Breast Expansion Archive Forum
Miscellaneous => Off-Topic & Testing => Topic started by: rtpoe on October 01, 2004, 11:38:24 PM
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The 14th First Annual IgNobel Prizes were handed out on Thursday to people who have "done something that first makes people LAUGH, then makes them THINK." Sponsored by the Annals of Improbable Research (www.improbable.com), the Igs "are intended to celebrate the unusual, honor the imaginative -- and spur people's interest in science, medicine, and technology."
Go here to find this year's winners:
http://www.improb.com/ig/ig-pastwinners.html#ig2004
rtpoe
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You have to wonder about this one
CHEMISTRY
The Coca-Cola Company of Great Britain, for using advanced technology to convert liquid from the River Thames into Dasani, a transparent form of water, which for precautionary reasons has been made unavailable to consumers.
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Apparently their purification process, in its last stages, left sufficient quantities of bromates (a powerful carcinogen) in the water to warrant a recall....
My personal favorite this year is the winner in Medicine:
Steven Stack of Wayne State University, Detroit, Michigan, USA and James Gundlach of Auburn University, Auburn, Alabama, USA, for their published report "The Effect of Country Music on Suicide."
PUBLISHED IN: Social Forces, vol. 71, no. 1, September 1992, pp. 211-8.
rtpoe
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Bel (bello in italian) in Ferrara dialect means "beautiful" or "handsome".
There is a beauty male (anti)contest in Ferrara called No Bel prize...
Blax12
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Gotta love it. (http://www.**21**/?http://www.networkworld.com/news/2009/100209-ignobels.html?page=1)
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I wanted Chelsea's to do so.
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Ya beat me to it!
Just for that, I'm going to reproduce the Peace prize entry, and hit you over the head with both a full beer bottle and an empty one. So you can tell me which hurts more. ;D
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Ya beat me to it!
Just for that, I'm going to reproduce the Peace prize entry, and hit you over the head with both a full beer bottle and an empty one. So you can tell me which hurts more. ;D
Ouch! lol ;D well yeah i wonder how many replicatrions made to obtain the results :P
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ENGINEERING PRIZE: Karina Acevedo-Whitehouse and Agnes Rocha-Gosselin of the Zoological Society of London, UK, and Diane Gendron of Instituto Politecnico Nacional, Baja California Sur, Mexico, for perfecting a method to collect whale snot, using a remote-control helicopter.
"A Novel Non-Invasive Tool for Disease Surveillance of Free-Ranging Whales and Its Relevance to Conservation Programs," Karina Acevedo-Whitehouse, Agnes Rocha-Gosselin and Diane Gendron, Animal Conservation, vol. 13, no. 2, April 2010, pp. 217-25.
MEDICINE PRIZE: Simon Rietveld of the University of Amsterdam, The Netherlands, and Ilja van Beest of Tilburg University, The Netherlands, for discovering that symptoms of asthma can be treated with a roller-coaster ride.
"Rollercoaster Asthma: When Positive Emotional Stress Interferes with Dyspnea Perception," Simon Rietveld and Ilja van Beest, Behaviour Research and Therapy, vol. 45, 2006, pp. 977–87.
TRANSPORTATION PLANNING PRIZE: Toshiyuki Nakagaki, Atsushi Tero, Seiji Takagi, Tetsu Saigusa, Kentaro Ito, Kenji Yumiki, Ryo Kobayashi of Japan, and Dan Bebber, Mark Fricker of the UK, for using slime mold to determine the optimal routes for railroad tracks.
"Rules for Biologically Inspired Adaptive Network Design," Atsushi Tero, Seiji Takagi, Tetsu Saigusa, Kentaro Ito, Dan P. Bebber, Mark D. Fricker, Kenji Yumiki, Ryo Kobayashi, Toshiyuki Nakagaki, Science, Vol. 327. no. 5964, January 22, 2010, pp. 439-42.
PHYSICS PRIZE: Lianne Parkin, Sheila Williams, and Patricia Priest of the University of Otago, New Zealand, for demonstrating that, on icy footpaths in wintertime, people slip and fall less often if they wear socks on the outside of their shoes.
