Daily Question #145

Connect.

Uncracked!!

Answer : Galaxies

- Bode's Galaxy (Johann Elert Bode)
- Cartwheel Galaxy
- Small/ Large Magellanic cloud (Ferdinand Magellan)
- Sombrero Galaxy
- Cigar Galaxy
- Milky Way Galaxy (Ganges->Akash Ganga)

@all : A bit vague I guess. Sorry

Daily Question #141

Special room for special people. What is it known as?

Cracked by Navin and Kamal Rathi!

Answer : Snoezelruimte (Snoezelen room)

Snoezelen (controlled multi-sensory activation) is used in the care of mentally disabled and in special education across Europe. The purpose of the room is to help them relax in total privacy and promote self-awareness and sensory perception.

Daily Question #132

A and B are storage facilities designed with a similar objective. Identify both.

Cracked fully by Navin, Kamal Rathi and Sanjeet !!

Answer : A - Svalbard Global Seed Vault, a secure seedbank located on the Norwegian island of Spitsbergen near the town of Longyearbyen in the remote Arctic Svalbard archipelago. The facility was established to preserve a wide variety of plant seeds from locations worldwide in an underground cavern.

B - San Diego Frozen Zoo, a cryonic facility for the long term storage of animal and plant genetic material such as DNA, sperm, eggs, and embryos.

Daily Question #129

Sorry about the comment fiasco. Last two questions will remain open for a day.

Today's question. Who are they?

Cracked by Navin and Chithananda!!

Answer : Mercury Seven, group of seven Mercury astronauts picked by NASA on April 9, 1959. They are also referred to as the Original Seven and Astronaut Group 1. This was the only astronaut group with members that flew on all classes of NASA manned spacecraft of the 20th century, from Mercury, through Gemini and Apollo, and ending with John Glenn's flight on the STS-95 Space Shuttle mission.

Daily Question #117

B is a product of the company X founded by A. B was hailed as one of the inventions of 2008. The company's name and logo (C) have been chosen to represent the domain of the company. Also, one of the founders is well known for a different reason. Identify X.

Cracked by Karthik, lordmaldy, Govind and Bad Ass Thambi!!

Answer : X - 23andMe

A - Linda Avey and Anne Wojcicki (wife of Sergey Brin)
B - Retail DNA Test, No.1 invention of 2008 according to TIME Magazine

Daily Question #113

What do the numbers indicate?

Cracked by Bad Ass Thambi and aamaadmi!! Brilliant!

Answer : International Nuclear Event Scale (INES)

There are 7 levels on the INES scale; 3 incident-levels and 4 accident-levels. Each increasing level represents an accident ten times more severe than the previous level.
7 – Major Accident (Chernobyl, 1986)
6 – Serious Accident (Kyshtym disaster at Mayak, 1957)
5 – Accident With Wider Consequences (Three Mile Island accident, 1979)
4 – Accident With Local Consequences (St.Laurent plant, France, 1980)
3 – Serious Incident (Paks plant, Hungary, 2003)
2 – Incident (Forsmark plant, Sweden)
1 – Anomaly (SOCATRI, France, 2008)

Daily Question #105

X, randomly, renamed themselves after the phenomenon depicted in the following pic (enlarge for better view). Identify X.

Cracked by lordmaldy, Sandipan, triviafreak, yossarian, Abhinav and Kamal Rathi!!

Answer : X - R.E.M

Rapid eye movement (REM) sleep is a normal stage of sleep characterized by rapid movements of the eyes. The band members selected "R.E.M" as their name, randomly from the dictionary.

Daily Question #63

X, named after D, was instituted by A and B to accelerate the kind of research depicted in the graph. The logo of X is shown in C. Identify X.

PS : Quiz Bonanza #1 is still open.


Hint (for D) :

Cracked by Shrey alone!

Answer : X - Methuselah Mouse Prize

The Methuselah Mouse Prize, given by the Methuselah Foundation, co-founded by Aubrey de Grey (A) and David Gobel (B), with a mouse for a logo (C), is given to researchers who extend the lifespan of mice to unprecedented lengths. It is named after the oldest Biblical character, Methuselah (D) who lived for 969 years as shown by the longevity graph.

Daily Question #57

Identify.



Hint :

Cracked precisely by shrey, Govind, Ajay, A:Might, scipio, aamaadmi, raghu and Pramod! Partial credit for those who mentioned Game Theory/ Nash equilibirum.

