new skyscrapers, tax breaks and incentives. The DIFC, for instance, initially suffered from suspicions of government meddling and from a high turnover among senior executives. Trading on its stock market remains thin, and the government seems unwilling to float its most successful companies there. Making the desert bloom was never easy.
PASSAGE FOUR
How do we recognize fear in another person Scientists have long known that the amygdala, an almond-shaped part of the brain, is critical for the perception of fear. But exactly what role it plays in recognizing facial expressions has remained a mystery.
A new study shows that the amygdala actively seeks out potentially important information in the face of another person. In particular, it focuses our attention on a person"s eyes, the facial features most likely to register fear. "These findings provide a much more abstract and general account of what the amygdala does," Ralph Adolphs said. Adolphs is a professor of psychology and neuroscience at Caltech University in Pasadena, California, and the University of Iowa in Iowa City.
Adolphs"s study focuses on a 38-year-old woman with an amygdala that is damaged from a rare genetic disease. As a result, she is unable to recognize fear in people"s facial expressions. However, the scientists have found that she is able to recognize fear if instructed to concentrate her attention on a person"s eyes. Adolphs says the research could help those who suffer from other disorders such as autism, which can dull some people"s ability to discern important facial signals. The study is published in this week"s issue of the science journal Nature .
Adolphs and his colleagues have studied the woman, known as SM, for more than a decade. She has a brain lesion in the amygdala. Not only can she not recognize fear, but she also fails to judge how trustworthy people look.
To find out how a person perceives fear in other people, the scientists had study participants look at photographs of fearful and happy faces through holes that revealed only small parts of the images. People with normal brains always looked immediately at the eye region of a face—even more so when the face was fearful. SM, on the other hand, failed to spontaneously look at the eyes, instead staring straight ahead at the photographs. As a result, she judged that each face had a neutral expression. "She simply doesn"t know where to look in faces in order to seek out potentially useful information," Adolphs said. "That knowledge is something that other people do automatically."
Although SM"s damaged amygdala is unable to direct the visual system to seek information, its capacity to process visual information is intact. Remarkably, the scientists found that SM was able to recognize fear in a person if told explicitly to look at the eyes of the other person. This solution, though, was short-lived, as SM needed to be reminded continuously to look at the eyes.
"This reveals that the deficit caused by amygdala lesion is not causing a loss of the knowledge of what fear is or looks like, which is what people would have thought until now," Patrik Vuilleumier said. Vuilleumier, a neuroscientist at the University Medical Center of Geneva, Switzerland, wrote a commentary in Nature on the study.
The results reinforce the idea that the amygdala can modulate perception and attention and is not responsible only for "knowing" or "analyzing" signals of fear, Vuilleumier said. In other words, in addition to analyzing other people"s eye signals, the amygdala "tells" you to check others" eyes in the first place. "The amygdala is able to guide the visual system to respond to faces, not only the converse that the visual system is feeding the amygdaia," he said. The scientists have also discovered that the amygdala is activated by other stimuli that don"t have anything to do with fear, such as erotic images.
"The simple answer that the amygdala processes fear or the threat of danger is only a very small part of the story," Adolphs said. "What we"re looking for is a more comprehensive account of what the amygdala does that may begin to tie all these pieces together." Adolphs says many parts of the brain work together and that more research will probably relate cognitive abilities to a network of brain structures. Meanwhile, the study could lead to therapies to help patients with defective emotional perception to lead more normal lives. People with autism, for example, may have similar brain impairments to those of the woman in the study. Some autistics may be unable to make normal eye movements when looking at other people. They may therefore fail to make judgments about other people"s emotions.
"To the extent that we could actually instruct people with autism how to look at the world and other people"s faces, we might be in a position to improve their impaired social functions," Adolphs said. Which of the following statements is NOT true about the Maldives( PASSAGE TWO )