Kurukshetra Sci-Tech Quiz

FINALS

1.

• The following incidents display the cognitive and memonic abilities of which famous scientist?

• Halmos recounts a story told by Nicholas Metropolis, concerning the speed of X’s calculations, when somebody asked X to solve the famous fly puzzle:

• Two bicyclists start twenty miles apart and head toward each other, each going at a steady rate of 10 mph. At the same time a fly that travels at a steady 15 mph starts from the front wheel of the southbound bicycle and flies to the front wheel of the northbound one, then turns around and flies to the front wheel of the southbound one again, and continues in this manner till he is crushed between the two front wheels. Question: what total distance did the fly cover? The slow way to find the answer is to calculate what distance the fly covers on the first, northbound, leg of the trip, then on the second, southbound, leg, then on the third, etc., etc., and, finally, to sum the infinite series so obtained. The quick way is to observe that the bicycles meet exactly one hour after their start, so that the fly had just an hour for his travels; the answer must therefore be 15 miles. When the question was put to X, he solved it in an instant, and thereby disappointed the questioner: "Oh, you must have heard the trick before!" "What trick?" asked X, "All I did was sum the infinite series."

• X had a photographic memory. Herman Goldstine writes: "One of his remarkable abilities was his power of absolute recall. As far as I could tell, X was able on once reading a book or article to quote it back verbatim; moreover, he could do it years later without hesitation. He could also translate it at no diminution in speed from its original language into English. On one occasion I tested his ability by asking him to tell me how The Tale of Two Cities started. Whereupon, without any pause, he immediately began to recite the first chapter and continued until asked to stop after about ten or fifteen minutes."

ANSWER:

• John von Neumann

2.

• X is the name of a hypothetical "lost land" variously located in the Indian and Pacific Oceans. The concept's 19th century origins lie in attempts to account for discontinuities in biogeography; however, the concept of X has been rendered obsolete by modern theories of plate tectonics.

• In 1864 the zoologist and biogeographer Philip Sclater wrote an article on "The Mammals of Madagascar" in The Quarterly Journal of Science. In this Sclater proposed that Madagascar and India had once been part of a larger continent due to presence of common species in both Madagascar and India but not in Africa or the Middle East. He wrote:

• The anomalies of the Mammal fauna of Madagascar can best be explained by supposing that ... a large continent occupied parts of the Atlantic and Indian Oceans ... that this continent was broken up into islands, of which some have become amalgamated with ... Africa, some ... with what is now Asia; and that in Madagascar and the Mascarene Islands we have existing relics of this great continent, for which ... I should propose the name X

ANSWER:

• Lemuria from Lemurs

3.

• The term X refers to World Wide Web content that is not part of the Surface Web, which is indexed by standard search engines. Mike Bergman, founder of BrightPlanet, credited with coining the phrase, has said that searching on the Internet today can be compared to dragging a net across the surface of the ocean: a great deal may be caught in the net, but there is a wealth of information that is X and therefore missed.

• Most of the Web's information is buried far down on dynamically generated sites, and standard search engines do not find it. Traditional search engines cannot "see" or retrieve content in the X—those pages do not exist until they are created dynamically as the result of a specific search. The X is several orders of magnitude larger than the World Wide Web.

ANSWER:

• DeepWeb or InvisibleWeb

4.

• Artists representation of what?

ANSWER:

• Rama from Rendezvous with Rama

5.

• The Xsignal was a strong narrowband radio signal detected by Dr. Jerry R. Ehman on August 15, 1977, while working on a SETI project at the Big Ear radio telescope of The Ohio State University then located at Ohio Wesleyan University's Perkins Observatory, Delaware, Ohio. The signal bore expected hallmarks of potential non-terrestrial and non-solar system origin. It lasted for the full 72-second duration that Big Ear observed it, but has not been detected again. The signal has been the subject of significant media attention.

• Amazed at how closely the signal matched the expected signature of an interstellar signal in the antenna used, Ehman circled the signal on the computer printout and wrote the comment “X" on its side. This comment became the name of the signal.

ANSWER:

• WOW! Signal

6.

