2013 ICT DI specific question discussion

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Re: DI specific question discussion

Post by theMoMA »

I was a bit surprised to see a tossup on the !Kung, let alone one that started off with what is probably the context in which most people would know them (Marshall Sahlins's Stone Age Economics). In my mind, it'd be a bit like starting a tossup on the Nuer with "E.E. Evans-Pritchard wrote a trilogy of works on this ethnic group." It confused me enough that I didn't buzz until the end.
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Re: DI specific question discussion

Post by Sima Guang Hater »

As people in Kansas like to say, yee ha.

PACKET 1:
-Seems like the density matrix is kind of easy for a leadin, considering there has been more than one tossup on the density matrix at this level.
-The clue about Collins' reagent seems easier to me than the one after it, but its probably fine.
-Reed-Sternberg cells are an excellent hard part. So's alpha-1-antitrypsin deficiency, which is a genetic disease that is super important but never comes up. Kind of the inverse of the Westphal variant of HD.
-I'm currently debating with Seth about this, but I said "Kasha-Vavilov rule" for "Kasha's rule" because one is a corollary of the other. I was probably wrong, but I think if I were writing the question I'd at least mention that there's a corollary named for Vavilov.
-A bonus on Millenium? This is exactly the kind of thing I was complaining about in the other thread. Why would you ask a question about an X-files knockoff from the 90s? What's the point of this?
-What were the middle and hard parts of the English civil war bonus? It seems like Earl of Essex and Earl of Manchester are equally difficult to me.

PACKET 2:
-The line about OpenCL in this parallelism tossup is confusing; from what I understand, OpenCL just lets you use the GPU to run any calculation you want. Whether that's explicitly parallelism or not, I don't know. I guess it is.
-The Pueblo tossup has been complained about. I said Hopi on Kachinas, to be complete.
-This asthma tossup reminds me of a general complaint I had about the set. I think its doubly important in NAQT to get the pronoun out early, i.e., this first sentence should read "People with this disease show Creola bodies and Charcot-Leyden crystals." That way people can buzz on the first instance of knowledge rather than having that sinking feeling that someone will shank them out of the tossup on a gamble.
-I said "computer vision" for "image processing". I think the language is ambiguous enough for me to be right.
-I'm a little surprised that this bonus part on "Reasons and Persons" didn't include the thought experiment leading to the Repugnant Conclusion.

PACKET 3:
-Maria Tallchief?!
-Red Violin is a movie for which John Corigliano famously did the score. That should not be that early.
-This hydronium tossup illustrates something else I dislike that happens at NAQT; if you can' twrite a four-line tossup on something without using second-order clues (i.e. the clues about water in this question), you probably shouldn't write it anyway. On top of that, this question's first two lines talk about something called the "special-pair" dance, which I've never seen in a stat mech textbook nor in the physical chemistry I've taken. The first buzzable clue is about the pKa of H3O.
-If you have to write a Wittig bonus, this is the best way to do it.
-I already complained about this Karateka bonus in the other thread.
-This bonus part on dominant negative is a great idea. A minor tweak I'd make is to say that it inhibits the function of the wild-type protein, rather than causes LOF. The latter implies that it's actually mutating the wild type protein, which isn't the case.

PACKET 4:
-Auschwitz is incredibly transparent
-I said "death with dignity" and "euthanasia" to answer this right to die question; it needed more alternate answers.
-April 6th movement seems awfully early in this Morsi question.

PACKET 5:
-The Staph aureus question was excellent.
-This cost question was stupid, according to Saajid. I tend to believe him.
-Group 15 was an awful, awful idea and should never be done again.
-Was this SR tossup a science history question or a physics question?
-I agree with Aaron Cohen's criticism of this myoglobin tossup. I've been around long enough to have been screwed by the hemoglobin-myoglobin bait-and-switch repeatedly, so I waited.

