AsiaPacific countries have resolved to take which approach to urban planning? ?->(Show Answer!)

1. AsiaPacific countries have resolved to take which approach to urban planning?

Answer: Urban Plus

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MCQ-> Throughout human history the leading causes of death have been infection and trauma, Modem medicine has scored significant victories against both, and the major causes of ill health and death are now the chronic degenerative diseases, such as coronary artery disease, arthritis, osteoporosis, Alzheimer’s, macular degeneration, cataract and cancer. These have a long latency period before symptoms appear and a diagnosis is made. It follows that the majority of apparently healthy people are pre-ill.But are these conditions inevitably degenerative? A truly preventive medicine that focused on the pre-ill, analyzing the metabolic errors which lead to clinical illness, might be able to correct them before the first symptom. Genetic risk factors are known for all the chronic degenerative diseases, and are important to the individuals who possess them. At the population level, however, migration studies confirm that these illnesses are linked for the most part to lifestyle factors — exercise, smoking and nutrition. Nutrition is the easiest of these to change, and the most versatile tool for affecting the metabolic changes needed to tilt the balance away from disease.Many national surveys reveal that malnutrition is common in developed countries. This is not the calorie and/or micronutrient deficiency associated with developing nations (type A malnutrition); but multiple micronutrient depletion, usually combined with calorific balance or excess (Type B malnutrition). The incidence and severity of Type B malnutrition will be shown to be worse if newer micronutrient groups such as the essential fatty acids, xanthophylls and falconoid are included in the surveys. Commonly ingested levels of these micronutrients seem to be far too low in many developed countries.There is now considerable evidence that Type B malnutrition is a major cause of chronic degenerative diseases. If this is the case, then t is logical to treat such diseases not with drugs but with multiple micronutrient repletion, or pharmaco-nutrition’. This can take the form of pills and capsules — ‘nutraceuticals’, or food formats known as ‘functional foods’, This approach has been neglected hitherto because it is relatively unprofitable for drug companies — the products are hard to patent — and it is a strategy which does not sit easily with modem medical interventionism. Over the last 100 years, the drug industry has invested huge sums in developing a range of subtle and powerful drugs to treat the many diseases we are subject to. Medical training is couched in pharmaceutical terms and this approach has provided us with an exceptional range of therapeutic tools in the treatment of disease and in acute medical emergencies. However, the pharmaceutical model has also created an unhealthy dependency culture, in which relatively few of us accept responsibility for maintaining our own health. Instead, we have handed over this responsibility to health professionals who know very little about health maintenance, or disease prevention.One problem for supporters of this argument is lack of the right kind of hard evidence. We have a wealth of epidemiological data linking dietary factors to health profiles/ disease risks, and a great deal of information on mechanism: how food factors interact with our biochemistry. But almost all intervention studies with micronutrients, with the notable exception of the omega 3 fatty acids, have so far produced conflicting or negative results. In other words, our science appears to have no predictive value. Does this invalidate the science? Or are we simply asking the wrong questions?Based on pharmaceutical thinking, most intervention studies have attempted to measure the impact of a single micronutrient on the incidence of disease. The classical approach says that if you give a compound formula to test subjects and obtain positive results, you cannot know which ingredient is exerting the benefit, so you must test each ingredient individually. But in the field of nutrition, this does not work. Each intervention on its own will hardly make enough difference to be measured. The best therapeutic response must therefore combine micronutrients to normalise our internal physiology. So do we need to analyse each individual’s nutritional status and then tailor a formula specifically for him or her? While we do not have the resources to analyze millions of individual cases, there is no need to do so. The vast majority of people are consuming suboptimal amounts of most micronutrients, and most of the micronutrients concerned are very safe. Accordingly, a comprehensive and universal program of micronutrient support is probably the most cost-effective and safest way of improving the general health of the nation.The author recommends micronutrient-repletion for large-scale treatment of chronic degenerative diseases because