• X is a web application that uses an artificial intelligence algorithm to hold conversations with humans. It was created in 1988 by AI scientist Rollo Carpenter.

• X's responses are not programmed into it, but rather selected from phrases entered by humans in previous conversations. Humans type into the box below the X logo and the system finds all of the keywords or an exact phrase matching the input and after searching through its saved conversations of previous chats, responds to the input by finding how a human responded to that input in past conversations when posed by X.

• X took part alongside humans in a formal Turing Test at the 2011 Techniche festival at the Indian Institute of Technology Guwahati on September 3, 2011. Out of the 1,334 votes cast, X was judged to be 59.3% human, compared to the rating of 63.3% human achieved by the actual humans. A score of 50% or higher is often considered to be a pass of the Turing Test.

ANSWER:

• Cleverbot

7.

Some of his findings include • The Treatise on Demonstration of Problems of

Algebra in which occurs the first known Pascal’s triangle.

• Explanation of Euclid’s Parallel Postulate.• Discovery of geometric algebra.• Binomial theorem upto any power• Saccheri quadrilateral• Proposition of the heliocentric theory• Jalali calendar

But he is mainly known today not for his scientific and mathematical findings but for something else entirely. Who and what?

ANSWER:

• Omar Khayyam and the Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám.

8.

X is credited with being the founder of medicine and with being the author of a medical treatise remarkable for being devoid of magical thinking; the so-called Edwin Smith papyrus containing anatomical observations, ailments, and cures. The surviving papyrus was probably written around 1700 BCE but may be a copy of texts a thousand years older. However, this attribution of authorship is speculative. The Papyrus can be viewed at the Brooklyn Children's Museum, New York City. The 48 cases contained within the Edwin Smith Surgical Papyrus concern:• 27 head injuries (cases #1-27)• 6 throat and neck injuries (cases #28-33)• 2 injuries to the clavicle (collarbone) (cases

#34-35)• 3 injuries to the arm (cases #36-38)• 8 injuries to the sternum (breastbone) and ribs

(cases #39-44)• 1 tumour and 1 abscess of the breast (cases

#45-46)• 1 injury to the shoulder(case #47)• 1 injury to the spine (case #48)

Descriptions of X by James Henry Breasted et al. :• "In priestly wisdom, in magic, in the

formulation of wise proverbs; in medicine and architecture; this remarkable figure of Zoser's reign left so notable a reputation that his name was never forgotten. He was the patron spirit of the later scribes, to whom they regularly poured out a libation from the water-jug of their writing outfit before beginning their work." '

• 'X extracted medicine from plants.'• 'X was portrayed as a priest with a shaven

head, seated and holding a papyrus roll. Occasionally he was shown clothed in the archaic costume of a priest.'

ANSWER:

• Imhotep

9.

• While studying at University of Rostock in Germany, on 29 December 1566 X lost part of his nose in a sword duel against fellow Danish nobleman, Manderup Parsberg . From this event X became interested in medicine and alchemy. For the rest of his life, he was said to have worn a replacement made of silver and gold, using a paste or glue to keep it attached. Some people, such as Fredric Ihren and Cecil Adams have suggested that the false nose also had copper. Ihren wrote that when X's tomb was opened in 24 June 1901 green marks were found on his skull, suggesting copper. Recent investigations have suggested that X died from mercury poisoning (Rather than the urinary problems which had been suggested earlier) which may have even been due to the various metals used to create his many different prosthetic noses that he wore.

ANSWER:

• X-Tycho Brahe

10.

• The concept of a “X" drug comes from the experience of 19th century German chemists with selectively staining tissues for histological examination, and in particular, selectively staining bacteria (Ehrlich was an exceptionally gifted histological chemist, and invented the precursor technique to Gram staining bacteria). Ehrlich reasoned that if a compound could be made that selectively targeted a disease-causing organism, then a toxin for that organism could be delivered along with the agent of selectivity. Hence, a “X" would be created that killed only the organism targeted.

• The concept of a “X" was fully realized with the invention of monoclonal antibodies.

• The name “X" was used in the 1940 movie Dr. Ehrlich's X, which depicts his life and focuses on Salvarsan his cure for syphilis.