PACKET 6:
-This variational principle tossup was excellent
-I agree with the above criticisms of the Permafrost tossup; I've been avoiding criticizing the earth science, because my criticisms tend to devolve into "ugh why was this tossed up".
-So this income inequality bonus is kind of needlessly coy. Why not talk about the Gini coefficient, or what a Pigouvian tax actually is, rather than just encouraging one-to-one guessing between "namesake tax" and a name? It doesn't seem like a great way to test knowledge of income inequality.
-We skipped this FARC bonus while reading. That's displeasing.

PACKET 7:
-This ribosomal RNA question sucks, and I'm going to complain about it. Lets go line-by-line.
Question wrote:In addition to methylation, C/D box snoRNAs guide this molecule's processing.
Thought process wrote:We're in the nucleolus, we're building ribosomes. I'll bet NAQT is being retarded and writing a question about the small or large ribosomal subunit, or the peptidyl-transferase site of the ribosome, or something. Andy Watkins wouldn't have let this shit in, unfortunately he's persona non grata. Man I'm totally going to post about this later.
Question wrote:A portion of it is specifically targeted by Ricin
Thought process wrote:Ok, the sarcin-ricin loop is in the 23S subcomponent of the prokaryotic ribosome. Time to buzz in and prompt-bash my way to points! But lets wait a tick. I can't neg this against Ike, Aaron, Billy, and that dude who just powered System of a Down. Those guys know things.
Question continues wrote: which removes a purine from a portion of this molecule critical for elongation factor binding
Me: *Buzz* ribosome (expecting to be prompted)
Andrew Yaphe: -5
Thought process wrote:??!?!?!?!!?!
Question wrote: Molecules occupying the P and A sites interact with the (*) 23S version of this molecule, which catalyzes peptide bond formation. For 10 points, name this molecule that complexes with protein to make the small and large subunits of the organelle responsible for translation.
So despite having near-perfect knowledge of the subject, I couldn't get points. And this was in a very important game. There's absolutely zero reason to write this question this way; a question on the ribosome would have tested identical knowledge, without turning into some kind of clusterfuck over the answerline.

-The Gaussian functions question was really weird. The leadin was about orbital basis functions; specifically, you add a bunch of Gaussian orbitals to form a Slater-type orbital in STO-nG. Had I buzzed with orbitals there, I would have been correct. Unfortunately Billy figured out what the hell was going on before that.

Playoffs later.
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Re: DI specific question discussion

Post by Cheynem »

People are carping on the Millennium bonus, but it's something that could have been a fine bonus with just some slight changes. (Before I begin, I'd just like to say I totally read a book on Millennium over the summer so my TRUE KNOWLEDGE IS REWARDED--BOO YAH)

For example, the parts if I recall were Millennium/Lance Henriksen/Seattle. Change Millennium to the X-Files and give easy clues and you've got an easy part. Seattle gave a clue about the TV show The Killing, that works as a middle part. Lance Henriksen may be pushing it as a hard part since people seem to have trouble remembering actors' names (you could have asked for Frank Black's name, using music clues). My point here is not to nitpick the specific parts, but rather to note that just dialing questions down a bit on things you would not expect the target audience to know is the best way to go. Like, this is just me kicking around ideas for five minutes, and I've made a more accessible bonus. It's not something that requires a complete overhaul in how one approaches answerlines or trash topics.
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Re: DI specific question discussion

Post by Good Goblin Housekeeping »

The Quest for the Historical Mukherjesus wrote:
Question wrote:In addition to methylation, C/D box snoRNAs guide this molecule's processing.
Thought process wrote:We're in the nucleolus, we're building ribosomes. I'll bet NAQT is being retarded and writing a question about the small or large ribosomal subunit, or the peptidyl-transferase site of the ribosome, or something. Andy Watkins wouldn't have let this shit in, unfortunately he's persona non grata. Man I'm totally going to post about this later.
In my MCB 150 course (which I may or may not be failing at this rate) we touched on snoRNPs/snoRNAs and I was under the impression that they just processed the pre-rrna and didn't do any of the assembly.
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Re: DI specific question discussion

Post by Sima Guang Hater »

Yeah I meant building in the most generic possible way. Assembly occurs in the nucleus, not the nucleolus.
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Re: DI specific question discussion

Post by JLai »

For what its worth, Yogesh R. got a decent buzz on the Maria Tallchief question for our team and reading through her wiki page she does seem like an important figure in her field. I can definitely see it having one of the lower tossup conversion rates in the set though.

