TSA 2020 S1

The 21st century is witnessing a significant rise in the proportion of people being diagnosed by medical professionals as having a mental illness. For example, at the turn of the century, the number of Canadians being treated for depression increased by over 30% in just one year. A recent study in the US found that nearly twice the number of young people there were diagnosed with a mental disorder in 2018 as compared to 2003. The World Health Organization estimates that by 2028, depression will be the second leading type of disability worldwide. It is clear that aspects of the modern world make it more difficult for people to maintain good mental health.

In the game of tigball, two teams compete against each other to try to score points.

Points are scored as follows:

A ‘penalty’ scores 5 points.

A ‘tigdown’ scores 8 points.

A ‘transformation’ scores 3 points, but teams only have the opportunity to achieve a transformation after scoring a tigdown.

There are no other ways of scoring points.

In the UK we are increasingly engrossed by entertainment: we devote more time to it than sleep and spend more money on it than food and drink. The aim of entertainment is to create a make-believe situation in which emotions can be excited and discharged without affecting real life. While entertainment has its proper place, it can become a preoccupation, dominating our thoughts and sapping our emotional energy. When this happens, the ‘real’ world of action starts to appear comparatively dull and tedious and this, in turn, undermines social cohesion. Our increasing use of entertainment is, then, threatening our wellbeing.

Adults over the age of 60 are often depicted by the media as depressed, lonely and grumpy. Of course, old age is associated with physical decline, health issues become more common and memory gets fuzzier. Previously, theories of ageing assumed that emotional experiences would follow a similar pathway towards dysfunction. They were wrong. Recent research has shown that in old age negative emotions (like anger) wane, while positive emotions (like contentment) become more common. Why? Our lives undergo pronounced changes in later life. Work demands are eliminated, there is more time for leisure pursuits, and older people structure their environments in ways that reduce unnecessary stress. Time horizons shrink: people learn to spend their remaining precious time on the things that matter most.

You are allowed to vote in the general election only if you are at least 18 years old. You have reached 18 so you will be able to vote in the forthcoming election.

A teacher is organising a trip to the local zoo for 20 students. Of the 20 students, 12 are aged 11–15 and 8 are 16–18 years of age. Tickets cost £12.95 per adult (16 years of age and over) and £9.95 per child (2–15 years of age). For every 4 students under 16 they must have one teacher supervising them. They will take the minimum number of teachers.

The Pentarathon Challenge is a competition in which five athletes compete against each other in five marathon races, run on consecutive days.

Points are awarded in each race, as follows:

first place              7 points

second place        5 points

third place            3 points

fourth place         2 points

fifth place             1 point

This table shows the total points of the competitors in this year’s Pentarathon Challenge after each race.

Between 1987 and 1992 there were four formats of singles recordings: 7″, 12″, cassette and CD. The accompanying graph shows how total sales of singles were split between the four different formats in the years 1987 to 1992.

Microscopic malaria parasites enter a person’s bloodstream through mosquito bites and infect red blood cells. They replicate in these cells and penetrate other organs. Until recently, microbiologists sought to block the parasites from entering red blood cells. Rhode Island University studied 700 Tanzanian children infected with malaria and found the parasites use a protein, since named PfSEA-1, to escape from the red blood cells they infect. Having investigated a subgroup of children immune to malaria, the researchers realised these children were producing an antibody that locked protein PfSEA-1 into their red blood cells. Trapped in the red cells, the parasites were destroyed by immune system cells. Scientists have reproduced the antibody and successfully tested it on mice. Experts believe that, after trials, the antibody will be certified for use in the treatment of humans.

Despite the government’s promise to be more business friendly, plans have been announced to change the law regarding the paid leave that couples are entitled to take following the birth of a child. This will allow new parents to take more time off work than under the current regulations. It is claimed that the current legislation makes it difficult for those with family commitments to manage all of their responsibilities, but it needs to be recognised that businesses (and in particular small businesses) need to operate in a way that guarantees that staff are available to do the jobs that need doing. The new proposals are undoubtedly going to make the system more complicated and could dissuade businesses from employing certain groups of people. They should be opposed.

As long as there is the right combination of guests, any party will be a success. The last party was great, so there must have been a perfect selection of guests.

A builder has 32 kg of a mix of sand and cement, of which 25% is sand. For a new job, he needs 120 kg of a mix of sand and cement in which the ratio of sand to cement is 2 :1. To obtain this, he starts with his initial 32 kg mix and adds more sand and cement.

I am planning to buy a new laptop. The following table shows the specifications and the prices of my shortlist.

