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Posted: 12-10-2006 22:23 Post subject:

Re: hiccups, all you have to do is hold your breath for a while. Do I get a prize?

Posted: 12-10-2006 23:21 Post subject:

Posted: 13-10-2006 15:11 Post subject:

Posted: 05-10-2007 07:33 Post subject:

Sword swallowing study wins alternative Nobel prize
By Roger Highfield, Science Editor
Last Updated: 7:01pm BST 04/10/2007

A British radiologist who discovered that sword swallowers suffer "major complications" when they are distracted or while gulping down more than one blade has been awarded an alternative Nobel prize.

Brian Witcombe, a consultant radiologist at Gloucestershire Royal NHS Foundation Trust, has joined the pantheon of scientists whose research on "gay bombs", bottomless bowls of soup, giving jet lagged hamsters Viagra and stranger things besides have been deemed sufficiently quirky to win an "Ig Nobel".

Mr Witcombe attended the ceremony at Harvard University's Sanders Theatre before an audience of around 1200, with thousands more watching on the web.

The prizes were handed out by real laureates during the annual event produced by the science humour magazine, "Annals of Improbable Research".

With Dan Meyer of The Sword Swallowers Association International, Mr Witcombe was cited for his penetrating medical report "Sword Swallowing and Its Side Effects" that appeared in the British Medical Journal last Christmas.

They studied the fate of 46 sword swallowers. "Sore throats are common, particularly while the skill is being learnt or when performances are too frequent," they wisely observed.

"Sword swallowers without healthcare coverage expose themselves to financial as well as physical risk."

The physics prize went to Profs Lakshminarayanan Mahadevan of Harvard University and Enrique Cerda Villablanca of Universidad de Santiago de Chile, for studying how sheets become wrinkled.

Complementing this pioneering work was a census of all the mites, insects, spiders, crustaceans, bacteria, algae, ferns and fungi with whom we share our beds, which earned the biology prize for Prof Johanna van Bronswijk of Eindhoven University of Technology, The Netherlands.

And for her efforts to extract vanilla fragrance from cow dung, the chemistry prize was scooped by Mayu Yamamoto of the International Medical Centre of Japan.

A ice cream shop located near the Ig Nobel ceremony, Toscanini's Ice Cream, created a new ice cream flavour in honour, called "Yum-a-Moto Vanilla Twist."

The linguistics prize went to Juan Manuel Toro, Josep Trobalon and Núria Sebastián-Gallés of the University of Barcelona for their remarkable discovery that rats sometimes cannot tell the difference between a person speaking Japanese backwards and a person speaking Dutch backwards.

Glenda Browne of Blaxland, Australia, won the literature prize for her study of the word "the" - and of the many ways it causes problems for anyone who tries to put things into alphabetical order; the peace prize went to The Air Force Wright Laboratory, Dayton, Ohio, for instigating research on the so-called "gay bomb" to make enemy soldiers become sexually irresistible to each other; the nutrition prize was lapped up by Brian Wansink of Cornell University, for exploring the appetites of human beings, by feeding them with a self- refilling, bottomless bowl of soup; the economics prize went to Kuo Cheng Hsieh, of Taichung, Taiwan, for patenting a device that catches bank robbers by dropping a net over them; and the aviation prize to Patricia Agostino, Santiago Plano and Diego Golombek of Universidad Nacional de Quilmes, Argentina, for their discovery that Viagra aids jetlag recovery in hamsters.

http://tinyurl.com/33fxft

Very Happy

Posted: 05-10-2007 16:22 Post subject:

Posted: 03-10-2008 10:07 Post subject:

here we go again!

Solved: scientific riddles of flea hops, armadillo digs and lap dancers' tips
Britons gain plaudits at irreverent highlight of academic calendar

Ian Sample, science correspondent
The Guardian, Friday October 3 2008 Article history

The pride of the nation is secured. Last night, two Britons joined a long and prestigious list of Ig Nobel prizewinners at the annual awards ceremony at Harvard University.