And just curious, did anyone else have a very low opinion of the Nancy Lieberman tossup (Round 5 I think?). I'm not sure how it played out in other rooms but it went dead in our match against Maryland, which was kind of a momentum killer since our team was counting on getting the most of the trash tossups :smile: . I would be curious to see what the conversion stats for the tossup was. I don't know, maybe it is more of a tossupable answerline than I'm giving it credit for.
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Re: DI specific question discussion

Post by Cheynem »

I've heard of Nancy Lieberman, but this seemed like an obtuse thing to write on. I understand writing sports is hard because it's tough to find challenging answers/clues, but NAQT seems to have a fondness for choosing oddball things in the sports distro (Lieberman and Arena Football here, the World Bowl some time ago).

*and by fondness, I guess I mean THREE EXAMPLES
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Re: DI specific question discussion

Post by jonpin »

Nancy Lieberman was just ridiculous. As I was reading that tossup, I was processing "OK, so this is some woman coaching a men's basketball team. Is there anything else about this woman? ... Nope." There was the obvious three seconds of silence after I finished reading, I gave the answer, and there was a ten-fold shrug by all in the room. And I'm a reasonably solid sports fan. Tossing up any basketball coach shy of the NBA and maybe a half-dozen collegiate coaches (Coach K, Bob Knight, Pat Summitt, Pitino, Geno what's-his-name) is a recipe for disaster.
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Re: DI specific question discussion

Post by The Ununtiable Twine »

Out of curiosity, was Lieberman-Cline acceptable for Lieberman? It's perfectly understandable that one may not have realized that she was now just a Lieberman if one has not followed women's basketball for quite some time. She's a rather notable person in women's basketball history, though. I can sympathize with those that were not intrigued when she came out of retirement at age 50 to play a WNBA game or those that don't care about Old Dominion women's basketball, however. Dargan beat me to the buzzer because I couldn't believe that there could possibly be a tossup on Nancy Lieberman at ICT. She's rather important in the history of women's basketball, but that doesn't mean that she's necessarily accessible at a modern national competition, just because. I would consider a tossup on Maya Moore or Candace Parker to be accessible, or even Geno Auriemma because knowledge on such figures is available readily if one watches women's basketball. Lieberman was kinda tough just because I can think of like 50 things in women's basketball that I would toss up before her. Like Val Ackerman.

EDIT: Okay, maybe not Val Ackerman. I will also suggest that NAQT just not have that question asked at whatever mirror it is planning to run of ICT. It will not get converted.

EDIT2: Ah, shades of the summer of 1997, watching a 39-year-old Nancy Lieberman-Cline handle the ball for the Phoenix Mercury in the new WNBA! It should also be noted that she only played that one season in the WNBA, with an exception being made for her magical comeback at the age of 50. She wanted desperately to play one season in the WNBA before she called it quits, though.
Last edited by The Ununtiable Twine on Thu Apr 18, 2013 11:34 pm, edited 2 times in total.
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Re: DI specific question discussion

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The Ununtiable Twine wrote:Out of curiosity, was Lieberman-Cline acceptable for Lieberman?
Yes.
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Re: DI specific question discussion

Post by AKKOLADE »

I didn't write or edit that question, but I am a little surprised it's looked at as such an impossible answer, since she could be the most important person in women's basketball history.
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Re: DI specific question discussion

Post by gaurav.kandlikar »

theMoMA wrote:I was a bit surprised to see a tossup on the !Kung, let alone one that started off with what is probably the context in which most people would know them (Marshall Sahlins's Stone Age Economics). In my mind, it'd be a bit like starting a tossup on the Nuer with "E.E. Evans-Pritchard wrote a trilogy of works on this ethnic group." It confused me enough that I didn't buzz until the end.
Could I see this tossup with answerline? I too was thrown off by the Sahlins clue coming up so early in a tossup on the !Kung, convinced myself that the first clue may have applied to the Hadza, and then sat around like an idiot until Andrew picked it up. I don't know what sort of quizbowl world we live in where Hadza would seem like a reasonable answer to me, but hey, Ninurta happened.

