1. What is the "Dunbar's number"? Ans. Dunbar's number is a theoretical cognitive limit to the number of people with whom one can maintain stable social relationships. These are relationships in which an individual knows who each person is, and how each person relates to every other person. Beyond this, proponents believe, the relationships would generally require more restricted rules, laws, and enforced norms to maintain a stable, cohesive group. No precise value has been proposed for Dunbar's number, but a commonly cited number is 150.
2. Who is the Prime Minister of Sri Lanka? Ans. Prime Minister Ratnasiri Wickremenayaka.
3. Who has been awarded the Dada Saheb Phalke Award for 2007? Ans. The Dada Saheb Phalke Award for 2007 has gone to Manna Dey
4. What does the Geographical Indications (G.I.) registration for a product indicate? Ans. A G.I. registration for a product denotes that it originates from a particular place of production that has a reputation for certain characteristics attributable to that place. It is distinguished from a trademark, which is used by an enterprise in relation to goods or services so as to distinguish them from others. Well-known examples of G.I. include Darjeeling tea, Kanjeevaram silk and Benaras silk. Recently the Geographical Indications (G.I.) Registry in Chennai for the famous Tirupati laddu, produced by the Tirumala Tirupati Devasthanams (TTD), has stirred up a controversy within intellectual property circles.
5. Who was the rallying figure of the “people power revolution” in the Philippines in 1986 and is remembered today as a national icon of democracy? Ans. Corazon Aquino
The people who got all the answers correct: 1. Parveen Arora 2. Khanjan B Mehta 3. Swati 4. heta 5. Chirag 6. Kumar jadhav
Here is another set of ‘commonly confused words’. As requested by some of you I am also giving you the usage of those words. Let me know if it serves the purpose.
Cession
The act of ceding, as by treaty esp. the transfer of territory by one country to another.
Sentence: The cession of J&K was demanded by Pakistan.
Cessation
A temporary or complete stopping; discontinuance; pause.
Sentence: The cessation of hostilities between the two nations was a prelude to peace.
Comprehensible
Capable of being comprehended or understood; intelligible.
Sentence: Her speech was scarcely comprehensible
Comprehensive
Of large scope; covering or involving much; inclusive
Sentence: He has a comprehensive collection of Amar Chitra Katha comics.
Council
An assembly of persons summoned or convened for consultation, deliberation, or advice; committee
Sentence: They hold their council meetings on Sunday.
Counsel
Advice; opinion or instruction given in directing the judgment or conduct of another.
Sentence: I will bear your counsel in mind.
Contemptible
Deserving of or held in contempt; despicable.
Sentence: He is a contemptible fellow who sells his conscience for money.
Contemptuous
Showing or expressing contempt or disdain; scornful.
Sentence: He replied in a very contemptuous manner.
Corporal
Of the human body; bodily; physical.
Sentence: Corporal punishment is strictly prohibited in this school
The topics for an RC have a wide variety and include such topics as Archaeology/Anthropology. The disadvantage in dealing with such topics is our lack of familiarity with them. It is with the objective of familiarising you with some of these topics that I am posting these here. This one is on Neanderthals from the Archaeology/Anthropology branch of study.
Please read the topic and take the time out to write down the summary for the same. The reason writing a summary is helpful is that you will develop the habit of reading and picking up the important points without having to go back to the passage repeatedly.
Please post the summary in the Comments section.
The first remains now known to be Neanderthal were discovered in Belgium in 1829, and further remains were discovered in Gibraltar in 1848. However, it was the 1856 discovery of a partial skull and an assortment of arm, leg and rib bones in the NeanderValley that led to the recognition of Neanderthals as a separate species by Hermann Schaffhausen. 'Tal' is the word for 'valley' in modern German, having replaced the 'Thal' of the slightly dated 19th Century dialect, hence the confusion between Neandertal and Neanderthal. In the light of Darwin's Origin of Species, published three years later in 1859, Neanderthals became the first bones to be recognised as a 'missing link' between humans and apes, of the type that Darwin predicted.
The Culture:
The culture of Neanderthals is technically known as Mousterian, after Le Moustier in France, where a Neanderthal skull was found. This refers largely to the design of stone scrapers, probably used for either scraping skins or simple woodwork. There is no evidence that Neanderthals ever developed the ability to sew, so it is unlikely that they wore clothing (despite the cold climate). It seems that Neanderthals made use of fire, but probably not for warmth. They do not seem to have constructed any structures, even tents. Mousterian technology includes stabbing spearheads and axes, but no throwing spears or arrowheads.
