Improbable Research #IgNobel 2017
▻http://www.improbable.com/ig/winners/#ig2017
PHYSICS PRIZE [FRANCE, SINGAPORE, USA] — Marc-Antoine Fardin, for using fluid dynamics to probe the question “Can a Cat Be Both a Solid and a Liquid?”
REFERENCE: “On the Rheology of Cats,” Marc-Antoine Fardin,
▻http://www.rheology.org/sor/publications/rheology_b/RB2014Jul.pdf
PEACE PRIZE [SWITZERLAND, CANADA, THE NETHERLANDS, USA] — Milo Puhan, Alex Suarez, Christian Lo Cascio, Alfred Zahn, Markus Heitz, and Otto Braendli, for demonstrating that regular playing of a didgeridoo is an effective treatment for obstructive sleep apnoea and snoring.
REFERENCE: “Didgeridoo Playing as Alternative Treatment for Obstructive Sleep Apnoea Syndrome: Randomised Controlled Trial,” ▻http://www.bmj.com/content/332/7536/266
ECONOMICS PRIZE [AUSTRALIA, USA] — Matthew Rockloff and Nancy Greer, for their experiments to see how contact with a live crocodile affects a person’s willingness to gamble.
REFERENCE: “Never Smile at a Crocodile: Betting on Electronic Gaming Machines is Intensified by Reptile-Induced Arousal,”
▻https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10899-009-9174-4
ANATOMY PRIZE [UK] — James Heathcote, for his medical research study “Why Do Old Men Have Big Ears?”
REFERENCE: “Why Do Old Men Have Big Ears?”
▻http://www.bmj.com/content/311/7021/1668.short
BIOLOGY PRIZE [JAPAN, BRAZIL, SWITZERLAND] — Kazunori Yoshizawa, Rodrigo Ferreira, Yoshitaka Kamimura, and Charles Lienhard, for their discovery of a female penis, and a male vagina, in a cave insect.
REFERENCE: “Female Penis, Male Vagina and Their Correlated Evolution in a Cave Insect,”
▻http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0960982214003145
FLUID DYNAMICS PRIZE [SOUTH KOREA, USA] — Jiwon Han, for studying the dynamics of liquid-sloshing, to learn what happens when a person walks backwards while carrying a cup of coffee. REFERENCE: “A Study on the Coffee Spilling Phenomena in the Low Impulse Regime,”
▻http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2078152015300377
NUTRITION PRIZE [BRAZIL, CANADA, SPAIN] — Fernanda Ito, Enrico Bernard, and Rodrigo Torres, for the first scientific report of human blood in the diet of the hairy-legged vampire bat
REFERENCE: “What is for Dinner? First Report of Human Blood in the Diet of the Hairy-Legged Vampire Bat Diphylla ecaudata,”
▻http://www.bioone.org/doi/abs/10.3161/15081109ACC2016.18.2.017
MEDICINE PRIZE [FRANCE, UK] — Jean-Pierre Royet, David Meunier, Nicolas Torquet, Anne-Marie Mouly and Tao Jiang, for using advanced brain-scanning technology to measure the extent to which some people are disgusted by cheese.
REFERENCE: “The Neural Bases of Disgust for Cheese: An fMRI Study,”
▻https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5065955
COGNITION PRIZE [ITALY, SPAIN, UK] — Matteo Martini, Ilaria Bufalari, Maria Antonietta Stazi, and Salvatore Maria Aglioti, for demonstrating that many identical twins cannot tell themselves apart visually.
REFERENCE: “Is That Me or My Twin? Lack of Self-Face Recognition Advantage in Identical Twins,”
▻http://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0120900
OBSTETRICS PRIZE — [SPAIN] — Marisa López-Teijón, Álex García-Faura, Alberto Prats-Galino, and Luis Pallarés Aniorte, for showing that a developing human fetus responds more strongly to music that is played electromechanically inside the mother’s vagina than to music that is played electromechanically on the mother’s belly.
REFERENCE: “Fetal Facial Expression in Response to Intravaginal Music Emission,”
▻http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/1742271x15609367
REFERENCE: “Fetal Acoustic Stimulation Device,” patent ES2546919B1, granted September 29, 2015 to Luis y Pallarés Aniorte and Maria Luisa López-Teijón Pérez.
▻https://patents.google.com/patent/ES2546919B1/en