The Ig Nobel for Literature was awarded for research into the different breeds of unpleasant character one might encounter in the workplace, while the Ig award for Nutrition went to scientists at Oxford University who proved stale crisps taste better when eaten to an accompaniment of crunchy sounds.

The Igs have become an irreverent highlight of the academic calendar, an annual exercise to celebrate research that makes people laugh first and think later. They are timed to coincide with the rather more lucrative and legitimate Nobels, which are awarded in Stockholm next week.

The ceremony is hosted by the tongue-in-cheek journal, Annals of Improbable Research, and is attended by real Nobel prizewinners and a 1,000-strong audience. This year's recipients were given 60 seconds to deliver their acceptance speech, a time limit enforced by an eight-year-old girl.

David Sims of the Cass Business School in London, whose paper You Bastard: A narrative exploration of the experience of indignation within organisations, won the literature prize, said: "I'm delighted. The whole ethos of the Ig Nobels is a wonderful way to make people think." The paper examines how people construct roles as clever bastards, devious bastards or bastard ex machina, and goes on to examine the mixture of joy and guilt of labelling someone as such.

Sims wrote the paper after puzzling how right-thinking people who often stressed the importance of appreciating others' arguments would give up and brand someone a bastard. "We are all novelists writing the next chapter of our life story and with bastards, we need to understand what kind of character they are trying to create," Sims said.

Charles Spence, professor of experimental psychology at Oxford University, was awarded the Ig for nutrition for his investigation into the gastronomical role of sound. In the study, volunteers ate crisps of varying freshness while wearing headphones.

As they ate, the sound of the crisp breaking was modified by a computer and played back to see if it changed their perception of the crisp's freshness. By making the crunch sounds louder, or by boosting the high frequencies, Spence made people rate the crisps 15% fresher.

The work led to a collaboration with Heston Blumenthal at the Fat Duck restaurant in Bray, Berkshire, who played diners the sound of crashing waves to improve the flavour of oysters, and sizzling bacon to enhance his egg and bacon ice cream. "I'm very happy to be receiving the award," said Spence, who is now testing why crisps come in such noisy packets.

The Ig Nobel prize for medicine was awarded to Dan Ariely at Duke University in North Carolina for a landmark study proving that costly placebos are more effective than cheap ones. Ariely's team told volunteers they were being given a new kind of painkiller, with some receiving an expensive one and others a much cheaper version.

Even though all of them received the same sugar pills, those who thought their pills were more expensive reported less pain when they were given small electric shocks.

"This is the proudest day of my life," said Arierly. "The Ig Nobels are humorous, but the work often examines things in real life, like why buttered toast is more likely to land face down."

Arierly said his work has serious implications for the medical industry, because many patients are told they can only have cheaper drugs, or have inexpensive-looking medication, which could undermine how effective the drugs are. While the active ingredients of the drug will help treat symptoms, often they work in tandem with the placebo effect, which triggers the body's own healing mechanisms.

Among other winners were the people of Switzerland who claimed the Ig Peace prize for adopting the legal principle that plants have dignity; Geoffrey Miller at the University of New Mexico who won the economics prize for showing lap dancers received more in tips when they were ovulating; and scientists in San Diego who showed that hair, string and almost anything else will become tangled given the chance, earning them the Ig award for physics.

Not all of the winners understood why their work had made people laugh. Marie-Christine Cadiergues, who won the prize for biology by proving the fleas on dogs jump higher than those on cats, said: "Despite appearing funny and maybe crazy and useless to some people, this was part of a larger work on the biology of fleas ... A better knowledge of flea biology can provide a better control and therefore help vets, pet owners and overall our favourite pets."

Toshiyuki Nakagaki at Hokkaido University in Japan was similarly nonplussed about receiving the Ig award for cognitive neuroscience, after showing that slime mould could navigate a simple maze. "I was wondering which aspect of our research attracted the Ig Nobel prize. How does the prize evaluate our research? We are always serious and don't know why they laugh once before thinking," Nakagaki said.

The real Nobel prizes are awarded next week, beginning with medicine on Monday.