In terms of storage, the operating system and my files take up 300 GB. I would also like a laptop with a screen size of at least 15 inches. I am looking for the cheapest laptop that can run the following games (the minimum system requirements indicate the lowest possible value for each characteristic that would enable me to play these games):

A combination lock has three dials, each dial has eight letters. It is known that the following combinations have been used – one, who, two, bob, add, owl, fab, den, mia and tat.

Although the Scottish Government has announced plans to ban corporal punishment of children (smacking), we must preserve the right of parents in the rest of the UK to smack their children when it is reasonable. This is not because we are violent people eager to hit our kids: we recognise that smacking is damaging to children. The point is rather that people resent being legislatively compelled to do what they would have done anyway. It only breeds contempt for the law and since the wellbeing of citizens depends on people respecting the law, we should take steps to prevent it falling into disrepute. We must, therefore, protect the rights of parents in Northern Ireland, Wales and England to smack their children.

Sometimes we are mistreated by others, and forgiveness is one kind of response to those who wrong us. However, sometimes we do things that appear to be morally wrong but, in fact, are not. If we are reproached, we can give an explanation for our action that justifies it. In these cases, we are claiming that, despite appearances to the contrary, what we did was morally permissible. Forgiveness and justification ought to be distinguished. When conduct is justified, the implication is that it was not morally wrong, but when conduct is forgiven, there is no such implication. What we are forgiven for is the morally wrong things we do.

There has been a choral singing boom. Three hundred thousand more people sing in choirs than play amateur football, yet football receives £30 million from the government every year compared to £1 million for choirs. It is only fair that a substantial increase in funding is made that reflects the numbers of participants and thus treats choral singers fairly. The benefits for those who sing in a choir are comparable to those who play football: increased lung capacity, better posture, improvements to the immune system, and a general sense of well-being. A choir also fosters teamwork, where there is cooperation, determination, discipline and imagination, drawing the best from every individual involved and creating something much greater than the sum of its parts.

Every week I buy 12 cans of lemonade. The shop that I always buy them from sells individual cans for 80p each and packs of 4 cans for £2.60, so I buy three packs of cans.

Last week the shop had a special offer, as follows:

Individual cans – buy one, get another half price

Pack of 4 cans – buy one pack, get a 5th can free

I didn’t want more than 12 cans, and I managed to get 12 cans for the lowest possible total price.

I have booked myself, my wife and our three children into The Wavecrest Hotel, Southbourne, for seven nights from June 19th. The hotel has sent us a ‘What’s on’ booklet, and we are particularly keen to see Oliver!, the advertisement for which is shown below:

In computer technology, a bit can take two values: 0 or 1. A byte is composed of 8 bits.

I start with the following byte: 01000111

I choose two adjacent bits and change each of them to the opposite value (that is, a 0 becomes a 1, and a 1 becomes a 0). I repeat this procedure a number of times.

In real terms, spending on education in the UK is going down. But reductions in funding always mean a reduction in the quality of education provided. In the current climate, we should expect to see the quality of education in the UK diminishing.

Maths is the most popular subject taken at A Level in the UK. Most of the best-paid jobs are in the technology and finance sectors, which tend to require maths. The majority of students achieving the best grades in maths are boys, which helps to explain the persistence of the gender pay disparity. But what explains the gender disparity in Maths A Level results – genetic inheritance or social conditioning? International studies of achievement in maths show that in some countries girls outperform boys in maths, suggesting that social conditioning is the explanation. From this we can conclude that the better achievement in maths of boys in the UK is caused by low expectations of girls in maths by teachers and parents.

In many cultures, traditional heterosexual male preferences for spouses have centred upon a woman’s preparedness – and willingness – to fulfil childcare and other domestic duties and not on her academic achievements or career potential. This kind of expectation on the part of men has served as a significant obstacle to women pursuing careers outside the home. It is for this reason that recent data on educational attainment within married, heterosexual couples is a cause for celebration. In many countries, university-educated men are now proportionally much more likely to marry university-educated women than was the case in their fathers’ generation. This shows that more men are valuing the potential of their female partners to develop a career outside the home, and represents the breaking down of another barrier to equality.

I had planned my day trip to the stately home very carefully, but then the bus was late. I won’t arrive until 11:30 am and will have to leave by 4:15 pm. There were five things that I had wanted to do and I had written these down in the table below:

Steven would like to book return flights from London to Pescara, Italy. He would like to spend at least 3 days in Pescara excluding the days of his flights. Steven has lectures in London every Wednesday that he must attend. However, there are no lectures during the 20th–24th April spring break.