ANSWER:

• X-Magic Bullet

11.

• X was an exhibit/ride at the 1939 New York World's Fair designed by Norman Bel Geddes that tried to show the world 20 years into the future (1959–1960). Sponsored by the General Motors Corporation, the installation was characterized by its automated highways and vast suburbs. Compared to other "visions of the future," Bel Geddes' was rather achievable—the most advanced technology posited was the automated highway system, of which General Motors built a working prototype by 1960.

• X is widely held to have first introduced the general American public to the concept of a network of expressways connecting the nation. However this exhibit is more famous today for having lent its name to something else entirely.

ANSWER:

• X-Futurama from which the T.V Show gets its name

12.

• Sonic hedgehog homolog (SHH) is one of three proteins in the mammalian signaling pathway family called hedgehog, the others being desert hedgehog (DHH) and Indian hedgehog (IHH). SHH is the best studied ligand of the hedgehog signaling pathway. It plays a key role in regulating vertebrate organogenesis, such as in the growth of digits on limbs and organization of the brain. Investigations aimed at finding a hedgehog equivalent in mammals revealed three homologous genes. The first two discovered, desert hedgehog and Indian hedgehog, were named for species of hedgehogs, while sonic hedgehog was named after Sega's video game character Sonic the Hedgehog.

• A potential inhibitor of the Hedgehog signaling pathway has been found and dubbed ‘X‘. So what is X?

ANSWER:

• 'Robotnikinin', in honor of Sonic the Hedgehog's nemesis, Dr. Ivo "Eggman" Robotnik.

13.

• X refers to a group of metaphors that share a common meaning: a self-sustaining process that proceeds without external help.

• The term is often attributed to Rudolf Erich Raspe's story The Surprising Adventures of Baron Munchausen, where the main character pulls himself out of a swamp by his hair (specifically, his pigtail). Instead, the phrase appears to have originated in the early 19th century United States, to mean an absurdly impossible action, an adynaton.

• X as a metaphor, meaning to better oneself by one's own unaided efforts, was in use in 1922.

ANSWER:

• Booting/Bootstrapping

14.

• What branch of science did this book give rise to?

ANSWER:

• This is Andreas Vesalius’ book on human anatomy, De humani corporis fabrica (On the Structure of the Human Body). Which led to him being called the father of modern human anatomy.

15.

• Identify (pic on next slide).

ANSWER:

• The Hertzsprung–Russell diagram is a scatter graph of stars showing the relationship between the stars' absolute magnitudes or luminosities versus their spectral types or classifications and effective temperatures.

16.

• What did this inspire google to do?

ANSWER:

• Do a barrel roll

17.

• Phylo is an experimental video game which was originally released as a free Flash game in November 2010. By aligning together each ________ _________, represented as differently coloured blocks, players attempt to create the highest point value score for each set of sequences by matching as many colours as possible and minimizing gaps. What is special about this game.

ANSWER:

• The goal of multiple sequence alignments in phylogenetics is to determine the most likely nucleotide sequence of each species by comparing the sequences of children species with those of a most recent common ancestor. Producing such an optimal multiple sequence alignment is usually determined with a dynamic programming algorithm that finds the most probable evolutionary outcome by minimizing the number of mutations required. These algorithms generate phylogenetic trees for each nucleotide in a sequence for each species, and determine the genetic sequence for a common ancestor by comparing the trees of the child species. The algorithms then score and sort the completed phylogenetic tree, and the alignment with the maximum parsimony score is determined to be the optimal, and thus most evolutionarily likely, multiple sequence alignment. However, finding such an optimal alignment for a large number of sequences has been determined to be an NP-completeproblem.

• Phylo uses human-based computation to create an interactive genetic algorithm to solve the multiple sequence alignment problem instead. Generation of the ancestral sequences and parsimony scoring is still computed using a variation of the Fitch algorithm, but Phylo abstracts the genetic sequences obtained from the UCSC Genome Browser into a pattern-matching game, allowing human players to suggest the most likely alignment rather than algorithmically considering all possible trees.

18.