And the winners are ...
Physics

Won by Dorian Raymer at Scripps Institute of Oceanography, California, for discovering why ropes, hair and cables get more knotted the longer they are. Rolling Eyes

Chemistry

Jointly awarded to Sharee Umpierre at the University of Puerto Rico for discovering Coke is a spermicide, and to Chuang-Ye Hong at Taipei Medical University for showing that it is not. Very Happy

Biology

Marie-Christine Cadiergues at the National Veterinary School in Toulouse for discovering that fleas jump higher on dogs than on cats.

Medicine

Dan Ariely at Duke University for demonstrating that expensive placebos are better painkillers than cheaper ones.

Economics

Geoffrey Miller at the University of New Mexico for discovering that lap dancers get larger tips when they are ovulating.

Archaeology

Astolfo Mello Araujo at the University of Sao Paulo in Brazil for measuring how the contents of an archaeological dig can be disrupted by the actions of an armadillo.

Cognitive neuroscience

Toshiyuki Nakagaki, at Hokkaido University in Japan, for discovering that amoeboid organisms can solve puzzles.

Literature

David Sims at Cass Business School, London, for discovering why there are bastards in the workplace.

Nutrition

Charles Spence at Oxford University for making crisps taste better by modifying the sound of their crunch.

Peace

The Swiss federal ethics committee on non-human biotechnology and the citizens of Switzerland for acknowedging the dignity of plant life.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/2008/oct/03/ignobel.awards

Posted: 03-10-2008 16:30 Post subject:

Posted: 02-10-2009 08:52 Post subject:

Here we go again! Very Happy

Gas mask bra traps Ig Nobel prize
By Victoria Gill
Science reporter, BBC News

Designers of a bra that turns into gas masks and a team who found that named cows produce more milk were among the winners of the 2009 Ig Nobel prizes.

The aim of the awards is to honour achievements that "first make people laugh and then make them think".

The peace prize went to a Swiss research team who determined whether it is better to be hit over the head with a full or empty bottle of beer.

The ceremony was organised by the magazine Annals of Improbable Research.

Catherine Douglas and Peter Rowlinson from the agriculture, food and rural development department of Newcastle University were the only UK recipients.

Dr Douglas, who was unable to attend the ceremony held at Harvard University in Cambridge, US, told BBC News that she was "thrilled" to have been selected and was a "big fan of the Ig Nobel awards".

She said that discovering cows with names were more prolific milk-producers emerged during research into improving dairy cow welfare.

The overall aim of the study was to reduce stress and fear by improving "the human-animal relationship".

"[This research] showed that the majority of UK dairy farmers are caring individuals who respect and love their herd," she said.

Dr Douglas dedicated the award to Purslane, Wendy and Tina - "the nicest cows I have ever known". Very Happy

The Ig Nobel Prizes were presented to the winners by genuine Nobel laureates.

Dr Elena Bodnar won the public health prize for the bra that, in an emergency, can be converted into two gas masks.

She demonstrated her invention and gave one to each of the Nobel laureates as a gift.

Professor Martin Chalfie, who won the Nobel prize for chemistry in 2008, was this year's prize in the "win a date with a Nobel laureate" contest.

Past winners also returned to take part in the celebrations. They included Kees Moeliker, the discoverer of homosexual necrophilia in the mallard duck, and Dr Francis Fesmire, who devised the digital rectal massage as cure for intractable hiccups.

Each new winner was permitted a maximum of 60 seconds to deliver an acceptance speech. The time limit was enforced by an intractable eight-year-old girl.

The evening also featured numerous tributes to the evening's theme of "Risk".

A 15-minute risk cabaret concert by the Penny-Wise Guys preceded the ceremony, during which the band paid special tribute to fraudster Bernie Madoff.

Appropriately, the prize for economics went to the executives of four Icelandic banks.

The governor of Zimbabwe's Reserve Bank received the prize for mathematics for printing bank notes with such a wide range of denominations.

