Going From Despair to Belief Trivia Quiz

Answer: spider

Spiders are a ubiquitous feature of life on Earth, with over 50,000 species in all kinds of land habitats across all continents except Antarctica. Naturally, there is significant variation across species, but they generally can inject venom from their fangs and extrude silk web from their spinnerets. Nearly all spider species are carnivorous, subsisting on insects, other spiders, and occasionally larger animals like birds and lizards.

It is well known that spiders are part of the arachnid class, distinct from insects. In fact, spiders and insects only share the same kingdom (Animalia) and phylum (Arthropoda), differing at the class, order, family, genus and species levels. Their last common ancestor existed a few hundred million years ago, and they have evolved quite distinct anatomies in that time. Insects are actually more closely related to crustaceans such as crabs, prawns, and lobsters, than they are to spiders.

Answer: pride

A "collective noun" is a word that refers to a collection of items or animals. Taking the answer as an example, a "pride of lions" is a more flowery way of referring to a "group of lions". Once referenced, one can refer to "the pride" without needing to add "of lions" in subsequent mentions.

When collective nouns are used to refer to a group of animals, they can also be called "terms of venery". These terms arose from French and English hunting tradition in the Middle Ages, where it became fashionable to use unique words to describe the same feature in different animals. This is also how English ended up with several ways to refer to solid animal waste, such as dung, pats, muck, droppings, guano and scat. Contemporaneous lists of terms of venery, such as the list included in the 1486 "Boke of Seynt Albans" (Book of Saint Albans), ran to over 100 different animals, many of which remain in popular use in modern English.

I have mixed feelings about collective nouns. On one hand, the ones with a long history of universal use (I hope we can agree that "pride of lions", found in the "Boke of Seynt Albans", falls into this category) add a little variety and whimsy to the English language. When they are universally recognised, they can reinforce which animal is bring referenced and highlight their difference from other animals. They sometimes even describe an important feature of the animals being referenced, such as a "colony" of ants describing their social structure, and a "swarm" of bees describing how they move together.

On the other hand, collective nouns are often redundant, adding no extra meaning that a generic term such as "group" or "herd" does not already imply. They can imply personalities and traits that animals don't really have, leading to popular misconceptions (e.g., a "parliament of owls" implies a level of intelligence beyond other birds that is simply inaccurate). They can be difficult to learn and retain, particularly for adult language learners. Many of the less recognised terms feel inauthentic; an arbitrary term made up for no reason other than to exist as a trivia question (which might have been fine, if there weren't so often multiple competing terms for the same animal).

Answer: drip

The origin of "drip" as a synonym for cool is hazy, but early usage is noted in early 2000s African American hip hop culture, where someone might have been described as "dripping" in money, luxury clothing and jewellery. This would be abbreviated into "drip", which could describe the coolness of a person, or perhaps the clothes or jewellery that adorned them. Mainstream use of the term emerged after prominent music artists brought it to broader attention, such as the rapper Gunna who released multiple "Drip Season" mixtapes, and Cardi B with her 2018 song "Drip".

I am very far removed from having any amount of "drip", preferring bland clothes and not caring much for style or fashion. Still, there is something so endearing to me about phrases like "new drip just dropped at Target" and "I love your drip, queen".

Answer: rip

Also called a rip current, rips are currents that arise at beaches with breaking waves. They allow water breaking on the shore to flow back away from the shore, concentrating in deeper channels that give the least resistance. They travel at right angles to the beach (i.e. out to sea). Once they pass the breaking waves, they tend to disperse. They are strongest at the surface where there is less resistance.

Rips can usually be spotted from the shore by observing their visible characteristics. Though it varies depending on the geography of each beach, they may look like a flat section of water with breaking waves on either side, a river of foam extending from the shore, water of a darker colour due to suspended sediment, and sometimes even floating debris is visible being pushed away from the shore.

Rips can travel at speeds anywhere up to 2.5 metres (8.2 feet) per second, which is faster than any human can swim. Thus they pose a significant threat to bathers who are not wise to their existence and don't know how to recognise them or respond if caught in one. Thankfully, they do not actually suck people or objects under the surface.

Because rips eventually dissipate fairly close to shore, someone stuck in one can easily float or tread water as the rip takes them out, until they are past the breakers and out of the rip. They can then swim over to the nearby waves, which will help move them back towards the shore. This technique can be expedited by calmly swimming parallel to the shore while the rip is dragging oneself out. It is recommended not to swim against the current, as this will usually not be successful, and will only increase fatigue and waste energy.

While the strategies described above are invaluable to know, it is still very dangerous to get caught in a rip, and avoiding them is always the best course of action. Rips are responsible for a large number of deaths across the world each year, and even more near-misses and rescues. Even confident swimmers are not advised to swim outside designated safe areas on patrolled beaches. If one is not a confident swimmer and cannot confidently stay afloat, or is prone to panic in the event of getting caught in a rip, they should never enter the water on unpatrolled beaches. With that said, some experienced water users such as surfers, body boarders, divers, and kayakers can use rips as a rapid way to get beyond the breaking waves.

