Oct

The 2007 Ig Noble Awards

Posted by Catfish as science

The Ig Noble Awards are given out every year for achievements in “silly” science. The awards are meant to encourage and celebrate the more peculiar and unique branches of scientific inquiry. Previous years have awarded the big prize to ” a centrifugal-force birthing machine that spins pregnant women at high speed and Britain’s official six-page specification for how to make a cup of tea.” (link) Here is the list of winner from the ceremony held at Harvard University last night . The winners for 2007:

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Aviation: Patricia V. Agostino, Santiago A. Plano and Diego A. Golombek, for discovering that hamsters recover from jetlag more quickly when given Viagra.
Biology: Johanna E.M.H. van Bronswijk, for taking a census of all the mites and other life forms that live in people’s beds.
Chemistry: Mayu Yamamoto for extracting vanilla flavor from cow dung.
Economics: Kuo Cheng Hsieh, for patenting a device to catch bank robbers by ensnaring them in a net.[4]
Linguistics: Juan Manuel Toro, Josep B. Trobalon and Nuria Sebastian-Galles, for determining that rats sometimes can’t distinguish between Japanese, played backward, and Dutch, played backward.
Literature: Glenda Browne, for her study of the word “the”. [5]
Medicine: Dan Meyer and Brian Witcombe, for investigating the side-effects of swallowing swords.
Nutrition: Brian Wansink, for investigating people’s appetites by secretly feeding them a self-refilling bowl of soup.
Peace: The Air Force Wright Laboratory in Dayton, Ohio, for research and development of a “gay bomb,” which would cause enemy troops to become sexually attractive to each other.
Physics: L. Mahadevan and Enrique Cerda Villablanca for their theoretical study of how sheets become wrinkled.