Science Quiz 2017 (prelims and Finals)

Lajja | Alen | Munnavir | Varad | Utkarsh

2
• Following are some of the reasons given for an interesting wildlife
phenomenon that was famous very recently. You need to tell what
the phenomenon is:
1. Comfort
2. It helps the young one to manipulate and fine tune the muscles in
this difficult to control appendage
3. As a method of advanced smelling
4. Sometimes seen in adults as well when they are nervous or upset

• Baby elephant sucks its trunk just like human babies suck their thumb

3
Google search popularity of X in early 2017
X is a low cost, low technology ‘stress buster’.

5
• Name the effect: A male scientist in the position of power hires
predominantly female staff. Workoutable!

6* The given picture shows a “partner preference test”
for mice. The female placed in the middle
compartment is first allowed to spend some time
with one of the two males. They are then separated
and placed in the apparatus shown along with
another ‘stranger’ male. The female now has equal
opportunities to interact with both the males: the
partner and the stranger. Calculating the amount of
time she spends with both the males separately, it
was found that the female spent significantly more
time with the partner (who she interacted with
before), than the stranger (meeting for the first
time); i.e. she shows a preference for the partner
over the stranger.
The same experiment, when repeated in mice
engineered to have the deficiency of a certain
chemical transmitter resulted in the female showing
no such partner preference. Which chemical did the
mice lack?

7
• The answer to this question depends upon your service provider, the
channel you’re using and also to some extent on the device you use
to access information.
• Interestingly, this question is also the question most commonly
searched on Google.
• What is the question?

• Margaret Hamilton (wrote the code for the Apollo mission)

• Diabetes (sweet urine, flame of hope, cartoon related to diabetes)

10 This Chakra lies in the upper part
of the belly, where the diaphragm
rests. It is the third chakra from
the bottom in the traditional
system counting 7 chakras. This
Chakra is said to have a yellow
colour. Chakras with higher
frequencies tend to have a more
golden colour. Balanced on three
fine points, this Chakra frequently
gets unbalanced and then needs
to be worked upon. Scientifically,
it is named after a neuronal
structure found at the same
anatomic location as itself.
What is the name of this Chakra?

11.
Inspiration for which
product?

12
• As a child he was transferred many times from one school to another
because of behavior that was declared poor, rebellious, and showing
an anti-authoritarian attitude. An extreme example of his
precociousness and rebelliousness at the age of eleven is his 1863
imprisonment for destroying his neighbor's yard gate with a
homemade cannon. He was an avid painter, artist, and gymnast, but
his father neither appreciated nor encouraged these abilities, even
though these artistic talents would contribute to his success later in
life. Who was this 1906 Nobel prize winning Spanish pathologist who
might remind you of a bollywood female star?

13
• There have been several explanations, both evidence based and not,
for this simple yet intriguing phenomenon. While the most common
and the most counter intuitive explanation is blending with the
surroundings, other theories suggest protection from markedly
‘smaller’ threats. Recently however, scientists based in UCLA did the
most comprehensive study on this phenomenon and found out that
the patterns in this context most closely relate to the temperature
and precipitation than other factors. So, the current theory explains
the occurrence of these as a means of temperature regulation by
creating eddy currents. What is being talked about?

• The reason why zebras have stripes

14
• In the 18th century, the Royal Humane Society
promoted the rescue of drowning people, and
paid 4 guineas (about $160 today) to anyone who
successfully brought a drowning victim back to life.
American First Nations people used tobacco as a
medicine and pioneered the use of tobacco smoke
enemas. Word of this treatment crossed the water
to England, and volunteer medical assistants with
the society began to use the procedure to treat
London citizens who were pulled from the Thames
River. Initially the “pipe smoker London Medic”
inserted an enema tube with rubber tubing
attachments into the victim and blew smoke into
the rectum. This was erroneously thought by the
practitioners to accomplish two things; first,
warming the drowned person, and second,
stimulating respiration.
• This shows one of the early versions of a modern
technique used by medical professionals
worldwide. Which technique?

