Psychologists who discovered that leaning to the left makes the Eiffel Tower seem smaller, neuroscientists who found brain activity in a dead salmon, and designers of a device that can silence blowhards are among the winners of Ig Nobel prizes for the oddest and silliest real discoveries.
The annual prizes are awarded by the Annals of Improbable Research as a whimsical counterpart to the Nobel prizes, which will be announced early next month.
Former winners of the real Nobels hand out the Ig Nobel Awards at a ceremony held at Harvard University in Massachusetts.
Ig Nobels for 2012 also went to US researchers who discovered that chimps can recognise other chimps by looking at snapshots of their backsides, and to a Swedish researcher for solving the puzzle of why people’s hair turned green while living in certain houses in the town of Anderslöv, Sweden. (The culprit was a combination of copper pipes and hot showers.)
Marc Abrahams, editor of the Annals and architect of the Ig Nobels who announced the winners on Thursday, said one of his personal favourites was this year’s Acoustics Prize. reuters
Other Winners :
Physicists at Unilever led by Dr Patrick Warren and at Stanford University led by Professor Joe Keller for their use of mathematics to explain why ponytails take on their distinctive “tail” shape. The Ig Nobel is Keller’s second.
Igor Petrov and colleagues at the SKN Company in Russia for using technology to convert old Russian ammunition into new diamonds.
Rouslan Krechetnikov and Hans Mayer of the University of California, Santa Barbara, for illuminating why carrying a cup of coffee often ends up in a spill.
French researcher Emmanuel Ben-Soussan on how doctors performing colonoscopies can minimise the chance of igniting gasses that make their patients explode.
The US Government General Accountability Office, for issuing a report recommending the preparation of a report to discuss the impact of reports about reports.
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