Strange Research
I recently discovered a rather interesting awards ceremony, the IG Nobels. Hosted by the Harvard-based journal Annals of Improbable Research , the awards honor less-than-traditional research and are handed out by real Nobel laureates.
Highlights from this year include:
- The veterinary medicine prize went Catherine Douglas and Peter Rowlinson at Newcastle University's school of agriculture for discovering that cows with names give more milk.
- The peace prize went to Stephan Bolliger and colleagues at the University of Bern in Switzerland, who found that empty beer bottles are sturdier than full ones, but either can fracture the human neurocranium.
- The medicine prize-my personal favorite as a knuckle cracker, went to Donald Unger, a doctor in Thousand Oaks, Calif. He cracked the knuckles of his left hand, but never those on his right, every day for 60 years to investigate whether it caused arthritis. (He concluded that it does not.)
- The chemistry prize was awarded to Javier Morales who heated 80-proof tequila blanco in a pressure vessel to create diamonds.
Read more at http://improbable.com/ig/winners/.