Agreed with Eric on the ribosomes TU. That was hella frustrating.
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Re: DI specific question discussion

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DI ICT round 14 wrote:{Marshall Sahlins}'s theory of the {original affluent society} drew on work on these {hunter-gatherer}s by Lorna Marshall and Richard Borshay Lee, whose study of their diet highlighted the nutritious {mongongo} nut. Lee noted their love for {diarrhea}-inducing fat in a paper on their {trance} dance feasts centered on oxen killed by their Herero and Tswana (*) neighbors. "Eating Christmas in the Kalahari" focuses on--for 10 points--what indigenous South Africans who, like the Khoi, speak a {click language}?

answer: _San_ or _!Kung_ (accept _Bushmen_ or _Ju/'hoansi_; do not accept "Khoisan")
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Re: DI specific question discussion

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gaurav.kandlikar wrote:Agreed with Eric on the ribosomes TU. That was hella frustrating.
Is the ribosome referred to as a molecule? I believe Selene specifically chose that noun to help guide people away from negging with ribosome. She may have more to say about this question in a few days when she's done traveling, but I figured I'd get the Attention Must Be Paid train rolling.

-Seth
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Re: DI specific question discussion

Post by The Ununtiable Twine »

Grams's Go-Go Boots wrote:I didn't write or edit that question, but I am a little surprised it's looked at as such an impossible answer, since she could be the most important person in women's basketball history.
I think that this may have something to do with the fact that the media keeps reminding us about great players of men's sports on a constant basis, allowing the general public to know more about them. Even though she's great, her career certainly isn't as celebrated as some of her more famous male counterparts (in the media, at least), leading to people not knowing who she is or thinking they even have to know much about her. You have to hunt for Nancy Lieberman knowledge whereas if you watch SportsCenter for a year straight you will most certainly learn things about hundreds of male athletes and coaches that were equally or less important than Lieberman was. Naturally, you can also learn more about current female athletes in this way, as well. I don't remember the last time I saw Lieberman flashbacks on ESPN, it must have been at least five years ago.

EDIT: I feel like a tossup on Cheryl Miller would have been more appropriate for the competition, given that her career was prominent, you can give it away with Reggie being her little brother if you want, and she is still working for TNT as a sideline reporter. People are given plenty of opportunities to feel like they need to know who she is given that she still plays a reasonably visible role in basketball today. If she is out of the public eye for five years straight and her highlights aren't shown, she still remains just as important, however future quizbowlers are far less likely to know who she is.
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Re: DI specific question discussion

Post by Sima Guang Hater »

setht wrote:
gaurav.kandlikar wrote:Agreed with Eric on the ribosomes TU. That was hella frustrating.
Is the ribosome referred to as a molecule?-Seth
I've definitely heard it called that.
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Re: DI specific question discussion

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gaurav.kandlikar wrote:
theMoMA wrote:I was a bit surprised to see a tossup on the !Kung, let alone one that started off with what is probably the context in which most people would know them (Marshall Sahlins's Stone Age Economics). In my mind, it'd be a bit like starting a tossup on the Nuer with "E.E. Evans-Pritchard wrote a trilogy of works on this ethnic group." It confused me enough that I didn't buzz until the end.
Could I see this tossup with answerline? I too was thrown off by the Sahlins clue coming up so early in a tossup on the !Kung, convinced myself that the first clue may have applied to the Hadza, and then sat around like an idiot until Andrew picked it up. I don't know what sort of quizbowl world we live in where Hadza would seem like a reasonable answer to me, but hey, Ninurta happened.

Agreed with Eric on the ribosomes TU. That was hella frustrating.
I thought most people would know the Bushmen from The Gods Must Be Crazy (obviously not a good source of clues for an academic tossup on them, but it shows that there's plenty of clues easier than Sahlins).

