Guide

Gli IgNobel 2007!!!
E’ tempo di consegna dei prestigiosi Premi Nobel, quest’anno anticipata dalla consegna degli altrettanto autorevoli Premi Ig-Nobel, riconosciuti alle ricerche e scoperte scientifiche piu’ originali e bizzarre, ma comunque documentate e condotte con tutti i canoni della scienza piu’ accreditata.
La diciassettesima edizione degli IgNobel vede importanti novita’: per la Medicina sono stati premiati un radiologo inglese e un ricercatore americano che hanno studiato gli effetti collaterali del mangiare le spade.
Premio per la Fisica a due scienziati che hanno studiato i principi in base ai quali si spiegazzano le lenzuola.
Premio Biologia a Johanna E. M. H. van Bronswijk, dell’Universita’ della Tecnologia di Eindhoven, Olanda, per un censimento di tutti gli organismi (insetti, parassiti, batteri, funghi) che vivono nel letto (ma si conoscono con quelli della Fisica?!).
Premio per la Chimica a un ricercatore dell’International Medical Center del Giappone per la scoperta, sconcertante, di un modo per estrarre vanillina dallo sterco di mucca.
Premio Linguistica a 3 studiosi dell’Universita’ di Barcellona per aver dimostrato che i ratti a volte non riescono a distinguere tra una persona che parla giapponese al contrario e una che parla olandese al contrario.
Premio Letteratura Glenda Browne di Blaxland, Australia, per il suo studio sull’articolo inglese “the” e sui problemi che esso crea a chi deve fare elenchi in ordine alfabetico.
Premio Alimentazione per una ricerca sull’appetito, intitolata “ciotola senza fondo”. In pratica Brian Wansink, della Cornell University, ha creato una ciotola collegata a tubicini che la riempiono in continuazione, senza che chi mangia se ne accorga. Ne e’ emerso che con la ciotola sempre piena il soggetto mangia fino al 70% di zuppa in piu’ di quanto farebbe se il contenitore si svuotasse regolarmente.
IgNobel per l’Economia a Kuo Cheng Hsieh di Taichung, Taiwan. Nel 2001 ha brevettato un sistema che cattura i ladri di banche intrappolandoli in una rete.
Premio per l’Aviazione a tre scienziati argentini che hanno scoperto e studiato come il Viagra facilita il recupero del jetlag (sindrome da fuso orario) nei criceti.
IgNobel speciale per la Pace al Pentagono e in particolare all’Air Force Wright Laboratory di Dayton, per lo studio sulla bomba gay (ne parlammo anche su Cacao), un ordigno in grado di scatenare nei nemici incontrollabili pulsioni omosessuali.
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Interdisciplinary collaboration at the Ig Nobel party
October 10th, 2007

Every year, after the Ig Nobel Prize Ceremony at Harvard, and after the Ig Informal Lectures at MIT, comes a relaxed party for the winners and the Ig Nobel organizers. Friendships are forged, ideas are born, good food is enjoyed. At this year’s party, 2007 Ig Nobel Medicine Prize co-winner Dan Meyer (co-author of the medical report “Sword Swallowing and Its Side-Effects“) collaborated with 1976 Nobel Chemistry Prize winner William Lipscomb for a small experiment. David Kessler, stage manager of the Ig ceremony, filmed the moment (click on the image):

(NOTE: To see one of Dan’s earlier collaborations, with a different collaborator, click here.)

posted by Marc Abrahams in Ig Nobel, Arts and science

Infinite monkey theorem — proved?
October 9th, 2007

We have seen evidence to support the infinite monkey theorem (which says that “a monkey hitting keys at random on a typewriter keyboard for an infinite amount of time will almost surely type a particular chosen text, such as the complete works of William Shakespeare“).

An anonymous investigator today sent us this note:

I bring to your attention the existence of two identical documents written, I am told, by completely different authors. These happen to be scientific studies in prestigious journals. The second one has just been published. It is:

“Determination of dopant of ceria system by density functional theory“, K. Muthukkumaran, Roshan Bokalawela, Tom Mathews and S. Selladurai Journal of Materials Science, Vol 42, Number 17, Sep 2007, pp 7461-7466.

It is identical to a paper, credited to other authors, published more than a year earlier in a different journal:

“Optimization of ionic conductivity in doped ceria,” David A. Andersson, Sergei I. Simak, Natalia V. Skorodumova, Igor A. Abrikosov, and Börje Johansson, PNAS | March 7, 2006 | vol. 103 | no. 10 | 3518-3521.

When I say “identical”, I mean every word, every figure and every concept, procedure, result and conclusion.

Two of the new authors (Roshan Bokalawela at the University of Oklahoma and Tom Mathews at IGCAR Kalpakkam) have dissociated themselves from the paper, which leaves K. Muthukkumaran and S. Selladurai, both from Anna University.

