Sunday 2 May 2010

The First Question - 27 April 2010

This week's panel

JB Hancroft, PB Recreant, QTPieMixemup, Q Linden

Quotes

"I believe that man will not merely endure. He will prevail. He is immortal, not because he alone among creatures has an inexhaustible voice, but because he has a soul, a spirit capable of compassion and sacrifice and endurance."
William Faulkner

"Don't believe what your eyes are telling you. All they show is limitation. Look with your understanding, find out what you already know, and you'll see the way to fly."
Richard Bach

"A man is a very small thing, and the night is very large and full of wonders."
Lord Dunsany

Word-UP of the week -
“Primify” - To reduce any complex design to a set of simple shapes - in plywood, of course.
-JB Hancroft
“Rezbian:” - One who has a complete collection of anatomically correct Second Life body parts.
-Q Linden

Audience Quote of the week
"I miss grandma already......hey ! What's in this soup?"
-Xanshin Paz

Questions

For the answers go to The 1st Question blog at treet.tv

1) There are people who are ahead of their time and then there are those who right on time. At 16, he had an idea that took him to his parents’ garage, strapping together a rectangular steel frame and a canvas sheet. He called what he made, a bouncing rig. That was in 1930. In 2000 the inaugural gold medal in trampolining was awarded. he once rented a kangaroo to bounce with him in Central Park. During the Second World War it was used to train pilots. The trampolines inventor died this month at the age of 96?

2) Mix Kraft Foods' contributions to a WWF-managed tiger conservation program, Animal Crackers and Barnum’ circus. Add 2010, the Chinese "Year of the Tiger" and you get -1 million special boxes to save endangered Asian tigers. Who designed this box giving it a "fresher, fashionable" look and an updated, environmentally conscious image with existing brand fans, as well building awareness among prospective buyers?

3) As a fan of meatricity, I report on this with great pleasure - It's estimated that one hour of pedaling at about 18 miles per hour will produce about 100 watt hours of electricity so. This hotel has installed two electricity-producing bicycles which are connected to the hotel's main supply. Guests who pedal hard enough score a complimentary meal once you reach the goal of 10 watt hours to earn your free meal. At what hotel in the UK can you pedal your way to the buffet?

4) Printing 3D objects is also something we are fans of here. And This can generate a building four times as fast at only half the cost . 3D printing of a building was something I thought only existed from the roadrunner cartoon & only available from ACME- nope!- this machines next challenge might be building moon bases. Its inventor is currently in talks with the European Space Agency about creating a version of the device that could use lunar dust to build structures on the surface of the Moon. The layers of sand are held by a binding agent said to be a magnesium-based solution. What tis the name of the machine or building process that is behind this?

5) Who ever invented twitter I’m sure didn’t think that thousands of tweets about what you ate for breakfast would be a bulwark of social media broadcasting, but it is. Even though legislation is pending to make those “I had a grilled cheese sandwich for lunch,” tweets illegal in some states. (I joke, I had a fajita for lunch) This new site is very investigative to say the least. –This is- the social network that instantly updates all your friends on what you're buying on your credit card -- updates include the location and the amount of each credit card purchase, and members can add extra information including photos of venues and comments on their purchases. Why anyone would want to do this well, I am frankly at a loss. What is the name of it?

6) Sometimes just wearing underwear isn’t enough, you want it to record important information for you & no I am definitely NOT talking about any new social network in my pants. But As the focus on healthcare shifts from centralized hospital-based treatment to home-based management, there are growing needs for developing reliable, wearable healthcare monitoring systems. Such on-body monitoring devices are also of interest for defense or sport applications. Direct screen-printing and Mechanical stress studies have indicated that textile-based printed sensors survive. What is the name of the brief that is part of this trend of documented evidence from our clothing?

7) There is a new multimedia search engine in the house, and they need room. Text-based searches might be great for hunting down relevant chunks of text, but searches for multimedia content can be tougher. It was the brainchild of an EU-wide joint project developed by researchers at the FranhoferInstitute, it can be used to detect similarities between different video or audio contents as well as genre. And it’s suitable not only for searches on the Internet and in archives, but also for TV programs, to check whether a contractually agreed advertisement has been broadcast. What works its magic by examining the digital fingerprints of multimedia files?

8) Its full-size USB keyboard broken into four connected quarter segments, allowing it to be folded over into a pocket-size rectangular shape. With the growing popularity of portable notebooks and tablets with smaller, cramped keyboards, having a full-size keyboard like this to tote around in your pocket might be a nice complement. It's fairly lightweight as well, weighing in at just over 8 ounces. The keyboard works with standard Windows and Mac operating systems. What is the name of the Japanese gadget giant that brought this to market?