Also, it seems pretty misleading to me to call the ribosome a molecule. I don't think editors should have to account for people answering with that given such a pronoun (though of course the clues should be tightened up).
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Re: DI specific question discussion

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The Ununtiable Twine wrote:EDIT: I feel like a tossup on Cheryl Miller would have been more appropriate for the competition
I'd buy a common-link tossup on that for a dollar.
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Re: DI specific question discussion

Post by Marble-faced Bristle Tyrant »

Ribosomes can be described with various terms like "organelle" or "molecule" depending on how strict your definitions are. For instance, my molecular teacher doesn't like calling it an organelle.
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Re: DI specific question discussion

Post by JamesIV »

A small point:

I take some issue with the bonus part that described Ramon Llull as "Spanish." Llull was born and died in the Kingdom of Majorca, and is usually considered Catalan. He wrote primarily in Latin and Catalan, and is considered the founding father of Catalan letters. A political entity called "Spain" did not come into existence until almost two centuries after his death (he died ca. 1315).

Again, not a huge deal, but Llull's status as the forefather of Catalan literature is basically the best-known thing about him, and Catalunya wasn't mentioned at all.
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Re: DI specific question discussion

Post by Sima Guang Hater »

Hey I was reading this tournament again and I want to complain about an absolutely awful question that still makes me mad.
This type of structure is preferentially stained by thiazole orange. A ribosomal frameshift event for HIV requires formation of this type of structure in messenger RNA. It forms readily when involving polypurine tracts and often forms through Hoogsteen interactions in the major groove. This type of structure is adopted by a protein that contains (*) proline and hydroxyproline. For 10 points—name this structure that was incorrectly predicted by Pauling for DNA and that is adopted by collagen.
ANSWER: _triple helix_
So going through the clues...

1. The thiazole orange clue I didn't know before, but upon looking it up, it appears to be a stain used to distinguish reticulocytes (red blood cell precusors that still have RNA and a nucleus) and platelets created in people with low platelet counts[1][2][3] by binding to residual RNA. Digging further shows that it binds to both single and double-stranded DNA [4][5]. One paper suggests that it binds to triplex and quadruplex DNA with high efficiency[6], but that doesn't really get you to the answer. A search for "thiazole orange triple helix" returns a few articles in which it is used to stain triple helices [7][8][9], but its fairly clear that this isn't some kind of canonical use for thiazole orange that everyone accepts.

The point of this is that the clue has to be a bijection - I should be able to get from thiazole orange to triple helix AND from triple helix to thiazole orange. This is clearly not the case here. An example of such a bijective clue is Tollens reagent. I can get from Tollens reagent to "silver mirror with aldehydes" AND vice versa, because this a common, well-accepted use of Tollens reagent. Had I heard of thiazole orange at all, I'd probably just flap my arms around and say "RNA? Reticulocytes?Those things are structures..." because that seems to be what its used for. The lesson is: use reverse clue lookup. It's helpful.

2. The HIV clue is actually a very well known one. There's a sequence element in HIV that forms a stem loop, which looks like this:

Image

When this RNA loops back on itself, it allows the ribosome to stutter when it translates, which is important for creating the HIV reverse transcriptase. In the literature, this element is most often called a stem loop [10][11]. What's even more damming is that there was one paper that said the stem-loop forms a "potential" triple helix[12], but this has been contradicted elsewhere[11][13][14] and a 2012 review calls it a bulged helix, with a figure showing two double helices [15].

So this clue is doubly frustrating. Not only is it outright wrong (or at the very least, a disputed fact), EVERY SINGLE paper I've cited calls this element a stem loop, because every possible structure it has IS a stem loop and it was originally discovered as a stem loop. I had near perfect information about this clue (I'd read [15], and this factoid appears in textbooks and so on), and I STILL couldn't get any points for it!

3. A basic literature search reveals that polypurine tracts don't necessarily form triple helices [16][17]. Some papers suggest that adding an exogenous probe can form a triple helix FROM a polypurine tract [18][19], but if this is what the question is going for it's 1. not clear from the phrasing, and 2. a really difficult and hard-to-recognize clue. Again, useless and misleading.

