| Question | Answer |
|---|---|
| Explorer 66 found slight anisotropies in this phenomenon, which it extensively studied. This phenomenon maintains a thermal black body (+) spectrum at roughly 2.725 Kelvins, which is associated with a slight glow (*) detected by radio telescopes. For the points, name this form of radiation left over from the Big Bang. | Cosmic Microwave Background Radiation (or CMB or CMBR; accept Relic Radiation; prompt on partial answers) |
| Spores of one member in this genus cause drooping eyelids and weak muscles and is often caused by improperly canning foods (+) at home. One bacterium in this genus is the reason that infants should not be fed raw honey, while another bacterium in this genus can cause (*) lockjaw via punctured wounds. For the points, name this genus of bacteria that causes tetanus and botulism. | Clostridium (accept Clostridium tetani; accept Clostridium botulinum) |
| A liquid-liquid extraction method named for this element and a lighter counterpart is called PUREX, which mostly purifies this element’s 239 isotope. (+) The earliest synthetic production of this element involved the beta-decay of neptunium-238 that occurred after uranium was bombarded with (*) deuterium nuclei by Glenn Seaborg. For the points, name this radioactive element named for what was considered the ninth planet from the Sun. | Plutonium (prompt on "Pu") |
| An astronomer from this country published a catalogue of 110 nebulae and star clusters, (+) while a physicist from this country gives his name to the SI unit of pressure of stress. An inventor from this country developed a reading and writing system for the (*) blind. For the points, name this country home to Blaise Pascal and Louis Braille. | France (or French Republic) |
| Two implementations of this programming task are stop-and-copy and mark-and sweep, and this process can be used to eliminate dangling pointer bugs (+) and memory leaks. Languages which perform this process automatically include Java and C# [[C Sharp]], while languages like C require manual implementation of this process. (*) For the points, name this memory management practice in which a program automatically deletes unused objects. | Garbage Collection |
| This person's discoveries were the inspiration for a pictorial representation by Henry De la Beche called Duria Anterior, a more ancient Dorset. This person was accused by Georges Cuvier as "a fraud" (+) after she discovered the first known plesiosaur skeletons. When this person was 12 years old, she completed her brother's finding of a skull fossil of an ichthyosaur by (*) discovering the rest of its skeleton. For the points, name this English fossil collector whose discoveries were made at her native Lyme Regis. | Mary Anning |
| These objects often contain a hose barb that is connected to a nozzle and can often be placed on top of a laboratory tripod. (+) Butane or propane are among the single sources of gas that can be produced by this piece of equipment, which is used to (*) sterilize loops in microbiology. For the points, name this piece of lab equipment that emits open flame and is named for a German scientist. | Bunsen Burner |
| This type of radiation is emitted by a blacklight, which is used in crime scenes to detect trace evidence of blood. Glowscreen (+) is a product created by Supergoop! to protect against this form of radiation, whose wavelength spans between 10 to (*) 400 nanometers. For the points, name his form of electromagnetic radiation that is present in sunlight. | Ultraviolet Radiation (or Ultraviolet Light; or UV Radiation or UV Light; accept UV-A or UV-B; prompt on “Electromagnetic Radiation”) |
| Complete hydrogenation of benzene produces a cyclic six-carbon example of these molecules. These molecules can be classified as either straight-chain (+) or branched-chain and have the general formula “C n, H 2n plus 2.” The suffix -ane is used to name, (*) for the points, what class of hydrocarbons which only contain carbon-carbon single bonds? | Alkanes (accept Cycloalkanes; accept Straight-chain Alkanes; accept Branched-chain Alkanes; prompt on “Hydrocarbons”; do not accept or prompt on “Alkenes” or “Alkynes”) |
| This substance stores almost half of all soil carbon despite only covering 3% of the world’s land. Muskegs are ecosystems characterized by producing (+) this material over permafrost from sphagnum moss. This substance is formed in namesake bogs and can eventually progress into (*) coal. For the points, name this material made of partially decayed plant matter than can be burned as fuel. | Peat (prompt on “Turf”) |
| This scientist's boss, the British polymath Henry Thompson, once described this man as "a shy Quaker [who] had a better microscope than any man in the college." This man invented the "donkey engine," (+) in which he used it to spray carbolic acid before operating on an abscess growing under Queen Victoria's armpit. (*) For the points, name this British surgeon and medical scientist referred to as the "father of antiseptic surgery." | Joseph Lister |
