The 2009 Ig Nobel Prize Winners

Surprise buttseks! I don’t mean it literally, but our blog’s downtime certainly took me from behind. I don’t quite know what happened, but I would like to send my apologies to you if you tried to visit and failed miserably. It’s not you, it’s me (well it’s due to our hosting company an internet backbone connectivity problem if we really want to point accusatory fingers). Needless to say, we’re back and we have some news.

Hosted by the scientific humor magazine, Annals of Improbable Research, the IgNobel Prize seek to highlight mankind’s achievements resulting from research that “cannot, or should not, be repeated”. In its 19th year, the prizes were presented to the winners by genuine Nobel laureates, at a gala event at Harvard University. This year’s achievements ranged from the power of Panda poo to diamonds made from Tequila. Africa got a mention as well, specifically to Gideon Gono, Zimbabwe’s professor of hard sums, creating a staggering range of bank notes.

Here’s a quick round-up of the winners:

Veterinary Medicine: Catherine Douglas and Peter Rowlinson for showing that cows who have names give more milk than cows that are nameless.

Peace: Stephan Bolliger, Steffen Ross, Lars Oesterhelweg, Michael Thali and Beat Kneubuehl for their extensive beer bottle vs skull research. They determined – by experiment – that empty or full, a beer bottle is strong enough to break a skull before the skull breaks it.

Economics: The directors, executives, and auditors of four Icelandic banks for demonstrating that tiny banks can be rapidly transformed into big banks, and vice versa.

Chemistry: Javier Morales, Miguel Apátiga, and Victor M. Castaño for creating diamonds from liquid, more specifically from Tequila.

Medicine: Donald L. Unger for investigating a possible cause of arthritis by cracking only the knuckles of his left hand for more than 60 years.

Physics: Katherine K. Whitcome for determining why pregnant women don’t tip over.

Literature: Ireland’s police service for issuing more than 50 traffic tickets to a man they thought to be the most persistent driving offender in the country. Mr Prawo Jazdy is Polish and in his native language, his name means “driver’s license”.

Public Health: Elena N. Bodnar, Raphael C. Lee, and Sandra Marijan for inventing a brassiere that can quickly be converted into a pair of gas masks.

Mathematics: Gideon Gono, the governor of Zimbabwe’s Reserve Bank, for printing bank notes that range from one cent to one hundred trillion dollars.

Biology: Fumiaki Taguchi, Song Guofu, and Zhang Guanglei from Japan, for determining that bacteria from Giant Panda faeces can be used to reduce kitchen refuse by more than 90% in mass.

Congratulations to the winners. You can see previous IgNobel laureates at Improbable Research.

[via Neatorama]