Torquest 2015 Finals

TORQUEST 2015
QM- Aman Shaikh
FINALS
a.k.a Questions of science, science and progress

Rules
• Two rounds IR1 and IR2
• Infinite bounce, finite pounce
• One incorrect pounce per round
• +10 on direct, +15 on pounce
• Pouncing on your own direct is allowed

INFINITE REBOUND 1
Clocks-wise

Q1.
X is a protein present in mammalian retinas and is
considered key in the physiology of vision. It was identified
by Shigeru et al. in 2008 who named it X due to its
"lightning fast, nimble movement in the extracellular matrix"
which resembled its fictitious namesake. ID X.

Q2.
Considered one of the most tragic physicists, X was a
professor of theoretical physics at the University of Munich.
The reason for his tragedy is that he served as PhD
supervisor for more Nobel prize winners than any
academician, but he himself never won a Nobel. Some of
his students include Werner Heisenberg, Wolfgang Pauli,
Peter Debye, Linus Pauling and Max von Laue. His
personal contribution to theoretical physics includes the
azimuthal quantum number and the spin quantum number.
ID X

Q3.
X is a computer language invented by Ben Olmstead in
1998. It is a public domain esoteric programming language,
and derives its name from the name given by Dante to the
eighth circle of hell in Inferno as part of The Divine
Comedy, possibly because programming in it was
extremely difficult. In fact, it was so difficult to understand
when it arrived that it took two years for the first X program
to appear. Indeed, the author himself has never written a
single X program. The first program was not written by a
human being: it was generated by a beam search algorithm
designed by Andrew Cooke and implemented in Lisp. What
language is being talked about?

Q4.
_______ is a term used to describe a word which occurs
only once in any context, be it the written records of an
entire language, in the works of an author or a single text. It
is a Greek term which literally translates to 'something said
only once'. Some examples include "zanjabil" the Arabic
term for ginger, which occurs only once in the Quran, and
Honorificabilitudinitatibus which occurs once in all of
Shakespeare's work. __________ are often significant in
history and archaeology as their meaning cannot be
inferred from multiple contexts. FITB

Q5.
X is a method of measuring a civilization's level of
technological advancement, based on the amount of
energy a civilization is able to utilize. Under this Type 1
civilizations refer to civilizations which can only harness the
energy present on the planet. Type 2 civilizations refers to
civilizations capable of harnessing the energy of its own
star and Type 3 refers to a civilization capable of
harnessing the energy of the galaxy. While X is only
hypothetical it put energy consumption in a cosmic
perspective. It is named after a Russian astrophysicist who
first proposed the idea, while working on the Soviet efforts
on SETI. Give X

Q6.
The Kenbak-1 is considered as the world’s first of its kind.
Only 40 machines were ever built and sold. Designed by
John Blankebaker of Kenbak Corporation in 1970 which
was first sold for USD $750. 10 machines are sold to exist
and production of Kenbak-1 has stopped as Kenbak
Corporation has folded. What are we talking about?

Q7.
The X was the name given to software, mostly browsers,
distributed by the Debian project. The matter was
embroiled in controversy as X was merely a rebranding of
Mozilla's Firefox, to which Mozilla Foundation owns the
copyright, and X seemed like a good parody of the Firefox
brand. The name X comes from a fictional quote which Matt
Groening attributed to Friedrich Nietzche which goes "Love
is a snowmobile racing across the tundra and then
suddenly it flips over, pinning you underneath. At night, the
X come." Give X

Q8.
Theseus was a magnetic mouse controlled by a relay
circuit that enabled it to move around a maze of 25 squares
of variable configuration. It was designed to search through
the corridors to find its target and in subsequent trials could
map out the maze and successfully clear it. It was designed
by X in 1950. X was an American electronic engineer and
mathematician who is regarded as the father of information
technology. He is credited with founding digital computer
and digital circuit design theory when in 1937, as a 21 year
old in MIT, he wrote his master's thesis demonstrating that
the electrical applications of Boolean algebra could
construct any logical or numerical relationship. Give X