| A protein that acts on these structures has unique TERT reverse transcriptase activity and is also called terminal transferase. The length of these structures slowly decreases (+) up until the Hayflick limit. In humans, these structures have repeats of the sequence TTAGGG and shorten every cell cycle, which leads to progressive aging and (*) cell death when they are depleted. For the points, name these DNA sequences that protect the ends of chromosomes. | Telomeres (prompt on “Chromosomes”) |
| This region is where icy noctilucent clouds form, which are only visible at twilight. This region contains a thick sodium layer that is regenerated by meteorites, (+) which first become visible in this region. The turbopause lies near the upper end of this region, which is the (*) coldest portion of Earth’s atmosphere. For the points, name this atmospheric layer located between the stratosphere and the thermosphere. | Mesosphere |
| On the top of a planet's surface, this spacecraft confirmed the existence of a phenomenon dubbed the "hexagon storm," which is believed to have been caused by jet streams. (+) This spacecraft, which observed the feature that resembles "Pac-Man" on the moon Tethys, was launched in 1997 along with the European Space Agency's Huygens probe. Over 100 flybys of (*) Titan were completed by, for the points, what spacecraft that explored the planet Saturn? | Cassini-Huygens |
| A law named after this man is represented by the formula "V1 over n1 equals V2 over n2," (+) which states that volume varies directly with the amount of gas at constant temperature and pressure. This man lends his name to a constant equal to (*) 6.022 times 10 to the 23rd power. For the points, name this Italian scientist whose constant is the number of particles in one mole of any substance. | Avogadro (or Amedeo Avogadro; or Lorenzo Romano Amedeo Carlo Avogadro; accept Avogadro's Law; accept Avogadro's Number; accept Avogadro's Constant) |
| Shifts in the appearance of Rebirth Island are among the indicators of this process, which has partly been attributed to the construction of the Karakum Canal. (+) The growth of the cotton industry in the Soviet Union led the Amu Darya and Syr Darya rivers to be diverted away from a (*) body of water, which caused this process. For the points, name this phenomenon, which has decreased the size of a once large lake in central Asia. | Shrinking of the Aral Sea (accept equivalents like Drying up of the Aral Sea; prompt on partial answers) |
| In 1934, while an apprentice under Dorothy Liddell in Swanscombe, this person discovered the largest elephant tooth known to a Britain. This person discovered the oldest known hominid tracks (+) in the locality of Laetoli, as well as the Zinjanthropus skull referred to by newspapers as the "Nutcracker Man." (*) For the points, name this British paleoanthropologist whose career was mainly conducted at Olduvai Gorge alongside her husband, Louis. | Mary Leakey (or Mary Douglas Leakey; accept Mary Douglas Nicol; prompt on "Leakey") |
| Near some of the symmetry axes of these objects are Fast Low-Ionization Emission Regions, or FLIERS. The "Ghost of Jupiter" (+) and "Dandelion Puffball" are examples of these objects, which form in between the asymptotic giant branch and white dwarf stages. Cat’s Eye (*) is an example of, for the points, what clouds of gas and dust that form in the final stage in a low-mass star's life and are named for resembling objects like Neptune? | Planetary Nebulae (prompt on "Nebula" or "Emission Nebula") |
| This phenomenon was summarized by Edward Lorenz as “when the present determines the future, (+) but the approximate present does not approximately determine the future.” This property was observed by Jacques Hadamard and Martin Gutzwiller with a model made up of (*) billiard balls. For the points, name this phenomenon expressed by the butterfly effect. | Chaos (accept Chaos Theory) |
| These glycoproteins contain a Class I [[One]] fusion protein that mediates cellular entry, which was leveraged to make the monoclonal antibody drug cocktail of bamlanivimab (+) and etesevimab. Cells are reprogrammed to express this protein to trigger an immune response in mRNA vaccines developed by Moderna and Pfizer. (*) For the points, name these protein complexes that protrude from the viral envelope to give coronaviruses their distinctive shape. | Spike Protein (or S-protein from SARS-CoV-2; or Peplomer Protein) |
| This object was previously referred to as "Xena,” while its moon was initially nicknamed "Gabrielle." That moon, now officially named Dysnomia, (+) is the only moon of this dwarf planet, which was discovered in 2005 by a team led by Caltech professor Michael Brown, who is also the author of the memoir How I Killed (*) Pluto and Why It Had It Coming. For the points, name this dwarf planet named after the Greek goddess of discord. | Eris |
| The letters "p" and "q" represent the frequency of these things under Hardy-Weinberg equilibrium, (+) where they remain stable over time. These things separate into different gametes according to Mendel's law of segregation, and they are different from each other at a certain gene in a (*) heterozygous individual. For the points, name these variants of a gene that can be either dominant or recessive. | Alleles (prompt on "Genes" or "Genotypes") |