16
In WWII, Nazi Germany bombed a secret cache of mustard gas that the
Americans stationed at Bari (to be used for retaliation in case the Nazis
decided to deploy gas warfare). The raid killed 2000 soldiers and
civilians. Because no one one the scene was aware that there was gas
released (or that there was gas present at all), the medics did not think
to remove the gas-soaked clothes from the wounded and many who
would have lived otherwise died. The incident was promptly hushed up
by the Allied High Command, but certain doctors were allowed to
conduct autopsies on the dead. They noticed that all of them have
abnormally low white blood cell counts. They put two and two together
and an amazing discovery was made.

17
• This phrase is a reference to the standard accounting reports. These
include the Income Statement, Balance Sheet, and Statement of Cash
Flows. In each of these multi-line reports, a variety of financial figures are
provided. Some are positive and some are negative. But figure written at
the end of each report provides the net of all the figures.
In that sense the last part of each report is generally the most important
indicator of the financial position. Anyone wanting the quick story would
look first to this part of the report.
• Originating from this financial background, this phrase is commonly used
today to signify the gist of something. What is the phrase?

18*. Observe the images of the mating ritual of a species of spider. The scientific name of this species is Maratus volans. What
is the spider most commonly known as?

19
• “__________ shock” is a phrase coined in World War I to describe the
type of posttraumatic stress disorder many soldiers were afflicted
with during the war. It is a reaction to the intensity of the
bombardment and fighting that produced a helplessness appearing
variously as panic and being scared.
• Hint: Alliteration!

21*
• William Gosset finished studying in 1899 as a chemistry and mathematics graduate at New
College, Oxford. As an employee of Guinness, a progressive agro-chemical business, William
Gosset applied his statistical knowledge – both in the brewery and on the farm – to the selection
of the best yielding varieties of barley. Gosset acquired that knowledge by study, by trial and
error, and by spending two terms in 1906–1907 in the biometrical laboratory of Karl Pearson.
Gosset and Pearson had a good relationship. Pearson helped Gosset with the mathematics of his
papers, but had little appreciation of their importance. The papers addressed the brewer's
concern with small samples; biometricians like Pearson, on the other hand, typically had
hundreds of observations and saw no urgency in developing small-sample methods. Another
researcher at Guinness had previously published a paper containing trade secrets of the Guinness
brewery. To prevent further disclosure of confidential information, Guinness prohibited its
employees from publishing any papers regardless of the contained information. However, after
pleading with the brewery and explaining that his mathematical and philosophical conclusions
were of no possible practical use to competing brewers, he was allowed to publish them, but
under a pseudonym, to avoid difficulties with the rest of the staff. Thus his most noteworthy
achievement is now named after his pseudonym and is one of the most basic concepts in
Statistics today.
• What is this concept?

• Student’s t- test/ t- distribution

22
This picture shows the notebook of a famous Science personnel. For having a look at these journals however,
you’ll require special clothing and a liability waiver. All of their notes, journals and possessions are so
dangerous that it will be thousands of years before anyone will be able to safely peruse them. Whose stuff?

Science Quiz
Pulse 2017, AIIMS New Delhi
FINALS

DRY ROUND
• Infinite bounce (+10), pounce (+10/-10)

1
• In 1999, a 125 million dollar US
satellite was lost in the orbit of
Mars, due a navigation error.
This was largely attributed to a
simple mathematical operation
performed incorrectly. What was
the problem?

2. FITB
• …so it is little wonder we have spent considerable time studying the
two designs for the supersonic SST airplane recently announced by
Boeing and Lockhead.
• …Still, at the close of our inquiry there remained this nagging
thought: Hadn’t we seen these designs somewhere before?
• …But who is its designer? Is he a Board chairman or a stock boy?..
• …In the interests of filling this information gap,…..,we are hereby
calling entries to the 1st ______________

• Paper plane flying competition

3.
“The iceberg living station” is still a purely speculative design from Denmark’s MAP activists
Basically, an iceberg gets hollowed out and everything necessary for research is stored inside.
What major problem faced by other stations is this station designed to solve?