Q9.
X is phenomenological law about the frequency of
significant digits in many real life sets of numerical data.
Due to this law, in sets which obey the law the number 1
will occur about 30% of the time while 9 occurs only about
5% of the time. The law has been found to be applicable
over a wide range of data sets including electricity bills,
stock prices, population numbers etc. The law is so widely
accepted, it is routinely used to check for fraud in cases of
accounting fraud and is even admissible as evidence in US
federal, state and local courts. Give X

Q10.
Omni Processors is a programme funded by the Bill and
Melinda Gates, which aims at _____________. Currently
prominent research groups and NGOs such as Climate
Foundation, Janicki Bioenergy and Unilever are developing
cost efficient Omni Processors. In early 2015, as part of a
publicity stunt, Bill Gates appeared on The Tonight Show
with Jimmy Fallon and demonstrated the Janicki
Foundation's Omni Processor. What is the function of an
Omni Processor?

Converting fecal sludge into drinkable water

Q11.
____________ is the first domain name to be registered on
the Internet. It was registered on March 15th 1985 by
___________ Computer Corporation, which pioneered in
making workstations optimised to run LISP. The company
also had a graphics division which provided graphic design
software used in movies like the 1984 Star Trek 3, and the
1990 Jetsons: The Movie. While the company is now
defunct, the domain name is owned by a group of private
investors called XF.com Investments which use the website
to generate ad revenue. FITB

Q12.
In medicinal terms, it is defined as a partial loss of vision or
blind spot in an otherwise normal visual field. "The mind
sees what it wants to see" - This is what Robert Langdon
said upon Sophie's surprise on discovering Mary
Magdalene in the Last Supper. What is being talked about?

Q13.
Connect: William Grey Walter and Karel Capek

Robot. Karel Capek coined the term in his play while
William Grey Walter is credited with creating the first
autonomous robot.

Q14.
The Internet's Own Boy is a documentary by Brian
Knappenberger which tells the story of American computer
programmer, writer, and political activist X. The
documentary covers every aspect of this precocious
person's life, from his childhood days to his relationships
and his ultimate suicide. X committed suicide after he was
charged with wire fraud and data theft, after he broke into
the MIT network and downloaded academic journals, in
2011. In 2013, he was posthumously inducted into the
Internet Hall of Fame, for his contribution to the movement
for a free internet and curbing of online piracy. ID X

Q15.
X is a legendary being in Gulliver's Travels. It is described
as being filthy and with unpleasant habits. The term has
come to mean a crude, brutish or obscenely coarse person.
However you may know X in an entirely different context
altogether, especially if you were around on the internet in
the late 90s. Give X

Q16.
This is a recently discovered species named "Euglossa
____". According to the biologist who discovered it, the
blank was a tribute to a popular sitcom character because
the bee had tricked other scientists with its similarities to
other bees. An EP for the sitcom remarked, "X (the
character) would be honored to know that Euglossa ____
was inspired by him. In fact, bees are his third favorite
flying creatures after 'Mothra' and griffins." FITB

Q17.
ID and give claim to fame

Randall Munroe, creator of xkcd

Q18.
The Sleeper Awakes is a dystopian novel by H.G Wells
about who a man who falls asleep for 230 years and wakes
up to find himself in futuristic London. The novel was
published in serialised form between 1898 and 1899, and
predicted the invention of _________. __________ was
actually invented in 1954 by Lee Hewitt and Dee Horton.
Today ________ finds widespread use in a lot of buildings
and establishments. FITB

Q19.
X states that given the corpus of natural language
utterances, the frequency of any word is inversely
proportional to its rank on the frequency table. It is named
after an American linguist, who popularised it. However the
regularity was first noticed by the French stenographer
Jean-Baptiste Estoup and the German physicist Felix
Auerbach. While the original law was formulated in the
context of linguistics, it has been found to hold true for
population distributions, with the largest city in a country
having twice the population of the second largest city in the
country. Give X

Q20.
OSnap is an app developed by Harvard professor David
Edwards and his students. On June 17th 2014, he sent the
first oNote from Paris to New York. While the app was
developed for iPhones, it needs a separate device called
the oPhone to run it. Currently this device is available only
at the American Museum of Natural History and Le
Laboratoire in Paris. What does oSnap do?

