| Question | Answer |
|---|---|
| A common problem in one variety of this process includes over-large spots, which could result in overlapping of component spots with similar Rf values. Helium is used to move mixtures in the gas variety of this technique, whose other varieties include paper and and thin-layer. For the point, name this lab technique which separates the components of a mixture. | Chromatography (accept Thin-Layer Chromatography; accept Gas Chromatography; accept Paper Chromatography) |
| The sudden conversion of soil into runoff is seen as an example of the "cultural" form of this process. HABs are a negatively ecological effect resulting from this process, which is characterized by increases in phytoplankton productivity and involves the rapid growth in algal populations of affected areas. For the point, name this process in which phosphorus and other nutrients enrich bodies of water. | Eutrophication (accept Cultural Eutrophication) |
| This university was where Navlab, the first autonomous car in history, was created. This university's Andrew Project included the development of the first university-wide Wi-Fi network. This university, which was the site of the world's first robotics department, jointly administers the Pittsburgh Supercomputing Center. For the point, name this university in Pittsburgh that is partly named for a steel magnate. | Carnegie Mellon University (or CMU; accept Carnegie Technical Schools; accept Carnegie Institute of Technology) |
| An index ellipsoid is used to describe a double form of this phenomenon that occurs in birefringent materials. One law that governs this phenomenon is derived using the calculus of variations and Fermat's principle of least time. A value that governs this phenomenon equals the ratio of the speed of light in a vacuum to its speed in the medium. Dipping a stick into water shows, for the point, what phenomenon in which a wave bends as it moves between two media? | Refraction (accept Double Refraction) |
| This constellation is the site of open Arches and dense Quintuplet clusters, the latter of which houses the luminous blue hypergiant Pistol Star. The Trifid and Lagoon Nebulas are among the 15 Messier objects located within this constellation, whose Teapot asterism exhibit the Milky as the "steam" coming out of its spout. For the point, name this southern constellation represented by a centaur drawing his bow and arrow. | Sagittarius |
| Senator Gaylord Nelson founded this holiday with generous funding from Walter Reuther, the president of the United Automobile Workers. John McConnell created this holiday's unofficial flag, which displays a photograph called The Blue Marble. The Paris Agreement was signed on this holiday that was first observed in 1970. For the point, name this holiday which occurs on April 22nd to advocate for environmental protection. | Earth Day (prompt on "April 22") |
| The Luria-Delbruck experiment found that the rate of these events is independent of selective pressure. DNA polymerase has exonuclease activity to lower the frequency of these events via proofreading. "Nonsense" types of these events incorporate premature stop codons, while "frameshift" types are caused by base insertions or deletions that lead to nonfunctional proteins. For the point, name these changes to an organism's DNA sequence. | Mutations (accept specific types; accept Nonsense Mutation; accept Frameshift Mutation) |
| The square of this quantity is also known as the second central moment. The number of these above or below a certain quantity yields the z-score, and this quantity is the square root of the variance. In statistics, the lowercase Greek letter sigma refers to this quantity, which can be thought of as the degree to which the data points are spread from the mean. For the point, name this measure of the dispersion among a set of values, often shortened to SD. | Standard Deviation (prompt on "SD"; prompt on "Sigma" before mentioned) |
| Howard Q. Zhang and Tony Zin wrote a piece examining the pulsed electric field method of this process. The "flash" variety of this process is said to better retain the flavor of its subjects. Items subjected to this process include fruit juice and milk, the latter undergoing this process at 135 degrees Fahrenheit for 30 minutes. For the point, name this process which involves the heat treatment of liquid foods. | Pasteurization (accept Flash Pasteurization; prompt on answers synonymous to "Food Preservation") |
| The “unrolling” technique can be used to increase the efficiency of these programming structures. It’s not a switch statement, but break statements can be used to leave one of these structures. These structures can be used to control program flow and implement iterative algorithms. The “do...while” is a type of, for the point, what control flow statements which cause a block of code to be repeatedly executed until a specific condition is met? | Loops (accept or Do...while Loop or While Loop) |