Animal remains are frequently associated with Neanderthal sites, indicating that they were meat-eaters. Interestingly, these remains are usually of animals in their prime, something usually associated with farming rather than hunting (where elderly or infirm animals would be easier to catch). Injuries found in Neanderthal skeletons are frequently similar to those found in rodeo clowns, which implies that Neanderthals often wrestled with large animals. This most likely indicates a close-quarters hunting method, although it is possible that livestock was also kept. Many of these injuries (for instance those suffered by the aged individual recovered at La Chapelle-aux-Saints in France) would have been debilitating, which indicates a communal structure that tended to the infirm.
Whistles made from the phalange bone of a reindeer leg - what would be a finger or toe bone in humans - are known from 90-100,000 years ago, but it is unclear whether these were used for music; an artefact that may or may not be a flute is known to have come from 20,000 years later, although many maintain it is a bone with bear tooth-holes in it. Neanderthals buried their dead, and one burial at Shanidar in Iraq was accompanied by grave goods in the form of plants. All of the plants are used in recent times for medicinal purposes, and it seems likely that the Neanderthals also used them in this way and buried them with their dead for the same reason. Grave goods are an archaeological marker of belief in an afterlife, so Neanderthals may well have had some form of religious belief.
Some Neanderthal burials appear to show incisions on the bones that would indicate butchery. This may be evidence of cannibalism, either by Neanderthals or sapiens. Whether this was an act of desperation or a religious ritual is not known, but it is generally accepted. However, it must be seen in the light of the other, more careful Neanderthal burials that would indicate a general respect for the dead.
Hypothesis:
The 'Multiregion Hypothesis' was first proposed in 1964, dominated throughout the 1980s, then fell out of favour during the 1990s. Mitochondrial DNA analyses of modern humans show that the most recent female ancestor common to all living humans lived less than 170,000 years ago - long after we diverged from Neanderthals 500,000 years ago. Later Y-chromosome analyses showed that our most recent male ancestor is around 100,000 years old. Although this was good evidence, it could also be explained by all part-Neanderthal lineages passing through an all-male generation, so that no Neanderthal mtDNA was passed on. Recovery in 1987 of mitochondrial DNA from a Neanderthal bone offered further confirmation of this theory.
The discovery in 1999 of a 24,000-year-old adolescent skeleton in Lapedo, Portugal (the Lapedo Child) with an apparent mixture of Neanderthal and sapiens characteristics has led to speculation that rather than going extinct, Neanderthals may have interbred with modern-type humans. More recently, a second alleged hybrid has been unearthed in Romania, and this idea has been backed up by more detailed genetic analyses. Haplotypes are sections of DNA that do not appear to be reshuffled during sexual reproduction. Although the majority of human haplotypes are consistent with 'shallow ancestry' - the idea that Homo sapiens evolved in Asia around 160,000 years ago - a small number seem to show deeper ancestry. A haplotype known as PDHA1 seems to have diverged around 1,800,000 years ago. It is difficult to explain how both varieties survived if humans were reduced to a small population (a bottleneck) much later than that; this gives support to the idea that it was introduced into the population by interbreeding with another population, such as Neanderthals. This re-introduction of genetic material is known as introgression.
Another example is the haplotype microcephalin, which diverged around 1,000,000 years ago but seems to have introgressed around 40,000 years ago. This ties in very neatly with the fossil dates for the appearance of Neanderthals and their simultaneous occupation of Europe with Homo sapiens. Both these examples are of genes that appear to offer an advantage, and have spread throughout the population by natural selection. This makes it impossible to tell whether they were introduced multiple times or just once, so they cannot be used to judge the frequency of Neanderthal/sapiens hybrids. The next step in research is to analyse 'junk' haplotypes, which cannot be selected for or against and are thus unaffected by natural selection. If these are found to be common, it would indicate frequent hybridisation events.
Finally, the RRM2P4 haplotype appears to have diverged 2,000,000 years ago. This pre-dates the separation of sapiens and Neanderthals, so it offers a hint that our ancestors may have bred with another sub-species, Homo erectus.
Any two groups that interbreed in the wild are defined as the same species, so Neanderthals are now recognised as a sub-species of humans, and are officially known as Homo sapiens neanderthalensis, as opposed to Homo sapiens sapiens, which covers everything from Cro-Magnon man to ourselves.
This extract is taken from the sub-section "The Standard Solution to the Paradoxes" of the article "Zeno’s Paradoxes"
In the 5th century B.C.E., Zeno of Elea offered arguments that led to conclusions contradicting what we all know from our physical experience–that arrows fly, that runners run, and that there are many different things in the world. The arguments were paradoxes for the ancient Greek philosophers. Because the arguments turn crucially on the notion that space and time are infinitely divisible, Zeno can be credited with being the first person in history to show that the concept of infinity is problematical.
