CELLS

The cell is the basic structural and functional unit of all known living organisms. It is the smallest unit that is classified as a living thing and is often called the building block of life. A typical cell consists of protoplasm, i.e., nucleus and cytoplasm. Organisms can be classified as unicellular which consist of a single cell which include most bacteria or multicellular which include plants and animals. The word cell comes from the Latin “cella”, meaning "small room". Cells emerged on planet Earth at least 4.0–4.3 billion years ago. 

1. Who discovered cell?

Ans: Robert Hooke (1665).

2. The largest known cells are unfertilized ostrich egg cells which is 3.3 pound in size. The smallest known cell is of PPLO which is 0.1 – 0.3µm in size.

3. Name the branch of Biology which deals with the study of cell.

Ans: Cytology.

4. The Golgi complex is a cytoplasmic organelle which is found in Eukaryote cells as in animals, plants and fungi. The Golgi complex was discovered by Camillo Golgi in 1898.

5. Who developed the cell theory for the first time?

Ans: Matthias Jakob Schleiden and Theodor Schwann (1839).

6. Mitochondria are the power house of the cell because in it stepwise oxidation of fuel occurs, which results in release of chemical energy. This energy is stored in the form of ATP.

7. Who discovered nucleic acids?

DNA diagram

Ans: Friedrich Miescher.

8. Full Form of DNA is Deoxyribo Nucleic Acid and the full form of RNA is Ribo Nucleic Acid.

9. Which is the kitchen of the cell?

Ans:  Chloroplast.

10. DNA was discovered by James D Watson and Francis Crick in 1953. They won the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1962.

11. Name two types of subdivisions of cell.

Ans: Prokaryotic Cells and Eukaryotic Cells.

12. There are two kinds of Prokaryotes, namely bacteria and archaea. Plants, animals, fungi, slime moulds, protozoa and algae are all Eukaryotic.

13. Which is the smallest human cell?

Ans: Red Blood Cell.

14. The largest human cell is the female ovum. The longest cell is neuron.

Robert Brown

15. Who discovered nucleus?

Ans: Robert Brown.

16. Nucleus contains nucleoplasm, nucleolus and chromatin material. Chromatin is the controlling centre of cell as it contains chromosomes.

17. Name three type of Plastids.

Ans: Chloroplasts, leucoplasts and chromoplasts.

18. The red color of tomatoes is due to the presence of lycopene pigment, i.e., chromophore. The color of the carrot is due to carotene.

Lynn Margulis

19. Who published Symbiosis in Cell Evolution in 1981?

Ans: Lynn Margulis.

20. According to the Endosymbiotic theory mitochondria and plastids and possibly other organelles represent formerly free living bacteria that were taken inside another cell as an endosymbiont.

Solar System

Nine Planets and the Sun

Solar System means the system of the Sun. All bodies under gravitational influence of our local star, the Sun, together with the sun formed the Solar System. The largest bodies are called planets. The cool bodies which are smaller and revolve around the planets in its orbit are called natural satellite or moons. Smaller bodies which orbit the Sun are called asteroids if they are rocky or metallic, comets if they are mostly ice and dust and meteoroids if they are very small. It formed 4.6 billion years ago from the gravitational collapse of a giant molecular cloud.

1. Which are the terrestrial planets?

Ganymede, the largest
natural satellite of
solar system is
named after the
mythological
 Ganymede,
cupbearer of the
Greek gods and
 Zeus's lover. 

Ans: Mercury, Venus, Earth and Mars.

2. Mars is the fourth planet from the Sun and the second smallest planet in the Solar System. Mars was name after Roman God of war. It is also known as the “Red Planet”. Mars is the only planet to have same features as of Earth.

3. Name two dwarf planets other than Pluto.

Ans: Eris and Haumea.

4. Pluto is the second most massive known dwarf planet in the Solar System. Pluto was considered as the Ninth planet from the Sun but was re-categorized.

5. Which is the largest known natural satellite of the solar system?

Ans:  Ganymede (Jupiter).

6. Jupiter is the largest planet of the solar system. Jupiter has 67 natural satellites. The four largest satellites Ganymede, Callisto, Io, and Europa are known as the "Galilean moons".

7. Who was the first astronomer to develop mathematically predictive heliocebtric system?

Ans: Nicolaus Copernicus of Kingdom of Poland (1473-1543).

8. Telescope was first invented in the Netherland at the beginning of the 17^th centuary using glass lenses and then by Galileo. The invention of the telescope led to the discovery of further planets and moons.

9. What is the name of the largest known asteroids?

Ans: Ceres.

10. The unmanned Dawn spacecraft which was launched on 27 September 2007 by NASA, is expected to be the first to explore Ceres after its scheduled arrival there in 2015.

