ACF Regionals 2007
Packet by Chicago B (Bruce Arthur, Selene Koo, Jared Sagoff, Seth Samelson) and Harvard C (Ruvani Fonseka, Daniel Okobi, Huy Nguyen, Kyle Bean, Jeff Nanney)
1. One of this man's appointees was demoted to serve under this man's assistant Charles Dan after the successful capture of Belle Boyd. This man was appointed to handle California land-title claims by Jeremiah Black, whom he would later succeed as Attorney General. In his most famous position, this man fought with the U.S. Sanitary Commission and delivered a stern rebuke following a surrender at Bennett Place. The appointment of Simon Cameron as Minister to Russia created an opening that led to his taking the vacated position, one that he refused to relinquish despite attempts to replace him by Lorenzo Thomas and U.S. Grant, who as President would appoint him to serve on the Supreme Court. FTP identify this Secretary of War who claimed that his dismissal by Johnson violated the Tenure of Office Act.
ANSWER: Edwin McMasters Stanton
2. Carbonic anhydrase mediates its theta activity in hippocampal CA1 cells. One unusual site of this molecule's action is on adrenal chromaffin cells, where it may stimulate adrenaline release. Bicuculline and baclofen specifically act on two classes of its receptors. Binding of this molecule to its B receptors results in the opening of potassium channels; a similar effect results from activation of a chloride ion channel that can bind it or benzodiazepines at a different site, causing the cell's resting potential to become more negative. Synthesized from the decarboxylation of glutamate in the central nervous system, FTP identify this inhibitory neurotransmitter.
ANSWER: gamma-aminobutyric acid or gamma-aminobutyrate or 4-aminobutyrate
3. Some later leaders of this group included Jacob of Arkel and Rudolf Schoppe. They emerged victorious at the Battle of Sirguna and shortly afterwards absorbed the Dobriners. This occurred after they were called upon by Conrad of Masovia and granted authority by the Golden Bull of Rimini. This group, which also absorbed a band known as the Swordbrothers, had earlier been badly defeated at the Battle of Lake Peipus. They were later forced to sign the first Peace of Thorn after their crippling defeat at Grunewald in a clash better known as the Battle of Tannenberg. FTP, name this medieval order with a name betraying its Germanic ancestry.
ANSWER: Teutonic Knights/Order
4. A fraudulent edition of this work, the so-called “Reading Edition,” was published in 1847 by T.J. Wise. In the sixth poem, the speaker tells the subject, “Go from me,” and the first poem in this series refers to an “antique tongue” and the “sweet years” that Theocritus had sung. The title of the series may have been inspired by its author’s early poem “Catarina to Camöens.” In the penultimate poem in this series, the speaker lists “freely, as men strive for Right” and “to the depth and breadth and height my soul can reach,” in answer to her question, “How do I love thee? Let me count the ways.” FTP, identify this series of poems originally addressed to Robert Browning and written by Elizabeth Barrett Browning.
ANSWER: Sonnets from the Portuguese
5. King Mvemba a Nzinga of the Kingdom of Kongo credited his 1509 victory over his rebellious brother Mpanzu a Kitima to the intercession of this figure, and in gratitude declared a national holiday on July 25. Together with his brother, he is described as being a "son of thunder" by Mark 3:17, and his question about the signs of the end times prompts Jesus' discussion of eschatology in Mark 13. According to tradition, he ordained as first bishop of Braga a man whose namesake spring is believed to cure sterility, St. Peter of Rates, while another tradition states that he appeared at the Battle of Clavijo on horseback, leading to the nickname Matamoros, Slayer of Moors. For ten points, name this patron saint of Spain, an apostle whose symbol is the scallop shell, and whose shrine is at Compostela.
ANSWER: St.James the Greater (accept James the Moor-Slayer before it is mentioned; prompt on James or on Santiago)
6. In Japanese myth, Ninigi’s wife Ko-no-Hana is their princess. In Chinese myth, Han Xian Zi once read a prophetic poem on some of these. In Aztec myth they were associated with the twin deities Xochipilli and Xochiquetzal, and in Welsh myth Gwydion and Math used some of these as the raw material for creating Blodeuedd. Ovid tells of an Oceanid named Clytië who turned into one of these so she could follow Helios each day, and in Indian myth, Kama’s five arrows of desire were tipped with them. People who produced some of these upon dying include a youth beloved by Apollo and Zephyrus, and a youth beloved by Echo and himself. FTP, name this type of plant life associated with Hyacinthus and Narcissus.
ANSWER: flowers or blossoms
7. Its cause was advanced when a vote was taken the day after several of its members marched in Edward Eslick's funeral procession. It was supported by such notables as Evelyn McLean and General Glassford, who provided food and money, and a second group of this name was met by Louis Howe one year after the first group of this name made its appearance. Led by Walter Waters, this group was incited by word of a Congressional vote on a bill proposed by Wright Patman, which eventually passed in 1936 over Roosevelt's veto, and they camped out on Anacostia Flats until driven out with artillery and tear gas by Douglas MacArthur. For ten points, name this group of impoverished veterans who proved problematic for President Hoover when they traveled to Washington to demand payment of their compensation certificates.
