Another priceless one - hope you'll enjoy it as much as I did...
Wherever else Britain might be failing, it still has the most
sophisticated sense of humour I've ever encountered :)
From: R.P.
Penguins under pressure win Ig Nobel for physicists. Artificial dog
testicles win prize for medicine.
Alok Jha, science correspondent Guardian Friday October 7, 2005
Ever wondered how far a penguin can fire waste from its anus? Or
whether humans can swim faster in water or in sugar syrup? Perhaps
even what frogs smell like when they are stressed?
Answers to these burning questions were among the 10 areas of work
celebrated at the Ig Nobel prizes at Harvard University last night.
The awards, a spoof on the Nobel prizes announced earlier this week, are
given for research which "cannot or should not be reproduced".
Marc Abrahams, editor of the Annals of Improbable Research and the man
behind the awards, said they "honour achievements that first make
people laugh, and then make them think".
Top billing went to the award for fluid dynamics, shared by Victor
Benno Meyer-Rochow of the International University Bremen and Jozsef
Gal of Lorand Eotvos University in Hungary "for using basic principles
of
physics to calculate the pressure that builds up inside a penguin".
In a videotaped acceptance speech, Dr Meyer-Rochow said the research
had started in 1993 when he led the first (and, so far, only) Jamaican
expedition to the Antarctic. Years later, while showing a group of
students pictures of the faeces-lined nests where penguins lived, he
was asked how the displays were created. "They get up, move to the edge
of
the nest, turn around, bend over and shoot," he said.
"The student who had asked the question blushed. The audience chuckled
and we got the idea to calculate what pressure is produced by a
penguin's pooh." On hand to award the prizes were a collection of real
Nobel laureates - Dudley Herschbach (chemistry, 1986), William
Lipscomb (chemistry, 1976), Sheldon Glashow (physics,1979), Robert
Wilson (physics, 1978) who greeted the winners with handshakes and
trumpet blasts.
The medicine prize went to Greg Miller of Missouri for his invention
of Neuticles - artificial replacement testicles for dogs which come in a
range of sizes. Neuticles allow your pet to "retain his natural look,
self-esteem and aid in the trauma associated with neutering", says
the company's website.
Brian Gettelfinger and Edward Cussler turned up wearing tiny swimming
trunks to claim this year's chemistry prize. They had tackled a
subject that even Isaac Newton tried, but failed, to get to the bottom
of, namely, would people be able to swim faster in water or in a sticky
syrup? (Turns out you can swim just as fast in either liquid). The
physics prize went to history's most patient team of scientists, who
have watched congealed tar drip through a funnel for almost 78 years.
The ceremony ended with the traditional paper plane throwing
competition, but there was one change: the man usually responsible for
sweeping up the planes from the stage, Harvard physicist Roy Glauber,
was absent, having been awarded this year's Nobel prize for
physics on Tuesday.
Dr Abrahams said the Ig Nobels were meant to poke fun at the
frustrationfaced by scientists in their daily work.
"Their job is to try and make sense of things that nobody else can
make any sense of," he said. "Persistence is a big part of it but
having a sense of humour about constant failure is a terrifically
useful thing
in that line of work." He ended the ceremony with the traditional call
to
researchers around the world: "If you didn't win an Ig Nobel prize
tonight - and especially if you did - better luck next year."
The winners
Physics: John Mainstone and the late Thomas Parnell of the University
of Queensland, for an experiment that began in the year 1927, in which a
glob of congealed black tar has been slowly dripping through a funnel
at a rate of around one drop every nine years.
Medicine: Greg A Miller of Missouri for inventing Neuticles -
artificial replacement testicles for dogs
Literature: The internet entrepreneurs of Nigeria, for using email to
distribute a bold series of short stories, thus introducing millions
of readers to a cast of rich characters, each of whom requires just a
small amount of money so as to obtain access to the great wealth they
will share with you.
Peace: Claire Rind and Peter Simmons of Newcastle University for
electrically monitoring the activity of a locust's brain cell while it
was watching selected highlights from the film "Star Wars".
Biology: An international team of scientists and perfumiers for
smelling and cataloguing the peculiar odours produced by 131 different
species of frogs when the frogs were feeling stressed.
Economics: Gauri Nanda of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology,
for inventing an alarm clock that runs away and hides, thus ensuring
that
people get out of bed, theoretically adding many productive hours
to the work day.
Nutrition: Yoshiro Nakamats of Tokyo for photographing and then
analysing every meal he has eaten over 34 years.
Chemistry: Edward Cussler of the University of Minnesota and Brian
Gettelfinger of the University of Minnesota and the University of
Wisconsin, for settling the scientific question: can people swim
faster in syrup or in water?
Agricultural history: James Watson of Massey University, New Zealand,
for his scholarly study, The Significance of Mr Richard Buckley's
Exploding Trousers.
Fluid dynamics: Victor Benno Meyer-Rochow of International University
Bremen, Germany, and the University of Oulu, Finland; and Jozsef Gal
of Lorand Eotvos University, Hungary, for using basic principles of
physics to calculate the pressure that builds up inside a penguin,
as detailed in their report Pressures Produced When Penguins Pooh -
Calculations on Avian Defecation.
--
Tamara P Duvall http://t-n-lace.net/
Lexington, Virginia, USA (Formerly of Warsaw, Poland)
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