As usual kindly put down the summary in the Comments Section.
The Standard Solution to the Paradoxes
A paradox is an argument that reaches a contradiction or other absurd conclusion by apparently legitimate steps from apparently reasonable assumptions, while the experts at the time can not agree on the way out of the paradox, that is, agree on its resolution. It is this latter point about disagreement among the experts that distinguishes a paradox from a mere puzzle in the ordinary sense of that term. Zeno’s paradoxes are now generally considered to be puzzles because of the wide agreement among today’s experts that there is at least one acceptable resolution of the paradoxes. This Standard Solution presupposes calculus, the rest of classical real analysis, and classical mechanics. It implies that motions, durations, distances and line segments are all linear continua composed of points, then employs these ideas to challenge various steps made by Zeno. A key background assumption of the Standard Solution is that this resolution is not simply employing some concepts that will undermine Zeno’s reasoning–Aristotle does that, too, at least for many of the paradoxes–but that it is employing concepts which not only do that but also are needed in the development of a coherent and fruitful system of mathematics and physical science.
What are continua? Intuitively, a continuum is a continuous entity; it is a whole thing that is smooth, having no gaps. Two abstract examples are the path of a runner’s center of mass and the time during this motion. Two concrete examples of continua are oceans and metal rods because treating them as continua is very useful for many calculations in physics even though we know the objects are lumpy with atoms, and thus discontinuous at the microscopic level. The ocean has the continuous property of degree of salinity, and the rod has the continuous property of temperature, so these properties are assigned real numbers as values rather than merely fractions or integers.
The distinction between “a” continuum and “the” continuum is that “the” continuum is the paradigm of “a” continuum. The continuum is the mathematical line, which has the same structure as the real numbers in their natural order. Real numbers are assigned one-to-one to its points; there are not enough rational numbers for this assignment. For Zeno’s paradoxes, the most important features of any continuum are that (a) it is undivided yet infinitely divisible, (b) it is composed of points, (c) the measure (such as length) of a continuum is not a matter of adding up the measures of its points nor adding up the number of its points, (d) any connected part of a continuum is also a continuum, (e) it is so dense that no point has any point next to it since the distance between distinct points is always positive and finite, and (f) the total distance traveled when crossing a convergent series of point places is defined by an infinite sum.
Knowing a continuous object is infinitely divisible does not tell you how many elements or points or ultimate parts it has, other than that there are an infinite number. The Standard Solution says there are in fact an aleph-one number of elements between any two elements in a continuum.
Physical space is not a linear continuum because it is a three-dimensional continuum. But it has one-dimensional subspaces such as paths of runners and orbits of planets; and these are linear continua if we use the line created by only one point on the runner and only one point on the planet. Regarding time, each (point) instant is assigned a real number as its time, and the duration of an instant is zero. Well-defined events that are not instantaneous are assigned an interval of real numbers rather than a single real number. For example, the time taken by Achilles to catch the tortoise is an interval, a linear continuum of instants, according to the Standard Solution (but not according to Zeno or Aristotle).
1. Who is a "whipping boy"? A boy who was to be whipped in place of a prince who was to be punished.
2. This ancient city in the land of Shinar, in which the construction of a tower intended to reach heaven was begun, has given a word to us. What is that word? Babel. In the Bible, a city (now thought to be Babylon) in Shinar where God confounded a presumptuous attempt to build a tower into heaven by confusing the language of its builders into many mutually incomprehensible languages.
3. What is a "cat's paw"? Someone used as a tool by another
4. What are the "locust years"? A period of economic hardship. This word was coined by Winston Churchill (on the basis of the Bible verse Joel 2:25) to describe the years 1931–35 in Britain.
5. Who are the "hoi polloi"? The common people. Hoi polloi is a borrowing of the Greek phrase hoi polloi, consisting of hoi, meaning "the" and polloi, the plural of polus, "many." Hoi polloi is sometimes incorrectly used to mean "the elite," possibly because it is reminiscent of high and mighty or because it sounds like hoity-toity.
Three of you got all the answers correct. The list: 1. Ankita 2. Swati Sinha 3. Sameer
Kudos to you folks. Hoping to get a better response for the next quiz.
I intend to run through all the European languages that have contributed to English and cherry pick some interesting words. I will start off with Latin.
As you know Latin is a source language for many words in English. Some of these words have mutated when they have entered English but a lot of words are used in English the way they were in original Latin. A look at a few of them,
ab origine
From the very beginning; from the source or origin.
