| 1 | What food (beverages not included) has the highest percentage by mass of water?
Best Answer: Peeled cucumber with 96.73% water. |
| 2 | Name three diseases that are a direct result of lack of nutrition and identify the missing component(s) that causes these diseases.
Best Answer: Three diseases that are caused by a lack of nutrition are beriberi, rickets, and scurvy. Beriberi is caused by lacking vitamin B1. Symptoms of beriberi may include weight loss, emotional disturbances, impaired sensory perception, weakness, and periods of irregular heartbeat. Rickets is caused by lacking vitamin D. Rickets usually occurs in infants or young children and causes soft bones because vitamin D isn't present to assist calcium and phosphate intake. Scurvy is caused by lacking vitamin C. Scurvy leads to the formation of livid spots on the skin, spongy gums and bleeding from almost all mucous membranes. Other symptoms include weakness and joint pain. |
| 3 | Name one food that encompasses the most of the needed daily nutrients for a human. Identify the missing components of the food you chose.
Best Answer: An apple contains many of the needed daily nutrients for a human. The missing components of an apple include: Vitamin A retinol; Vitamin D including D3 colecalciferol, D2 ergocalciferol, and 25 hydroxycolecalciferol; Vitamin B12, Vitamin C L-Dehydroascorbic acid and 2,3-Diketogulonic acid; heme iron and non-heme iron; good cholesterol.
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| 4 | Give the history of the Calorie.
Best Answer A: Calorie is a unit that is used to measure heat energy in the metric system of measurement. A calorie is the amount of energy that is needed to raise the temperature of one gram of water by one Celsius degree. The word calorie comes from a Latin word that means heat.
Best Answer B: The unit Calorie is a measurement of heat in the metric system. When the measurement is written as Calorie it symbolises 1000 calories. One Calorie is equal to 1,000 kilocalories. The amount of heat required to raise the temperature of 1g of water 1 degree Celcius is a calorie. Calorie is the metric measurement used to express the energy-producing value of food in diet calculations. The word calorie means heat in Latin.
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| 5 | What is Barbara McClintock known for?
Best Answer: McClintock's work on the cytogenetics of maize led her to theorize that genes are transposable -- they can move around -- on and between chromosomes. Consequently she was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1983. This made McClintock the first American woman to win an unshared Nobel.
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| 6 | Who was the first female to win a Nobel Prize for medicine, in what year, and why?
Best Answer: The first woman to win the Nobel prize for medicine was Gerty Cori. She and her husband, Carl Cori, described glucose 1-phosphorylation as the initial step in glycogen formation. The prize was awarded in 1947 to the Coris and Bernardo Houssay for discoveries regarding regulation of blood glucose.
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| 7 | What was the first disease successfully combated with vaccines?
Best Answer: In 1796 British physician Edward Jenner realized dairy maids who had caught cowpox showed a resistance to smallpox. Jenner used diseased matter from the hand of local dairymaid Sarah Nelmes, who had become infected with cowpox, and inserted this matter into the cut arm of healthy eight-year-old James Phipps, who then caught cowpox. Weeks later, Jenner injected smallpox matter into the boy, which had no effect, and became the first recorded effective vaccination.
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| 8 | What is the most widely purchased over the counter medicine in the United States versus the world?
Best Answer: Ibuprofen is the most widely purchased over the counter medicine in the United States. Together aspirin, ibuprofen and the analgesic paracetamol form the three most commonly purchased over-the-counter medicines world-wide.
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| 9 | What is the most widely prescribed medicine in the United States versus the world?
Best Answer: Premarin is the most widely prescribed drug in the world and Hydrocodone / APAP is the most widely prescribed drug in the u.s with 85.1 million prescriptions in 2003.
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| 10 | What is the safest medicine either over the counter or prescription? Include information to support your answer.
Best Answer: Tylenol is proven to be safer than any other medicine out there. It is known for its superior safety profile.
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| 11 | What is the most common disease or ailment worldwide?
Best Answer: Tooth decay is the most common disease in the world.
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| 12 | Name the fundamental components that comprise human DNA. Identify the average number of monomers in a typical human DNA. How many different combinations are possible for human DNA?
Best Answer: DNA is a polymer. The monomer units of DNA are nucleotides, and the polymer is known as a "polynucleotide." Each nucleotide consists of a 5-carbon sugar (deoxyribose), a nitrogen containing base attached to the sugar, and a phosphate group. There are four different types of nucleotides found in DNA, differing only in the nitrogenous base. The four nucleotides are given one letter abbreviations as shorthand for the four bases. A is for adenine, G is for guanine, C is for cytosine, and T is for thymine.
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| 13 | At what age does the human body have the most bones? How many is this?
Best Answer: The human skeleton consists of 206 bones. We are actually born with more bones (about 300), but many fuse together as a child grows up.
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| 14 | Explain the process by which DNA is identified to differentiate between people.
Best Answer: DNA is identified to differentiate between people by DNA typing. This is performed by demonstrating differences in length of specific DNA sequences. This can be done by digestion of DNA with restriction enzyme(s), followed by Southern blot hybridization using a probe specific for the polymorphic site. Polymerase chain reaction (PCR) techniques are becoming widely applied to the same task, and have several advantages over Southern blotting - for example, much less DNA is required and in many cases, typing can be done using partially degraded DNA. For PCR analysis, the primers are designed to flank the VNTR locus and the size of the PCR product is dependent on the number of repeats.
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| 15 | Give the thermodynamics of the hydration of P2O5.
Best Answer: There was no best answer submitted. The answer shown here was written by the judges.