William Herschel

11. Who discovered Uranus?

Ans: William Herschel in 1781.

12. Triton is the largest known moon of the planet Neptune. It was discovered on October 10, 1846 by 
English astronomer William Lassell.

Neptune

13. Which planet was named after the Roman god of the sea?

Ans: Neptune.

14. Mercury was named after the messenger of the Gods. Venus was named after the Roman god of Love. Earth is the only planet that was not named after a God. Earth’s name was based on Germanic and old English word for “ground”. Mars was named after Roman god of war. Jupiter was named after King of Gods. Saturn was named after the god of agriculture and harvest. Uranus was named after the Roman god who was father of Jupiter. Neptune was named after the Roman god of sea.

Milky Way

15. What is the name of the spiral arm of the Milky Way in which our Solar System resides?

Ans: Orion-Cygnus Arm.

16. The nearest galactic neighborhood of the Solar System is known as the Local Interstellar Cloud or Local Fluff, an area of denser cloud in an otherwise sparse region known as the Local Bubble.

The Hubble Space Telescope

The Hubble Space Telescope is a large telescope in space. It was launched by NASA with contribution from ESA in 1990. Hubble is the length of a large school bus. It weighs as much as two adult elephants. Hubble travels around Earth at about 5 miles per second. Hubble faces toward space. It takes pictures of planets, stars and galaxies. Hubble has seen the birth and death of stars. It has seen galaxies that are billions of light years away. Hubble has also seen comet pieces crash into the atmosphere above Jupiter.

Hubble Space Telescope in orbit

1. Name the American astronomer after whom Hubble Space Telescope was named.

Ans: Edwin Powell Hubble.

2. In 1923, German scientist Hermann Oberth first suggested that a telescope could be launched into orbit to help overcome the distortions caused by the atmosphere. As rocket launchings became more commonplace, the idea became feasible, and in 1969, approval was given for the launch of a Large Space Telescope. But its development took longer than preparing for a trip to the moon.

3. Who operates the HST?

Ans: Space Telescope Science Institute.

4. Hubble transmits about 120 gigabytes of science data every week. That would be roughly 3,600 feet of books on a shelf. The collection of pictures and data is stored on magneto-optical disks.

STS 31 Launch

5. Which space shuttle launched HST into the earth orbit in 1990?

Ans: Space Shuttle Discovery (STS-31). 

6. The HST is 43.5 ft in length which weight 11,110 kg and has maximum diameter of 14 ft. Hubble has been serviced five times. Astronauts had to replace batteries and directional gyroscopes, among other fix-it projects. Its final servicing mission took place in 2009.

7. Name the picture that shows the farthest galaxies ever seen in HST?

Ans: Hubble Ultra Deep Field.

The Pillars of Creation within the Eagle Nebula

8. Space Shuttle Atlantis (STS-125) carried out the fifth and last (till now) servicing mission to HST in 11 May, 2009. Space Shuttle Atlantis carried two new instruments to the Hubble Space Telescope, the Cosmic Origins Spectrograph and the Wide Field Camera 3. The mission also replaced a Fine Guidance Sensor, six gyroscopes, and two battery unit modules to allow the telescope to continue to function at least through 2014.

9. Name the nebula from which an image was released in 20^th anniversary HST in space?

Ans: Carina Nebula (~6500-10000 light years).

Carina Nebula

10. Hubble pictures start out as shades of black and white. Colors are then added to the pictures. Colors can help show how an object might look to the human eye. Colors can also be used to point out an important detail in the picture. Or they can help to show details that the human eye wouldn't see.

11. In our solar system only two planets are not observed by Hubble. Name them.

Ans: Earth and Mercury.

12. In 2001, NASA polled internet users to find out what they would most like Hubble to observe; they overwhelmingly selected the Horsehead Nebula.

The Sun from Hubble

13. Name the energy source of Hubble.

Ans: The Sun.

14. Hubble completes one orbit around the Earth (crossing over the same longitude line) every 96 minutes. Its speed is approximately 8 km per second (5 miles per second). On August 11, 2008 the Hubble Space Telescope completed its 100,000th orbit.

JWST primary mirror as compared to HST's

15. Name the astronomers who are responsible for photographs of "Pillars of Creation" by using HST.

Ans: Jeff Hester and Paul Scowen.

16. HST is expected to continue to function until 2014. NASA plans to replace it with the James Webb Telescope, scheduled to launch in 2018.

Video Game Console

We all have played games on video games. The most famous video game console of current generation is PlayStation and Xbox. A video game control is a customized computer system that produces a video display signal which can be used with a display device to display a video game. The term "video game console" is used to distinguish a machine designed for people to buy and use primarily for playing video games on a TV in contrast to arcade machines, handheld game consoles, or home computers.

1. What was the name of first home video game console?

Ans: Magnavox Odyssey (1972).