This is the source word for aboriginal/aborigine.
caveat emptor
Let the buyer beware
It is the principle that the seller of a product cannot be held responsible for its quality unless it is guaranteed in a warranty.
in camera:
In secret; privately
lapsus linguae
A slip of the tongue
fac simile
an exact copy, as of a book, painting, or manuscript. It means “make the like”
Been a while since I Iast mailed you guys, lazing around during Diwali and all that. Well! I am back and since the general feedback is that people want a lot more of GK, I am starting off with a post on Current Affairs.
I will be putting up the answers tomorrow evening.
Happy Quizzing!
1. Last week the Trinamool Congress accused a journalist and two cameramen of trying to kill railway minister Mamata Banerjee. Which TV channel did they belong to? Ans. The news channel 24Ghanta
2. Who is India's Chief Information Commissioner? Ans. Wajahat Habibullah
3. This National park is spread over an area of 820.42 sq. km. in three Districts- Dehradun, Haridwar & Pauri Garhwal of Uttarakhand. It was created in 1983 by amalgamation of three existing sanctuaries. Name the sanctuary. Ans. Rajaji National Park - It was created by amalgamating Rajaji sanctuary (estd. 1948) Motichur sanctuary (estd. 1964) and Chilla sanctuary (estd. 1977). It is named after C. Rajgopalachari - The first and last Governor General of independent India. He was popularly known as "Rajaji".
4. There have been many reports in the past few days/weeks of disturbances along the border in Arunachal Pradesh. Simple question, who is the Chief Minister of the state? Ans. Dorjee Khandu
5. Why is Steward David Nozette in the news? Ans. He was a senior American space scientist arrested by the FBI in the US for allegedly spying for Israel. Meanwhile ISRO has said Nozette visited Bangalore and interacted with its scientists during work for the Chandrayan mission. He however had no access to critical ISRO establishments during the visits and there was no concern about loss of data.
Yiddish is the language of Jews of eastern and central Europe and their descendants. It is conventionally written in the Hebrew alphabet. I know it is not relevant but still; among my favourite words is the word Chutzpah which has a Yiddish origin. For some reason, I feel that it depicts what it means in a wonderful manner.
Here are a few words from Yiddish.
Chutzpah (khoot-spuh)
Audacity; nerve
Etymology: Khutspa = to be insolent
Glitch
A defect or malfunction in a machine or plan.
Etymology: Glitsh = Slip, skate or nosedive; slippery area.
Klutz
Clumsy or awkward person
Etymology: Klots = A block of wood
Schmooze
Chat, make small talk, converse about nothing in particular.
1. Against whom has a murder case been registered for the killing of Baloch nationalist leader Nawab Akbar Bugti?Ans. Former Pakistan President Pervez Musharraf, among others.
2. Who has taken charge as the first lady-President of the apex chamber of commerce, ASSOCHAM? Ans. Swati Piramal. She is the Director of Piramal Healthcare.(She replaces JSW Steel's Sajjan Jindal)
3. Aircraft lessor GE Commercial Aviation Services (Gecas), an arm of General Electric Co. (GE), has asked India’s aviation regulator to de-register three Embraer jets leased to which Chennai based Airlines? Ans. Paramount Airways Pvt. Ltd
The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam is one of the best known and most often quoted pieces of English writing. [Most of them are sceptical and hedonistic (devoted to pursuit of pleasure and self-gratification) in nature] While it has nothing to do with your CAT/CET preparation, I still thought a few quatrains from The Rubaiyat could not possibly hurt. So here goes,
The Moving Finger writes; and, having writ, Moves on: nor all your Piety nor Wit Shall lure it back to cancel half a Line, Nor all your Tears wash out a Word of it
-x-
There was the Door to which I found no Key; There was the Veil through which I might not see: Some little talk awhile of ME and Thee There was - and then no more of THEE and ME.
-x-
Here with a Loaf of Bread beneath the Bough, A Flask of Wine, a Book of Verse - and Thou Beside me singing in the Wilderness- And Wilderness is Paradise enow.
-x-
Yet Ah, that Spring should vanish with the Rose! That Youth's sweet-scented manuscript should close! The Nightingale that in the branches sang, Ah whence, and whither flown again, who knows!
This is just a set of words that I felt you might find interesting. No particular theme as such. Unless of course you take a look at the last three words and feel they mean something when they actually mean something else.
Hypnopompic:
Pertaining to the semiconscious state prior to complete wakefulness.
Parapraxis:
A slip of the tongue (or pen) that reveals the unconscious mind.
Obambulate:
To walk about.
Vomitorium:
A passageway to the rows of seats in a theatre.
Etymology: Vomitoria (the plural form) in ancient amphitheaters helped the audience to reach their seats quickly and then leave just as quickly. At the end of the performance, of course. The erroneous meaning "place where ancient Romans (allegedly) deliberately vomited during feasts" is attested from 1923.