Transmits scents over the Internet

Q21.
Dead of Night was a film released in September 1945 by Ealing
Studios. It earned its status as the first horror film to be made in Britain
after the world war censorship. Starring Mervyn Johns, Michael
Redgrave and Googie Withers, the movie was the tale of an architect
called Walter Craig who wakes up one day and travels to the
countryside to visit a farmhouse and discuss a new project. Upon his
arrival, he tells the people at the farmhouse that he already knows them
through a recurring and disturbing dream. The guests react with
suspicion and curiosity, and one by one they reveal their own strange
experiences creating a chain of 5 horror stories that range from a tale
of a sibling homicide to a psychiatrist's account of a psychotic
ventriloquist. Craig becomes increasingly agitated by these stories and
at one point he wakes up and realises that it was all a nightmare. The
next morning he scurries out of bed, gets dressed and travels to the
countryside and visits a farmhouse to discuss a new project. Upon his
arrival, he tells the people at the farmhouse that he is already familiar
with them through a series of disturbing dreams..............
This particular story-line inspired one of the greatest ideas in science.
What idea ?

Fred Hoyle’s Steady state theory

INFINITE REBOUND 2
Stuck in reverse

Q22.
__________ is a phantom settlement, which was seen on
Google Maps and Google Earth but does not exist in real
life. It was shown to be located off A59 road, in the civil
parish of Aughton, West Lancashire, England. While no
one knows the actual reason as to why this happened,
explanations range from Google doing it as a copyright
trap, to it being an honest mistake. The name is believed to
have come from the echo of Google. Another explanation
of the fictional town name is that it is an anagram of Not
Large. What is the name of the town?

Q23.
Connect:
1. Computer Graphics
2. Peter Dinklage
3. A winner of NASA's Lunar Lander Challenge
4. Chromebook OS Operating System

Q24.
He is Ethan Zuckerman. In 2007, he joined the inaugural
Wikimedia Foundation Advisory Board. In 2008, he coined
the cute cat theory of digital activism. Later in 2011 named
by Foreign Policy magazine to its list of top global thinkers,
in which he stated the Best idea is "The world isn't flat and
globalization is only beginning, which means we have time
to change what we're doing and get it right". He apologised
to the world for creating what is one of the world's most
hated web tools. What was this creation/ Give his claim to
infamy.

Q25.
Touted as the most complex crop circle ever found in Britain, the
pattern appeared earlier this month near Barbury Castle, an Iron
Age hill fort above the village of Wroughton in Wiltshire. Initially,
crop circle enthusiasts were stumped as to its meaning and even
a number of experts said it was 'mind-boggling'. Dismissed in
mid 2008 as being unsolvable, retired astrophysicist Mike Reed
put 2 and 2 together to finally arrive upon the answer. Upon
having solved it, he produced a fractal of the form as described:
"The little dot near the centre is the decimal point. The code is
based on ten angular segments, with the radial jumps being the
indicator of each segment. Starting at the centre and counting
the number of one-tenth segments in each section contained by
the change in radius clearly shows the values of the first 10 of X"
What is X?

Q26.
1.Sewing Machine
2. Fan
3. Tea kettle
4. Toaster
5. X
This is a chronological sequence of household appliances
to be electrified. What is X?

Q27.
X and Y discovered avermectin, a treatment of roundworm
parasites. Z discovered artemisinin, a treatment for malaria.
For their contribution to controlling tropical illnesses which
affect millions, the three scientists were awarded the Nobel
prize in Medicine. Give X, Y and Z

X- William Campbell
Y- Satoshi Omura
Z- Youyou Tu

Unagi. AOL Media Player was developed under the
codename Unagi

Q29.
Takotsubo cardiomyopathy is a heart condition which
results in a temporary weakening in the muscular portion of
the heart. This type of cardiomyopathy is generally brought
on by stress or constant anxiety and is a well recognized
cause of acute heart failure, lethal ventricular arrhythmias
and ventricular rupture. What is the more common name of
this condition?

