NASAT 2017 - Round 10 - Tossups
1. DREADDs are designer forms of these proteins that only respond to synthetic small molecules. Thrombin cleaves the N-terminus off of a protease-activated type of these proteins to reveal a tethered ligand, which then binds to itself. VIP and calcitonin act via members of the secretin family of these proteins. Sodium ion channels close, releasing inhibition of bipolar cells, after isomerization of 11-cis-retinal to all-trans-retinal causes a conformational change in one of these proteins called rhodopsin. They induce an intracellular GTPase to dissociate into alpha and beta-gamma subunits, leading to activation of adenylate cyclase and cAMP signaling. For 10 points, name these seven-transmembrane domain receptors linked to namesake proteins.
ANSWER: GPCRs [or G-protein coupled receptors; prompt on receptors] <Smart>
2. In a 2000 novel by Joyce Carol Oates, this real-life person is murdered by a government agent called the Sharpshooter. This woman's affair with Yves Montand (EEVZ mon-TAWN) is dramatized in the 2004 play Finishing the Picture. A character who represents this real-life person downs most of a bottle of pills and a bottle of whiskey in the second act of a play in which her lover Quentin calls an ambulance to take her away. This person is represented by Maggie in a play whose set includes a concentration camp tower. This actress portrayed Roslyn Tabor in a movie written by her husband, The Misfits. Her suicide inspired many of the interpersonal scenes in the play After the Fall. For 10 points, name this actress once married to Arthur Miller.
ANSWER: Marilyn Monroe [or Norma Jean Baker] <Droge>
3. While visiting this location, Roger Pryor assumed a bottle of iodide was actually whiskey and almost died after he consumed it. An object taken from this location inspired the Frederic Church painting Our Banner in the Sky. Daniel Hough and Edward Galloway died here in an explosion sparked during a 100-gun salute and were the only casualties of the losing side. Abner Doubleday called himself the "hero" of this location for firing the first return shot, which completely missed. The ship Star of the West was unable to resupply Major Robert Anderson's force at this location, which was surrendered after P.G.T. Beauregard opened fire in April 1861. For 10 points, name this fort in Charleston, South Carolina, which was fired upon in the opening moments of the Civil War.
ANSWER: Fort Sumter [prompt on Charleston until read] <Cheyne>
4. This character enjoys a dream in which he gets out of bed and goes through the door into an identical bedroom, and so on to infinity. This man's death coincides with the unexpected return of the brother of an exiled Indian princess who declares, "I have come for the exequies of the king." He is haunted by the ghost of a man whom he easily kills with a spear throw in a cockfighting pit. This character spends the last years of his life tied to a chestnut tree by his house after he goes mad and starts speaking Latin. This man is the husband of Ursula Iguaran, and his sons include the rebel Colonel Aureliano. For 10 points, name this character from One Hundred Years of Solitude, the patriarch of the Buendia family.
ANSWER: José Arcadio Buendia [prompt on Buendia; do not accept "José"; do not accept "Arcadio"; do not accept "José Arcadio, Jr.," "the second José Arcadio," or anything else indicating he's not the first José Arcadio] <Casalaspi>
5. In one story, this man's body is rejected by the Rhone River and thus ends up near Lake Lucerne. In that story, the emperor kills this man after being healed by the handkerchief of Veronica. This man defends a choice of an inscription with the phrase "quod scripsi, scripsi." After hearing that "everyone on the side of truth listens" to another person, this man asks the infamous question "what is truth?" His wife warns him she has suffered in a dream because of an innocent man. An angry crowd tells this man they have no king but Caesar and demands that he release Barabbas. He ultimately ends up washing his hands, saying the crowd is responsible for the blood of his prisoner. For 10 points, name this Roman prefect who presided over the crucifixion of Jesus.
ANSWER: Pontius Pilate <Cheyne>
6. In an opera by this man, Zima and Adario pledge their love for each other before a peace pipe ceremony; that opera by this man also contains the act "The Generous Turk." He cut a prologue that celebrated the War of the Polish Succession from the revival of an opera in which Telaira sings "Tristes apprêts" (treest ah-PREH) and is loved by a pair of twins, only one of whom is initially immortal. This man's operas were disparaged by fans of Pergolesi's La serva padrona in the "War of the Buffoons." He wrote one of the first explanations of tonal music in his Treatise on Harmony. For 10 points, name this French Baroque composer whose operas Castor et Pollux and Les indes galantes(lay ZAND gah-LONT) reimagined forms previously established by Jean-Baptiste Lully.
ANSWER: Jean-Philippe RameauWhite
7. A banned album in this country whose title translates as Keep the Gate Closed, Little Brother is by folk singer Karel Kryl. While visiting this country as a representative of a multiple sclerosis charity, Shirley Temple saw a woman gunned down in the street, a fact that she remembered when she served as US ambassador to this country in 1989. A leader of this country announced an Action Programme twenty years after the "Victorious February" coup put Communists in power. In this country, a student named Jan Palach (YON PAH-loch) set himself on fire in a city square in protest of an invasion. When Gustáv Husák took power in this country, he reversed the reforms of Alexander Dubček (DOOB-check). For 10 points, name this country that briefly experienced "socialism with a human face" during the 1968 Prague Spring.