ANSWER: Bonus Army or Bonus Expeditionary Force
8. The Curtin-Hammett principle describes conditions under which this quantity becomes relevant for a multiple-pathway situation. For a given system, this quantity may be calculated from the slope of an F-plot or more straightforwardly from a Scatchard plot. It is proportional to the negative exponential of the ratio of the Gibbs free energy divided by the absolute temperature, and its standard definition was given using a reaction between acetic acid and ethyl alcohol by Waage and Guldberg. FTP, identify this thermodynamic quantity whose expression is given by the law of mass action as the ratio of the activity or concentration of products to that of reactants, a certain constant denoted K.
ANSWER: equilibrium constant or K eq before mentioned
9. He wrote his own libretti for his first operas, Irmelin and The Magic Fountain, and his other early works include the tone poems Over the Hills and Far Away and Hiawatha. One of his works contains a melody taken from the folk song "In Osa Valley" and another theme in which the title creature is evoked by an oboe and divided strings. Another work features an orchestral "Walk to the Paradise Garden" and is based on a Gottfried Keller work. His friend Thomas Beecham premiered this composer’s Nietzschean A Mass of Life. In addition to writing On Hearing the First Cuckoo in Spring, he also wrote a set of variations on the folk song “Brigg Fair” and the Florida Suite. For 10 points, identify this English composer who also wrote the opera A Village Romeo and Juliet.
ANSWER: Frederick Delius
10. One character in this novel, Hippolite, is a consumptive who writes an “Essential Statement” on life and mortality. At one point, the main character falls ill after breaking a priceless vase at a dinner party, and earlier he befriends Ganya, a secretary who wishes to marry Aglaya, the daughter of a general. The main character’s wishes to marry are foiled by his friend Rogozhin, who ends up murdering Natasya. This title character first comes to the Epanchin house after leaving a sanatorium in Switzerland, where he was being treated for epilepsy, and it is the Epanchins who give him the nickname that titles the book. For ten points, identify this novel by Fyodor Dostoyevsky, which centers on Prince Myshkin.
ANSWER: The Idiot
11. An important influence on this group was the functional analysis propounded by Karl Bühler. One man associated with it wrote a book called Aesthetic Function, Norm, and Value published in 1979 and another wrote Theory of Literature after emigrating to the US. In addition to Jan Mukarovsky and René Wellek, this group, which introduced the idea of “foregrounding,” also included Vilem Mathesius and Nikolai Trubetzkoy, as well as a man who propounded distinctive feature analysis. Aimed at furthering the development of Saussure-style structuralism, FTP, name this group which also included Roman Jakobson, a school of linguists centered in a Czechoslovakian city.
ANSWER: Prague school or Prague Linguistic Circle
12. This philosopher’s doctoral thesis, Aristotle’s Conception of Place, was referred to in a footnote of Heidegger’s Being and Time to support the claim that his theories were never far from the Greeks. Some of his more idiosyncratic works include one on the “Philosophy of Poetry” subtitled the “genius of Lucretius” and an “essay on the meaning of the comic” entitled Laughter. He examined aphasia in Matter and Memory, and Whitehead acknowledged him as an influence on his process metaphysics. Among his major tomes is Time and Free Will, but he remains most associated with an idea put forth in Creative Evolution. FTP, name this 20th century French philosopher who introduced the concept of élan vital.
ANSWER: Henri-Louis Bergson
13. Highly anoxic, this body of water's lower levels are almost completely lifeless due to the high concentration of hydrogen sulfide, and its water circulates through the Rim Current. The Karkinit Bay sits on its north, and islands in this body of water include Berezan and Fidonisi, while cities on its shores include Sochi and Constanta. Sitting on the Skifsky Platform, it is probably a residual basin of the Tethys Sea, while the two straits that connect it to other bodies of water are the Kerch Strait and the Bosporus, which connects it to the Sea of Marmara. Known to the ancient Greeks as "Axenos," or "Inhospitable," for ten points, idenitfy this body of water that borders, among others, Ukraine and Russia, and contains the Crimean Peninsula.
Answer: Black Sea
14. The hymn “Blessed Be the Tie That Binds” is sung once in each act of this play, the first time under the direction of Simon Stimson. The first act opens just before dawn on May 7, 1901, and the third act opens in the summer of 1913 in a graveyard where the dead watch a burial. Its setting rates a 6.032 by MacPherson's gauge, and lies on the old Pleistocene granite of the Appalachian range, a fact that the locals are proud of. People in the audience inquire about culture and awareness of social inequality in the title locale at the prompting of the Stage Manager. FTP, name this work that closes with George Gibb prostrate before the grave of Emily Webb, a Thornton Wilder play whose title setting is Grover's Corners.