The full list of winners:

Veterinary medicine: Catherine Douglas and Peter Rowlinson of Newcastle University, UK, for showing that cows with names give more milk than cows that are nameless.

Peace: Stephan Bolliger, Steffen Ross, Lars Oesterhelweg, Michael Thali and Beat Kneubuehl of the University of Bern, Switzerland, for determining whether it is better to be smashed over the head with a full bottle of beer or with an empty bottle.

Biology: Fumiaki Taguchi, Song Guofu and Zhang Guanglei of Kitasato University Graduate School of Medical Sciences in Sagamihara, Japan, for demonstrating that kitchen refuse can be reduced more than 90% in mass by using bacteria extracted from the faeces of giant pandas.

Medicine: Donald L Unger of Thousand Oaks, California, US, for investigating a possible cause of arthritis of the fingers, by diligently cracking the knuckles of his left hand but not his right hand every day for more than 60 years.

Economics: The directors, executives, and auditors of four Icelandic banks for demonstrating that tiny banks can be rapidly transformed into huge banks, and vice versa (and for demonstrating that similar things can be done to an entire national economy).

Physics: Katherine K Whitcome of the University of Cincinnati, Daniel E Lieberman of Harvard University and Liza J. Shapiro of the University of Texas, all in the US, for analytically determining why pregnant women do not tip over.

Chemistry: Javier Morales, Miguel Apatiga and Victor M Castano of Universidad Nacional Autonoma in Mexico, for creating diamonds from tequila.

Literature: Ireland's police service for writing and presenting more than 50 traffic tickets to the most frequent driving offender in the country - Prawo Jazdy - whose name in Polish means "Driving Licence".

Public Health: Elena N Bodnar, Raphael C Lee, and Sandra Marijan of Chicago, US, for inventing a bra that can be quickly converted into a pair of gas masks - one for the wearer and one to be given to a needy bystander.

Mathematics: Gideon Gono, governor of Zimbabwe's Reserve Bank, for giving people a simple, everyday way to cope with a wide range of numbers by having his bank print notes with denominations ranging from one cent to one hundred trillion dollars.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/8285380.stm

Posted: 04-10-2009 16:33 Post subject:

Posted: 02-10-2010 08:57 Post subject:

Ig Nobel for 'whale breathalyser'
By Jonathan Amos, Science correspondent, BBC News

A London-based scientist's use of a remote-control helicopter to get breath samples from whales has led to her being awarded an "Ig Nobel" Prize.

Karina Acevedo-Whitehouse's technique is used to collect gases and mucus exhaled by the giant mammals.

The tongue-in-cheek Ig Nobel awards for "improbable research" have become almost as famous as the real Nobels.

Other research lauded at the Igs ceremony included proof that germs tend to cling to bearded scientists.

Other slightly wacky science celebrated at the US ceremony included research that proved the symptoms of asthma could be treated by riding on a roller-coaster and wearing socks outside your shoes could reduce your chances of slipping on an ice path.

Dr Acevedo-Whitehouse, of the Zoological Society of London, was present at the Sanders Theater at Harvard University, US, to receive her award. Colleagues Agnes Rocha-Gosselin and Diane Gendron were also there.

Not to put it too finely, the trio collect "whale snot". They hang petri dishes under a mini-chopper and fly the vehicle over a surfacing whale just as it evacuates its blow-hole.

The exhaled gases and mucus blast the dishes which are then taken back to the lab to study the disease-causing micro-organisms carried by the animals.

The remarkable method of obtaining the samples was featured in the BBC series Oceans. You can see how it is done by watching the video at the top of this page.

Dr Acevedo-Whitehouse told BBC News she was delighted to receive the spoof honour: "I was slightly bemused at first, to be honest, but I think that it is important to recognize (and communicate) that science can be fun. My colleagues and I are actually quite proud to receive this award now. Beyond the actual results (which are actually very interesting) we certainly have had fun doing our whale-snot research!"

This was the 21st Ig Nobel ceremony. The awards are run by the science humour magazine Annals of Improbable Research. They are supposed to "first make people laugh, and then make them think".