9) The as yet unnamed PC was announced at a demonstration in Japan where a prototype was on show. It was revealed the 3D PC would feature a Blu-ray player and an LCD display that would display 3D content using polarized glasses - which are less expensive than the active shutter glasses. The computer reportedly uses software to convert 2D photographs or movies into 3D and includes a media player for 3D visual software. Which company will release before years end the 3D all-in-one desktop PC? (NEC) And 1000 Lindens for the first person on the web right now in treet talk -who can tell me how many times I said 3D in that last question?

10) It isn’t the most legal way to dispose of a body yet, but with ashes leaving a big carbon footprint and land becoming scare in places for burials – this just might be the coming thing. Its inventor, Sandy Sullivan, turns the human body into dust – which can be kept by grieving families – and a coffee-coloured liquid which is flushed down the drain. Glasgow-based Sandy has sold machines to Canada and the US, where five states allow the process, which is seen as being environmentallyfriendly. He said: “I am getting a lot of requests from families and we hope it will become legal in Scotland within the year. What is the name of this new way to deal with the Body after the soul has departed?

11) One of Britain’s best known and most controversial scientists, widely recognized as the "Sage” He pioneered X-ray crystallography and determined the structure of graphite. He is also famous for having firstly proposed a type of space habitat intended as a long-term home for permanent residents. After an influential Marxist account of the work of Isaac Newton changed his world-view he published The Social Function of Science, probably the earliest text on the sociology of science. From 1959-1965 he was chairman of the World Peace Council


12) His father operated a hand laundry while encouraging his son to get his education. It worked. Attracted to physics because of the clarity of its logic, he got his PhD at Columbia. Among his achievements are the discovery of the muon neutrino in 1962 and the bottom quark in 1977. He wrote a book with a great title, “The God Particle: If the Universe Is the Answer, What Is the Question?,” and described The history of atomism as one of reductionism - the effort to reduce all the operations of nature to a small number of laws governing a small number of primordial objects." Who was the man that undertook this quest?

13) The composition of algae is changing, as a result of which its nutritional value for other aquatic life is decreasing. As they are the first link in the underwater food chain, the algae ultimately influence the entire ecosystem, climate change is exerting an effect on underwater life. Experiments were performed with micro-algae in a higher concentration of this . Their faster growth was associated with a change in its composition - it had less nutritional phosphorous.. What did the micro algae grow faster but not better with?


14)A talking and singing robot which adaptively learns vocalization skill by means of an auditory feedback is being developed. It mainly consists of an air pump, artificial vocal cords, a resonance tube, a nasal cavity, and a microphone connected to a sound analyzer, which, respectively, correspond to a lung, and Vocal cord. Add a vocal tract, a nasal cavity, and an audition of Lady gaga singing and where can you find this being built?

15) You want to rough it but not really really rough it. You want to go to a remote undisclosed location but you don’t want to sleep in a tent and aren’t Dick Cheney with an underground hideaway at your beck and call. What to do? This 50 year old German company operates a hotel on wheels service. By day passengers sit in the front of the coach and take in all the sights, and by night they adjourn to the rear of the vehicle to enjoy their semi-private sleeping quarters. What is it called?

16) It has been estimated that 1.5 million barrels of oil are used annually for the production of one-use water bottles. About 38 million of those get tossed out each year. Then of course, there’s also the whole matter of wondering if you’re a sucker for paying to drink what is likely just filtered tap water. That’s where this contraption comes in handy.You just fill it from the faucet, and it filters the water as you drink. The filter is good for at least 300 bottlefuls, which should work out to about two months. What Is the name of this?

17) Students from Malardalens University in Sweden hope to send a robot tothe moon to deploy a tiny white house. The students are collaborating with artist Mikael Genberg, who is known for alternative living environments. The main idea of the project is for the robot to drop a small barn red house with white trim on the moon by 2012. The robot named Roony is being designed to deploy a tiny house on the moon. What is the robot called?

18) What timepiece would let you show off how green you are? It would have to be something that incorporates low-impact, sustainable and biodegradable materials, that doesn’t contain hazardous substances, and that supports recycling. These watches claim to be 80-86% eco-friendly by weight, depending on their size. Some of the features that make them eco-friendly include: Biodegradable corn resin bodies and buckles, Organic cotton bands and Mercury-free batteries. What is it called?

19) Scientists at this Institute for Production Technology have devised a carbon fiber fabrication process that they say is considerably quicker and easier than conventional ones. Traditionally, carbon fiber products are made through several tedious and time consuming steps. This doesn’t do that. This process utilizes carbon fibers that are integrated into kilometer-long strips of meltable resin tape. The tape strips are laid down over the form, side-by-side and on top of one another. Once in place, they’re compressed, and joined together by the heat of a laser melting the resin. It’s fast and precise. What country is prototyping this remarkable carbon fiber assembly?

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