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MCQ-> Read the following passages carefully and answer the questions given at the end of each passage.PASSAGE 3Typically women participate in the labour force at a very high rate in poor rural countries. The participation rate then falls as countries industrialise and move into the middle income class. Finally, if the country grows richer still, more families have the resources for higher education for women and from there they often enter the labour force in large numbers. Usually, economic growth goes hand in hand with emancipation of women. Among rich countries according to a 2015 study, female labour force participation ranges from nearly 80 percent in Switzerland to 70 percent in Germany and less than 60 Percent in the United States and Japan. Only 68 Percent of Canadian omen participated in the workforce in 1990; two decades later that increased to 74 Percent largely due to reforms including tax cuts for second earners and new childcare services. In Netherlands the female labour participation rate doubled since 1980 to 74 Percent as a result of expanded parental leave policies and the spread of flexible, part time working arrangements. In a 2014 survey of 143 emerging countries, the World Bank found that 90 Percent have at least one law that limits the economic opportunities available to women. These laws include bans or limitations on women owning property, opening a bank account, signing a contract, entering a courtroom, travelling alone, driving or controlling family finances. Such restrictions are particularly prevalent in the Middle East and South Asia with the world’s lowest female labour force participation, 26 and 35 percent respectively. According to date available with the International Labour Organisation (ILO), between 2004 and 2011, when the Indian economy grew at a healthy average of about 7 percent, there was a decline in female participation in the country’s labour force from over 35 percent to 25 percent. India also posted the lowest rate of female participation in the workforce among BRIC countries. India’s performance in female workforce participation stood at 27 percent, significantly behind China (64 percent), Brazil (59 percent), Russian Federation (57 percent), and South Africa (45 percent). The number of working women in India had climbed between 2000 and 2005, increasing from 34 percent to 37 percent, but since then the rate of women in the workforce has to fallen to 27 percent as of 2014, said the report citing data from the World Bank. The gap between male and female workforce participation in urban areas in 2011 stood at 40 percent, compared to rural areas where the gap was about 30 percent. However, in certain sectors like financial services, Indian women lead the charge. While only one in 10 Indian companies are led by women, more than half of them are in the financial sector. Today, women head both the top public and private banks in India. Another example is India’s aviation sector, 11.7 percent of India’s 5,100 pilots are women, versus 3 percent worldwide. But these successes only represent a small of women in the country. India does poorly in comparison to its neighbours despite a more robust economic growth. In comparison to India, women in Bangladesh have increased their participation in the labour market, which is due to the growth of the ready- made garment sector and a push to rural female employment. In 2015, women comprised of 43 percent of the labour force in Bangladesh. The rate has also increased in Pakistan, albeit from a very low starting point, while participation has remained relatively stable in Sri Lanka. Myanmar with 79 percent and Malaysia with 49 percent are also way ahead of India. Lack of access to higher education, fewer job opportunities, the lack of flexibility in working conditions, as well as domestic duties are cited as factors behind the low rates. Marriage significantly reduced the probability of women working by about 8 percent in rural areas and more than twice as much in urban areas, said an Assocham report. ILO attributes this to three factors: increasing educational enrolment, improvement in earning of male workers that discourage women’s economic participation, and lack of employment opportunities at certain levels of skills and qualifications discouraging women to seek work. The hurdles to working women often involve a combination of written laws and cultural norms. Cultures don’t change overnight but laws can. The IMF says that even a small step such as countries granting women the right to open a bank account can lead to substantial increase in female labour force participation over the next seven years. According to the United Nations Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific (ESCAP), even a 10 percent increase in women participating in the workforce can boost gross domestic product (GDP) by 0.3 percent. The OECD recently estimated that eliminating the gender gap would lead to an overall increase in GDP of 12 percent in its member nations between 2015 and 2030. The GDP gains would peak close to 20 percent in both Japan and South Korea and more than 20 percent in Italy. A similar analysis by Booz and Company showed that closing gender gap in emerging countries could yield even larger gains in GDP by 2020, ranging from a 34 percent gain in Egypt to 27 percent in India and 9 percent in Brazil. According to the above passage, though there are many reasons for low female labour force participation, the most important focus of the passage is on
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MCQ-> Read the following passage carefully and answer the questions given below it. Certain words/phrases have been printed in bold to help you locate them while answering some of the questions. The past quarter of a century has seen several bursts of selling by the world’s governments, mostly but not always in benign market conditions. Those in the OECD, a rich-country club, divested plenty of stuff in the 20 years before the global financial crisis. The first privatisation wave, which built up from the mid-1980s and peaked in 2000, was largely European. The drive to cut state intervention under Margaret Thatcher in Britain soon spread to the continent. The movement gathered pace after 1991, when eastern Europe put thousands of rusting state-owned enterprises (SOEs) on the block. A second wave came in the mid-2000s, as European economies sought to cash in on buoyant markets. But activity in OECD countries slowed sharply as the financial crisis began. In fact, it reversed. Bailouts of failing banks and companies