ANSWER: Czechoslovakia [do not accept "Czech Republic" or "Slovak Republic"] <Cheyne>
8. Eastern Armenian is a rare example of a language that uses this feature for contrast in word-final positions. Ancient Greek grammarians used the words "thin," "thick," and "middle" to express the degree of this feature. Proto-Indo-European unusually had a voiced consonant series with this feature, but not a voiceless series with it. This feature is usually indicated by a large positive voice-onset time. In Sanskrit, this feature disappears from the first of two consecutive phonemes that have it, according to Grassmann's law. The loss of this feature in Proto-Germanic voiced stops is the final phase of Grimm's law. This feature can be called "breathy voice" when applied to a voiced stop. This feature is represented in IPA with a superscript "h." For 10 points, name this linguistic feature in which air is puffed while pronouncing a consonant.
ANSWER: aspiration [or aspirated consonants; prompt on breathy voice until read] <Weiner>
9. In a play set in this country, a woman opts to ride through town on a chair carried by two men instead of riding in a car; that woman earlier pulled an emergency cord to stop the "Flying Dutchman." An author from this country wrote that he does "not start out with a thesis but with a story" in 21 bullet points he appended to a play in which a man claims to have discovered the "Unitary Theory of Elementary Particles." Three men believe themselves to be Einstein, Newton, and King Solomon in a play set in an insane asylum in this country, which is also the home of a legend about a crossbowman who shot an apple off his son's head. For 10 points, name this country home to the author of The Physicists, Friedrich Durrenmatt, as well as William Tell.
ANSWER: Switzerland [or Swiss Confederation] <Belal>
10. A group with this name can be represented by Specht modules or by Young tableaux with n boxes and ndistinct entries. Every group is isomorphic to a subset of the a group with this name according to Cayley's theorem. Groups of this name have subgroups of half their size generated by transpositions called alternating groups. This adjective describes matrices that are equal to their own transpose as well as groups consisting of all permutations of a fixed set of elements. Equivalence relations are reflexive, transitive, and have a property with this name, which states that x and y are related whenever y and x are. For 10 points, give this term for lines that divide a region into mirror images.
ANSWER: symmetric groups [accept symmetry; accept Sn or S-sub-n; prompt on permutation groups] <Thompson>
11. This piece does not write out the parts for side drums, instead instructing an unspecified number of them to play "ad libitum." A traffic jam was caused by a rehearsal of this piece at Vauxhall (VAWKS-all) Gardens that attracted twelve thousand paying customers. For a performance at the Foundling Hospital a month after its premiere, this work's composer added strings. Its third movement is a largo alla siciliana titled "La Paix" (PEH), which is followed by "La Réjouissance" (rage-wee-SAWNS). This piece was commissioned for an outdoor celebration of the signing of the Treaty of Aix-La-Chapelle. For 10 points, bad weather ruined some namesake pyrotechnics at the premiere of what George Frideric Handel suite?
ANSWER: Music for the Royal Fireworks <White>
12. A hero of this conflict rode a horse whose name translates as "stupid" because that was his godfather's reaction to the animal. In a sub-engagement during this conflict, Pope Alexander II sanctioned various Europeans' participation in the War of Barbastro. Elements of a real-life battle at Monte Laturce inspired a mythical battle in this conflict at Clavijo (klah-VEE-ho), in which a man on a white horse ended the Tribute of 100 Virgins. A setback for the eventual victors during this conflict was the disastrous Battle of Alarcos. Many historians believe it began with Pelagius's victory at the Battle of Covadonga. Heroes during this conflict included El Cid, and it officially ended in 1492 when Granada fell. For 10 points, what over 700-year conflict featured Christian forces trying to drive off Muslims from the Iberian Peninsula?
ANSWER: Reconquista [or Reconquest] <Cheyne>
13. This poet gave "special thanks" to a playwright "from first youth tested up to extreme old age… who saw life steadily, and saw it whole" in a sonnet "To a Friend." The speaker hears a whisper asking "What dost thou in this living tomb?" in his poem that describes "wandering between two worlds, one dead, the other powerless to be born." This poet of "Stanzas from the Grande Chartreuse" lamented "this strange disease of modern life" in a poem named for a man who joins a "wild brotherhood" upon leaving Oxford. He also described the "melancholy, long, withdrawing roar" of the "Sea of Faith" in a poem ending with the image of ignorant armies clashing by night. For 10 points, name this Victorian poet of "The Scholar-Gipsy" and "Dover Beach."
ANSWER: Matthew Arnold <Casalaspi>
14. The mineral Boltwoodite is named after the pioneer of this process who first published it in 1907. SHRIMP is an Australian sector instrument used for this technique. Samarium and neodymium were used in this technique to support the chondritic uniform reservoir model. Zircon and monazite are used in one variation of this technique, which relies on the closure temperature of a mineral. This method was famously used on the Acasta Gneiss (nice) and Nuvvuagittuq (noo-voo-AH-gih-tuke) Greenstone Belt. Dendrochronology is one method of this technique. One element used in this technique is only viable for about 60,000 years due to its 5,700 year long half-life. The term "before present" is used in this process. For 10 points, name this process of determining the age of materials using isotopes like carbon-14.
