It does seem like one massive joke but after looking at some of the awards doesn’t it seem like there might be some practical use in some of the winning research?
The prize for Veterinary Medicine went to Catherine Douglas and Peter Rowlinson who showed that giving cows names increased the yield of milk. Though funny after a discussion with a colleague at work he assured me (in the way that only a person who works on a farm can) that this proved that paying the cows attention meant that they were more relaxed and so produced more milk.
The Peace prize went to Stephan Bolliger, Steffen Ross, Lars Oesterhelweg, Michael Thali and Beat Kneubuehl for there research into comparison between the damaged caused to the head from empty and full beer bottles. I can see why people would find this useless but forensically it could contribute towards finding or convicting the right person who made such an attack by looking at the damage caused. This is a long shot I know, but still useful in some way.
The biology one is just strange but let me just put an idea out there for this one. This prize went to Fumiaki Taguchi, Song Guofu and Zhang Guanglei for their research showing that kitchen waste could be reduced up to 90% by bacteria taken from giant Panda faeces. Odd I know but if this process is similar to other decomposition processes wouldn’t a lot of methane be produced? In one respect it would reduce the amount of space rubbish would take up and in another it might be a ‘green’ way to produce a useful gas.
My favourite at the minute (because I love sparkle) has to be the Chemistry prize that went to Javier Morales, Miguel Apatiga and Victor M Castano who produced diamonds from Tequila! This may have no use whatsoever and is probably quite expensive to do but it does combine two of my interests, sparkly things and alcohol!
Another favourite would be the Public Health prize that went to Elena N Bodnar, Raphael C Lee, and Sandra Marijan for the gas mask bra. Though I’m sure it would be handy having two gas masks shoved down your top and it could be life saving in the right environment it would be better to have it less gender specific and for those people who either struggle with bras or just don’t want to strip in public it might be a better idea to just have one that could slip into a bag, or maybe even the bag itself.
Okay, maybe I’m just being an optimist but what does everybody else think? Wonderful or a waste of time?
For the full article follow one of these links:
New Scientist: http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn17899-best-of-the-ig-nobel-prizes-2009.html
BBC News: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/8285380.stm
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment