British researchers also win award for their work on giving cows names
By TOM PHILLIPS - Friday, October 2, 2009
Engineers who invented a bra that converts into a gas mask, pathologists who determined that beer bottles can crack your skull even when empty, and Irish police officers who mistakenly wrote speeding tickets to somebody called 'Driver's License' were all honoured for their dubious achievments at the IgNobel prizes on Thursday.
Prizes also went to Zimbabwe for issuing banknotes that range in value from one Zimbabwean cent to 100 trillion Zimbabwean dollars, to Mexican scientists who made diamonds out of tequila and to the directors, executives, and auditors of four Icelandic banks that suffered spectacular collapses.
The IgNobel prizes - a cheeky counterpoint to the Nobel prizes awarded every October - are given out by the Harvard-based magazine Annals of Improbable Research.
Gas mask bra iventor Elena Bodnar of Hinsdale, Illinois and her colleagues won the Public Health prize for their patented design: a bra that can be quickly converted into a pair of gas masks, one for the bra-wearer and one to be given to some needy bystander.
The UK's only representatives in the awards were a pair of researchers, Peter Rowlinson and colleague Catherine Douglas of the University of Newcastle, who found that dairy cows who are given names yield more milk than unnamed cows.
Rowlinson explained that naming cows was just one aspect of their research that showed that when humans are nice to animals, the animals return the affection.
For their study, they petted, groomed and named one group of heifers and acted neutrally toward another group.
'Then we followed their performance once they calved the first time and entered the dairy herd, and essentially we found that their behavior in terms of entry into the parlor was improved, they were less likely to kick when they were first introduced to the milking machine and there was an improvement in milk yield.'
Ireland's police won the literature prize for their efforts in writing more than 50 traffic tickets to serial traffic offender from Poland named Prawo Jazdy. It was only later that they realised that 'Prawo Jazdy' is Polish for 'Driver's License'.
Pathologist Stephan Bolliger and colleagues at the University of Bern in Switzerland won for a study they did to determine whether an empty beer bottle does more or less damage to the human skull than a full one in a bar fight.
'Both suffice in breaking the human skull. However, the empty ones are more sturdy,' Bolliger said. This is because the pressure of the beer, aided by carbonation, makes a full beer bottle explode quickly.
Gideon Gono, governor of Zimbabwe's Reserve Bank which is struggling to fight runaway inflation, won an award 'for giving people a simple, everyday way to cope with a wide range of numbers - from very small to very big - by having his bank print bank notes with denominations ranging from one Zimbabwean cent to $100 trillion Zimbabwean dollars.
The economics prize went to managers at Kaupthing Bank, Landsbanki, Glitnir Bank and Central Bank of Iceland 'for demonstrating that tiny banks can be rapidly transformed into huge banks, and vice versa'.
Donald Unger of California was honored for a lifelong, experiment in which he cracked the knuckles of his left hand but never his right for more than 60 years to prove that cracking your knuckles does not cause arthritis. Other winners included researchers who used panda droppings to break down household trash and a scientist who calculated why pregnant women do not fall over.
THOSE IG-NOBELS WINNERS IN FULL
The 2009 Ig Nobel winners, awarded ON Thursday at Harvard University by the Annals of Improbable Research magazine.
VETERINARY MEDICINE: Catherine Douglas and Peter Rowlinson for showing that cows with names give more milk than unnamed cows.
PEACE: Stephan Bolliger, Steffen Ross, Lars Oesterhelweg, Michael Thali and Beat Kneubuehl for investigating whether it is better to be struck over the head with a full beer bottle or with an empty beer bottle.
ECONOMICS: Executives of four Icelandic banks for showing how tiny banks can become huge banks, and then become tiny banks again.
CHEMISTRY: Javier Morales, Miguel Apatiga and Victor Castano for creating diamonds out of tequila.
MEDICINE: Donald Unger for cracking just the knuckles on his left hand for 60 years to see if knuckle cracking contributes to arthritis.
PHYSICS: Katherine Whitcome, Liza Shapiro and Daniel Lieberman for figuring out why pregnant women don't tip over.
LITERATURE: The Irish police for issuing 50 tickets to one Prawo Jazdy, which in Polish means 'driver's license.'
PUBLIC HEALTH: Elena Bodnar, Raphael Lee and Sandra Marijan for inventing a brassiere than can be converted into a pair of gas masks.
MATHEMATICS: Gideon Gono and the Zimbabwean Reserve Bank for printing bank notes in denominations from 1 cent, to $100 trillion.
BIOLOGY: Fumiaki Taguchi, Song Guofu and Zhang Guanglei for demonstrating that bacteria in panda poop can help reduce kitchen waste by 90 percent.
Source:
MetroPosted by AlmondShell @ HWZ