Answer : Prisoner's dilemma ( problem in Game Theory)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prisoner%27s_dilemma

PS : Scipio shares his thoughts on Game Theory in the movie "The Dark Knight". A must read for Game Theory enthusiasts (like me!).
http://scipio-inde.blogspot.com/2008/09/are-you-game.html

@Ajay : I thought Ocean's Eleven was obvious due to the hint. Turned out it wasn't, so credit to you!

Daily Question # 50

Identify the famous Indian classical singer and her claim to fame.


You can take him as a hint.

Cracked by Govind and Rithwik!! Great job!

Answer : Surashri Kesarbai Karkar.

Her rendition of "Jaat Kahaan Ho" is included in the Voyager Golden Record which was sent into space in 1977 aboard both the Voyager 1 and Voyager 2 spacecraft. The contents of the record were selected for NASA by a committee chaired by Carl Sagan.

Daily Question #39

Simply connect.

Cracked perfectly by stuntman mike! Ajay came close.

Answer : Human Genome Project
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_Genome_Project)

- The project began in 1990 initially headed by James Watson
- Genomes
- A parallel project was conducted by Celera Corporation
- Mohinder Suresh (character from TV show Heroes) uses the Human Genome Project to find people with special abilities

Daily Question #28

Connect. A sitter if you can id the personalities.
Hint : Think lateral

Cracked by Mr.Q alone. Great job! Good attempt from avik.

Answer : States of Matter

- Solid
- Liquid
- Gas
- Plasma
- Bose-Einstein condensate

Daily Question #20

Connect to a law or just give funda. Though scary, the answer isn't scientific in nature. Also, there are five separate pics.

Cracked by the one and only Bad Ass Thambi! Hats Off!

Answer : Stigler's Law of eponymy ("No scientific discovery is named after its original discoverer.")

- Salmonella (Discovered by Theobald Smith, named after Daniel Salmon)
- Gaussian distribution ( Introduced by De Moivre, named after Carl Friedrich Gauss)
- Mandelbrot Set (Discovered by Pierre Fatou and Gaston Julia, named after Benoit Mandelbrot)
- Wheatstone Bridge (Invented by Samuel Christie, named after Charles Wheatstone)
- Leibniz formula for pi (Discovered by Madhava, named after Gottfried Leibniz)

Daily Question #19

Identify the invention.

Cracked by Mihir, Bad Ass Thambi, Nakul, Anand Shankar and Ajay Parasuraman!

Answer : Grave Alarm (Security Coffin will also do)

- A safety coffin or security coffin is a coffin fitted with a mechanism (usually a bell) to prevent premature burial or allow the occupant to signal that he has been buried alive.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Safety_coffin

Daily Question #14

Simply connect.
Hint : Think Biology

Cracked by Padmaraj and stuntmanmike! Awesome!

Answer : They all have body parts named after them.

- Paul Langerhans, Islets of Langerhans
- Adam, Adam's apple
- Gabrielle Fallopio, Fallopian tube
- Ernst Grafenberg, G-Spot!
- Achilles (centre), Achilles tendon

Daily Question #13

Sitter. Identify the experiment.

Cracked by Rithwik, Zishanpurple, Anand Shankar, Anonymous(?), MrQ, prince, Bad Ass Thambi, raghu, malcaluffin.

Answer : Schrödinger's cat

- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schr%C3%B6dinger%27s_cat

Daily Question #8

Connect. Lot of hints in pic.

Cracked by prince and Ajay Parasuraman.

Answer : ISRO


- Antariksh Bhavan, ISRO HQ
- "Sathish Dhawan" Space Centre, Sriharikota, the launch centre for ISRO
- Logo of Antrix Corp - the marketing arm of ISRO
- Bhuvan is a satellite mapping tool developed by ISRO similar to Google Earth giving resoultion upto 5m
- ISRO is a member of International Cospas-Sarsat system for Search And Rescue programme.

Daily Question #7

Claim to fame of pic?

Uncracked again!

Answer : The First Indian patent

- An Efficient Punkah Pulling Machine by George Alfred DePenning (1856). He also started the firm DePenning & DePenning which acts as a Patent Agent to represent inventors struggling with the process of patenting new inventions.

Daily Question #5

An interesting question for the day. One of my favorites!

Connect both pics.

Cracked by presumptuous pretense, MrQ?, abhishek chakraborty, prince and Jean Valjean (welcome!)

Answer : Perpetual Motion

- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buttered_cat_paradox

- Capillary bowl / Self-flowing flask