Q31.
Although the device is called a LASER which stands for
Light Amplification through/by Stimulated Emission of
Radiation, Stimulated Emission isn’t responsible for the
amplification part, Hence LASER is a scientifically incorrect
term. A component called an Optical Resonator (a pair of
mirrors) is responsible for the amplification, whereas
stimulated emissions just produce the vibrations required to
form a standing wave pattern between the pair of mirrors.
There exists a scientifically correct term, however the term
LASER was chosen over this and is now widely used. What
is the scientifically correct term (abbreviation will do) and
for what obvious reason was it not used?

Light Oscillations through/by Stimulated Emissions of
Radiation, which abbreviates to LOSER, which was not
used because of its bad connotation

Q32.
X is one of the five basic tastes. It was discovered in 1908
by Kikunae Ikeda and was accepted worldwide in 1985. X
is first encountered by humans in their mothers' breast milk.
What is X?

Q33.
X was a German chemist while Y was a French one. Both
received a Nobel for their work in the field of chemistry. But
both of them were also the head of chemical warfare
division of their respective countries during World War I .X
was given the Nobel for the manufacturing process of
ammonia while Y was given the Nobel for the formation of
Y reagent. While X suggested chlorine as a weapon ,Y
suggested phosgene. Identify X and Y?

X- Fritz Haber; Y- Victor Grignard

Q34.
This is Susan Bennett. She is an American voice-over
artist, having recorded messages for all Delta Airlines
terminals worldwide, and several advertisements including
Ford, Coca-Cola, Fisher-Price etc. What voice-over work is
she best known for?

Q35.
ID the blanked out person

Q36.
X was a computer, developed by Carnegie Mellon
University and IBM, to play chess. While it won the North
American Computer Chess Championship in 1988 and
World Computer Chess Championship in 1989, it lost both
games in a two game match against Gary Kasparov in
1989 and a correspondence match with Michael Valvo. It
shares its name with a fictional computer with immense
computational power, which supposedly was the reason
Earth was created. Give X.

Q38.
Y is an impact crater on the surface of Mars. It is named
after XY who first identified it. XY is also credited with
extensively describing the surface of Mars and first gave
the occurrence of canals and continents on Mars. Y crater
is one of the locations in the story of The Martian. XY also
has a lunar crater and and the 2016 ExoMars lander
named after him. Give XY.

Q39.
Developed by Sheshanath Bhosale from RMIT University in
Melbourne, Australia, and his team, the intricate structures
take shape when two organic chemicals, a phosphonic acid
and melamine, are mixed in water. The structure of the
reacting chemicals, and the hydrogen bonds they form
between them, cause the petal-like arrangement to grow on
its own, in just 3 hours.
What am I talking about?

Q40.
This device is a linear injector ( particle accelerator) being
developed in India by DRDO and BARC. It operating
parameters are : 1MeV energy, 50-100ns pulse
time, current of the order 10^3 A and 40GW Power Level.
Although it is currently used for research purposes by
DRDO, its potential as a weapon is being realized and
there are plans to weaponize it to fry onboard circuits of
incoming enemy missiles using powerful bursts of
Relativistic Electron Beams. It can thus assume the role of
a destroyer.
What is this device called/ what rather apt (but coincidental)
acronym, related to Mythology, is this device popularly
known by?

Kilo Ampere Linear Injector (KALI)

Q41.
A Throbber is an animated graphical control element, which
most of us have seen (and most of us are annoyed by it)
What is a Throbber?

The circular thing that comes up when a video is buffering

Q42.
An X is a hypothetical structure which entirely surrounds a
star in order to obtain the total energy output of the star to
fulfill a civilisation's energy needs. While the idea was first
described by Olaf Stapledon in his sci-fi novel Star Maker,
and was also seen in the works of J.D. Bernal, Raymond
Gallun and Edgar Rice Burroughs, it is named after Y, an
English-American physicist and mathematician who
proposed the idea. Y is also known for his contribution to
pure mathematics, with his namesake series which is the
formal solution of a time independent Schrodinger
equation. Give X and Y

Dyson sphere named after Freeman Dyson

Torquest 2015 Finals

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