"Preventing Winter Falls: A Randomised Controlled Trial of a Novel Intervention," Lianne Parkin, Sheila Williams, and Patricia Priest, New Zealand Medical Journal. vol. 122, no, 1298, July 3, 2009, pp. 31-8.
PEACE PRIZE: Richard Stephens, John Atkins, and Andrew Kingston of Keele University, UK, for confirming the widely held belief that swearing relieves pain.
"Swearing as a Response to Pain," Richard Stephens, John Atkins, and Andrew Kingston, Neuroreport, vol. 20 , no. 12, 2009, pp. 1056-60.
PUBLIC HEALTH PRIZE: Manuel Barbeito, Charles Mathews, and Larry Taylor of the Industrial Health and Safety Office, Fort Detrick, Maryland, USA, for determining by experiment that microbes cling to bearded scientists.
"Microbiological Laboratory Hazard of Bearded Men," Manuel S. Barbeito, Charles T. Mathews, and Larry A. Taylor, Applied Microbiology, vol. 15, no. 4, July 1967, pp. 899–906.
ECONOMICS PRIZE: The executives and directors of Goldman Sachs, AIG, Lehman Brothers, Bear Stearns, Merrill Lynch, and Magnetar for creating and promoting new ways to invest money — ways that maximize financial gain and minimize financial risk for the world economy, or for a portion thereof.
CHEMISTRY PRIZE: Eric Adams of MIT, Scott Socolofsky of Texas A&M University, Stephen Masutani of the University of Hawaii, and BP [British Petroleum], for disproving the old belief that oil and water don't mix.
"Review of Deep Oil Spill Modeling Activity Supported by the Deep Spill JIP and Offshore Operator’s Committee. Final Report," Eric Adams and Scott Socolofsky, 2005.
MANAGEMENT PRIZE: Alessandro Pluchino, Andrea Rapisarda, and Cesare Garofalo of the University of Catania, Italy, for demonstrating mathematically that organizations would become more efficient if they promoted people at random.
"The Peter Principle Revisited: A Computational Study," Alessandro Pluchino, Andrea Rapisarda, and Cesare Garofalo, Physica A, vol. 389, no. 3, February 2010, pp. 467-72.
BIOLOGY PRIZE: Libiao Zhang, Min Tan, Guangjian Zhu, Jianping Ye, Tiyu Hong, Shanyi Zhou, and Shuyi Zhang of China, and Gareth Jones of the University of Bristol, UK, for scientifically documenting fellatio in fruit bats.
"Fellatio by Fruit Bats Prolongs Copulation Time," Min Tan, Gareth Jones, Guangjian Zhu, Jianping Ye, Tiyu Hong, Shanyi Zhou, Shuyi Zhang and Libiao Zhang, PLoS ONE, vol. 4, no. 10, e7595.
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Sort of how like Halle Berry won an Oscar and a Golden Raspberry, now comes word that the 2000 Ig Nobel winner in Physics, Andre Geim, has won the 2010 Nobel Prize in Physics (http://www.networkworld.com/news/2010/100510-geim-nobel.html) :)
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Sort of how like Halle Berry won an Oscar and a Golden Raspberry, now comes word that the 2000 Ig Nobel winner in Physics, Andre Geim, has won the 2010 Nobel Prize in Physics (http://www.networkworld.com/news/2010/100510-geim-nobel.html) :)
There seems to be a "prediction" factor, like more than half the winners of a U.S. prize for genetics (whose name I have forgotten--Milliken Prize?) win the Nobel for Medicine.
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http://www.improbable.com/ig/winners/
Too little time to list them all, so I'll just mention the Wasabi Alarm (US patent application 2010/0308995 A1), which earned its creators the Chemistry prize...
Makoto Imai, Naoki Urushihata, Hideki Tanemura, Yukinobu Tajima, Hideaki Goto, Koichiro Mizoguchi and Junichi Murakami of JAPAN, for determining the ideal density of airborne wasabi (pungent horseradish) to awaken **83** people in case of a fire or other emergency, and for applying this knowledge to invent the wasabi alarm.