ANSWER: Our Town
15. The fact that it does not affect the ground state can be derived heuristically from symmetry considerations or explicitly from the Wigner-Eckart theorem. In semiconductor heterostructures, a quantum-confined version of this effect occurs, which results from the enhancement of this effect by excitons. For higher quantum numbers, the energy levels induced by this effect are degenerate, and leading to the commonly observed quadratic form, whose components are proportional to the polarizability tensor. Particularly useful for analyzing molecular rotational spectra, for ten points, identify this effect from atomic physics, which consists of the splitting and shift of a spectral line into several components in the presence of an electric field.
ANSWER: Stark effect
16. An inscription above the First Cataract describes a seven-year famine during this man's reign and a dream in which he was promised an end to the famine in return for rebuilding the temple of Khnum at Elephantine. This subject of the oldest life-sized statue ever found was briefly succeeded by Sekhemkhet. His name was discovered on the burial seal at the tomb of his predecessor, Khasekhemwy, who built a mysterious rectangular wall near one of this man's constructions found on the Saqqara plateau set atop a maze-like necropolis. FTP, name this founder of the third dynasty whose architect Imhotep built him a stepped structure recognized as the world’s first pyramid.
ANSWER: Djoseror Zoser
17. In this man's most recent work, periodic “choruses” are interspersed between stories concerning a rancher who wants his four sons to be priests, and the rebellious son of the president. A Knight from Don Quixote and the glass found in Olmec tombs serve as repeated metaphors of the title concept in his The Buried Mirror. The myths of his country serve as material for historical analysis in the novel A Change of Skin, and his chief work of literary criticism is The New Hispano-American Novel. Philip II’s construction of the Escorial is one of the settings in his Terra Nostra, while an avatar of the Aztec God of war is the narrator of Where the Air is Clear. For ten points, identify this Mexican novelist ofThe Old Gringo and The Death of Artemio Cruz.
ANSWER: Carlos Fuentes
18. This group'smain publication was later supplemented by an addition called Mecano, and its work prompted the formation of the COBRA group.Its building designs include the Café de Unie and a factory in Permerund, anda building containing free-floating walls, painted steel beams, and interior sliding partitions, the Schroder House. Including such people as Gerrit Rietveld and J. J. Oud, and growing out of Neo-Plasticism, FTP, identify this art movement exemplified by such works as Broadway Boogie-Woogie, which was founded Theo van Doesburg and whose main exponent was Piet Mondrian.
ANSWER: De Stijl (or The Style)
19. A book giving some “new perspectives” on it was published in 1983 by Jerry and Edmund Leach, and a variant of this system was discussed by Reo Fortune. One author described it as a “consecutive narrative” beginning with canoe-building and continuing through the complicated rituals involving the kitoum. Because those who perform it do not use the term “gimwali” to describe it, Marcel Mauss insisted that it is not an example of commodity exchange. Occurring in several islands in the Massim archipelago of Papua New Guinea, shell necklaces and armbands are the usual mediums of exchange. Described in Malinowski’s Argonauts of the Western Pacific, FTP, identify this gift exchange system or ring.
ANSWER: kulu exchange or ring
20. The prokaryotic analog of their monomers, FtsZ (pronounced “fits-zee”), recruits proteins for formation of the Z-ring at the site of the new cell wall in dividing cells. They nucleate at a ring complex with the aid of gamma-ring proteins, and their stability is modified by proteins such as katanin, colchicine, and taxol. Proteins that may associate with them include stathmins and CLASPs, which are associated with the kinetochore during mitosis. Consisting of a polymer of 13 protofilaments and exhibiting dynamic instability, FTP identify these cellular structural elements that nucleate at the centrosome, found in doublets in cilia and made up of alpha/beta dimers of tubulin.
ANSWER: microtubules (accept “tubulin” until “polymer”)
21. From 1999 to 2004, this man was a representative to the European Parliament from Italy's Green Party. His writings include Antarctica: Both Heaven and Hell, and a work subtitled Expedition to the Ultimate. His "unauthorized biography" titled a 1999 album by Ben Folds Five, and he was the subject of a 1984 Werner Herzog film about his tackling of Gashenbrum I and II. He first came to prominence after losing several toes at Nanga Parbat, but he became the first man to ascend Everest without supplementary oxygen. FTP, identify this Italian mountain climber who pioneered an Alpine climbing system and was the first man to climb all fourteen peaks taller than 8,000 meters.
Answer: Reinhold Messner
1. Answer the following about a Chinese dynasty FTPE.
[10] This dynasty was given its name by Hong Taiji eight years before it took control of China upon the takeover of Beijing by Li Zicheng in 1644.
ANSWER: Qing Dynasty
[10] The Qing Dynasty traced its origins back to this Manchu father of Hong Taiji who defeated the Ming army at Saerhu ("sah-ur-hoo") in 1619 and established the eight-banner bureaucratic system.
ANSWER: Nurhaci
[10] Nurhaci initially named the Manchu dynasty he founded after the Jin dynasty was founded by this tribe from whom the Manchus descended.
ANSWER: Jurchen
2. Name these members of the New Mickey Mouse Club, FTPE.
[10] More recently she was captured by Phillip Seymour Hoffman in Mission Impossible 3, but she’s better known for her interminable vacillations between Ben and Noel as the protagonist of Felicity.