• Would just melt away, so no need to dispose

4.
This is a Magpie. This is a person suffering from
Waardenburg syndrome. What is
this disorder commonly known as
because of its resemblance to the
bird?

5. ID the discovery.
• In 1964, while working with the Holmdel antenna in New Jersey, the
two astronomers discovered a background noise that left them
perplexed. After ruling out possible interference from urban areas,
nuclear tests, or pigeons living in the antenna, Wilson and Penzias
came across an explanation.
• In fact, only 37 miles from the Holmdel antenna at Princeton
University, Dicke and his team had been searching for this background
radiation. When he heard the news of Wilson and Penzias' discovery,
he famously told his research partners, "well boys, we've been
scooped." Penzias and Wilson would go on to receive the Nobel Prize.

6.
• The statue shown in this picture
is sculpted by an artist at
Novosibirsk, Russia. What is the
thought behind it?

• Tribute to mice used in research

Cartoon/ google doodle
round
Differential = 3n

7. FITB
“Not a leaf is heard to murmur, Not
a bird is heard to sing,”

8. The probe is named after a stele featuring a decree in 3 scripts.
The lander is named after an obelisk which bears a bilingual inscription.
ID both

9. ID the blanked
out part.
Hint?

10.
In 1914, German-American seismologist Beno Gutenberg discovered that the
Earth contained a semi-liquid core 1,400 miles beneath the crust by studying
the different types of seismic waves -- acting like x-rays displaying deeper layers
of the planet -- that propagated through Earth during earthquakes.
Yet the theory contained holes, which scientists at the time mostly attributed to
faulty equipment, that could not explain certain types of waves arriving at
certain end points of Earth that should not have been possible with only a semi-
liquid core.
Lehmann, who often sat in her garden with seismometer data written on
cardboard ripped from boxes of oatmeal, posited that______________,
explaining the earthquake data. In a 1936 paper titled "P" -- after the name of
the type of seismic waves confounding scientists -- Lehmann laid out her
analysis, which fellow seismologists quickly adopted as the correct
interpretation over the next few years.
Google doodle on
Inge Lehman’s 127th
birthday.

1. Wormhole
2. Dreaming
3. Mendeleev
4. Benjamin Franklin
5. Placebo
6. Mobius strip
7. Rachel Carson
8. Philae, Rosetta
9. CRISPR
10. Solid core of earth
11. Roemer determining speed of light
12. Laennec stethoscope
13. JC Bose

Bidding round
• You will be shown broad-ish topics first, based on which will be the
question at hand
• Look at the topics and make decide how much you want to bid
• Max bid +30, Minimum bid 0
• Points system: +x/-x

Topics
1. Space
2. Protein structure and function
3. Popular science
4. Theoretical physics
5. Genetics
6. History and science
7. Scientist(s)
8. Disease

1
The X was a strong narrowband radio
signal received on August 15, 1977, by Ohio
State University's Big Ear radio telescope in the
United States, then used to support the search
for extraterrestrial intelligence. The signal
appeared to come from the
constellation Sagittarius and bore the expected
hallmarks of extraterrestrial origin.
Astronomer Jerry R. Ehman discovered the
anomaly a few days later while reviewing the
recorded data. He was so impressed by the
result that he circled the reading on the
computer printout and wrote the comment on
its side, leading to the event's widely used
name. The entire signal sequence lasted for the
full 72-second window during which Big Ear
was able to observe it, but has not been
detected since, despite several subsequent
attempts by Ehman and others. Many
hypotheses have been advanced on the origin
of the emission, including natural and man-
made sources, but none of them adequately
explains the result. The X remains therefore
the strongest candidate for an alien radio
transmission ever detected.

X is a glycoprotein found in
the saliva of vampire bats. It is
composed of 411 amino acids,
weighing about 88.5kDa. It
functions as an anticoagulant,
inhibiting coagulation
factors IX (IXa) and X (Xa), thus
keeping the blood of the
bitten victim from clotting
while the bat is drinking. It is
recently being proposed as a
treatment of strokes and heart
attacks.
ID X
2.

