English: Cloze Test for Upcoming Exams – Set 109

Directions: In the passage given below there are 10 blanks. Every blank has A PAIR of five alternative words given in options (A),(B),(C), (D) and (E). You have to tell which pair is APPROPRIATE according to the context. If all are appropriate then mark your answer s “E”.

Take a cardboard disc and punch two holes in it, on either side of its centre. Thread a piece of string through each hole. Now, pull on each end of the strings and the disc will spin _____1_____ in one direction as the strings wind around each other, and then in the other, as they ____2______.
Versions of this children’s whirligig have been found in archaeological digs across the world, from the Indus Valley to the Americas, with the oldest dating back to 3,300BC. Now Manu Prakash and his colleagues at Stanford University have, with a few nifty modifications, ____3_____ the toy into a cheap, lightweight medical centrifuge. They report their work this week in Nature Biomedical Engineering.
Centrifuges’ many uses include the _____4______ of medical samples (of blood, urine, sputum and stool) for analysis. Tests to spot HIV, malaria and tuberculosis, in particular, require samples to be ____5_____ clear them of cellular debris. Commercial centrifuges, however, are heavy and require power to run. That makes them impractical for general use by health-care workers in poor countries, who may need to carry out diagnostic tests in the field without access to electricity. They also cost hundreds—often thousands—of dollars.
Dr Prakash’s device, which he calls a “paperfuge”, costs 20 cents and weighs just two grams. The standard version (pictured) consists of two cardboard discs, each 10cm across. One of the discs has two 4cm-long pieces of drinking straws _____6______ to it, along opposing radii. These straws, which have had their outer ends sealed with glue, act as receptacles for small tubes that contain the blood to be______7_______.
Once the straws have been loaded, the two discs are attached face to face with Velcro, sandwiching the tubes between them. For string, Dr Prakash uses lengths of fishing line, tied at each end ______8______wooden or plastic handles that the spinner holds.
The result, which spins at over 300 revolutions per second (rps) and generates a centrifugal force 10,000 times that of gravity, is able to separate blood into corpuscles and plasma in less than two minutes. This is a rate comparable to that of electrical centrifuges. Spinning samples for longer (about 15 minutes is ideal, though that is a lot of _____9_____ for a single spinner) can even separate red corpuscles, which may be infected by malarial parasites, from white ones, which cannot be so infected. The team is now trying the system out for real, to find out what works best, by conducting blood tests for malaria in Madagascar.
Once samples have been separated, they still need to be analysed. Fortunately, the paperfuge is not the first cheap laboratory instrument Dr Prakash has invented. In 2014 he unveiled the “foldscope”, a microscope made from a sheet of paper and a small spherical lens. The foldscope goes on sale this year, but his laboratory has already distributed more than 50,000 of them to people in 135 countries, courtesy of a _____10_____ donation that paid for them. He plans to ship a million more by the end of 2017. Putting this together with a paperfuge means it is now possible to separate biological samples and analyse them under a microscope using equipment that costs less than a couple of dollars.

1. wildy, frantically
   frenetically, furiously
   demoniacally, desperately
   hectically, dementedly
   All are correct
   Option E
   

2. slack, agitate
   relax, tangle
   recline, entwine
   unwind, unfurl
   All are correct
   Option D
   

3. built, flourished
   turned, reversed
   spoiled, delighted
   soured, continued
   All are correct
   Option B
   

4. divorce, severance
   union, extrication
   separation, partition
   fusion, split
   All are correct
   Option C
   

5. pivoted, protracted
   whirled, reeled
   rotate, netted
   spun, gyrate
   All are correct
   Option E
   

6. attached, linked
   glued, fastened
   buckled, chopped
   detached, neglected
   All are correct
   Option B
   

7. divider, decent
   snob, extrovert
   centrifuged, blender
   steadier, egalitarian
   All are correct
   Option C
   

8. around, round
   exactly, through
   completely, faithfully
   because, means
   All are correct
   Option A
   

9. blossom, apathy
   enterprise, bossom
   effort, attempt
   exertion, attempt
   All are correct
   Option C
   

10. barbaric, callous
    severe, sadistic
    lenient, malevolent
    charitable, bountiful
    All are correct
    Option C