Finally, another week has passed! Due to my busy schedule recently, I’ve not been able to blog as frequently as I wished to. Now, I’m working in the library again, with endless piles of homework waiting to be marked. The mundane marking has taken a toll on my half-asleep brain, so I’ve decided to take a break by surfing the net.

Anyway, I’ve found some interesting trivia when I was surfing the American Scientist Online site, and thought I would just post some of them here. Well, have fun figuring them out!  

Q1: In industrialized countries, what proportion of adults are affected by food allergies?

• A. 1 in 2,000
• B. 1 in 640
• C. 1 in 50

Q2: How much weight can a single gecko’s sticky toes support?

• A. Two apples
• B. Two bowling balls
• C. Two people

Q3: The average yawn lasts

• A. 4 seconds
• B. 6 seconds
• C. 7 seconds

Q4: Which of these has been levitated sucessfully using strong magnetic fields?

• A. a golf ball
• B. a frog
• C. a pizza

Q5: Natives of the Tibetan plateau are, in general, well able to cope with the thin air of their high-altitude homeland because:

• A. Their blood contains an especially high concentration of hemoglobin.
• B. They are able to pass air through their lungs at an especially rapid rate.
• C. They have notably low metabolisms, which require considerably less oxygen to support.

Q6: The precursor to HIV-1 (the virus responsible for the vast majority of AIDS cases) is found in which of these animals?

• A. chimpanzees
• B. African green monkeys
• C. baboons

Yeah, just 6 questions. Scroll below to see if you’ve got them right!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Ans 1: C. Food allergy affects 1 in 50 adults and 1 in 20 young children, and the numbers are rising: The incidence of peanut allergy doubled between 1997 and 2002. 

Ans 2: C. Theoretically, the 6.5 million hairlike stalks on a tokay gecko could generate 1,300 newtons of shear force.

Ans 3: B. Yawns also come in bouts, at intervals of about 68 seconds, on average. 

Ans 4: B. Andre Geim, a physicist at the University of Manchester, and his collaborators have levitated a live frog using a powerful superconducting magnet. With a sufficiently intense magnetic field, any diamagnetic material can be levitated. 

Ans 5: B. Tibetans can maintain very high respiratory rates while at rest. Andean natives, in contrast, respirate normally but show very high hemoglobin concentrations—two strikingly different human adaptations to life at very high altitudes.

Ans 6: A. The closest relative of HIV-1 is the simian immunodeficiency virus SIVcpz, which is carried by chimpanzees. 

 

Have a good weekend!!