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It's that time again! Winners were announced on Sept. 20.
Among the winners:
NEUROSCIENCE PRIZE: Craig Bennett, Abigail Baird, Michael Miller, and George Wolford [USA], for demonstrating that brain researchers, by using complicated instruments and simple statistics, can see meaningful brain activity anywhere — even in a dead salmon.
http://www.improbable.com/ig/winners/#ig2012
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lol i have been warned that statistics can be used to bent data at researcher's wills. This demonstrates it :(
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Brain/nerve cells in a dead organism are still capable of neural activity for some time after death.
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After death experience?
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Brain/nerve cells in a dead organism are still capable of neural activity for some time after death.
Yes but isn't the same as brain activity anywhere...also we don't know for how long the salmon was dead
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As we read about the awarding of this year's Nobel Prizes, it's worth keeping in mind scientific contributions at the other end of the scale (as it were).
This year's IgNobel Prizes were given out back on Sept. 12 (Sorry, I wasn't paying attention)
My favorite amongst this year's honorees:
PSYCHOLOGY PRIZE: Laurent Bègue [FRANCE], Brad Bushman [USA, UK, the NETHERLANDS, POLAND], Oulmann Zerhouni [FRANCE], Baptiste Subra [FRANCE], and Medhi Ourabah [FRANCE], for confirming, by experiment, that people who think they are **92** also think they are attractive.
REFERENCE: "'Beauty Is in the Eye of the Beer Holder': People Who Think They Are **92** Also Think They Are Attractive," Laurent Bègue, Brad J. Bushman, Oulmann Zerhouni, Baptiste Subra, Medhi Ourabah, British Journal of Psychology, epub May 15, 2012.
http://www.improbable.com/ig/winners/#ig2013
(Earlier threads on this topic are here (http://forum.bearchive.com/index.php/topic,273924.0.html)and here (http://forum.bearchive.com/index.php/topic,9978973.0.html))
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Love it!
I note that Marie Dacke and others confirmed that dung beetles have mastered celestial navigation.
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lol, finally science is useful for something
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The 2014 winners have been announced.
http://www.improbable.com/ig/winners/#ig2014
PHYSICS PRIZE [JAPAN]: Kiyoshi Mabuchi, Kensei Tanaka, Daichi Uchijima and Rina Sakai, for measuring the amount of friction between a shoe and a banana skin, and between a banana skin and the floor, when a person steps on a banana skin that's on the floor.
REFERENCE: "Frictional Coefficient under Banana Skin," Kiyoshi Mabuchi, Kensei Tanaka, Daichi Uchijima and Rina Sakai, Tribology Online 7, no. 3, 2012, pp. 147-151.
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The 2015 Winners have been announced!
PHYSIOLOGY and ENTOMOLOGY PRIZE — Awarded jointly to two individuals: Justin Schmidt [USA, CANADA], for painstakingly creating the Schmidt Sting Pain Index, which rates the relative pain people feel when stung by various insects; and to Michael L. Smith [USA, UK, THE NETHERLANDS], for carefully arranging for honey bees to sting him repeatedly on 25 different locations on his body, to learn which locations are the least painful (the skull, middle toe tip, and upper arm). and which are the most painful (the nostril, upper lip, and penis shaft).
REFERENCE: "Hemolytic Activities of Stinging Insect Venoms," Justin O. Schmidt, Murray S. Blum, and William L. Overal, Archives of Insect Biochemistry and Physiology, vol. 1, no. 2, 1983, pp. 155-160.
REFERENCE: "Honey Bee Sting Pain Index by Body Location," Michael L. Smith, PeerJ, 2014, 2:e338.
http://www.improbable.com/ig/winners/#ig2015
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The 2016 Prizes have been announced!
http://www.improbable.com/ig/winners/#ig2016
Among the winners:
ECONOMICS PRIZE [NEW ZEALAND, UK] — Mark Avis, Sarah Forbes, and Shelagh Ferguson, for assessing the perceived personalities of rocks, from a sales and marketing perspective. REFERENCE: "The Brand Personality of Rocks: A Critical Evaluation of a Brand Personality Scale," Mark Avis, Sarah Forbes ,and Shelagh Ferguson, Marketing Theory, vol. 14, no. 4, 2014, pp. 451-475.