ANSWER: radiometric dating [accept specific methods like radiocarbon dating or uranium-lead dating] <Fulgenzi>
15. In one culture's mythology, the goddess of storage and wealth generally takes the form of an invisible type of this creature with ears, and is the only gasin (gah-sheen), or household deity, that appears as an animal. That goddess, Eopsin (UP-sheen), is believed to bring wealth, which is why weasels and these creatures were once welcomed into the homes of Koreans. After being bitten by an ant, one of these creatures from another culture's mythos regurgitated the Wawalag sisters to form a landmass. The "Wagyl" is one of these animals popular among Dreamtime stories. A "Rainbow" one of these animals is a creator god in Australian mythology. For 10 points, an ouroboros depicts what kind of animal eating its own tail?
ANSWER: snakes [or serpents; prompt on dragons; accept weasel until read] <Thompson>
16. It's not Georgia, but a festival with the slogan "Give Peach a Chance" is held in this state's city of Ruston. This state's central city of Natchitoches (NACK-uh-tish) is known for producing meat pies. This state's residents make dishes from its invasive population of the nutria rodent, which was introduced by the McIlhenny family. A dish from this state incorporates a powder made from ground sassafras leaves called filé (FEE-lay). This state's Avery Island is where Tabasco sauce is made. The "smothering" technique is used throughout this state to produce dishes called étouffée (ay-too-FAY). This state produces the country's vast majority of crawfish, and it originated a seafood sandwich known as the po' boy. For 10 points, name this state whose Cajun dishes include gumbo and jambalaya.
ANSWER: Louisiana <Shimizu>
17. A man who gained fame for this activity likely modeled for a bronze sculpture exhibited by Arthur Lee at the Armory Show titled The Ethiopian. A massive mural in the Smithsonian depicting this activity by James Montgomery Flagg was first created for a restaurant that was owned by one of the men in the painting. A participant in this activity is about to fall onto two men looking worriedly upwards in a painting partially titled for Luis Angel Firpo. A trick to skirt the Lewis Law of 1900 explains the title of one painting of this activity, Both Members of This Club. A man smoking a cigar looks back at the viewer as two nearly-nude men engage in this activity in George Bellows's masterpiece Stag at Sharkey's. For 10 points, name this bloody sport.
ANSWER: boxing [or prize fighting] <Bentley>
18. Generation of these phenomena are thermodynamically favorable at the critical temperature of the Kosterlitz–Thouless transition in the XY model. An exact solution to the Navier–Stokes equation named for Lamb and Oseen describes the decay of one of these phenomena due to viscosity. When a fluid flows on either side of some body and is separated, it can form a "street" of these phenomena named for von Kármán. Helmholtz names three theorems concerning these phenomena, the first of which states that the strength of one of their "tubes" does not vary in time. Their namesake quantity is equal to the curl of the fluid velocity vector. For 10 points, name these phenomena in which a fluid flows in a circle around some center.
ANSWER: vortices [or vortex; accept vortex street] <Overman>
19. John B. Cobb wrote an introduction to theological approaches based on the metaphysics of this philosopher, whose ideas were also extended to theology by Charles Hartshorne. This philosopher eschewed the view of reality as being composed of permanent substances in favor of elemental "drops of experience" that he called "actual occasions," part of a metaphysical system he called the "philosophy of organism." With a former student, this author of Process and Reality co-wrote a three-volume book that relies on the axiom of reducibility in its attempt to demonstrate that all mathematical truths can be translated into terms from formal logic. For 10 points, name this English philosopher who co-wrote Principia Mathematica with Bertrand Russell.
ANSWER: Alfred North Whitehead <Casalaspi>
20. During this period, a man's marriage to a woman known as the "Witch" horrified the populace because she did not convert from Catholicism. While it did not take place in South America, a horrific famine during this period was probably caused by the eruption of Peru's Huaynaputina. The end of this period is celebrated with the November 4 holiday called National Unity Day. A leader during it fled after the Battle of Klushino, when Vasily Shuisky's forces lost to foreign invaders. During this period, at least three "False Dmitris" appeared, with the first challenging the rule of Boris Godunov. For 10 points, name this period in between the end of the Rurik dynasty and the ascension of the Romanovs, a chaotic era of Russian history.
ANSWER: Time of Troubles [prompt on Troubles; do not accept "The Troubles"] <Cheyne
21. Virginia Woolf highlighted a symbolic passage in this novel in which a plain earthenware pot allows the reader to see into the human soul. A religious theme in this novel develops parallels between a Christian god and the deity Benamuckee. The protagonist of this novel builds a dwelling he nicknames his fortress, in which he inscribes the date September 30 on a wooden cross. The main character of this novel embarks on a disastrous voyage from his plantation in Brazil to buy slaves in Guinea. This book's title character traps goats and learns to grow crops while surviving for several years on an island where he encounters a native he names Friday. For 10 points, name this novel by Daniel Defoe.
ANSWER: Robinson Crusoe <Droge>