The 1st Question 70 - 20 Oct 09

This week's panel

Colossus Linden , Zinnia Zauber , Keystone Bouchard , Judi Newall

Quotes

They that have lived a single day have lived an age.
Jean de la Bruyere

The true mystery of the world is the visible, not the invisible.
Oscar Wilde

Word-UP of the week - "Mumffuling" - wandering about aimlessly but happily, not doing much of anything.
Judi Newall

Audience Quote of the week – Best quote ever "Who the heck stuffs snow in to a chicken?!"
Zen Paine

What we do with the 90% of the brain we are allegedly not using -Mind is not limited to the brain - the remainder of the human electrical system interacts interdimensionally (the multidimensional human) We will learn to be more aware of this over time & generations.
Caprica McCallen

Questions

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

P:1) There is a new UK-based business website that provides you with four random camera feeds. Should you come to believe you are seeing a) shop lifting, b) burglary, c) vandalism or d) anti social behavior, you can press your alert button. Internet Eyes discourages the idea that their service "is creating a “snoopers paradise”, although users will be strictly anonymous and the person who catches the most miscreants will be awarded a 1,000 pound prize each month. Although there isn’t much in literature on citizens snooping on one another through camera feeds, a 1954 novel has a totalitarian, book-burning government looking for the novel's hero, who is on the run for reading books and directs its citizens saying – “The fugitive cannot escape if everyone in the next minute looks from his house. Ready!" set spy! – What very famous book is it?

X:2) He just makes his fellow billionaires look bad. His philosophy “I had one idea that never changed in my mind — that you should use your wealth to help people", led him to set up his charity. He also said “Money has some attraction for some people but you can only wear one pair of shoes at a time” – He transferred the bulk of his wealth to the foundation and gave it away. He made his billions in airport duty free shops. Up to 2005, his foundation had given away over are you sitting down? $3.5 billion- Who was the greatest donor of all time, an anonymous man?

3) In 1903, At 31 Horatio Nelson Jackson differed with the then-prevailing wisdom that the automobile was a passing fad, the plaything of rich men. While in San Francisco Nelson took a bet to prove that a car could be driven across the country. He accepted even though he did not own a car, had practically no experience driving, and had no maps to follow. The young mechanic he convinced to accompany suggested Jackson buy this car. So He did, a slightly used one, bade his wife goodbye, and left San Francisco. They arrived in New York City almost two months after they left. Their trip expended over 800 gallons of gasoline. There were only 150 miles of paved roads then in the nation total, no gas stations, road maps or mechanics. In what car did he drive?

4) This country’s car-makers push their plans to increase sales and give motorists more electric and hybrid-powered vehicle choices, and its Government has added its support by announcing intent to spend the equivalent of $2.2 billion on creating a battery-charging network for them across the country. The government says it will also make the installation of charging stations obligatory in new apartment blocks with parking lots. The money will come from a strategic investment fund. Which country is taking this great drive forward?

5) Nanobees are nanoparticles laden with this peptide, an ingredient in bee venom that is known to have therapeutic uses. Its use in medicine has been minimal due to the fact that it does damage to healthy cells as well. Researchers at Washington University in St. Louis came up with the nanobee idea as a way to get it directly to tumor cells. This also exhibits potent anti-microbial activity on the bacteria that causes lyme disease and yeast infections. What do the nanobees deliver?

6) An organism in a cryptobiotic state can essentially live indefinitely until environmental conditions return to being hospitable. Tardigrades are known for their virtual indestructibility on Earth. Scientists have reported their existence in hot springs, on top of the Himalayas, under layers of solid ice and in ocean sediments. And can survive in a vacuum and a European Space Agency experiment has also shown them enduring ultraviolet radiation and cosmic rays. They are the first animals known to be able to survive this and might be made to behave like quantum objects too soon What are these tiny but very mighty creatures also called?

7) Legend has it that the Irish warrior Finn McCool built then to walk to Scotland to fight his Scottish counterpart Benandonner. It is a remarkable geological configuration, of about 40,000 interlocking basalt columns, the result of an ancient volcanic eruption. It was declared a World Heritage Site by UNESCO in 1986, and recently named as the fourth greatest natural wonder in the United Kingdom. The tops of the columns form stepping stones that lead from the cliff foot and disappear under the sea. Managed by the National Trust, it is the most popular tourist attraction in Northern Ireland, what is it called?

8) He turned to medicine at 16, achieving full status as a qualified physician 2 years later. A polymath in Islams. Golden Age, he wrote the Canon of Medicine, a remarkable medical book known for its introduction of quarantine, experimental medicine, clinical trials, neuropsychiatry, risk factor analysis, diagnosis of contagious diseases & more . He viewed color to be of vital importance in diagnosis and treatment, and also developed a chart that related color to the temperature and physical condition of the body. The first color therapist, and a legendary doctor- who was he?