PSYCHOLOGY PRIZE [BELGIUM, THE NETHERLANDS, GERMANY, CANADA, USA] — Evelyne Debey, Maarten De Schryver, Gordon Logan, Kristina Suchotzki, and Bruno Verschuere, for asking a thousand liars how often they lie, and for deciding whether to believe those answers. REFERENCE: "From Junior to Senior Pinocchio: A Cross-Sectional Lifespan Investigation of Deception," Evelyne Debey, Maarten De Schryver, Gordon D. Logan, Kristina Suchotzki, and Bruno Verschuere, Acta Psychologica, vol. 160, 2015, pp. 58-68.
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2017:
http://www.improbable.com/ig/winners/#ig2017
PHYSICS PRIZE [FRANCE, SINGAPORE, USA] — Marc-Antoine Fardin, for using fluid dynamics to probe the question "Can a Cat Be Both a Solid and a Liquid?"
"On the Rheology of Cats," Marc-Antoine Fardin, Rheology Bulletin, vol. 83, 2, July 2014, pp. 16-17 and 30.
MEDICINE PRIZE [FRANCE, UK] — Jean-Pierre Royet, David Meunier, Nicolas Torquet, Anne-Marie Mouly and Tao Jiang, for using advanced brain-scanning technology to measure the extent to which some people are disgusted by cheese.
"The Neural Bases of Disgust for Cheese: An fMRI Study," Jean-Pierre Royet, David Meunier, Nicolas Torquet, Anne-Marie Mouly and Tao Jiang, Frontiers in Human Neuroscience, vol. 10, October 2016, article 511.
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2018!!!!
http://www.improbable.com/ig/winners/#ig2018
MEDICINE PRIZE [USA] — Marc Mitchell and David Wartinger, for using roller coaster rides to try to hasten the passage of kidney stones.
REFERENCE: "Validation of a Functional Pyelocalyceal Renal Model for the Evaluation of Renal Calculi Passage While Riding a Roller Coaster," Marc A. Mitchell, David D. Wartinger, The Journal of the American Osteopathic Association, vol. 116, October 2016, pp. 647-652.
CHEMISTRY PRIZE [PORTUGAL] — Paula Romão, Adília Alarcão and the late César Viana, for measuring the degree to which human saliva is a good cleaning agent for dirty surfaces.
REFERENCE: "Human Saliva as a Cleaning Agent for Dirty Surfaces," by Paula M. S. Romão, Adília M. Alarcão and César A.N. Viana, Studies in Conservation, vol. 35, 1990, pp. 153-155.
PEACE PRIZE [SPAIN, COLOMBIA] — Francisco Alonso, Cristina Esteban, Andrea Serge, Maria-Luisa Ballestar, Jaime Sanmartín, Constanza Calatayud, and Beatriz Alamar, for measuring the frequency, motivation, and effects of shouting and cursing while driving an automobile.
REFERENCE: "Shouting and Cursing While Driving: Frequency, Reasons, Perceived Risk and Punishment," Francisco Alonso, Cristina Esteban, Andrea Serge and Maria-Luisa Ballestar, Journal of Sociology and Anthropology, vol. 1, no. 12017, pp. 1-7.
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2019!!!1!!l!
https://www.improbable.com/2019/09/12/announcing-the-2019-ig-nobel-prize-winners/
BIOLOGY PRIZE [SINGAPORE, CHINA, 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.
REFERENCE: “In-Vivo Biomagnetic Characterisation of the American Cockroach,” Ling-Jun Kong, Herbert Crepaz, Agnieszka Górecka, Aleksandra Urbanek, Rainer Dumke, Tomasz Paterek, Scientific Reports, vol. 8, no. 1, 2018: 5140.