• X are a class of computational algorithms that rely on repeated random sampling to compute their results. X are often used in computer simulations of physical and mathematical systems. These methods are most suited to calculation by a computer and tend to be used when it is infeasible to compute an exact result with a deterministic algorithm. The X was coined in the 1940s by John von Neumann, Stanislaw Ulam and Nicholas Metropolis, while they were working on nuclear weapon projects (Manhattan Project) in the Los Alamos National Laboratory. It was named in homage to the ____________ where Ulam's uncle, a chronic gambler, would often go.

ANSWER:

• Monte Carlo Methods

19.

• A X is a computer program that browses the World Wide Web in a methodical, automated manner or in an orderly fashion.

• This process is called Xing. Many sites, in particular search engines, use X as a means of providing up-to-date data. X are mainly used to create a copy of all the visited pages for later processing by a search engine that will index the downloaded pages to provide fast searches. X can also be used for automating maintenance tasks on a Web site, such as checking links or validating HTML code. Also, X can be used to gather specific types of information from Web pages, such as harvesting e-mail addresses (usually for sending spam).

ANSWER:

• X- Web Crawlers or Spiders

20.

• X refers to the hypothetical future emergence of greater-than-human intelligence through technological means, very probably resulting in explosive superintelligence. Since the capabilities of such intelligence would be difficult for an unaided human mind to comprehend, the occurrence of a X is seen as an intellectual event horizon, beyond which the future becomes difficult to understand or predict. Proponents of the X typically state an "intelligence explosion“ is a key factor of the X where superintelligences design successive generations of increasingly powerful minds.

• The term was coined by science fiction writer Vernor Vinge, who argues that artificial intelligence, human biological enhancement or brain-computer interfaces could be possible causes of the X. The concept is popularized by futurists like Ray Kurzweil and it is expected by proponents to occur sometime in the 21st century, although estimates do vary.

ANSWER:

• Technological Singularity

21.

• "Niruddesher Kahini“ was a bangla science fiction story written by X in 1896. This tale of weather control, one of the first Bangla science fiction works, features getting rid of a cyclone using a little bottle of hair oil (Kuntol Keshori). Later, X submitted the story to Obbakto as "Polatok Tufan" ("Run Away Cyclone"). This caused X to be called the father of Indian science fiction.

ANSWER:

• X-Jagdish Chandra Bose

22.

• X is a satirical novel by Y about World War II experiences and journeys through time of a soldier called Billy Pilgrim also known under the lengthy title: X, or The Children’s Crusade: A Duty Dance with Death, by Y, a Fourth-Generation German-American Now Living in Easy Circumstances on Cape Cod [and Smoking Too Much], Who, as an American Infantry Scout Hors de Combat, as a Prisoner of War, Witnessed the Fire Bombing of Dresden, Germany, ‘The Florence of the Elbe,’ a Long Time Ago, and Survived to Tell the Tale. This Is a Novel Somewhat in the Telegraphic Schizophrenic Manner of Tales of the Planet Tralfamadore, Where the Flying Saucers Come From. Peace.

ANSWER:

• X-Slaughterhouse-Five• Y-Kurt Vonnegut

23.

• Shown on the next slide is the first page of a paper by Arthur C. Clarke titled "Extra-Terrestrial Relays — Can Rocket Stations Give Worldwide Radio Coverage?” which first gave the idea of a __________ _____ .

ANSWER:

• Geostationary or Clark Orbit.

24.

• The origin of this word is obscure, but apparently recent. In The British Standard of the Capital Letters contained in the Roman Alphabet, forming a complete code of systematic rules for a mathematical construction and accurate formation of the same (1813) by William Hollins, it defined surripses, as "projections" which appear at the tops and bottoms of some letters, at the beginning or end, and sometimes at each, of all." The standard also proposed that surripses may be derived from the Greek words συν (together) and ριψις (projection). Which word?

ANSWER:

• Serif as in Sans Serif.

25.

• What is going on here?

ANSWER:

• This is a game called Old Snakey, a version of snake which can be played in Gmail.

26.

Because of his sharp (and sometimes shady) business practices, and for paying his writers extremely low fees or not paying them at all H. P. Lovecraft and Clark Ashton Smithreferred to him as “The Rat."