All the research, bar some special prizes, is real and published in bona fide academic journals. As part of the fun, the prizes are also handed over by genuine Nobel Laureates.

As usual, UK-based scientists featured heavily among the winning teams.

"Usually when you are an eccentric, you get punished. But in Britain, if you are an eccentric, you're kind of celebrated," awards organiser Marc Abrahams told BBC News.

The full list of winners:

Engineering Prize: Karina Acevedo-Whitehouse (UK) and colleagues for perfecting a method to collect whale snot, using a remote-control helicopter.

Medicine Prize: Simon Rietveld (Netherlands) and colleagues for discovering that symptoms of asthma can be treated with a roller-coaster ride. Shocked

Transportation Planning Prize: Toshiyuki Nakagaki (Japan) and colleagues for using slime mould to determine the optimal routes for railroad tracks. Confused

Physics Prize: Lianne Parkin (New Zealand) and colleagues for demonstrating that, on icy footpaths in wintertime, people slip and fall less often if they wear socks on the outside of their shoes.

Peace Prize: Richard Stephens (UK) and colleagues for confirming the widely held belief that swearing relieves pain. Very Happy

Public health Prize: Manuel Barbeito (US) and colleagues for determining by experiment that microbes cling to bearded scientists. Cool

Economics Prize: Awarded to the executives and directors of Goldman Sachs, AIG, Lehman Brothers, Bear Stearns, Merrill Lynch, and Magnetar for creating and promoting new ways to invest money — ways that maximize financial gain and minimize financial risk for the world economy, or for a portion thereof. Rolling Eyes

Chemistry Prize: Eric Adams (US) and colleagues for disproving the old belief that oil and water don't mix. The research, supported by BP, was published under the title: "Review of Deep Oil Spill Modeling Activity Supported by the Deep Spill JIP and Offshore Operator's Committee". Cool

Management Prize: Alessandro Pluchino (Italy) and colleagues for demonstrating mathematically that organisations would become more efficient if they promoted people at random. Shocked

Biology Prize: Libiao Zhang (China) and colleagues for scientifically documenting fellatio in fruit bats. Embarassed

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-11447095

Posted: 02-10-2010 16:07 Post subject:

Posted: 02-10-2010 17:44 Post subject:

Posted: 20-09-2011 09:10 Post subject:

Ig Nobel awards: the triumph of silly science
Next week, the Ig Nobel awards recognise the most weirdest science around, says Victoria Lambert.
By Victoria Lambert
7:30AM BST 20 Sep 2011

Showered with paper aeroplanes, garlanded by admiring Nobel laureates, some of the world's quirkiest scientists will be honoured at a sell-out ceremony at Harvard University next week.

The 21st annual Ig Nobel Prizes, conferred by Annals of Improbable Research (AIR), have become one of the most coveted prizes in science. Bringing neither personal riches nor offers of future funding, the Ig Nobels do bestow a heavy dollop of cool on their winners who, collectively, seem to put the fizz in physics and the giggles in gigabytes.

Recent winners include a UK-Mexico collaboration, for perfecting a method to collect whale snot, using a remote-controlled helicopter; Dutch duo Simon Rietveld and Ilja van Beest for discovering that some forms of asthma can be treated with a roller-coaster ride; and a team from Otago University, New Zealand, for demonstrating that, on icy footpaths in winter, people slip and fall less often if they wear socks on the outside of their shoes.

British scientists traditionally fare well at the Ig Nobels (there are 10 categories covering similar disciplines to the Nobels, from chemistry and economics to peace, but also including public health, engineering, biology, and interdisciplinary research). In 2009, Catherine Douglas and Peter Rowlinson of Newcastle University won for revealing that cows with names give more milk than cows that are nameless. Howard Stapleton of Merthyr Tydfil, triumphed in 2006, for inventing an electro-mechanical teenager repellent (a device that makes annoying high-pitched noise designed to be audible to teenagers but not to adults). And in 2005, an award went to Claire Rind and Peter Simmons of Newcastle University (again) for electrically monitoring the activity of a brain cell in a locust that was being shown selected highlights of Star Wars. Shocked

If it all sounds like a lot of geeks getting together to let their long hair down, whip off their white coats and, over a glass of champagne, sort out some sticky issues (like Edward Cussler and Brian Gettelfinger, University of Minnesota, winners for the experiment: can people swim faster in syrup or in water?), you wouldn't be far wrong.