The event has been reported in the Linkoping University News and in Dagens Nyheter (both on September 5, 2007).

posted by Marc Abrahams in News about research, Letters from readers, Arts and science

The duck guy at the 2007 Ig
October 9th, 2007

Kees Moeliker, 2003 Ig Nobel Biology Prize winner, participated in this year’s Ig Nobel Prize ceremony. He writes about it in the October 9, 2007 issue of The Guardian. His report includes this passage:

We are in the Sanders theatre to meet new and returning winners. The first to show up is Francis Fesmire, of the University of Tennessee College of Medicine, who won the 2006 Ig Nobel medicine prize for his novel treatment of intractable hiccups with digital rectal massage.

What has happened to him since winning an Ig? “The phone did not stop ringing for months: interviews and talks in all parts of the country,” he says. But, strangely, Dr Fesmire was not asked to treat a poor girl in Florida who had the hiccups for six weeks.

Brian Witcombe, of Gloucester, and Dan Meyer of Antioch, Tennessee, have won the 2007 medicine prize for their penetrating medical report Sword Swallowing and its Side Effects, published last year in the British Medical Journal. Until today, Witcombe, a radiologist, and Meyer, a professional sword-swallower, have never met.

“Almost nothing was published about the medical side of sword swallowing, and Dan Meyer’s database of all members of the Sword Swallowers’ Association International was a true goldmine. We exchanged hundreds of emails,” says Witcombe. Both new winners had heard only vaguely about the Ig awards before Abrahams phoned them. Despite his ignorance, Witcombe says he was “flattered, delighted and amused” and imagines colleagues “may feel a little envy and extra respect”. Meyer says he will never forget the moment that he was notified of his nomination.

In the photo above right: 2006 Ig Nobel Medicine Prize winner Francis Fesmire explains his work to Nobel Laureates Craig Mello (left) William Lipscomb and Dudley Herschbach moments after the 2007 ceremony. In the photo below, 2007 Medicine Prize co-winner Brian Witcombe is partly visible behind and to the left of the red hand. Both photos: David Holzman / Annals of Improbable Research.

posted by Marc Abrahams in Ig Nobel

Antidote to traffic
October 8th, 2007

A 1958 automobile design by Ford would have reduced traffic congestion. As Wikipedia describes it:

The Ford Nucleon was a nuclear-powered concept car developed by Ford Motor Company in 1958. No operational models were built. The design did not include an internal-combustion engine, rather, a vehicle was to be powered by a small nuclear reactor in the rear of the vehicle. The vehicle featured a power capsule suspended between twin booms at the rear. The capsule, which would contain radioactive core for motive power, was designed to be easily interchangeable, according to performance needs and the distances to be traveled.

After a crash, people would have avoided the neighborhood of the collision for decades.

(Thanks to investigator Ron Josephson for bringing this to our attention.)

posted by Stephen Drew in News about research

Crocheting the Hyperbolic Plane
October 7th, 2007

For God’s sake, please give it up. Fear it no less than the sensual passion, because it, too, may take up all your time and deprive you of your health, peace of mind and happiness in life.

So said Wolfgang Bolyai, urging his son Janos Bolyai to give up work on hyperbolic geometry, as quoted in David W. Henderson and Daina Taimioa’s “Crocheting the Hyperbolic Plane,” the updated version of which is published in Mathematical Intelligencer, Vol. 23, No. 2, pp. 17-28, Spring 2001.

(Thanks to investigator Dave Brooks for bringing this to our attention.)

posted by Stephen Drew in Arts and science

Ig Informal Lectures today
October 6th, 2007

The Ig Informal Lectures happen today, beginning at 1:00 pm, at MIT Building 10, Room 250, 77 Massachusetts Avenue, Cambridge.

The new Ig Nobel Prize winners will explain, as best they can, why they did what they did. Each talk will be a maximum of five (5) minutes long. The lecturers will be joined by several past Ig winners, in the presence of autodidactic hecklers, and possibly some Mozart-playing accordianists.

Admission is free — but the room is (like many rooms) of limited size, so it’s a good idea to get there early.

posted by Marc Abrahams in Ig Nobel

Notable failure
October 6th, 2007

UW Fails to Win Ig Nobel Prize

So says an October 4 item on a blog written by a thoughtful person at or near the University of Wisconsin.

posted by Marc Abrahams in Ig Nobel

Chitty: Do lemmings commit suicide?
October 6th, 2007

On a visit to Norway in 1923, an Oxford undergraduate, Charles Elton, became intrigued by stories about the apparently suicidal migrations of lemmings. Six years later he began a series of studies in which, 6 years later still, I was lucky enough to join…