Using various sources for standard enthalpy of formation, standard entropy, and standard Gibbs free energy of formation, for the hydration reaction of phosphorus pentoxide (P2O5) at 298 K the enthalpy change was found to be -213 kJ / mol; the entropy change was found to be -103 J / mol K; and the change in Gibbs free energy was found to be -177.4 kJ / mol. These values are consistent with an approximation for the former two values, considering the number of bonds formed versus broken (enthalpy) and the disorder of the reaction (entropy). The assignment of a spontaneous reaction at lower temperatures (below approx 1500 ºC) is again consistent with hydrating P2O5 in a classroom demonstration - it is a highly spontaneous and exothermic reaction.
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| 16 | Explain the role the ATP in the human body.
Best Answer: The ATP is used for many cell functions including transport work moving substances across cell membranes. It is also used for mechanical work, supplying the energy needed for muscle contraction. It supplies energy not only to heart muscle (for blood circulation) and skeletal muscle (such as for gross body movement), but also to the chromosomes and flagella to enable them to carry out their many functions. A major role of ATP is in chemical work, supplying the needed energy to synthesize the multi-thousands of types of macromolecules that the cell needs to exist. ATP is also used as an on-off switch both to control chemical reactions and to send messages. The ATP molecule can bond to one part of a protein molecule, causing another part of the same molecule to slide or move slightly which causes it to change its conformation, inactivating the molecule. Subsequent removal of ATP causes the protein to return to its original shape, and thus it is again functional. The cycle can be repeated until the molecule is recycled, effectively serving as an on and off switch (Hoagland and Dodson, 1995, p.104). Both adding a phosphorus (phosphorylation) and removing a phosphorus from a protein (dephosphorylation) can serve as either an on or an off switch.
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| 17 | What is the protein basis for sickle cell anemia and how does it relate to the non-diseased state of hemoglobin?
Best Answer: A single amino acid substituion in one of the components of hemoglobin creates sickle cell, and a protein that contains the substitution is known as or becomes defective in the process. Normal hemoglobin transports oxygen, sickle cells also transport oxygen but have a tendancy for the molecules to clump which is a difference in teh relation between the two and also the shape of the two is different, one is sickle shaped, while the other is not.
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| 18 | Under what circumstances does the body produce ketones?
Best Answer: Your body makes ketones when there isn't enough insulin in your blood. The body uses insulin for energy, and when there isn't enough it is forced to break apart fats to use for energy. Your body then makes acids (ketones) and releases them into your blood and urine.
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| 19 | Why does the heart prefer to use lipids as a fuel source rather glucose?
Best Answer: The heart likes to use lipids as a fuel sorce rather than glucose because lipids contain twice the energy-rich (C-H) bonds as glucose and produce twice as many calories (9 kcal/gm vs 4 kcal/gm) when burned.
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| 20 | How does the body make vitamin D?
Best Answer: Your skin can make vitamin D when it's exposed to sunlight. When the highest energy ultraviolet light, called UVB, penetrates the skin, it converts a precursor into vitamin D, which becomes 25-hydroxyvitamin D in the liver, and is then activated to 1,25-dihydroxyvitamin D in the kidneys.
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| 21 | How does keratin function in the vision process?
Best Answer: Vitamin A is involved with the vision, and with out Vitamin A, you wouldn't be able to see. Most of your Vitamin A is stored in your liver, and that's why when you're drunk you have problems seeing. Now, without Vitamin A, keratin starts to build up and tissues harden. You also can be afflicted with night blindness, cloudy vision, ulcers of the cornea, and in extreme cases, blindness.
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| 22 | Which vitamins are absorbed by water versus lipids?
Best Answer: Vitamin C - ascorbic acid; Vitamin B 1 - thiamine, thiamin; Vitamin B 2 – riboflavin; Vitamin B 3 - niacin, niacinamide, nicotinic acid; Vitamin B 5 -pantothenic acid; Vitamin B 6 – pyridoxine; Vitamin B 9 - folacin, folic acid; Vitamin B 12 - cyanocobamin, cobalamin; PABA - para-aminobenzoic acid; Choline; Inositol; Vitamin H - biotin.
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| 23 | Why do vitamins absorbed by water have to be constantly replenished?
Best Answer A: Water-soluble vitamins dissolve in water. The pass easily into the blood in the process of digestion and are not stored in the body tissue. Any excess is excreted in urine. Because of this you need to re-supply your body with vitamins everyday through your diet.
Best Answer B: Vitamins absorbed by water have to be constantly replenished because they are not stored in mass quantity by the body. If they are present in excess of the body's needs, they are excreated in the urine. A shortage of water souluable vitamains affects the skin and blood tissues along with the nervous system and digestive tract.
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| 24 | What role do telomeres play in the aging process?
Best Answer: Each time mitosis occurs in a cell, the telomeres of the dividing cells get just a bit shorter. Once a cell's telomeres have reached a critically short length, that cell can no longer divide. Its structure and function begins to fail. Some cells even die. In the laboratory, most human cells can only divide 30 to 50 times before they stop reproducing, reaching a stage called senescence. Cells taken from older persons and persons with premature aging syndromes undergo even fewer divisions before reaching senescence. This is how telomeres play in the aging process.
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| 25 | Why does decreasing cholesterol in the diet not necessarily reduce the amount of cholesterol in the body?
Best Answer: Decreasing the amount of cholesterol in the diet doesn't necessarily decrease the amount of cholesterol in the body because cholesterol is present in the foods we eat and our liver also produces our own supply of cholesterol as well. The liver is responsible for the manufacture of cholesterol along with regulating the proteins that carry it.
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