And Barry Malzberg has said,

“His venality and corruption, his sleaziness and his utter disregard for the financial rights of authors, have been so well documented and discussed in critical and fan literature. That the founder of genre science fiction who was the Guest of Honor at the 1952 Worldcon was pretty much a crook (and a contemptuous crook who stiffed his writers but paid himself $100K a year as President) has been clearly established.“

Who?

ANSWER:

• Hugo Gernsback after whom the Hugo awards are named.

27.

• A X is a hypothetical megastructure originally described by _______ ______. Such a “X" would be a system of orbiting solar power satellites meant to completely encompass a star and capture most or all of its energy output. _____ _____ speculated that such structures would be the logical consequence of the long-term survival and escalating energy needs of a technological civilization, and proposed that searching for evidence of the existence of such structures might lead to the detection of advanced intelligent extraterrestrial life. Xs’ in the form of rings can be seen in Larry Niven’s Ringworld series.

ANSWER:

• Dyson Spheres or Dyson Swarms.

28.

• The X is a method of measuring an advanced civilization's level of technological advancement. The scale is only theoretical and in terms of an actual civilization highly speculative; however, it puts energy consumption of an entire civilization in a cosmic perspective. The X defines three levels of civilizations, based on the order of magnitude of the amount of power available to them:

• Type I: "technological level close to the level presently [1964] attained on earth, with energy consumption at ≈4×1019 erg/sec. Guillermo A. Lemarchand stated this as "a level "near" contemporary terrestrial civilization with an energy capability equivalent to the solar insolation on Earth, between 10 to the 16 power and 10 to the 17 power Watts.”

• Type II: "a civilization capable of harnessing the energy radiated by its own star energy consumption at ≈4×1033 erg/sec. Lemarchand stated this as "a civilization capable of utilizing and channeling the entire radiation output of its star. The energy utilization would then be comparable to the luminosity of our Sun, about 4 x 10 to the 26 power Watts."

• Type III: "a civilization in possession of energy on the scale of its own galaxy, with energy consumption at≈4×1044 erg/sec.“ Lemarchand stated this as "a civilization with access to the power comparable to the luminosity of the entire Milky Way galaxy, about 4 x 10 to the 37 power Watts."

ANSWER:

• Karadashev Scale

29.

• Whose gravesite?

ANSWER:

• Erwin Schrodinger. The symbol in the middle is the Greek letter Psi used to denote the wave function in Schrodingers equations

30.

• X was a French portrait painter, pastelist, miniaturist, and engraver, who was a successful portraitist at the court of Louis XVI of France, and was able to resume his career after the French Revolution. X was an unorthodox portrait artist, interested less in the classical ideas of portraiture used by later French artists like David and Ingres. X had more of what sequential art philosopher Scott McCloud might refer to as a “Formalist” approach, taking the medium to a new ground by tearing down the fourth wall between subject and audience by depicting himself pointing out of the canvas while grinning maniacally, reflecting his belief that facial features could be use to depict personality.

ANSWER:

• Joseph Ducreux

31.

• Put fundas.

ANSWER:

• Guru Meditation is an error notice displayed by early versions of the Commodore Amiga computer when they crashed. It is analogous to the "Blue Screen Of Death" in Microsoft Windows operating systems.

32.

• A study published in the New Journal of Physics by Dr Clanet and his colleague David Quere, who were studying the trajectory of bullets when they made their discovery, explains this famous incident.

• They used water and plastic balls with the same density as water to "simplify the problem". This approach eliminated the effects of air turbulence and of gravity and revealed the pure physical path of a spinning sphere. "We have shown that the path is a spiral," lead researcher Christophe Clanet from the Ecole Polytechnique in Paris told BBC News. Dr Clanet described this path as a "snail-shell shaped trajectory", with the curvature increasing with distance travelled. Because of the larger distance more of this spiral trajectory was visible. So the apparently physics-defying sharp turn was actually following a naturally tightening curve and the speed minimised the effect of gravity.

ANSWER:

• Roberto Carlos’s free kick.