| The Schläfli symbol of this shape is notated as {4,3} [["Four-comma-three"]]. A fractal called the Menger sponge is constructed by first subdividing one of these shapes, which is also the dual of a regular octahedron. An ancient geometric problem involved using a compass and straightedge to double the volume of one of these shapes, whose 4-dimensional analogue is the tesseract. For the point, name this 3-dimensional polyhedron with six square faces. | Cube (accept Regular Hexahedron; prompt on "Rectangular Prism"; prompt on "Hexahedron") |
| The largest species of this order is found in India and is known as Gigantometrus swammerdami. Organisms in this order engage in a type of mating dance called the promenade à deux. Often residing in desert conditions, members of this order have segmented tails and, like other arachnids, have eight legs. A stinger is at the end of said tail of members of, for the point, what order whose members have a pair of pincers? | Scorpiones (accept Scorpions) |
| Charles Dowd was one of the first Americans to propose the creation of these entities, in which he proposed should be 15 degrees longitude. ISO 8601 is the global standard for these things, whose 19th century proponents included Canadian railway engineer Sandford Fleming. Eastern Standard and Pacific Standard are examples of, for the point, what entities, whose global standards are based around a "mean" at the Royal Observatory in Greenwich? | Time Zones (prompt on partial answers) |
| Torx and star are among the varieties of the drive tips of these objects. These objects are utilized upon items that can have a cruciform slot, such as one named for Henry F. Phillips. The standard varieties of the manual types of these objects consist of a shaft and a handle and have often been replaced by power drills. For the point, name these tools that are used to turn a certain metal fastener into place. | Screwdrivers (accept Torx Screwdriver; accept Star Screwdriver; accept Phillips Screwdriver) |
| In 1999, an experiment involving this liquid was first shown on the Late Show with David Letterman by Lee Marek. Steve Spangler set off a trend of viral videos on YouTube involving an experiment with this liquid, which makes use of a brand of scotch mints in order to achieve the soda geyser. A sugar-free beverage, this is, for the point, what soft drink often used in experiments with Mentos to create a fountain-like effect? | Diet Coke (accept Diet Coca-Cola; accept Coca-Cola Light; accept Coca-Cola Light Taste; do not accept or prompt on "Coke" or "Coca-Cola") |
| The diffusion of these particles through a network of hydrogen bonds occurs in the Grotthuss mechanism. A form of radiotherapy that utilizes an exceptionally narrow beam of these particles is preferred during attempts to localize treatment to a specific tissue. The names of these particles, which are made of two up quarks and one down quark, was originally bestowed by Ernest Rutherford upon the nucleus of hydrogen. For the point, name these positively charged subatomic particles. | Protons (accept Proton Therapy or Proton Beam Therapy) |
| This object’s namesake “armada” included Sakigake [[sah-kee-gah-kay]] and Suisei [[soo-eh-”sigh”]]. The planet Venus and this object were studied in 1986 by the Soviet spacecraft Vega 1 and Vega 2. The debris of this object is responsible for the Eta Aquarid [[AY-tah AK-wuh-rid]] and Orionid [[oh-RYE-oh-nid]] meteor showers. Named for an English astronomer who predicted its 1758 return, this is, for the point, what comet with a 76-year period? | Halley’s Comet (or 1P/Halley; accept Halley's Armada) |
| Listric varieties of these structures can form décollement deformations. The stress regime of these structures can be determined by identifying the hanging wall and the footwall. These structures, which may be interspersed with raised and lowered blocks known as horsts and grabens, include varieties such as dip- slip and strike-slip. For the point, name these boundaries between plates whose sudden movements cause earthquakes. | Faults (accept Listric Faults; accept Dip-slip Faults; accept Strike-slip Faults) |
| Drugs used to treat this disease are remembered with the mnemonic "RIPE," which includes rifampin. The bacteria causing this disease is detected by QuantiFERON assays or a Ziehl-Neelson acid-fast stain. The BCG vaccine that prevents this disease can give a false positive for the Mantoux skin test. Visible cavities on a chest X-ray and a bloody cough are common signs of, for the point, what lung disease which was historically called consumption? | Tuberculosis (or TB; accept Consumption before mentioned) |
| Only 10% of energy from one level of these constructs is passed from one level to another, typically limiting them to five trophic levels. Biomagnification is the increased concentration of toxins as you move up through these constructs. These constructs can be defined as a specific path taken through a similarly named web. For the point, name these constructs that illustrate the relationship between basal prey up through apex predators. | Food Chains (prompt on “Food Webs” or “Webs” before mentioned) |
| A cold gas thruster is a type of this structure, where its fuel is typically comprised of alcohol, kerosene, and hydrazine. In a liquid-fuel chemical type of these structures, stored fuel and stored oxidizer are mixed and burned while inside a combustion chamber, where it is then ignited. For the point, name these structures the propel a certain vehicle into space. | Rocket Engines (prompt on partial answers) |