| The Bonferroni correction avoids mischaracterizing this type of statement when making multiple comparisons. A test's power is the probability of correctly (+) rejecting this statement and avoiding a Type II [[Two]] error. This statement is rejected if a test's p-value is less than the (*) significance level, which is typically five percent. For the points, name this type of hypothesis that assumes there is no relationship between a set of variables, as opposed to the alternative hypothesis. | Null Hypothesis (or H-sub-zero; prompt on "Hypothesis") |
| A 5-fluorinated form of this molecule is commonly used to select for yeast lacking the URA3 gene. The codon containing three units (+) of this molecule codes for phenylalanine. The demethylation of thymine produces this molecule, which hydrogen-bonds with (*) adenine in a single- stranded nucleic acid. For the points, name this RNA nucleobase symbolized U. | Uracil (accept 5-FU or 5-fluorouracil; prompt on "U" before mentioned; prompt on "Ura") |
| Field-evaporation microscopy is combined with the time-of-flight variety of this technique in an atom probe, a device used to image specific nuclei. (+) After ionization, samples analyzed in this technique are accelerated with an electric field. (*) For the points, name this technique for finding the mass to charge ratio for a sample of ions. | Mass Spectrometry (or Mass Spec; or MS; prompt on “Spectrometry”) |
| Fossil Ridge is a rocky outcropping around that deposit of this rock, which is famed for preserving soft tissue fossils. (+) The first complete Anomalocaris remains was discovered in the fossil-rich Burgess formation of this rock. (*) For the points, name this type of rock that commonly preserves fossils alongside oil reserves. | Shale (accept Burgess Shale) |
| The largest of these structures in the Atlantic Ocean is called the Great Meteor, while the Chatham Rise contains 28 (+) of these structures called Graveyard Knolls. A phenomenon called flank collapse is the greatest threat to these structures, whose flat-topped examples are known as (*) guyots. For the points, name these large hills, formed by volcanic activity and are found on the ocean floor. | Seamounts (accept Great Meteor Seamount; accept Graveyard Seamounts; prompt on “Volcanoes” or "Underwater Volcanoes" or “Mountains”) |
| Kasimir Fajans and Oswald Helmuth Göhring discovered one element in this series and called it "brevium." This series of elements is characterized by partially filled 5f (+) orbitals. These elements include one named after a scientist who created the first nuclear reactor, as well as another that is mined from the ore (*) pitchblende. For the points, name this series of elements that spans the bottom row of the periodic table, below the lanthanides. | Actinoids (or Actinides; prompt on "Heavy Metals"; prompt on "Radioactive Elements") |
| Though not Isaac Newton, this man postulated the indefinite divergence from the eye of rays that are rectilinear in a work on Optics. (+) A means of finding the greatest common divisor is often named for this man, who lived in ancient (*) Alexandria. For the points, name this author of Elements who is often seen as the "father of geometry." | Euclid |
| This organelle is the site of O-linked, but not N-linked, glycosylation. Proteins bound for the lysosome are tagged with mannose-6-phosphate (+) in this organelle, which contains both a cis and a trans face, as well as flattened disks called cisternae. Proteins that are produced in the endoplasmic reticulum are (*) packaged into vesicles in, for the points, what organelle named for an Italian scientist? | Golgi Apparatus (accept Golgi Complex; accept Golgi Body; accept the Golgi) |
| Simplicio is among the characters in the Dialogue Concerning the Two Chief World Systems by this man, whom Vincenzo Maculani was the inquisitor (+) for in a set of proceedings. Io and Europa are among a set of satellites named for this man, who stood (*) trial in Italy in 1610. For the points, name this Italian astronomer who discovered a series of moons around Jupiter. | Galileo Galilei (accept either underlined portion; or Galileo di Vincenzo Bonaiuti de' Galilei) |
| LECA was initially used when the "semi-" variety of this practice was done on orchids in the 1990s. Arabidopsis thaliana is often a subject (+) of this practice which, commercially, is often used to grow tomatoes. In this technique, soil is replaced with (*) mineral nutrient solutions containing an aqueous compound. For the points, name this water-based technique of growing plants. | Hydroponics (prompt on "Hydroculture"; accept Semi-Hydroponics; accept passive Hydroponics; prompt on “Horticulture” or “Agriculture”) |
| The Sargasso Sea takes its name from beds made from large members of this class. Floating members of this class often utilize gas bubbles in pneumatocysts. (+) This class gets its namesake color from fucoxanthin pigments, which distinguishes them from their yellow-green counterparts. Ecosystems defined by the presence of large examples of this class include (*) underwater forests. For the points, name this class of algae that makes up kelp forests. | Brown Algae (or Phaeophyceae; prompt on “Kelp” or “Algae” or “Seaweed” or “Macroalgae”) |