 |
|
|
2007 Ig Nobel Prizes
The 17th First Annual Ig Nobel Prize Ceremony announced and introduced the ten new Ig Nobel Prize winners. The winners are traveling to the ceremony, at their own expense, from several continents. The Prizes will be handed to them by a group of genuine, genuinely bemused Nobel Laureates, all before a standing-room only audience of 1200 people.
2007 Ig Nobel Winners
Peace The US Air Force Wright Laboratory for instigating research and development on a chemical weapon that would provoke widespread homosexual behavior among enemy troops.
Medicine Brain Witcombe, of Gloucestershire Royal NHS Foundation Trust, UK, and Dan Meyer for their probing work on the health consequences of swallowing a sword.
Physics A US-Chile team who ironed out the problem of how sheets become wrinkled.
Biology Dr Johanna van Bronswijk of the Netherlands for carrying out a creepy crawly census of all of the mites, insects, spiders, ferns and fungi that share our beds.
Chemistry Mayu Yamamoto, from Japan, for developing a method to extract vanilla fragrance and flavoring from cow dung.
Linguistics A University of Barcelona team for showing that rats are unable to tell the difference between a person speaking Japanese backwards and somebody speaking Dutch backwards.
Literature Glenda Browne of Blue Mountains, Australia, for her study of the word "the", and how it can flummox those trying to put things into alphabetical order.
Nutrition Brian Wansink of Cornell University for investigating the limits of human appetite by feeding volunteers a self-refilling, "bottomless" bowl of soup.
Economics Kuo Cheng Hsieh of Taiwan for patenting a device that can catch bank robbers by dropping a net over them.
Aviation A National University of Quilmes, Argentina, team for discovering that impotency drugs can help hamsters to recover from jet lag.
The ceremony was recorded for later broadcast, on Friday, November 23, the day after Thanksgiving, on National Public Radio's "Talk of the Nation/ Science Friday with Ira Flatow."
Every year, the ceremony has a new theme. (The theme pertains to some of the goings-on at the ceremony, though not necessarily to any of the year's prize-winning achievements). This year's theme: CHICKEN.
Additional highlights : In addition to the awarding of the Prizes, the ceremony will include a variety of momentously inconsequential events. Among them:
* Keynote speech ("Chicken Chicken Chicken Chicken Chicken") by Doug Zongker, followed by chicken-related Nano-Lectures by three of the world's great thinkers.
* Return appearances by
o 1996 Ig Nobel Art Prize winner Don Featherstone (creator of the plastic pink flamingo).
o 2003 Ig Nobel Biology Prize winner Kees Moeliker (who documented the first scientifically recorded case of homosexual necrophilia in the mallard duck)
o 2005 Ig Nobel Economics Prize winner Gauri Nanda (who invented an alarm clock that runs away and hides, repeatedly, thus ensuring that people DO get out of bed)
o 2006 Ig Nobel Acoustics Prize winner Lynn Halpern (who explored why people dislike the sound of fingernails on a blackboard)
o 2006 Medicine Prize winner Dr. Francis Fesmire (pioneer in using digital rectal massage to treat intractable hiccups)
* The 24/7 LECTURES, in which several of the world's top thinkers each explained his or her subject twice:
FIRST: a complete technical description in TWENTY-FOUR (24) SECONDS*
AND THEN: a clear summary that anyone can understand, in SEVEN (7) WORDS.
The Lecturers include:
* Fariba Houman: Research Ethics
* Massimo Marcone: Food Science
* Jill Lepore: History
* William Lipscomb: Chicken
* "Chicken versus Egg" -World premiere of the mini-opera, starring the mother-daughter singing team Gail Kilkelly and Maggie McNeil.
* The Nobel Laureates who will present the Ig Nobel Prizes to the winners:
* Sheldon Glashow
* Roy Glauber
* Dudley Herschbach
* Robert Laughlin
* William Lipscomb
* Craig Mello
* and others to be announced
* The WIN-A-DATE-WITH-A-NOBEL-LAUREATE CONTEST
* Karen Hopkin, creator of the Studmuffins of Science Calendar
* Gala Introduction of the Audience Delegations
* All speeches will be brief, and thus especially delightful
* Portions of the ceremony will be simultaneously translated into several languages, in a manner most pleasing.
* The Traditional "Welcome, Welcome" Speech
* The Traditional "Goodbye, Goodbye" Speech
* Other wondrous things.
* Time limits to be enforced by Mr. John Barrett, the Ig Nobel Referee
|
|
|
|
