Things that you might or might not want to know: The 2019 Ig Nobel Prize Winners The 2019 Ig Nobel Prizes were awarded at the 29th First Annual Ig Nobel Prize ceremony, on Thursday, September 12, 2019, at Harvard’s Sanders Theatre. The ceremony was webcast. MEDICINE PRIZE [ITALY, THE NETHERLANDS] Silvano Gallus, for collecting evidence that pizza might protect against illness and death, if the pizza is made and eaten in Italy. Pizza is healthy, if you eat in Italy... ==================================== MEDICAL EDUCATION PRIZE [USA] Karen Pryor and Theresa McKeon, for using a simple animal-training technique— called “clicker training” —to train surgeons to perform orthopedic surgery. How to train your surgeon like you train your dog... ===================================== BIOLOGY PRIZE [SINGAPORE, CHINA, GERMANY, AUSTRALIA, POLAND, USA, BULGARIA] Ling-Jun Kong, Herbert Crepaz, Agnieszka Górecka, Aleksandra Urbanek, Rainer Dumke, and Tomasz Paterek, for discovering that dead magnetized cockroaches behave differently than living magnetized cockroaches. Terra Formers, here we come... ===================================== ANATOMY PRIZE [FRANCE] Roger Mieusset and Bourras Bengoudifa, for measuring scrotal temperature asymmetry in naked and clothed postmen in France. Is your left or right ball colder? Wait, why are you stripping?! Is this a new postal service? - Horny housewife ======================================= CHEMISTRY PRIZE [JAPAN] Shigeru Watanabe, Mineko Ohnishi, Kaori Imai, Eiji Kawano, and Seiji Igarashi, for estimating the total saliva volume produced per day by a typical five-year-old child Ew... your kid salivated on my cardigan. You better pay for it. ========================================= ENGINEERING PRIZE [IRAN] Iman Farahbakhsh, for inventing a diaper-changing machine for use on human infants. Spoiler We are short on people, who is going to change the diapers of new borns ========================================== ECONOMICS PRIZE [TURKEY, THE NETHERLANDS, GERMANY] Habip Gedik, Timothy A. Voss, and Andreas Voss, for testing which country’s paper money is best at transmitting dangerous bacteria. And then, we will send the money back to their respective countries without sterilization... =========================================== PEACE PRIZE [UK, SAUDI ARABIA, SINGAPORE, USA] Ghada A. bin Saif, Alexandru Papoiu, Liliana Banari, Francis McGlone, Shawn G. Kwatra, Yiong-Huak Chan, and Gil Yosipovitch, for trying to measure the pleasurability of scratching an itch. You scratch me, and I scratch you... *Starts moaning* =========================================== PSYCHOLOGY PRIZE [GERMANY] Fritz Strack, for discovering that holding a pen in one’s mouth makes one smile, which makes one happier — and for then discovering that it does not. Holding a p*n*s does though... ============================================ PHYSICS PRIZE [USA, TAIWAN, AUSTRALIA, NEW ZEALAND, SWEDEN, UK] Patricia Yang, Alexander Lee, Miles Chan, Alynn Martin, Ashley Edwards, Scott Carver, and David Hu, for studying how, and why, wombats make cube-shaped poo. Isn't that wombat soo cute? Ooh, even it's poo is so cute... *picks up shit* ============================================ FYI, my mother kept complaining that i keep cracking my knuckles, and that my knuckle bones will shatter. Until I saw a news about a scientist who cracked only his left knuckles for 60 years to prove the rumour false.
At least she ain't breaking your arms or your shaft. Does everyone not know the art of tempering flesh and bones? The art of ironing flesh? The art jet streaming bodily fluids? The art of screeching vibrations? The art of blah blah blah~
lol I guess that depends on the way you do it then. I had a phase where I cracked my knuckles all the time and now the first joints of both my middle fingers aren't quite like what they were before xD
Well, there is one time my bones hurt from too much cracking to the point that it hurts even by just moving it.
And then there was this: Ig Nobel Prize Winner Dr. Elena Bodnar demonstrates her invention (a brassiere that can quickly convert into a pair of protective face masks) assisted by Nobel laureates Wolfgang Ketterle (left), Orhan Pamuk, and Paul Krugman (right). EDIT: when guys are caught in possesion of bra, they can say it is to prepare for haze.