2. Ralph H. Baer is known as “The Father of Video Games”. He was a German born American video game pioneer, inventor and engineer. He was awarded the National Medal of Technology for inventing the home console for video games and spawning the video game industry.

3. Name the first video game console to use microprocessor.

Ans: Fairchild Channel F (1976).

4. The Atari 2600 became the most popular game console of the second generation. The Atari 2600 was the dominant console for much of the second generation, with other consoles such as Intellivision, the Odyssey 2, and ColecoVision also enjoying market share.

5. When was the video game crash occurred in America?

Ans: 1983 to 1985.

6. The Nintendo Entertainment System gave new life to US video game industry following the video game crash of 1983. Famicom(NES) was most popular video game console of its generation.

7. Which famous game was developed by Nintendo for NES?

Ans: Super Mario Bros.

8. The Sega Genesis or Mega Drive was the first fourth generation video game console to achieve notable market share in continental Europe and North America. The console competed against a wide range of platforms, including both dedicated gaming consoles and home computer systems.

9. Which was the first fifth generation console to be based on Apple Macintosh?

Ans: Apple Bandai Pippin.

10. PlayStation from Sony was released on December 3, 1994 in Japan, in North America on September 9, 1995, in Europe on September 29, 1995 and in Australia on November 15, 1995 was the first video game console to ship 100 million units, 9 years and 6 months after its initial launch.

11. When was Microsoft’s first video game console, Xbox was introduced?

Ans: November 15, 2001 in America.

12. PlayStation 2 is the bestselling home console and second bestselling video game console in history with over 150 million units sold.

13. In which country video game console are banned since 2000?

Ans: China.

14. Wii was seventh generation console released by Nintendo. Unlike the other systems of the seventh generation, the Wii does not support an internal hard drive, but instead uses 512 MB of internal Flash memory and includes support for removable SD card storage.

15. Which multinational video game developers released first CD based gaming system?

Ans: Sega Corporation (1991).

16. The PlayStation 3 system uses even higher-capacity Blu-ray optical discs for games and movies while the Xbox 360 formerly used HD DVDs in the form of an external USB player add on for movies, before it was discontinued.

17. What is the name of Sony’s online game distribution?

Ans: PlayStation Network (PSN).

18. Miiverse is a communication system or social network created by Nintendo Network Business & Development and Hatena. It allows players to interact and share their experience through their own Miis. The service is available through Nintendo Network for the Wii U, and is planned to be released for the Nintendo 3DS.

Supercomputers

Supercomputer at NASA 

Supercomputers, introduced in the 1960s, are computers with very high speeds of processing capacity and used for a range of calculation-intensive such as weather forecasting, climate research, computing the structures and properties of chemical compounds and physical simulations. The term "Super Computing" was first used in the New York World in 1929 to refer to large custom-built tabulators that IBM had made for Columbia University. As of November 2012, the Cray Titan supercomputer is the fastest in the world.

1. Who was father of supercomputer?

Ans: Seymour Roger Cray.

2. Name the Supercomputer which is generally considered as first Supercomputer. In which year it was released?

Ans: CDC 6600. It was released in 1964.

3. Name one Supercomputer Operating System.

Ans: Linux.

4. What was Intel i860?

Ans: The Intel i860 was a RISC microprocessor from Intel, first released in 1989.

5. The speed of a Supercomputer is generally measured in ………………

Ans: FLOPS ((FLoating Point Operations Per Second).

6. Name the Chinese supercomputer which was developed by Chinese National University of Defense Technology (NUDT).

Intel i860

Ans: Tianhe-I.

7. What is the memory space of TITAN Supercomputer?

Ans: 710 TB (598 TB CPU and 112 TB GPU).

8. Name one petaflop supercomputer other than Tianhe-I.

Ans: Nebula.

9. On February 10, 1996, supercomputer Deep Blue became the first machine to win a chess game against a reigning world champion under regular time controls. Who was the famous chess player?

Garry Kasparov vs Deep Blue

Ans: Garry Kasparov.

10. Who manufactured K- Computer? Which country it belongs to?

Blue Gene/L

Ans: Fujitsu. Japan.

11. Name the designer of Cray X-MP.

Ans: Steve Chen.

12. Name any two Indian supercomputers.

Ans: SAGA-220 and Virgo.

13. Computational Research Laboratories built a Indian supercomputer with technical assistance and whose hardware was provided by Hewlett-Packard. Name the Supercomputer.

Ans: EKA

PARAM

14. What was the name of the first supercomputer of India?

Ans: PARAM 8000.

15. What was name of the supercomputer that was originally composed of 1,100 Apple Power Mac G5 computers and was assembled by Virginia Tech's Advanced Research Computing facility?

Ans: System X (pronounced "System Ten").