Answer: pi

The number "pi" has legendary status within mathematics, broadly seen as its poster child by the wider community. Simply the ratio between a circle's circumference and its diameter, it has turned out to appear in widely disparate branches of mathematics, with numerous curious properties.

One such property is its transcendence (the term used to describe a number that is transcendental). Described in a simple (though not mathematically rigorous) way, this means that it cannot be a solution of "x" in an algebraic polynomial that is equal to zero, e.g., 5x^2 + 6x - 9 = 0 or x^3 -2x^2 + 9 = 0. This means it is also irrational, i.e. it cannot be written as a fraction of two whole numbers (or more accurately, two integers). In turn, this means that its digits never repeat, which means that every single positive whole number is found somewhere within its endless decimals, no matter how high. You can find your age, the year you were born, the attendance of the latest FIFA World Cup match, the population of Guatemala, and even the number of atoms in the universe, all hidden within those digits somewhere. There are many tools online that allow you to search for such strings of digits in pi.

A popular approximation of pi is 22/7, which is just 0.04% higher than the actual value of pi. This is enough degrees of accuracy for many practical applications, though it falls short when high precision is required. There are several methods one can employ to find pi to any number of digits, though more and more computational power is required to reach deeper and deeper. Over 300 trillion digits have been calculated, and counting.

Radians are the SI unit for angle, rather than the "degrees" used in common practice. One radian is defined as the angle that produces an arc of a circle equal its radius, which turns out to be around 57.30 degrees. 30 degrees is pi/6 radians, 90 degrees is pi/2 radians, 180 degrees is pi radians, while 360 degrees is 2*pi radians. We use 360 degrees for a full revolution because in our base 10 number system it is divisible by far more numbers than a round number like 100 or 1000 is. It has 24 factors, including every number from 1 to 10 except for 7, which means more calculations involve only whole numbers, making computation far easier. It may seem silly to do away with such a simple but effective unit for angles, but radians are preferred in more advanced mathematics, where angles involving simple fractions of pi become much more common.

Answer: I

The thyroid is a hormone producing gland, found in the upper neck in humans. Its primary role is to produce T4 and T3, the two thyroid hormones. These are responsible for controlling the rate of metabolism throughout the body. The thyroid also produces calcitonin, which acts in opposition to parathyroid hormone to lower calcium levels in the blood.

Iodine is a chemical element with symbol "I" and atomic number 53. It is the heaviest stable element of the halogen group, which contains the most reactive non-metals. Iodine-127 is the only stable isotope, accounting for almost 100% of naturally occurring iodine on Earth. However, dozens of radioactive isotopes from Iodine-108 to Iodine-147 have been synthesised, with half-lives varying from nanoseconds to millions of years.

In the body the twain shall meet, as iodine is a critical component of the T3 and T4 thyroid hormone molecules. Though it has some other uses in the body, 70-80% of the body's total iodine is found in the thyroid gland at any one time. This has several implications in thyroid disease and its management.

Firstly, iodine deficiency is the most common cause of hypothyroidism (underactive thyroid) worldwide. This can cause a range of symptoms for the sufferer, including weight gain, fatigue, constipation, cold intolerance, cognitive impairment, and many more. Even worse, when it affects pregnant or breastfeeding women, it can lead to permanent impairment of brain development in the baby. Thankfully, this problem can be mitigated by the cheap and simple solution of adding iodine into table salt and other foods such as flour and bread.

Secondly, the ravenous uptake of iodine by the thyroid gland can be exploited through ingenious methods in healthcare:

In a radioactive iodine uptake test (RAIU), a low dose of the radioactive isotope iodine-123 is administered via an oral capsule or fluid. A scintillation counter is used to measure the radiation emitted by the iodine that has reached the thyroid at 4-6 hours and at 24 hours. The pattern and amount of uptake can help differentiate between different types of thyroid disease such as thyroiditis, Graves' disease and toxic nodules.

Radioactive iodine-131 is administered to treat conditions including hyperthryoidism (overactive thyroid) and thyroid cancer. Given at higher doses than those used in a RAIU test, and with a longer half-life than iodine-123, it allows selective destruction of thyroid cells without requiring a surgical procedure. Patients who have undergone this treatment shed radioactive material for many weeks afterwards, meaning they must isolate and take precautions until the radiation levels have decreased to a safe level.

Finally, non-radioactive iodine-127 in the form of potassium iodide is used in radiation emergencies. When taken in large doses, it saturates the thyroid so it cannot absorb any more iodine. This impairs the absorption of radioactive iodine after exposure to nuclear fallout. This is particularly important in children, young adults, and pregnant and breastfeeding women, where a large dose of radioactive iodine can lead to hypothyroidism and thyroid cancer.