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I've noticed when reading back that Roller Coasters are good for both kidney stones and asthma. Perhaps someone should do a study seeing how many medical conditions Roller Coasters are curative for? ;)
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Here we go again.
https://www.improbable.com/ig-about/winners/#ig2020
MATERIALS SCIENCE PRIZE [USA, UK]
Metin Eren, Michelle Bebber, James Norris, Alyssa Perrone, Ashley Rutkoski, Michael Wilson, and Mary Ann Raghanti, for showing that knives manufactured from frozen human feces do not work well.
REFERENCE: “Experimental Replication Shows Knives Manufactured from Frozen Human Feces Do Not Work,” Metin I. Eren, Michelle R. Bebber, James D. Norris, Alyssa Perrone, Ashley Rutkoski, Michael Wilson, and Mary Ann Raghanti, Journal of Archaeological Science: Reports, vol. 27, no. 102002, October 2019.
ACOUSTICS PRIZE [AUSTRIA, SWEDEN, JAPAN, USA, SWITZERLAND]
Stephan Reber, Takeshi Nishimura, Judith Janisch, Mark Robertson, and Tecumseh Fitch, for inducing a female Chinese alligator to bellow in an airtight chamber filled with helium-enriched air.
REFERENCE: “A Chinese Alligator in Heliox: Formant Frequencies in a Crocodilian,” Stephan A. Reber, Takeshi Nishimura, Judith Janisch, Mark Robertson, and W. Tecumseh Fitch, Journal of Experimental Biology, vol. 218, 2015, pp. 2442-2447.
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The first one gets the appropriate reply of : NO SHIT!!
The second one : Freaking WHY?
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I would LOVE to hear the conversations in a scientists' bar that generated these articles! :o ;D
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2022!
https://improbable.com/ig/winners/#ig2022
LITERATURE PRIZE [CANADA, USA, UK, AUSTRALIA]
Eric Martínez, Francis Mollica, and Edward Gibson, for analyzing what makes legal documents unnecessarily difficult to understand.
REFERENCE: “Poor Writing, Not Specialized Concepts, Drives Processing Difficulty in Legal Language,” Eric Martínez, Francis Mollica, and Edward Gibson, Cognition, vol. 224, July 2022, 105070.
MEDICINE PRIZE [POLAND]
Marcin Jasiński, Martyna Maciejewska, Anna Brodziak, Michał Górka, Kamila Skwierawska, Wiesław Jędrzejczak, Agnieszka Tomaszewska, Grzegorz Basak, and Emilian Snarski, for showing that when patients undergo some forms of toxic chemotherapy, they suffer fewer harmful side effects when ice cream replaces one traditional component of the procedure.
REFERENCE: “Ice-Cream Used as Cryotherapy During High-Dose Melphalan Conditioning Reduces Oral Mucositis After Autologous Hematopoietic Stem Cell Transplantation,” Marcin Jasiński, Martyna Maciejewska, Anna Brodziak, Michał Górka, Kamila Skwierawska, Wiesław W. Jędrzejczak, Agnieszka Tomaszewska, Grzegorz W. Basak, and Emilian Snarski, Scientific Reports, vol. 11, no. 22507, 2021.
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2022!
https://improbable.com/ig/winners/#ig2022
LITERATURE PRIZE [CANADA, USA, UK, AUSTRALIA]
Eric Martínez, Francis Mollica, and Edward Gibson, for analyzing what makes legal documents unnecessarily difficult to understand.
REFERENCE: “Poor Writing, Not Specialized Concepts, Drives Processing Difficulty in Legal Language,” Eric Martínez, Francis Mollica, and Edward Gibson, Cognition, vol. 224, July 2022, 105070.
MEDICINE PRIZE [POLAND]
Marcin Jasiński, Martyna Maciejewska, Anna Brodziak, Michał Górka, Kamila Skwierawska, Wiesław Jędrzejczak, Agnieszka Tomaszewska, Grzegorz Basak, and Emilian Snarski, for showing that when patients undergo some forms of toxic chemotherapy, they suffer fewer harmful side effects when ice cream replaces one traditional component of the procedure.