Organiser and inventor Marc Abrahams explains his motivation: "I became the editor of a science magazine (The Journal of Irreproducible Results), and suddenly was meeting lots of people who had done wonderfully loopy things – but it was clear that most of them would never earn any sort of recognition for what they'd done. So I decided to help out a bit. Thus was born the first Ig Nobel Prize ceremony, in 1991."

That first year saw Jacques Benveniste, controversial French immunologist, honoured for his demonstrating (to his own satisfaction, if no one else's) that water is able to "remember" events long after all trace of those events has otherwise vanished.

As the awards have grown, it is clear that what they do (more than honouring semi-obscure theoreticians) is to celebrate the humour intrinsic in much of science and many of its practitioners. Abrahams recognises this connection: "What scientists do is, by its nature, frustrating. They are trying to understand things that no one else has managed to understand. Much of the time they will fail at this, but occasionally they will succeed, and maybe change the world. If you know that your job inevitably involves living through lots of failures, it helps to have a sense of humour about yourself.

"When a scientist makes a really good, unexpected discovery, everyone else's first reaction is going to be laughter: how can this discovery be true? And then they see that yes, it's true, and pretty soon everyone thinks it's ordinary. It's much better that people laugh at a new discovery, and think about it, than attack it from the off."

This, perhaps, is the true charm of the awards: they make the public smile – and then think. Simon Singh, the author known for making scientific topics accessible to a wide audience (his latest book is Trick or Treatment? Alternative Medicine on Trial), says: "I like the Ig Nobels. They are generally a good thing, linking wacky and straight science."

He does warn that some people misinterpret the awards, because occasionally they drift into irony – such as the 2010 economics prize, to "the executives and directors of Goldman Sachs, AIG, Lehman Brothers, Bear Stearns, Merrill Lynch, and Magnetar for creating and promoting new ways to invest money – ways that maximise financial gain and minimise financial risk for the world economy, or for a portion thereof".

In 2004, the Vatican was a winner "for outsourcing prayers to India". No wonder it is difficult to tell whether the 2008 prize is laughing at, or with, the University of New Mexico team for discovering that professional lap dancers earn higher tips when they are ovulating.

"It can be a bit confusing. At one end, they cover serious, if wackily presented science, and at the other, they can be mocking. So some people think they don't just recognise silly but bad science. However, if I was awarded one, I'd be honoured," says Singh.

Dr Richard Stephens, senior lecturer in the Department of Psychology at Keele University, made the podium last year for proving that swearing relieves pain. "They do pre-warn you so you can decide whether to go or not," says Dr Stephens. "I'd heard of the Ig Nobels and thought it was cool. My wife and daughter came, too."

In fact, his wife and daughter partly inspired the research, which was co-authored by some of his undergraduates. "Partly I was inspired by DIY mishaps, but I was also interested in why women swear in childbirth, as my wife did. I remember the midwife telling me it was normal. My work found that swearing is the language we use in times of strong emotions and pain."

He thinks the Ig Nobels encourage students. "If they portray science in a humorous way, that can only be a good thing.
"It hasn't led to new collaborations or extra funding. But it's seen as a bit cool among your peers," he says.

Dr Gareth Jones of the University of Bristol (winner, 2010, for scientifically documenting fellatio in fruit bats) is also grateful. "Yes, I'm proud of my Ig Nobel. Humour is a valuable way of popularising science."
And he points out: "Many of the prizes are awarded for serious science. My own work on fellatio in fruit bats led to feedback from members of the American Association for the Advancement of Science about female mate-choice strategies, and whether animals experience the equivalence of 'pleasure' in humans.