| The field capacity for this quantity is defined as the volume remaining when adhesion and cohesion overcome gravity. This quantity can be measured using frequency domain sensors such as a capacitance probe or electrical impedance sensor. The wilting point is the minimum value needed for this quantity to prevent plant death. For the point, name this quantity that becomes dangerously low for plants during a drought. | Soil Moisture (accept any answers indicating the amount of Water in soil or dirt; prompt on “Amount of water” or similar answers that do not specific dirt or soil) |
| In a speech, Ronald Reagan noted that this event occurred on the same day Sir Francis Drake had died 390 years prior. The Rogers Commission Report investigated this event, whose fate was determined to be caused by an O-ring seal failure. Ellison Onizuka and Christa McAuliffe were among the crew members who perished during, for the point, what 1986 event that saw the explosion of a space shuttle? | Challenger Disaster (accept answers synonymous to the Challenger Explosion) |
| A treatment used for this affliction is a surgery called open reduction and internal fixation. The Busch type of this affliction is common among motorcycle riders due to hyperflexion, typically resulting in a “hammer finger.” The most common occurrence of this affliction in children is the incomplete "greenstick" variety. An open wound in the form of skin breakage is typical in the compound type of, for the point, what affliction that results from a break in a bone? | Bone Fractures (accept Busch Fracture; accept Greenstick Fracture; accept Compound Fracture; prompt on answers synonymous to "Breaking of the bone") |
| After a certain volume is collected in the tipping bucket variety of these devices, a seesaw-like lever triggers a reed switch and transmits an electric signal. Acoustic disdrometers can be used in some types of these devices to determine droplet size and composition from sound. For the point, name these devices used to measure the amount of liquid precipitation that falls in a certain location. | Rain Gauges (accept Hyetometer, Ombrometer, Pluviometer, Udometer, Pluviograph, or Ombrograph) |
| Hongpin Yu helped author a study that found that 28 teragrams of dust from the Sahara Desert are deposited to this region per year. This region covers 5,500,000 square kilometers of a basin it shares its name with. A set of 2019 wildfires in this region are thought to have led to over $3.5 trillion worth of losses for countries like Brazil, in which 60% of this region is located. For the point, name this biome, a rainforest in South America. | Amazon Rainforest (accept Amazon Jungle; or Amazonia; or Selva amazónica; or Floresta amazônica) |
| A treatment for this disease used in traditional Chinese and Indian medicine was Chaulmoogra oil. The island of Spinalonga in Crete was the last area in Europe used to isolate people who suffered from this disease, although the most notable area was on the Hawaiian island of Molokai, which was where Father Damien served its community. Hansen’s disease is another name for, for the point, what contagious infection which leaves skin sores? | Leprosy (accept Hansen's Disease before mentioned) |
| This family proliferated in the Late Cenozoic era which altered hill formation to disfavor escarpment formations. Members of this family are the most common anti-erosion plants used in riparian zones. This family of plants includes millet, bamboo, and grains. Savannahs or prairies are defined by the presence of, for the point, what broadly distributed plant clade that is often used to cover lawns? | Grass (or Poaceae; or Gramineae) |
| These phenomena can be indicated by the presence of highly reflective “debris balls” on radar maps. A pulse-Doppler radar can be used to detect these phenomena by detecting hook echoes. These phenomena, which are called waterspouts when they form over water, most commonly form from a funnel cloud at the base of a cumulonimbus cloud. For the point, name these rapidly rotating columns of air which extend from a thunderstorm. | Tornadoes (or Twisters; or Whirlwinds; or Cyclones; accept Waterspouts before mentioned) |
| This phenomenon was theorized by a Belgian priest named Georges Lemaître [[leh-MAH-treh]]. The onset of this phenomenon was the mission of the Planck mission, in which it measured the ripples of cosmic microwave background. For the point, name this event of an explosion which led to the expansion of our universe nearly 14 billion years ago. | Big Bang (accept Big Bang Theory) |
| Plants described by an adjective form of this word can be killed in the process of dieback. The genus Ochroma contains dicots that produce the hard variety of this good, examples of which include balsa. Lignin and fibers of cellulose can be found in this substance, which is overlain by bark. For the point, name this material found in the tissue of the stems of trees. | Wood (accept Lumber; accept Timber; accept Hardwood; accept Balsa Wood) |