REFERENCE: “Ice-Cream Used as Cryotherapy During High-Dose Melphalan Conditioning Reduces Oral Mucositis After Autologous Hematopoietic Stem Cell Transplantation,” Marcin Jasiński, Martyna Maciejewska, Anna Brodziak, Michał Górka, Kamila Skwierawska, Wiesław W. Jędrzejczak, Agnieszka Tomaszewska, Grzegorz W. Basak, and Emilian Snarski, Scientific Reports, vol. 11, no. 22507, 2021.
One of our best ongoing threads. Thanks for keeping it alive, rtpoe!
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Here we go again....
https://improbable.com/ig/winners/#ig2023
LITERATURE PRIZE [FRANCE, UK, MALAYSIA, FINLAND]
Chris Moulin, Nicole Bell, Merita Turunen, Arina Baharin, and Akira O’Connor for studying the sensations people feel when they repeat a single word many, many, many, many, many, many, many times.
REFERENCE: “The The The The Induction of Jamais Vu in the Laboratory: Word Alienation and Semantic Satiation,” Chris J. A. Moulin, Nicole Bell, Merita Turunen, Arina Baharin, and Akira R. O’Connor, Memory, vol. 29, no. 7, 2021, pp. 933-942. doi.org/10.1080/09658211.2020.1727519
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Hot off the presses!
(The prizes were announced yesterday)
https://improbable.com/ig/winners/#ig2024
MEDICINE PRIZE [SWITZERLAND, GERMANY, BELGIUM]
Lieven A. Schenk, Tahmine Fadai, and Christian Büchel, for demonstrating that fake medicine that causes painful side-effects can be more effective than fake medicine that does not cause painful side-effects.
REFERENCE: “How Side Effects Can Improve Treatment Efficacy: A Randomized Trial,” Lieven A. Schenk, Tahmine Fadai, and Christian Büchel, Brain, vol. 147, no. 8, August 2024, pp. 2643–2651. <doi.org/10.1093/brain/awae132>
BIOLOGY PRIZE [USA]
Fordyce Ely and William E. Petersen, for exploding a paper bag next to a cat that’s standing on the back of a cow, to explore how and when cows spew their milk.
REFERENCE: “Factors Involved in the Ejection of Milk,” Fordyce Ely and W.E. Petersen, Journal of Dairy Science, vol. 3, 1941, pp. 211- 23. <doi.org/10.1093/ansci/1939.1.80>
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Fordyce Ely and William E. Petersen, for exploding a paper bag next to a cat that’s standing on the back of a cow, to explore how and when cows spew their milk.
/me just falls about laughing after he reads this! ;D ;D ;D
I'd love to see video of the experiment! :)
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JUST ANNOUNCED!
https://improbable.com/ig/winners/#ig2025
PHYSICS PRIZE [ITALY, SPAIN, GERMANY, AUSTRIA]
Giacomo Bartolucci, Daniel Maria Busiello, Matteo Ciarchi, Alberto Corticelli, Ivan Di Terlizzi, Fabrizio Olmeda, Davide Revignas, and Vincenzo Maria Schimmenti, for discoveries about the physics of pasta sauce, especially the phase transition that can lead to clumping, which can be a cause of unpleasantness.
REFERENCE: “Phase Behavior of Cacio and Pepe Sauce,” Giacomo Bartolucci, Daniel Maria Busiello, Matteo Ciarchi, Alberto Corticelli, Ivan Di Terlizzi, Fabrizio Olmeda, Davide Revignas, and Vincenzo Maria Schimmenti, Physics of Fluids, vol. 37, 2025, article 044122. <doi.org/10.1063/5.0255841>
PSYCHOLOGY PRIZE [POLAND, AUSTRALIA, CANADA]
Marcin Zajenkowski and Gilles Gignac, for investigating what happens when you tell narcissists — or anyone else — that they are intelligent.
REFERENCE: “Telling People They Are Intelligent Correlates with the Feeling of Narcissistic Uniqueness: The Influence of IQ Feedback on Temporary State Narcissism,” Marcin Zajenkowski and Gilles E. Gignac, Intelligence, vol. 89, November–December 2021, 101595. <doi.org/10.1016/j.intell.2021.101595>