3
If you’ve ever played the Fallout series, you’ve almost certainly seen a picture of Vault Boy. Vault Boy
poses with his hand stuck out in front him, thumb pointing up, and a wink and a smile. Most people
probably think this is just him being a positive, chill, corporate bro, but there’s plenty of reason to
believe that Vault Boy is doing something else entirely… Samjhao.

• Mushroom cloud safety radius

4
• “According to the consistency conjecture, any complex interpersonal
interactions must work themselves out self-consistently so that there is no
paradox. That is the resolution. This means, if taken literally, that if time
machines exist, there can be no free will. You cannot will yourself to kill
your younger self if you travel back in time. You can coexist, take yourself
out for a beer, celebrate your birthday together, but somehow
circumstances will dictate that you cannot behave in a way that leads to a
paradox in time. _____ supports this point of view with another argument:
physics already restricts your free will every day. You may will yourself to fly
or to walk through a concrete wall, but gravity and condensed-matter
physics dictate that you cannot. Why, ____ asks, is the consistency
restriction placed on a time traveler any different?”
• The above quote is about the famous ______ self consistency principle.
• FITB

• Novikov self consistency theorem

5. ID the gene
• …displaying the most severe phenotype, lacking otoliths (Calcium
carbonate structure in the inner ear) at all stages. In ___________
mutants, the otoliths are normal in size but they are not correctly
anchored, indicating that a protein essential for attaching the otoliths
to the kinocilia of the tether cells or to the otolithic membrane is
affected.

6.
Fighter pilots in World War I faced
an embarrassing situation every
time they got off the plane. In spite
of covering their face and wearing
scarfs, the pilots had to run to the
loo each time they returned from a
flight. To dull this effect, they drank
copious amounts of brandy and
whiskey, often mixed with milk,
which also helped them withstand
the intense cold aloft and their own
constant and palpable fear.
Funda?

• Fumes of castor oil- diarrhea – used for lubrication in the engine

7. ID the person
Daily routine
of this person

8.
• A key element about this disease is that it shows up only when the patient
is a certain number of years old. According to the latest updates, one of the
criteria involved in the diagnosis was that the symptoms should “not be
explained better by some other disorder”.
• A lot of controversy surrounds the diagnosis
• “First of all, its weird; that a diagnosis that used to be applied to 3% of the
population, is now applied to 15% of the population. An enormous
increase. This is coincident with the drug companies coming out with new
and very expensive products, that gave them both the method and the
means to aggressively market _____: selling the ill, to sell the pill. Several
studies show that the youngest person in a sub-population was most likely
to be diagnosed with this disorder. Immaturity is being turned into a
mental disorder and being treated with a pill” –Dr. Allen Frances (Duke
Univ)

DRY ROUND 2
• Infinite bounce (+10), pounce (+10/-10)

1
• Bateman's principle, in evolutionary biology, is that in most species,
variability in reproductive success (or reproductive variance) is greater in
males than in females. It was first proposed by Angus John Bateman, an
English geneticist. It can be seen as the result of anisogamy. Bateman
suggested that, since males are capable of producing millions of sperm
cells with little effort, while females invest much higher levels of energy in
order to nurture a relatively small number of eggs, the female plays a
significantly larger role in their offspring's reproductive success. Bateman’s
paradigm thus views females as the limiting factor of parental investment,
over which males will compete in order to copulate successfully.
• The Bateman’s principle is the scientific basis of a pop culture term which
first appeared in 1994 in a popular TV show.
• What is the term?

2. The picture below shows the track profile of an art concept showing its lift hill and seven inversions. In 2010,
it was designed and made into a scale model by Julijonas Urbonas, a PhD candidate at the Royal College of
Art in London. What is the use of this model?