The prices of flights between London and Pescara are shown for the time period Steven would like to make the trip. The airline does not have any flights between these destinations on Fridays.

The current ‘Special Offer’ gimmick at Fareprice involves putting a band marked ‘TWINPACK – 25% OFF’ around pairs of selected items, such as washing powder.

People are understandably suspicious of big, centralised governments – government by people based a long way away from them, who seem disconnected from their lives and concerns. Instead there is a movement to give local people more control over what goes on in their area. The trouble with this is that people will always choose to protect their local interests over those of the wider group. Take energy: no one wants wind farms, fracking, solar power units or any sort of power station near them. It is always local groups that fight to stop them being built. Highly localised politics is not the solution. By ensuring that each small group wins its own little local battle, we are guaranteeing that everyone loses.

Some property developers have discovered that designing energy-efficient buildings can provide them with a ‘green premium’. The government-backed Energy Star programme has been designed to identify and promote products that reduce greenhouse gas emissions. Researchers found that the positive impact on the selling prices of ‘green buildings’ was around 16%. The value of rents was also significantly enhanced by the Energy Star label. If taking advantage of the green premium to increase a company’s profits has positive consequences for the environment, then it is all to the good. Outcomes are all that matter, contrary to the view of many green campaigners that, unless a policy is motivated purely by environmental concern, there is no virtue in it.

The ‘ticking time bomb’ scenario demonstrates that it is possible for torture to be morally permissible. In the scenario, a person with knowledge of an imminent terrorist attack that will kill many people is in the hands of the authorities, and will disclose the information needed to prevent the attack only if she is tortured. The consequences of not torturing her – many people dying – are far worse that the consequences of torturing her – one person being tortured – so in this situation torture would be morally permissible.

Joyce has decided to volunteer to work in the local High Street Charity Shop. She has agreed to be in the shop for 4 hours on a Saturday.

To get from her home to the High Street, Joyce will have to travel by bus. Her walk from home to the bus stop is no more than 5 minutes, and the bus journey each way takes between 20 and 30 minutes depending on traffic.

Buses from Joyce’s home leave for the High Street at 30 minute intervals, on the hour and on the half hour. Return buses for Joyce leave the High Street at 30 minute intervals, at 15 minutes past the hour and 15 minutes to the hour.

The walk to and from the bus stops to the Charity Shop is no more than 5 minutes.

Joyce wants to catch the 13:45 bus home after working in the shop.

The prices for tickets to a concert are set based on the day of the performance and the number of tickets that have been sold so far. The table below shows the ticket prices. There are 1000 tickets on sale for each performance.

I need to buy 10 tickets for Saturday’s performance. I will buy all of them in one purchase this afternoon.

Bert has agreed to make 14 decorations for his daughter’s birthday. Each decoration will require two gold ribbons, one 12 cm long and the other 7 cm long.

The table shows the lengths and prices of available gold ribbon.

The ribbon can be easily cut to size for the decorations, but short pieces of ribbon cannot be joined to make longer lengths.

The last century has seen amazing advances in medical research and practice. By preventing millions of premature deaths and reducing pain and incapacity, they have transformed life all over the world. But it is now time to call a halt. Further progress in surgery or medicine will be too expensive for any but a very few excessively rich people to be able to benefit from it. Trying to meet the medical needs of a whole population will therefore bankrupt any country which is foolish enough to attempt it. Extending the slow decline towards the grave does more harm than good, because no one looks forward to a life of increasing dependence and deteriorating mental capacity.

Campaigners have long been calling for a change in the law to force social media companies to take racist, sexist, terrorist, or obscene material posted on their platforms more seriously. They want the government to bind Facebook, Google, etc. to the same strict rules that apply to newspapers and magazines. But that would be wrong. The proprietors of newspapers and magazines are classified as ‘publishers’, and all publishers are responsible for the content that is printed or displayed on their pages, whoever has contributed it. But the operators of social media platforms are not publishers in the proper sense of the word, and therefore they are not accountable for what individuals post on their platforms.

There are countless ways to get rich in this world. Those who do not achieve wealth either do not find it important or simply have bad luck. Jane is poor but she has always valued material goods, so she must have been unlucky in her life.

The whole of my garden is a patio, which is 12.5 by 10.5 metres. I intend to resurface my patio. I would like my patio to include a 25cm border of bricks and the remainder of the patio inside the border to be covered with paving slabs.

The bricks I will use for the border are 25 cm x 25 cm and the paving slabs I will use for the remainder are 30 cm x 20 cm.

The table below shows the popularity of different breakfasts served in a hotel from 2006 to 2012.

At a smoothie factory, a tropical smoothie mixture contains banana, orange and apple in the proportions shown in the pie chart below.