"Andre Geim from Manchester, who won the 2000 Ig Nobel Prize in Physics, went on to win the 2010 Nobel Prize in Physics for his research on graphene."

Marc Abrahams confesses his favourites in the past have been British. "Very British, in fact. The study, called 'Courtship Behaviour of Ostriches Towards Humans Under Farming Conditions in Britain' is one, and another is the medical report (in The Lancet) called 'A Man Who Pricked His Finger and Smelled Putrid for Five Years'."

Perhaps the Ig Nobels are, in fact, an experiment in their own right: to see why, when some scientists are looking at the stars, others are stuck staring in the gutter, like the 2010 Transportation Planning Prize winners from Japan and the UK, honoured for their work using slime mould to determine the optimal routes for railroad tracks.

On Thursday, September 29, genuine Nobel laureates will hand the prizes to the winners, including the recipient of the Win-a-Date-with-a-Nobel-Laureate Contest. But whoever wins shouldn't get too excited, warns Dr Stephens – you don't go home with a golden trophy. "They create a unique object out of cheap materials each year. Mine was a plaque, a bit like a petri dish with three bacteria-like creatures made of packing foam attached. My daughter christened them 'Ig' 'Nobel' and 'Award'. You're supposed to hang them in the loo, but mine's on a shelf somewhere."

Full list of previous years' winners: http://improbable.com/ig/winners/

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/science/science-news/8775127/Ig-Nobel-awards-the-triumph-of-silly-science.html

Posted: 20-09-2011 17:54 Post subject:

Next week? That time of year already? Looking forward to it, there's always a good article in the FT about these awards.

Posted: 30-09-2011 08:08 Post subject:

Beetle's beer bottle sex wins Ig Nobel Prize
By Jonathan Amos, Science correspondent, BBC News

That's right, certain Australian beetles will try to copulate with discarded beer bottles, but they have to be of the right type - brown ones with bobbly bits on them.
This fascinating observation made almost 30 years ago has finally landed entomologists Darryl Gwynne and David Rentz with an Ig Nobel Prize.

The Igs are the "alternative" version to the rather more sober Nobel awards announced in Sweden next week.

Other recipients this year of the prizes run by the science humour magazine Annals of Improbable Research included the mayor of Vilnius in Lithuania, Arturas Zuokas.
He was honoured with the Ig Peace Prize for demonstrating that the problem of illegally parked luxury cars could be solved by squashing them with an armoured tank. Very Happy

The Chemistry Prize went to an inventive Japanese team that worked out how to use wasabi (pungent horseradish) in a fire alarm system. The group even has a patent pending on its idea.

Understanding why discus throwers get dizzy was the topic of the study that won the Physics Prize. Rolling Eyes

The American awards were handed out on Thursday at Harvard University's Sanders Theatre, in what has become down the years a slightly chaotic but fun event where people throw paper planes and a little girl berates the winners.

Being given an Ig is nowadays regarded as something to be proud of, which may explain why seven of the 10 winners this year travelled to the ceremony at their own expense. Receiving their Ig from a real Nobel Laureate - seven of them were in attendance - probably added to the sense of achievement.

"I'm a great believer in communicating science to non-scientists and I think humour is a good way of doing that; and for that reason I think the Ig Nobels are very positive," Professor Darryl Gwynne told BBC News.
His and David Rentz' study of buprestid beetles began by accident one morning on a field expedition in Western Australia when they found the insects trying to mate with brown "stubbies" left by the side of the road.

"It was just co-incidental that my area of research was Darwinian sexual selection and how sex differences evolve, and here was a classic example taking place in front of my eyes where males were making mating errors.
"It was very obvious the beetles were trying to mate. These beetles have enormous genitalia, and they're large to start with - over two inches long. "The sad thing was that these beetles were dying; they wouldn't leave the bottles alone. They'd fall off them exhausted.
"It was almost certainly the visual colour - the bottle looked like a giant female. And also in the reflectance patterns - there were stipples on the bottles that resembled marks on the females' wing covers."

etc...

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-15117051