3. Name the robot
• The self-assembly and propulsion are accomplished in clever ways. A
PVC sheet is laser cut with structural layers that cause the sheet to
fold around its tiny magnet in just a few minute’s time when placed
on a heating element. Movement is achieved by pulsing
electromagnetic coils placed near the machine to stimulate its
magnet.
• Images follow

5
• Anandamide, called the “bliss molecule”, is the first discovered endocannabinoid(1992),
a naturally occurring molecule in the human body that acts on the cannabinoid
receptors(the same receptors responsible for the pleasure associated with cannabis
use),for example,the CB1 receptor.
• Also known as N-arachidonoylethanolamine,structurally it consists of ethanolamine and
arachidonic acid linked by an amide bond between the amino group of ethanolamine
and the –OH group of arachidonic acid.
• In a paper published in 2002,scientists reported the presnce of another
endocannabinoid, O-arachidonoyl ethanolamine, which consists of the same
ethanolamine and arachidonic acid,but are linked by an ester linkage, the opposite of
that in anandamide.
• Based on this opposite orientation, the compound was named ___________, relating it
to the naming of anandamide.
• Interestingly, this compound was also found to have effects opposite to anandamide at
the CB1 receptor.

6. ID the rover which had such a curious
landing sequence.

7
• As part of research efforts to discover new materials and characterize them, researchers
Paul Canfield and Na Hyun Jo, a grad student at his lab were planning to study ternary
compounds containing Barium and Zinc. Jo, suddenly inspired by something she saw in a
commercial, got the idea to go with a compound of Barium, Zinc and Gallium. Since no
other compound had been reported previously with just these elements, they went
ahead.
• The results were surprising- the compound had a never before seen crystal structure-an
exciting discovery, but that was about it. It was pretty unremarkable otherwise. They
checked to see if it was quasicrystalline, or for high temperature superconductivity, a
character of many such compounds, but struck blanks.
• This they referred to as the ______ dualism, in a lighthearted report. "Whereas we have
shown that (it) is a well-defined ternary compound, it also manifests the gestalt of its
original meaning, to be an a posteriori signaling of a (often poorly constructed) jest or
jape", they said, in view of its unremarkableness despite the new structure
• What was the inspiration for this particular compound?

Exponential
• You need to answer 6 questions
• Points will depend upon the number of questions you answer
• Points increase in the order of 4,8,16,32,64,128.

1
• Following slide shows a letter written to the US President in 1939,
expressing a concern about a lack of US involvement in Nuclear
energy.
• This is the letter which might have been the starting point of Project
Manhattan.
• Who wrote this letter?

2
• The Indiana ___Bill was the brainchild of Edwin J Goodwin, a physician from the town of Solitude
in the south-western corner of the state. He had approached the assembly and proposed a bill
that focused on his solution to a problem known as "squaring the circle". He seemed oblivious to
the fact that this ancient problem had already been proved impossible in 1882. Goodwin's
complicated and contradictory "solution" effectively dictated a bizarre fact. He said that Indiana
schools could use his discovery without charge, but that the state and he would share the profits
from royalties charged to other schools who wished to adopt this fact as true.
• Initially, the technical nature of the bill baffled the politicians, who then passed it without any
objection. It was then up to the state senate to ratify the bill.
• Fortunately, Professor CA Waldo, a mathematician at Indiana's Purdue University, alerted senior
politicians to the absurd legislation. This prompted Senator Orrin Hubbell to proclaim: "The
Senate might as well try to legislate water to run uphill as to establish mathematical truth by
law."
• There was a successful motion to indefinitely postpone the passing of the bill, but it still exists in a
filing cabinet in the basement of the Indiana statehouse, waiting for a gullible politician to
resuscitate it.

