The Ig Nobel Prizes

 STEM Can Be Fun!

   It is still too bright out to be blogging. I need to post something for paying subscribers, however, and for those who stay inside because they are worried about UV rays, or because it is Friday the 13th.  Although I won't have to do much work, this post will keep you busy, especially if you watch the attached video which will take you a couple of hours. I wouldn't post anything that long if it wasn't funny.

   To learn about the Ig Nobel Prizes see my post from seven years ago about "The Nobel Prizes."  Cleverly concealed, along with the "Igs", you will find information about such things as, The Annals of Improbable Research and The Journal of Irreproducible Results. As well, make sure to check the bonus, "The Order of the Golden Fleece."
   This week, the 34th First Annual Ig Nobel Prize ceremony was held at MIT. One of the winners from 2021 is pictured above. He was hung upside down in a study designed to see how rhinos reacted when hung upside down. This year some of the winners include: 
"Demography: Saul Justin Newman, for discovering that people famous for having the longest lives lived in places that had lousy birth-and-death record keeping.

Biology: Fordyce Ely and William E. Petersen, for exploding a paper bag next to a cat standing on the back of a cow, to explore how and when cows spew their milk."

    B. F. Skinner finally won an award for a paper done in the 1960s on “the feasibility of housing live pigeons inside missiles to guide their flight paths,” (let's hope the folks at Boeing read it.) The award was accepted by his daughter, who threw her cap into the crowd.
   If you still need more incentive to read my old post, I will add that it also included a short review of the book, Curious Behavior: Yawning, Laughing, Hiccupping, and Beyond. If it is CANCON you are looking for, see the chapter in that book which is on "Farting and Belching." 
   The video of the ceremony is found here. I forgot to mention that the winner receives 10 trillion Zimbabwean dollars.

P.S.
As mentioned, the ceremony was hosted by MIT. If you are still trying to avoid the sun, or something else, see the post in MM about "MIT Press" where you can read something from their "Essential Knowledge Series," to make up for the time you squandered here.

   

THE NOBEL PRIZES

    It is Nobel Prize time and there are many related news stories to be found. One of the latest indicates that President Trump will break with tradition and not invite to the White House the eight American laureates. I am sure everyone involved is relieved.

    Naturally given that the Nobel Prizes are much in the news I choose to focus on the Ig Nobel ones. If it is as dreary where you are as it is here, or if you failed to win a Nobel, then you might need a little humour.

The Ig Nobel Prizes

    

    I will keep this short. You probably know about Wikipedia where you can go straight away to learn about both the Nobels and the Igs. You rely on me for more and better information so here is where you should go to learn about the origin of the Ig Nobel Prizes - The Annals of Improbable Research. After you stop laughing and again start feeling depressed, move on to The Journal of Irreproducible Results: The Science Humor Magazine which will make you “Laugh!, “Chortle!” and “Guffaw!”

Post Script:

   This bonus information is only available to subscribers; the rest of you are not allowed to read it.

   A while back I read Curious Behavior: Yawning, Laughing, Hiccupping, and Beyond, by Robert R. Provine. Don’t be too dismissive. It is published by Harvard University Press. In it, he gives a good explanation of what the Ig Nobel prizes are all about and provides two examples. One of them even has some Canadian content which allows me to meet the CRTC quota.

About the IP, Provine says (p.235): “The annual Ig Nobel Prizes are not a dishonor, but typically a good-humored recognition of the unusual, imaginative, and funny in science, medicine and technology.”

p. 130-131 of Curious Behavior... in the Chapter on “Hiccupping”
In discussing a potential cure for hiccupping he notes:
“The most creative cure is offered by a physician, Dr. Francis M. Fesmire of the University of Tennessee College of Medicine, in a memorable paper in the Annals of Emergency Medicine: “Termination of Intractable Hiccups by Digital Rectal Massage”. “The approach of a rubber-gloved Dr. Fesmire would disrupt any number of physiological patterns. His discovery earned him the gratitude of thankful patients and a 2006 Ig Nobel Prize.”

A Canadian example is found in the chapter on “Farting and Belching”, on p. 197:

“Having made the case that farting could provide a novel though limited channel of communication, we can question whether any animals actually exploit this unlikely aural niche. So far, signaling by fart is reported only in certain herring. The breakthrough research appears in a paper cryptically titled “Pacific and Atlantic Herring Produce Burst Pulse Sounds.” The work earned Ben Wilson and colleagues at the Bamfield Marine Science Centre in British Columbia, Canada, the 2004 Ig Nobel Prize in biology. The scientists became curious about the origin of strange rasping noises produced at night by captive herring under observation in a tank, and discovered that they were fish farts. The fish gulp air at the surface, store it in their swim bladder, and release it from a duct in their anus, producing a high-frequency burst up to 22,000Hz. (Human hearing ranges from 20Hz to 20,000Hz.) Their next insight was that the farts are signals that may bring fish together and assist in evading predators. But signaling may have a price: predators such as killer whales may also be listening to flatulent herring and home in on the signal. The herring fart by night, but not by day, when they rely on visual instead of auditory information.”

PS:
If you are old enough you may remember the “Order of the Golden Fleece” and Senator Proxmire. The Golden Fleece Awards were a little different in that they typically ridiculed seemingly ludicrous studies that received government funding. Often such subjects yield useful results.