Researchers from the Georgia Institute of Technology bagged this year’s physics prize for analysing the biological principle that almost all mammals empty their bladders in about 21 seconds, plus or minus 13 seconds.
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Researchers who studied the consequences of intense kissing, the global use of the word “huh?” and how badly bee stings hurt on different parts of the body were among the winners of this year’s Ig Nobel prizes for comical scientific achievements.
Other participants worked for exciting prizes for linking a measured continue with a chicken’s posterior to show how dragons would likely have left, and then for exhibiting that is actually discerning…
Dr Smith donated his own bodyto the cause, carefully applying honey bees to 25 locations and assessing the pain of each sting based on a comparison to his “internal standard” – a sting to his forearm. His conclusion: The most painful places to get stung are the nostril, the upper lip and the male sex organ.
Scientists who have discovered how to “unboil” an egg are among the winners of the 2015 Ig Nobel awards.
The management prize went to researchers who found that many senior business leaders enjoyed risk taking because they had experienced – and survived – natural disasters in their childhood.
Real Nobel laureates handed out the spoof awards at the ceremony at Harvard University organized by Marc Abrahams, editor of the Annals.
They were given a cash prize of a Zimbabwean 10 trillion dollar bill – the equivalent of a couple of USA dollars.
The winners of the Literature Prize were Mark Dingemanse, Francisco Terreira and Nick J Enfield, who discovered that the word “huh?”
In other pain related research the Diagnostic Medicine Prize went to work that determined that acute appendicitis can be accurately diagnosed by the amount of pain evident when the patient is driven over speed bumps. Or whether fastening a stick onto a chicken will show you how dinosaurs walked?
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The mathematics prize was won by a team of Austrians who calculated that is was possible for Moulay Ismael the Bloodthirsty, the Sharifian Emperor of Morocco, to have successfully fathered 888 children between the years 1697 and 1727. The study found that it could be done with as few as 65 women, not the 500 in his harem.