4. Hoogsteen base pairing is necessary for all kinds of nucleic acid secondary and tertiary structure, including quadruplexes and triple helices [20]. In quizbowl (and in life), you often see Hoogsteen pairing talked about in the context of G-quadruplexes formed in telomeres [21][22], though it sometimes comes up as a clue for triple helical DNA [23]. So this clue isn't uniquely identifying.

5. Now for the gettable clue. Not only are there zero actual clues about collagen (the one thing that everyone knows has a triple helix), the only clues you give are proline (which is unbuzzable - lots of proteins have proline) and hydroxyproline (which is a knee-jerk buzzword for collagen). This is incredibly suboptimal. Not only is a knowledgeable player whiplashed throughout the question trying to figure out what the hell to say, when the only identifiable, unique, and correct clue in this question appears, it's after power and it's a buzzer race. You could have easily mentioned the G-X-Y motif (which is really important to the collagen triple helix), osteogenesis imperfecta, Alport's syndrome, or any of a bounty of clues about collagen to make this a fair pyramid, but no, it all gets shot to hell on the hydroxylation of proline.

So, use reverse clue lookup [24]. Its very, very important. This question almost cost us a game against UVa, and that's not ok.

REFERENCES:

[1] http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1 ... 3/abstract
[2] http://www.sigmaaldrich.com/catalog/papers/1688494
[3] http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/2272158
[4] http://www.tataa.com/wp-content/uploads ... 9_1998.pdf
[5] http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/9404660
[6] http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/20329708
[7] http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3218511/
[8] http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19005602
[9] http://www.clemson.edu/chemistry/41.pdf
[10] http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC369415/
[11] http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC137970/
[12] http://www.pnas.org/content/99/8/5331.abstract
[13] http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC169958/ (see esp figure 5, which shows the top of the step loop as a double helix. This paper also calls it a tetraloop structure)
[14] http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/ar ... 3605003189 (see esp figure 8, which shows a structure consisting of a pair of double helices bridged by a purine bulge)
[15] http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3328590/ (see esp figure 2)
[16] http://www.nature.com/emboj/journal/v20 ... 93647a.pdf (figure 3 and 6 show a double helix)
[17] http://proteopedia.org/wiki/index.php/1n4l (this is a double helix)
[18] http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1 ... ed#preview
[19] http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/ar ... 8194901848
[20] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hoogsteen_base_pair
[21] Gaddis Round 8, Tossup 14
[22] Chicago Open 2006, Ferrari-Cohn packet, Bonus 21
[23] HFT 7 Round 7, Tossup 13
[24] viewtopic.php?f=21&t=13405&start=0
Last edited by Sima Guang Hater on Thu Sep 05, 2013 2:09 pm, edited 5 times in total.
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Auroni
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Re: DI specific question discussion

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FATALITY
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Re: DI specific question discussion

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Constructively, this question serves to illustrate the pitfalls of using academic articles to pick clues for science tossups. I know I've been guilty of this before, but this often results in non-unique, unhelpful clues.
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Re: DI specific question discussion

Post by setht »

The Quest for the Historical Mukherjesus wrote:Hey I was reading this tournament again and I want to complain about an absolutely awful question that still makes me mad.
This type of structure is preferentially stained by thiazole orange. A ribosomal frameshift event for HIV requires formation of this type of structure in messenger RNA. It forms readily when involving polypurine tracts and often forms through Hoogsteen interactions in the major groove. This type of structure is adopted by a protein that contains (*) proline and hydroxyproline. For 10 points—name this structure that was incorrectly predicted by Pauling for DNA and that is adopted by collagen.
ANSWER: _triple helix_
This question has problematic clues, which I should have caught and fixed, and I apologize for that.

That said, I wanted to note that reverse clue look-up was used in writing this question, and the clues were not picked semi-randomly from scientific articles. Reverse clue look-up is a fine idea and can help a lot with writing science questions, but it doesn't guarantee unimpeachable clues.

Also, I wanted to point out that the Hoogsteen pairing clue, when considered in its entirety, is in fact uniquely specifying: it is true that the fragment "it often forms through Hoogsteen interactions" is an ambiguous clue, but the full clue is "it often forms through Hoogsteen interactions in the major groove," and that last bit rules out quadruplexes.

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