Differences of behavior observed between dead magnetized cockroaches and living magnetized cockroaches : The dead magnetized cockroaches are significally less active : their feelers are immobile and they don't run when prodded. The dead magnetized cockroaches have less appetite and have constipation issues as they didn't try to eat, even when they were partially immerged in food, and didn't produce any poo during the time of observation. The dead magnetized cockroaches seems to enjoy sulking all day long as they stayed prone in a corner of their box during the time of observation, moving only when the box was shaken vigourously. The dead magnetized cockroaches seem to be more resistant to heat and/or pain as they didn't react when they were put on fire after being sprinkled with high octane gasoline. The dead magnetized cockroaches seems to have sucidal tendencies as they didn't try to escape when predated by Carl, our intern (who should now remember that I prefer my coffee with only half of a sugar cube, not a full one). ... The rest of the report is partially redacted, but seems about unsuccesfull attemps to make zombie cockroaches, in order to test behavior discrepancies between dead, undead and living magnetized cockroaches.
It so happens that I worked for one of the professors who did the dead cockroaches work. Not the same time and not even close to that job and not even related in the minion way? Sheeh be quiet! The cockroaches work is really so much fun. Ig Nobels are supposed to be research that first makes you laugh, and then makes you think. And because these are physics people who have almost no bio background, everything was learnt on the job. Not to mention that physics experiments are the easy to do type where we can always get superbly reliable and great results, whereas bio people are forced to make compromises. This means that there were quite many poor cockroaches being subjected to their nefarious experiments, which they are very precise in telling you exactly how they are treated and how they also helped figure out what ethical stuff needs to be done at least, say. The actual results are that the magnetisation of cockroaches differ if they are alive v.s. dead. That is, they took cockroaches, clean them and breed them. Then put them in the fridge. Definitely do not repeat the one case where they wanted to quickly cool down a cockroach for a few minutes, only to forget the poor cockroach in the freezer for the next few months. Cockroaches are cold blooded, so they will literally get so lethargic that they won't eat the food given to them when they are cooled down to fridge temperatures. Take the cockroaches out and quickly blast them to a high magnetic field for a while. After they are magnetised, put them to the magnetic field sensor, that senses the magnetisation they acquire. Their magnetisation will drop with time. Repeat a few times. Finally, because you cannot compare different cockroaches, kill them and do the same tests. The RATE of decay of magnetisation differs. That is the discovery. Half the lecture is describing the hilarious detours and trying out other animals that don't have the same behaviour at all. They even talked about how to market this result. But they did it too late---they already killed and threw away the cockroaches, when they realised that they should have tried to see if the dead/alive cockroach would stick to the fridge door. So they faked one in post-production just for the laughs, and then computed what would happen, and stuck a huge disclaimer that they know that this is an exaggeration, in their cases neither type will stick to the fridge door. Science is dam difficult to do, but sometimes something this ridiculously fun comes by.
Do you start to look at cockroaches in your neighborhood with fond nostalgia or are you still going to suffocate it with insecticide?
Not me. Didn't do the experiment. Totally going for the kill here. But I think the lead profs did say that they have a better appreciation for this critter. But they themselves killed all the samples, so I suppose they will kill too. After all, there is no lack of plastic versions. They'll throw them out like rock stars, to audiences that simply can't be phased by anything. Partly because the crowd is so old the physical strain might activate ambulances. Still more useful than your face. These are typically properly useful science that have been joke-ified to scratch the scientific rebel itch. Unless you are the type to think that inventing, say, the multi-billion industry of GPS is useless. In which case, my condolences to your parents for having birthed a certified useless child.
Breakthroughs are built upon small insignificant findings. Unrelated discoveries can give scientist that "Eureka!!" moment that allows them to make breakthroughs. And without motivation to research on these so called "useless" findings, we would not have a vast library of knowledge and reference that we can rely on to spark greater, better breakthroughs. Just like how doing origami allows people to build stuff ranging from as small as toys to things like the folding of space equipments...