Prelims (Non-Visuals)
These are the questions for the prelims (non-visuals).
1. What is the Japanese equivalent for “everywhere”?
2. In 2001, A quit his post as Chairman and CEO of the company. Among the 3 contenders for the top job, B won through and has been the CEO till date. One of the other contenders James McNerney left and became CEO of 3M and later C. D went on to head The Home Depot before moving to E where the position he once held is now held by Sergio Marchionne. Name A, B, C, D and E.
3. Name the visual effects company behind the flora and fauna of Avatar’s Pandora.
4. Technology Review is a magazine published by Technology Review Inc, a media company owned by the MIT. It comes out with a list ever year called TR35 recognizing 35 innovators under the age of 35. The list for 2009 has five persons of Indian origin – Shwetak Patel, Ranjan Dash, Vik Singh and Ashoke Ravi along with X. Name X and his innovation/invention.
5. Deja became Google Groups. Dodgeball became Google Latitude (allows a mobile phone user to allow certain people to track their location). Measure Map became Google Analytics. What did Keyhole graduate into?
6. During the development of Erwin Schrödinger's famous thought experiment, Schrödinger’s cat, he coined the term Verschränkung. This concept has been elaborated since and is now defined as property of a quantum mechanical state of a system of two or more objects in which the quantum states of the constituting objects are linked together so that one object can no longer be adequately described without full mention of its counterpart—even if the individual objects are spatially separated in a spacelike manner. What term defines this property? (The English equivalent of Verschränkung)
7. The first prototype was given the initials MP5 and baptized "Paperino", the Italian name for Donald Duck, a nickname given to it by the workers because of the strange shape it had. Enrico Piaggio did not like the design and asked Corradino D'Ascanio to redesign it which he did with a more aeronautical-derived aerodynamic look.
When the second prototype MP6 was shown to Enrico, he heard the buzzing sound of the engine and exclaimed: "Sembra una ___________!" ("It resembles a _________!") The name stuck and from there on it went on to become one of the most recognized brands in the world.
Identify this revolutionary brand/product.
8. How do we more popularly know a medical procedure called "lumbar puncture", a diagnostic and at times therapeutic treatment?
9. Monsanto Company is a U.S based multinational agricultural biotechnology corporation. It is the world's leading producer of genetically engineered seeds (it sells 90% of the world's G.E seeds). In 1967, three employees of the company, Donald L. Elbert, James M. Faria and Robert T. Wright, invented something and sold it under the name "Chemgrass".
How do we know "Chemgrass" today?
10. The United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) has made an official policy which is given below:
With the exception of cases involving _________ ______, a model is not ordinarily required by the Office to demonstrate the operability of a device. If operability of a device is questioned, the applicant must establish it to the satisfaction of the examiner, but he or she may choose his or her own way of so doing.
And, further, that: A rejection [of a patent application] on the ground of lack of utility includes the more specific grounds of inoperativeness, involving _________ ______. A rejection under 35 U.S.C. 101 for lack of utility should not be based on grounds that the invention is frivolous, fraudulent or against public policy.
So in other words, the USPTO will not patent such a device, no matter what.
Fill in the blanks.
11. Nicknamed X, this 200+ years old institution was originally started as a military academy and began admitting women in 1972. Alumni are referred to as “Xnnnn”, where nnnn stands for the year of admission into the school. Among its alumni are two Nobel prizes winners, three presidents and many CEOs (Paul Hermelin, Bernard Arnault).
Name the institution.
12. This phenomenon is a reference to the apparently mysterious anecdotal failure of technical equipment in the presence of certain people. It is named after X of whom it was said that he was such a good theorist that any experiments would self-destruct simply because he was in the vicinity. X himself was convinced that the effect named after him was real. He confided in his beliefs about Synchronicity (the experience of two or more events that are causally unrelated occurring together in a meaningful manner) to Y, a pioneering psychologist. Y for his part began interpreting the dreams that X began to have during his breakdown. Their correspondences are published today as Atom and Archetype. Name X and Y.
13. Straightforward. Who proposed the theory of continental drift?
14. Expand a. CRISIL b. EBITDA
15. A company called Takara Tomy created this product and branded it Diaclone. They produced it until a buyout in 1984. After the buyout, the product was marketed with an innovative tagline – “More than meets the eye”. What product?
16. Zhores Alferov and Herbert Kroemer were two of the three Nobel awardees for Physics in 2000. The person – a legend by then and receiving his due 42 years down the line - they shared the prize with mentioned this in the introduction to his speech. “The reality of what people have done with it has gone far beyond what anyone – including myself – imagined possible at the time. Charles Townes won the Nobel for his work with maser technology, and he summed up how I feel. Townes said “It’s like the beaver told the rabbit as they stared at the Hoover dam. ‘No, I didn’t build it myself. But it’s based on an idea of mine!’”. Name the person.
17. This iconic logo was created in 1908 by illustrator Tom Browne as an accompaniment to the slogan “Born 1820 – Still going Strong”. The most notable cultural appearance of this logo was in Haruki Murakami’s novel Kafka on the Shore. In 2009 the advertising agency Bartle Bogle Hegarty created a short film called The Man Who Walked Around the World, outlining the history of the brand. Which brand is being talked about?
18. The United Kingdom was the first of the great industrial powers to switch from the silver standard to a gold specie standard. In 1717, the then master of the Royal Mint established a new mint ratio between silver and gold that had the effect of driving silver out of circulation and putting Britain on a gold standard. In 1816, the Royal Mint introduced the gold sovereign coin. In 1821, the United Kingdom was formally put on a gold specie standard. Soon to follow was Canada in 1853, Newfoundland in 1865, and the USA and Germany in 1873. A huge divide between silver-based and gold-based economies resulted. The worst affected were economies with silver standard (India) that traded mainly with economies with gold standard.
Question: Who headed the Royal Mint in 1717?
19. John Bissell left his position as a buyer for Macy's New York and worked as a consultant for the Ford foundation where he was given a two-year grant to instruct Indian villagers in making goods for export. He firmly believed in the emerging Indian textile industry and was determined to showcase Indian handloom textiles with a way to provide employment to traditional artisans. What did he start in 1960?
20. The order Cetacea includes Whales, Dolphins and Porpoises, noted for their high intelligence. It comprises of two suborders – Mysticeti (Baleen Whales) and Odontoceti (Dolphins, Porpoises and other Whales). What is the primary basis for this classification?
21. Aresa Biodetection, a Danish firm has developed a flower that is likely to solve a major problem that the world faces. What is this flower for?
22. A proposed his theory in 1927 in Annals of the Scientific Society of Brussels. Einstein’s comment upon reading it was – “Your math is correct, but your physics is abominable”. It received little recognition until Arthur Eddington’s enthusiastic endorsement in 1930. A did not intend for his theory to be called B and this name came about as a result of a disparaging remark by C whose stance on this topic was nearly opposite to that of A. Name A, B and C.
23. In 1996, this magazine carried an exposé on the tobacco industry entitled "The Man Who Knew Too Much". The article was later adapted into a movie ‘The Insider’ (1999). Also, after more than thirty years of mystery, an article in the May 2005 edition revealed the identity of Deep Throat (W. Mark Felt), one of the sources for The Washington Post articles on Watergate. Name the magazine.
Zed