have contributed to a dramatic increase in government purchases of corporate equity during the past five years. A more lasting fea ture is the expansion of the state capitalism practised by China and other emerging economic powers. Governments have actually bought more equity than they have sold in most years since 2007, though sales far exceeded purchases in 2013. Today privatisation is once again “alive and well”, says William Megginson of the Michael Price College of Business at the University of Oklahoma. According to a global tally he recently completed, 2012 was the third-best year ever, and preliminary evidence suggests that 2013 may have been better. However, the geography of sell-offs has changed, with emerging markets now to the fore. China, for instance, has been selling minority stakes in banking, energy, engineering and broadcasting; Brazil is selling airports to help finance a $20 billion investment programme. Eleven of the 20 largest IPOs between 2005 and 2013 were sales of minority stakes by SOEs, mostly in developing countries. By contrast, state-owned assets are now “the forgotten side of the balance-sheet” in many advanced economies, says Dag Detter, managing partner of Whetstone Solutions, an adviser to governments on asset restructuring. They shouldn’t be. Governments of OECD countries still oversee vast piles of assets, from banks and utilities to buildings, land and the riches beneath (see table). Selling some of these holdings could work wonders: reduce debt, finance infrastructure, boost economic efficiency. But governments often barely grasp the value locked up in them. The picture is clearest for companies or company-like entities held by central governments. According to data compiled by the OECD and published on its website, its 34 member countries had 2,111 fully or majority-owned SOEs, with 5.9m employees, at the end of 2012. Their combined value (allowing for some but not all pension-fund liabilities) is estimated at $2.2 trillion, roughly the same size as the global hedge-fund industry. Most are in network industries such as telecoms, electricity and transport. In addition, many countries have large minority stakes in listed firms. Those in which they hold a stake of between 10% and 50% have a combined market value of $890 billion and employ 2.9m people. The data are far from perfect. The quality of reporting varies widely, as do definitions of what counts as a state-owned company: most include only centralgovernment holdings. If all assets held at sub-national level, such as local water companies, were included, the total value could be more than $4 trillion. Reckons Hans Christiansen, an OECD economist. Moreover, his team has had to extrapolate because some QECD members, including America and Japan, provide patchy data. America is apparently so queasy about discussions of public ownership of -commercial assets that the Treasury takes no part in the OECD’s working group on the issue, even though it has vast holdings, from Amtrak and the 520,000-employee Postal Service to power generators and airports. The club’s efforts to calculate the value that SOEs add to, or subtract from, economies were abandoned after several countries, including America, refused to co-operate. Privatisation has begun picking up again recently in the OECD for a variety of reasons. Britain’s Conservative-led coalition is fbcused on (some would say obsessed with) reducing the public debt-to-GDP ratio. Having recently sold the Royal Mail through a public offering, it is hoping to offload other assets, including its stake in URENCO, a uranium enricher, and its student-loan portfolio. From January 8th, under a new Treasury scheme, members of the public and businesses will be allowed to buy government land and buildings on the open market. A website will shortly be set up to help potential buyers see which bits of the government’s /..337 billion-worth of holdings ($527 billion at today’s rate, accounting for 40% of developable sites round Britain) might be surplus. The government, said the chief treasury secretary, Danny Alexander, “should not act as some kind of compulsive hoarder”. Japan has different reasons to revive sell-offs, such as to finance reconstruction after its devastating earthquake and tsunami in 2011. Eyes are once again turning to Japan Post, a giant postal-to-financial-services conglomerate whose oftpostponed partial sale could at last happen in 2015 and raise (Yen) 4 trillion ($40 billion) or more. Australia wants to sell financial, postal and aviation assets to offset the fall in revenues caused by the commodities slowdown. In almost all the countries of Europe, privatisation is likely “to surprise on the upside” as long as markets continue to mend, reckons Mr Megginson. Mr Christiansen expects to see three main areas of activity in coming years. First will be the resumption of partial sell-offs in industries such as telecoms, transport and utilities. Many residual stakes in partly privatised firms could be sold down further. France, for instance, still has hefty stakes in GDF SUEZ, Renault, Thales and Orange. The government of Francois Hollande may be ideologically opposed to privatisation, but it is hoping to reduce industrial stakes to raise funds for livelier sectors, such as broadband and health. The second area of growth should be in eastern Europe, where hundreds of large firms, including manufacturers, remain in state hands. Poland will sell down its stakes in listed firms to make up for an expected reduction in EU structural funds. And the third area is the reprivatisation of financial institutions rescued during the crisis. This process is under way: the largest privatisation in 2012 was the $18 billion offering of America’s residual stake in AIG, an insurance company.Which of the following statements is not true in the context of the given passage ?