Answer: Li

Lithium is a chemical element with symbol "Li" and atomic number 3. It is the lightest element in the alkali metal group, a highly reactive group of metals analogous to the halogens we saw with iodine. It reacts strongly when exposed to water, even water vapour in the atmosphere. It is so soft it can be cut with a knife. Being so light, it is one of only four elements created in the Big Bang.

Various salts of lithium have been used as mood-stabilising medications to treat mania in bipolar disorder, with lithium carbonate being most favoured in modern medicine. Australian psychiatrist John Cade first used lithium to treat mania in 1948, marking the first time medication was used successfully to treat symptoms of mental illness rather than for sedation. This slowly led to a paradigm shift in psychiatry, where psychoactive medications allowed more patients to be treated in the community, away from institutionalisation in mental asylums.

As with most psychoactive medications, we don't have a clear explanation for lithium's effectiveness in treating mania. It interacts with several molecular targets within the brain, with the sum total effect being a stabilisation of mood. There are numerous side effects such as increased urination, tremor, and thirst, and it can cause birth defects when taken during pregnancy. It can also accumulate to a toxic level if taken in overdose, or if its clearance is suddenly impaired by a drop in kidney function, meaning it requires careful blood level monitoring. For these reasons, newer mood stabilisers with better side effect and safety profiles tend to be favoured by modern prescribers, though lithium still has its place in modern psychiatry.

Answer: lie

Lying is a surpisingly rich area of the human experience. Children typically begin to lie (very poorly) around 2-3 years of age, developing further skill and perhaps being able to get away with it on occasion by age 4-6. While it is second nature to most adults, lying requires a combination of multiple executive cognitive functions, including working memory, impulse control, and theory of mind (understanding that other people's thoughts differ from one's own). In fact, lying at a young age is a fairly reliable predictor of intelligence and cognitive abiltiy later in life.

There are dozens of ways in which one can lie, depending on the context and intention. Some ways that have been more topical in recent years include:

* Misinformation - incorrect or misleading information, with or without malicious intent or knowledge of the falsehood of the information

* Disinformation - as above, but knowingly false and with the conscious intent to deceive

* Nonsense - things said without regard for veracity or lack thereof, as the speaker is more interested in creating their own reality without any concern for actual reality.

Of course, there are many contexts where lying can be seen as justified and acceptable. White lies are trivial lies told to be polite or avoid hurting someone's feelings, though they can sometimes harm by fostering distrust and uncertainty. Similarly, April Fools' and similar prank days are a worldwide phenomenon, with mixed opinions on its appropriateness.

And I promise, I didn't knowingly lie in writing this interesting information!

Answer: bile

Bile is a yellow-green fluid comprised of 98% water, and a sprinkling of other constituents including bile salts, bilirubin, fatty acids and cholesterol. The liver continuously produces bile, which trickles into the gallbladder via the bile ducts. Here it is stored, becoming 3-10 times more concentrated. When fatty food enters the digestive tract, the hormone cholecystokinin is released, which stimulates the gallbladder to contract. This pushes bile out of the gallbladder and into a different path of bile ducts, through the pancreas and into the duodenum (first part of the small bowel).

Bile is very important in the digestion of fats. It acts as a surfactant, emulsifying lipids into small droplets called micelles. These increase the surface area for the pancreatic enzyme lipase, which breaks down fats into monoglycerides and fatty acids that the body can absorb and use for energy and cell building. The absorption of fat-soluble vitamins (A, D, E and K) is quite reliant on this process.

Bile components quite commonly precipitate into gallstones within the gallbladder. Gallstones often exist without causing any trouble, generating no outward signs of symptoms. However, they can cause multiple issues if they get stuck within or otherwise block the bile ducts, including repeated episdoes of abdominal pain (biliary colic), and inflammation of the gallbladder, bile ducts, and/or pancreas. This often necessitates surgical removal of the gallbladder (cholecystectomy). While one can survive without a gallbladder, patients who have had a cholecystectomy have difficulty digesting fats, and must follow a low-fat diet and take care to avoid fat-soluble nutrient deficiencies.

Answer: belie

"Belie" is an uncommon word in modern English. Its first known usage recorded over 1000 years ago in Middle English. Its roots lie further back in linguistic history, in Proto-Germanic. Thus we find the similar Dutch word "beliegen" (to lie about, tell lies) and the German word "belugen" (to lie to someone).

Though it is somewhat obscure in everyday conversational English, the word "belie" can be used to great effect in certain contexts. Some examples that help clarify its usage and meaning are:

"Her nervous laugh belied the confidence she aimed to display." (contradiction)
"The new evidence belies the notion that pigs can't fly." (contradiction)
"His medical tremor belies the fact that he is actually feeling calm and at ease." (false impression)