Thursday 29 January 2009

Quotes and Questions 37 - 27 Jan 09

Quotes:

The best way to predict the future is to invent it.
Dennis Gabor

Every great advance in science has issued from a new audacity of imagination.
John Dewey

Questions:

For the answers go to The 2nd QuestioN! blog at SLCN

1) Adding to the list of nature-inspired 21st Century tech now uses a 228-million-year-old animal as the basis for a UAV or unmanned aerial vehicle The 30-inch robotic craft or drone, features a strange design of a rudder at the nose of the craft instead of the tail, and would gather data from sights, sounds and smells in urban combat zones and transmit information back to a command center. The unmanned, sensor-packed craft in development will alter their wing shapes using morphing techniques to squeeze through confined spaces, dive between buildings, zoom under overpasses, land on apartment balconies or sail along the coastline for surveillance, what is the model animal?

2) He was an American entertainer, playwright, composer, lyricist, actor, singer, dancer, director, and producer. Known as "the man who owned Broadway” His parents were traveling Vaudeville performers, and he joined them on stage while still an infant, at first as a prop. He earned acclaim as a serious actor in Eugene O'Neill's only comedy Ah, Wilderness! (1933) and James Cagney won an academy award playing this man in a film about his life. Who was he?

3) In the 1930s, he worked in Chicago in radio, where he performed jazz music. His first two records were released in 1936. One was credited to Rhubarb Red, his hillbilly alter ego, Dissatisfied with the electric guitars that were sold in the mid 1930s and began experimenting with a few designs of his own. Famously, he created "The Log," which was nothing more than a length of common 4" by 4" fence post with bridge, guitar neck, and pickup attached. For the sake of appearance, he attached the body of an Epiphone hollow-body guitar, sawn lengthwise. This solved his two main problems: feedback, as the acoustic body no longer resonated with the amplified sound, and sustain, as the energy of the strings was not dissipated in generating sound through the guitar body. Who is he?

4) He would train in the off years by carrying a newborn calf on his back every day until the Olympics took place. By the time the events were to take place, he was carrying a four-year-old cow on his back. He carried the full-grown cow the length of the stadium, then proceeded to kill, roast, and eat it. He was a follower of Pythagoras, and a six time Olympic victor; Ancient sources and legends report that he took great pleasure in showing off his strength. Who was he?

5) The Greenhouse Gases Observing Satellite, is an Earth observation satellite and the world's first satellite dedicated to greenhouse-gas-monitoring, which will be used to measure densities of carbon dioxide and methane from 56,000 locations on the Earth's atmosphere. Developed by the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency and launched on January 23it will share its data with NASA and other space and scientific organizations. What is it called in Japan, and also known more familiarly as?

6) On January 13, 1888, 33 explorers and scientists gathered at the Cosmos Club, a private club in Washington, D.C., to organize "a society for the increase and diffuse geographical knowledge." Alexander graham bell was one of its first presidents, and his son-in-law, Grosvenor, devised the successful marketing notion of its Society membership and the first major use of photographs to tell stories in magazines. It’s Headquarters in Washington, D.C. was one of the first buildings to receive a "Green" certification from Global Green USA.. What Society is this?

7) In connection with student riots in 1908, professors and lecturers of Saint Petersburg University were ordered to observe their students. He initially refused to accept this decree and wrote an explanation in which he declined to be an “agent of the governance”. And was rejected from further teaching activity. He is famously known for a process which is a mathematical model for the random evolution of a memory less system, that is, one for which the likelihood of a given future state, at any given moment, depends only on its present state, and not on any past states. Who was this calculus master?

8) The Clock of the Long Now, is a proposed mechanical clock designed to keep time for how many years?

9) Everyone knows about the Amazons, In some versions of the myth, no men were permitted to have sexual encounters or reside in Amazon country; but once a year, in order to prevent their race from dying out, the well known Amazons visited a neighboring tribe. The male children who were the result of these visits were either killed, exposed in the wilderness to fend for themselves. or sent back to their fathers. Who were these forgotten sperm donors?

10) was the record of the great survey of England completed in 1086, executed for William I of England, or 'William the Conqueror'. The survey was similar to a census by a government of today. One of the main purposes of the survey was to determine who held what, and what taxes had been liable; the judgment of these assessors was final—whatever the book said about who held the material wealth, or what it was worth, was the law, and there was no appeal. What was this book called?

11) It was the world's first mechanically frozen ice rink. The rink was opened by John Gamgee in Chelsea, London, in 1876. The rink was based on a concrete surface, with layers of earth, cow hair and timber planks. Atop these were laid oval copper pipes carrying a solution of glycerin with ether, peroxide of nitrogen and water. The pipes were covered by water and the solution was pumped through, freezing the water into ice. Gamgee had discovered the process while attempting to develop a method to freeze meat for import from Australia and New Zealand, and had patented it as early as 1870. Operated on a membership-only basis and attempted to attract a wealthy clientele, experienced in open-air ice skating during winters in the Alps. What was it called?

12) This is a technique that allows the light scattered from an object to be recorded and later reconstructed so that it appears as if the object is in the same position relative to when it was recorded. The image changes as the position and orientation of the viewing system changes in exactly the same way as if the object was still present, thus making the recorded image appears three dimensional. Although theorized papers between 1946 and 1951 it had to wait till the invention of the laser in 1960 for a coherent light source to be produced. For his work in this field Dennis Gabor received the Nobel Prize for physics in 1071. What is it?

13) It is a wading bird renowned for being the hardest of all birds to hunt due to being difficult to locate, impossible to approach without flushing, or to hit once in the air due to its erratic flight. In the days of market hunting, those who brought them to sell were regarded as the best of the best and earned the term associated with the birds name. The verb originated in the 1770s among soldiers in British India applying similar skills in wartime with a human quarry. What is this bird called?

14) a new tire using a flexible, honeycomb-like internal structure could prove to be a disruptive technology in one of the world’s largest industries. With development funded by the U.S. Dept of Defense, the initial aim of the project was to replace the Achilles heel of the military vehicle, and now might be going commercial. Tires have proven to be the weak link in Humvees, which can be immobilised by the scourge of the 21st century urban battlefield, the IED (Improvised Explosive Device). Once the mobility of a Humvee is compromised in a hostile environment, its inhabitants’ life expectancy closely approximates zero. What defines this important feature of this new technology?

15) By 1911, at the age of 36, after seven years of low wages, he was working as a pencil sharpener wholesaler at the time, he began to write. He read a lot of trashy fiction and decided he could write as well as anything he was reading, in fact. Better. He wrote popular science fiction stories involving Earthly adventurers transported to various planets (notably Barsoom, his' fictional name for Mars, and Amtor, his fictional name for Venus), lost islands, and into the interior of the hollow earth as well as westerns and historical romances. He has a crater named for him on Mars, and his most popular fictional character as 2 cities in the US named after him. He was the oldest war correspondent in WW2. Who was he?

16) Who is “The Great One”, In Hockey?

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