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MCQ-> Read the following passage carefully and answer the questions given below it. Certain words/phrases have been printed in bold to help you locate them while answering some of the questions.There are various sectors in India that are to be assessed for their strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats. The total population is over 1 billion which will increase to 1.46 billion by 2035 to cross China. The huge population will result in higher unemployment and deterioration of quality. Literacy, in India is yet another factor to be discussed. According to 1991 census, 64.8% of the population was illiterate. The major downtrend of education is due to child labour which has spread all over India and this should be totally eradicated by way of surveillance and a good educational system implemented properly by the Government. Pollution is one more threat to the environment and for the country’s prospects. This has been experienced more in urban areas mainly in metropolitan cities. The water pollution by the sewage seepage into the ground water and improper maintenance will lead to various diseases which in turn will affect the next generation. In most of the cities there is no proper sewage disposal. The Government has to take effective steps to control population which, in turn, will minimize the pollution. Poverty questions the entire strength of India’s political view and minimizes the energetic way of approach. The shortfall of rains, enormous floods, unexpected famine, drought, earthquake and the recent tsunami hit the country in a negative way. The proactive approach through effective research and analytical study helps us to determine the effects in advance. Proper allocation of funds is a prerequisite. In developed countries like. U.S., Japan precautionary methods are adopted to overcome this, but it has to be improved a lot in our systems. Increased population is one of the major reasons for poverty and the Government is unable to allocate funds for basic needs to the society. India has nearly 400 million people living below the poverty line and 90% of active population is in informal economy. The children are forced to work due to their poverty and differential caste system. They work in match industry for daily wages, as servants, mechanics, stone breakers, agricultural workers, etc. To prevent child labour, existing laws which favour the Anti Child Labour Act should be implemented by the Government vigorously. More population results in cheap cost by virtue of the demand supply concept. Most of the foreign countries try to utilize this factor by outsourcing their business in India with a very low capital. According to U.S., India is a “Knowledge pool” with cheap labour. The major advantage is our communication and technical skill which is adaptable to any environment. The cutting edge skill in IT of our professionals helps the outsourcing companies to commensurate with the needs of the consumers in a short span. The major competitors for India are China and Philippines and by the way of an effective communication and expert technical ability, Indians are ahead of the race. The major Metropolitan states are targeting the outsourcing field vigorously by giving various amenities to the outsourcing companies like tax concession, allotting land etc., to start their businesses in its cities without any hurdles. Thereby most of the MNCs prefer India as their destinations and capitalize the resources to maximize their assets. Infrastructure is another key factor for an outsourcing company to start a business in a particular city. It includes road, rail, ports, power and water. The increased input in infrastructure in India is very limited where China’s record is excellent. India in earlier days gave more importance to the development of industry and less importance to other departments. But the scenario has quite changed nowadays by allocating a special budget of funds for security. This is because of the frightening increase in terrorism all around the world especially emerging after the 9/11 terror attack in U.S. In the last ten years, budget towards the development of military forces is higher when compared to others. It shows that the threat from our neighbouring countries is escalating. India has to concentrate more on this security factor to wipe out the problem in the way of cross border terrorism. Making India, a developed country in 2020 is not an easy task. India has to keep in check a variety of factors in order to progress rapidly. To quote China as an example is that they demolished an old building to construct a very big port to meet future demands, but India is still waiting for things to happen. The profits gained by India through various sectors are to be spent for the development and welfare of the country. India’s vision for a brighter path will come true not only by mere words or speech, but extra effort needed at all levels to overcome the pitfalls.Which of the following, according to the author, is/are a result(s) of increased population in India ? (A) Pollution (B)Poverty (C) Unemployment...