The chief taster requested a new recipe, in which every litre contained 10% more banana than was present in the original mixture, and 10% less orange than was present in the original mixture. This change also affected the proportion of apple in the mixture.

If the captain of a national team commits any kind of crime, he or she is likely to be dropped, heavily fined by the sport’s governing body, or barred from future competition. This is on top of any punishment handed down by the courts. Senior politicians, doctors, judges or head teachers who offend also find themselves barred from their professions, with little or no chance of regaining their hard-earned status after serving their sentence. There is nothing unjust in this, although it is effectively a double punishment for a single offence. Privileged people must understand that with rewards come responsibilities, including the responsibility to behave in a more exemplary way than those in ordinary walks of life.

What is there in the universe that we know, or have good reason to believe, to possess consciousness? Humans, and perhaps certain other animals. What do they all have in common? They are living beings, made of flesh and blood. As far as we know, nothing else in the universe contains any consciousness at all. For all the mystery of consciousness, of exactly what it is, and of how and why it arises, there is one thing that is certain: it is a biological phenomenon. Any fears surrounding the possibility of so-called ‘artificial intelligence’ are therefore misplaced. If machines are not biological organisms, then they cannot have a mind. Do not expect man-made machines to be conscious – now or ever!

Some readers think there is nothing to learn from historical fiction. Yet the historian and the writer of historical fiction can work in a way that is complementary. Historical novels can thus enrich our understanding of the past. History is a record of the past that is full of gaps. We mostly don’t know what was said or how people behaved when there was no one around to record what was going on. The historian’s trade is never simply about stockpiling facts. The novelist’s trade is never just about making things up. Those undocumented areas of history often force us to contemplate the most private, human moments, away from the public stage, and the blank spaces they leave are irresistible to a novelist.

On sports day at Thiska Academy points are awarded in each event as follows:

Each student may enter no more than three events.

Every Christmas the most popular children’s toys become scarce. Many people turn to online auction sites to buy them instead. The table below shows the recommended retail price and the price that the listed toys have sold for online.

A store sells a particular type of television. The graphs below show the number of these televisions sold per month and the total income from their sales per month, over a six-month period.

The price at which these televisions were sold was increased at the beginning of one of the six months.

The UK is the most researched nation on Earth. Some £60 per head is spent each year on surveys, polls, consumer panels and questionnaires, more per capita than any other country, according to the Market Research Society. No wonder many Brits are suffering from survey fatigue and refuse to fill out questionnaires. This reluctance to participate is very likely to have contributed to incorrect polling predictions in several elections.

My dog’s coat had been looking dull, so I bought some conditioning tablets. The pet shop stocks these in boxes of 300 tablets, and for a dog the size of mine the recommendation (which I have followed) is 6 tablets per day.

Now, several months later, his coat is much shinier. Opening a new box of tablets today, I have decided to reduce his dosage. I shall just give him 6 tablets per day, twice a week, and on the remaining days each week he can have 4 tablets each day.

The UK private security industry employs half a million people in a range of roles, including  supervising public events, guarding cash in transport, and assisting police in surveillance work. Some government officials are pushing for the legal regulation of such work to be moved  out of government agency control and placed in the hands of the private security companies themselves. According to these officials, self-regulation is justified on economic grounds and because of the sector’s ‘willingness to … be more accountable for its own actions’. The foolishness of this argument is breathtaking. The power entrusted to these workers over valuable property – not to mention the safety of people – means that there’s a fundamental need for monitoring and oversight of standards of conduct by an impartial, trustworthy source.

Trains run regularly between Ayton and Exbay, stopping at Beetown, Chalton and Deeford, according to the following timetable.

George lives a 14-minute walk away from Beetown station. He is going to the cinema in Exbay to watch a film that starts at 19:20. It will take him five minutes to walk from the station at Exbay to the cinema. George wants to make sure that he will miss no more than the first five minutes of the film.

One often hears that this or that action is justified or unjustified morally on the grounds that it is ‘natural’ or ‘unnatural’. To say that something is ‘natural’ is really just to say that this is how things happen to be. Yet just because something happens to be the case, it doesn’t mean that it ought to be the case. After all, there are plenty of things in life that are natural – for instance illness and disease, droughts and earthquakes; even emotions such as aggression, jealousy, anger and a desire for revenge. This does not mean that they are to be encouraged or welcomed. To say of something that it is natural, or unnatural, is not to provide anything by way of moral justification.

The table below shows the medal count by the top five teams in a recent Mini Olympics.

Each team calculated the proportion of their medals that were gold.