9) You couldn't ask for a more accurate description of a hologram than the one in this book “The telestereo, a glass disk, inserted in the room's floor, was initiated by a switch. Instantly there appears, the image of a man in the blue and white robe of the Supreme Council, a lifesize and moving and stereoscopically perfect image, flashing across the void of space by means of etheric vibrations. Through the medium of that projected image the man himself could see and hear as well as Jan Tor could see and hear him." From what 1928 novel does the telestereo derive?

10) Ever since the Rubik’s cube took the world by storm in the 80’s there has been a steady stream of puzzles looking to capture the public’s imagination. The latest brainteaser to take a stab at puzzling glory is this, a cylindrical device that has been individually milled from a solid block of metal, and that features an internal labyrinth which must be navigated to remove the metal core. You must solve a maze that you can’t see, relying on your memory of incorrect moves to get you through to the end. What is this fun for the whole family device called?

11) This country has the only fully rotating hotel building in the world - and the way they've done it is fascinating. Its smaller "revolving loft" is an engineering marvel and a pinnacle of luxury. Featuring only 24 rooms, this cylindrical tower cost $12 million to build & to accomplish this; the entire building is floated in a special pool system containing 470 tons of water. The lower three floors are submerged under the water, while the upper 3 floors are treated to a slowly rotating panoramic view of the area. In what country is this floating hotel?

12) The competition concluded this weekend, and its pretty big for user created content, NASA, offered the prize. Their motivation simple: being able to dig on the moon. Future lunarnauts will “live off the land” by excavating useful materials, such as oxygen and even recently discovered water. Home-built moonbots raked, scraped and dug their way across an artificial lunar landscape in California pursuing a half-million-dollar prize. Hobbyists from Los Angeles became the first ever to meet the minimum qualification & a group of students from Worcester tech took the prize the first since it was launched 3 years ago. What was the challenge?

13) In the mid-1800s neuroscientists discovered cells in the brain that are not like neurons (the presumed active players of the brain) and called them thus, the Greek word for “glue.” Even though the brain contains about 10 times as many as neurons—the assumption was that those cells were nothing more than a passive support system. They are really busy multitaskers, guiding the brain’s development and sustaining it throughout our lives. They also listen carefully to their neighbors, and speak in a chemical language of their own. . What does the brain contain a trillion of that have many different functions from immune system to scaffolding?

14) The magnetic equivalent of electricity, dubbed "magnetricity", has been demonstrated experimentally for the first time. Just as the flow of electrons produces electrical current, individual north and south magnetic poles have been observed to roam freely. Magnets normally have two poles, north and south, that are inseparable. That is true all the way down to its individual atoms, since each behaves as a tiny bar magnet with two poles. - Many of physic’s grandest theories require single, freely moving magnetic poles to exist and in this type of magnetic solid monopoles not bound in pairs move independently of one another, forming inside a crystalline material called what?

15) Before him, everyone assumed that cells got their energy using straightforward chemistry, generated from food by a series of standard reactions. This man thought otherwise. Life, he argued, is powered not by the kind of chemistry that goes on in a test tube but by a kind of electricity. He dubbed his theory chemiosmosis, and it is not surprising that biologists found it hard to accept. It might be counter-intuitive, but this has turned out to be ubiquitous in the living world. Living power drives not only cell respiration, but photosynthesis: energy from the sun is converted into a proton gradient in essentially the same way as the energy of food. A British biochemist, he was awarded the 1978 Nobel Prize for Chemistry. Who was this genius?

16) These shipping container disaster relief houses are just too good to waste on terrible natural catastrophes. They are easy to deliver, easy to set up (just 90 minutes) and are even self-sustaining. The units come complete with a kitchenette, a fold-out bed, dried foods, and everything else needed for a family to be able to move right in that day. There is also a solar array that powers batteries for off-grid power. But a fully charged battery comes with the unit when it arrives so power is instantly available. What company has created this self sustaining home?

17) Science-fiction becomes science fact with the development of an exoskeleton suit inspired by the one Ripley wore in her climactic battle in Aliens. And, just like in the movie, the suit is designed to give its wearer superhuman strength for lifting of heavy objects. And has plans to release a version to the market by the 2015. What is this PowerLoader suit constructed from?
18) Making a living thing do two things at once is more than a physicist's tour de force, or Pooky’s dream of shopping and writing at the same time. It could answer fundamental questions about the nature of quantum theory. Both the Yaqi sorcerer Don Juan of Carlos Castenada's books and R Buckminster Fuller said this was entirely feasible. In quantum theory, a single object can be doing two different things at once. This is a delicate state, destroyed by any contact with the outside world and only molecules have done it so far. Now, lasers can alter the energy state of a virus by reflecting and transmitting it into both its ground state and next vibrational energy one. What kind of position is it that does two different things at once ?