MCQ-> There are a seemingly endless variety of laws, restrictions, customs and traditions that affect the practice of abortion around the world. Globally, abortion is probably the single most controversial issue in the whole area of women’s rights and family matters. It is an issue that inflames women’s right groups, religious institutions, and the self-proclaimed ‘guardians’ of public morality. The growing worldwide belief is that the right to control one’s fertility is a basic human right. This has resulted in a worldwide trend towards liberalization of abortion laws. Forty per cent of the world’s population live in countries where induced abortion is permitted on request. An additional 25 per cent live in countries where it is allowed if the women’s life would be endangered if she went to full term with her pregancy. The estimate is that between 26 and 31 million legal abortions were performed in that year. However, there were also between 10 and 22 million illegal abortions performed in that year.Feminists have viewed the patriarchal control of women’s bodies as one of the prime issues facing the contemporary women’s movement. They abserve that the defintion and control of women’s reproductive freedom have always been the province of men. Patriarchal religion, as manifest in Islamic fundamentalism,traditionalist Hindu practice, orthodox Judaism, and Roman Catholicism, has been an important historical contributory factor for this and continues to be an important presence in contemporary societies. In recent times, govenments, usually controlled by men, have ‘given’ women the right to contraceptive use and abortion access when their countries were perceived to have an overpopulation problem. When these countries are perceived to be underpopulated, that right had been absent. Until the 19th century, a woman’s rights to an abortion followed English common law; it could only be legally challenged if there was a ‘quickening’, when the first movements of the fetus could be felt. In 1800, drugs to induce abrotions were widely advertised in local newpapers. By 1900, abortion was banned in every state except to save the life of the mother. The change was strongly influenced by medical profession, which focussed its campaign ostensibly on health and safety issues for pregnant women and the sancity of life. Its position was also a means of control of non-licensed medical practitioners such as midwives and women healers who practiced abortion.The anti-abortion campaign was also influenced by political considerations. The large influx of eastern and southern European immigrants with their large families was seen as a threat to the population balance of the future United States. Middle and upper-classes Protestants were advocates of abortion as a form of birth control. By supporting abortion prohibitions the hope was that these Americans would have more children and thus prevent the tide of immigrant babies from overwhelming the demographic characteristics of Protestant America.The anti-abortion legislative position remained in effect in the United States through the first 65 years of the 20th century. In the early 1960s, even when it was widely known that the drug thalidomide taken during pregnancy to alleviate anxiety was shown to contribute to the formation of deformed ‘flipper-like’ hands or legs of children, abortion was illegal in the United States. A second health tragedy was the severe outbreak of rubella during the same time period, which also resulted in major birth defects. These tragedies combined with a change of attitude towards a woman’s right to privacy led a number of states to pass abortion permitting legislation.On one side of the controversy are those who call themselves ‘pro-life’. They view the foetus as a human life rather than as an unformed complex of cells; therefore, they hold to the belief that abortion is essentially murder of an unborn child. These groups cite both legal and religious reasons for their opposition to abortion. Pro lifers point to the rise in legalised abortion figures and see this as morally intolerable. On the other side of the issue are those who call themselves ‘pro-choice’. They believe that women, not legislators or judges, should have the right to decide whether and under what circumstances they will bear children. Pro-choicers are of the opinion that laws will not prevent women from having abortions and cite the horror stories of the past when many women died at the hands of ‘backroom’ abortionists and in desperate attempts to self-abort. They also observe that legalized abortion is especially important for rape victims and incest victims who became pregnant. They stress physical and mental health reasons why women should not have unwanted children.To get a better understanding of the current abortion controversy, let us examine a very important work by Kristin Luker titled Abortion and the Politics of Motherhood. Luker argues that female pro-choice and prolife activists hold different world views regarding gender, sex, and the meaning of parenthood. Moral positions on abortions are seen to be tied intimately to views on sexual bahaviour, the care of children, family life, technology, and the importance of the individual. Luker identified ‘pro-choice’ women as educated, affluent, and liberal. Their contrasting counterparts, ‘pro-life’ women, support traditional concepts of women as wives and mothers. It would be instructive to sketch out the differences in the world views of these two sets of women. Luker examines California, with its liberalized abortion law, as a case history. Public documents and newspaper accounts over a 26-year period were analysed and over 200 interviews were held withheld with both pro-life and pro-choice activists.Luker found that pro-life and pro-choice activists have intrinsically different views with respect to gender. Pro-life women have a notion of public and private life. The proper place for men is in the public sphere of work; for women, it is the private sphere of the home. Men benefit through the nurturance of women; women benefit through the protection of men. Children are seen to be the ultimate beneficiaries of this arrangement of having the mother as a full-time loving parent and by having clear role models. Pro-choice advocates reject the view of separate spheres. They object to the notion of the home being the ‘women’s sphere’. Women’s reproductive and family roles are seen as potential barriers to full equality. Motherhood is seen as a voluntary, not a mandatory or ‘natural’ role. In summarizing her findings, Luker believes that women become activists in either of the two movements as the end result of lives that centre around different conceptualizations of motherhood. Their beliefs and values are rooted to the concrete circumstances of their lives, their educations, incomes, occupations, and the different marital and family choices that they have made. They represent two different world views of women’s roles in contemporary society and as such the abortion issues represent the battleground for the justification of their respective views.According to your understanding of the author’s arguments, which countries are more likely to allowabortion?
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