• Tried to give an exact value of 3 to pi

3. Give funda
• Gibbs – infusing vanilla pods in egg white with sugar, adding olive
oil and then microwave cooking.
• Vauquelin – using orange juice or cranberry juice with added sugar
when whipping eggs to increase the viscosity and to stabilize the
foam, and then microwave cooking.
• Baumé – soaking a whole egg for a month in alcohol to create a
coagulated egg

• Eponymous molecular gastronomy recipes

4. The face on the right looks more feminine. What’s the funda? How has it been
exploited by women since centuries?

• Eyeliner/ contrast enhancing make up

5
• In U.S. patent No. 1,799,664 issued on 7 Apr 1931, inventor Hermann
W. Williams of Boston, Massachussetts, presents his design for a
“Safety Drop Device For Aviator's Use,” inspired by the seed pod wing
of the maple keys seen spinning down from maple trees in fall. With
concern that “The ordinary parachute of umbrella type which
requires to be opened out from its collapsed or folded form for a
safety descent sometimes fails to open at the critical time,” the
innovation is purported to “provide a safety landing device which
does not require any preliminary opening but is always operative for a
gliding descent as soon at it is attached to the body of the user. What
device?

6. FITB
• A man named Ted Slavin was a haemophilic who had received
repeated blood transfusions. Because of that, he had been exposed to
______ again and again. A blood test showed extremely high
concentrations of ______ antibodies in his serum. Researchers
around the world were developing a vaccine for ____ and so Slavin
started selling his serum for as much as 10$ a millilitre. He wrote a
letter to Baruch Blumberg, a Nobel laureate who had discovered the
____ antigen. Slavin offered Blumberg unlimited access to his serum
and the partnership helped uncover the link between _____ and
__2___ cancer and created the first _____ vaccine.

• Hepatitis B, Hepatocellular carcinoma

Mega-connect
• 6 questions, will move like a dry round (pounce, bounce)
• Answer to each question goes in the mega connect.
• You can pounce after any of the questions.
• Points +60/-10, +50/-20…

1. Look at this screen shot of an uncyclopedia article about a community prejudiced to be dim witted. FITB.

2
• Trypophobia is a fear or disgust of closely
packed _____. People who have it feel
uncomfortable looking at certain surfaces
e.g. the head of a lotus seed pod or the
body of a strawberry. Researchers don’t
agree whether to classify this as an
official phobia and suggested that the
phobia may just be an extension of the
biological fear of harmful things.
Symptoms were triggered merely by high
contrast colours in a certain graphic
arrangement. Researchers argue that this
was because people affected with this
were associating harmless things (lotus
seed pod) with dangerous animals (e.g.
the blue ringed octopus).

3.
The Flint Lockwood Diatonic Super Mutating
Dynamic Food Replicator, or FLDSMDFR for
short, is a machine which creates "food
weather". It was created by Flint Lockwood, so
it could make food for Swallow Falls. The
FLDSMDFR was originally designed by Flint to
be household appliance for the kitchen, similar
microwave or combi oven. It converts water
molecules into food molecules through
microwave radiation, the FLDSMDFR's Radiation
Matrix produces the microwave radiation that
creates the Nano-Mutation effect, which is
needed to reorganize the molecular structure of
water into food.
It is the main antagonist in an animated film.
Which one?

• Cloudy with a chance of meatballs
+40/-30

4
• X is a famous animated television character famously known as ‘Boy
Genius’.
• He has an impossible IQ of 210, possibly making him the smartest
individual in the whole world.
• Supposedly named after the Newton, his middle is Isaac.
• Some of his inventions include: hovercar, jet pack, hypercube,
mombot, popbot, super bubble gum mobile etc.
• Who is X?

5. What was the statement?
• Hooke was a huge rival of Newton's. In a letter to Hooke,
Newton wrote a statement which became extremely famous.
Some believe that it was meant to be sarcastic to Hooke,
who was actually short statured.

• Standing on the shoulder of giants
+20/-50

6.
The picture shows the
molecular structure of a
compound. This yellow solid
is used as a dye and also to
generate charge transfer
salts. However, it is well
known for some other use
which is due to its properties
of being insensitive to friction
and pressure/ shock,
allowing ease of handling.
What is this use?

• Used for explosions (TNT)
+10/-60

Science Quiz 2017 (prelims and Finals)

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