Other people's research

Some might have the impression that our research is kinda odd. NO. Look at this:

Every year in October, at Harvard University the ig nobel prizes are bestowed upon some of the `top' academic achievers - willing or unwilling. This year we completely forgot about this ceremony until some days ago. But then, as every year: rolled on the floor laughing. We have to share this.

The ig nobel prizes reward all that is bizarre, weird and improbable in real-life scientific research. It is not as profitable as the nobel prizes, but what is a lot of money against a good laugh?

Here are some of this year's winners:

The medicine ig nobel prize goes to Brian Witcombe of Gloucester, UK, and Dan Meyer of Antioch, Tennessee, USA, for their penetrating medical report "Sword Swallowing and Its Side Effects" (in: British Medical Journal, December 23, 2006, vol. 333, pp. 1285-7.)
Witcombe and Meyer asked 110 sword swallowers from 16 countries for information on the technique and complication of sword swallowing. 46 sword swallowers gave the requested information. Their conclusion: Sword swallowers run a higher risk of injury when they are distracted or adding embellishment to their performance; but injured performers have a better prognosis than patients who suffer iatrogenic perforation.

Who would have guessed?

The physics ig nobel prize was awarded to L. Mahadevan of Harvard University, USA, and Enrique Cerda Villablanca of Universidad de Santiago de Chile, for studying how sheets become wrinkled. ("Wrinkling of an Elastic Sheet Under Tension," E. Cerda, K. Ravi-Chandar, L. Mahadevan, in: Nature, vol. 419, October 10, 2002, pp. 579-80; " Geometry and Physics of Wrinkling," E. Cerda and L. Mahadevan, in: Physical Review Letters, fol. 90, no. 7, February 21, 2003, pp. 074302/1-4; "Elements of Draping," E. Cerda, L. Mahadevan and J. Passini, in: Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, vol. 101, no. 7, 2004, pp. 1806-10.)
That does not sound so weird at all - to us.

The chemistry ig nobel prize goes to Mayu Yamamoto of the International Medical Center of Japan, - and this is really a new step - for developing a way to extract vanillin -- vanilla fragrance and flavoring -- from cow dung.
By the way: Toscanini's Ice Cream, the finest ice cream shop in Cambridge, Massachusetts, created a new ice cream flavor in honor of Mayu Yamamoto, and introduced it at the Ig Nobel ceremony. The flavor is called "Yum-a-Moto Vanilla Twist."

There is also an ig nobel prize for linguistics. Awarded are Juan Manuel Toro, Josep B. Trobalon and Nùria Sebastiàn-Gàlles, of Universitat de Barcelona, for showing that rats sometimes cannot tell the difference between a person speaking Japanese backwards and a person speaking Dutch backwards. ("Effects of Backward Speech and Speaker Variability in Language Discrimination by Rats," Juan M. Toro, Josep B. Trobalon and Núria Sebastián-Gallés, in: Journal of Experimental Psychology: Animal Behavior Processes, vol. 31, no. 1, January 2005, pp 95-100.)

And one more:

The ig nobel prize of aviation goes to Patricia V. Agostino, Santiago A. Plano and Diego A. Golombek of Universidad Nacional de Quilmes, Argentina. They discovered that Viagra aids jetlag recovery in hamsters. ("Sildenafil Accerlerates Reentrainment of Circadian Rhythms After Advancing Light Schedules," Patricia V. Agostino, Santiago A. Plano and Diego A. Golombek, in: Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, vol. 104, no. 23, June 5 2007, pp. 9834-9.) Good to know.

At last our favourite:

The peace ig nobel prize. This would really make a difference: The Air Force Wright Laboratory, Dayton, Ohio, USA, was awarded for instigating research & development on a chemical weapon -- the so-called "gay bomb" -- that will make enemy soldiers become sexually irresistible to each other. ("Harassing, Annoying, and Bad Guy Identifying Chemicals", Wright Laboratory, WL/FIVR, Wright Patterson Air Force Base, Ohio, June 1, 1994.)