Joel Orr's World

Posted by John Murrell on October 2nd, 2009 at 6:54 am 

Oh sure, “Ardi,” the newly revealed skeleton of the oldest known member of the human family tree, is the science story getting all the big headlines today, but let us not ignore the diverse and compelling projects that were honored Thursday night with this year’s Ig Nobel prizes, given with good humor for research that “cannot, or should not, be repeated.” Among this year’s winners:

* Elena N. Bodnar, Raphael C. Lee, and Sandra Marijan of Chicago, who won the public health prize for inventing a bra that in a pinch can be used as a pair of gas masks.

* Stephan Bolliger, Steffen Ross, Lars Oesterhelweg, Michael Thali and Beat Kneubuehl of the University of Bern, Switzerland, given the peace prize for their experiments to determine whether it is better to be cracked over the head with a full beer bottle or an empty one. “Empty beer bottles are sturdier than full ones,” they concluded. “However, both full and empty bottles are theoretically capable of fracturing the human neurocranium.”

* Donald L. Unger, of Thousand Oaks, Calif., recipient of the prize in medicine for his personal quest to test his mother’s warning that cracking his knuckles would give him arthritis. Every day for 60 years, Unger cracked the knuckles of his left hand at least twice and those of his right not at all. Now 83, Unger said, “After 60 years, I looked at my knuckles and there’s not the slightest sign of arthritis. I looked up to the heavens and said: ‘Mother, you were wrong, you were wrong, you were wrong.’”

* Catherine Douglas and Peter Rowlinson of Newcastle University, Newcastle-Upon-Tyne, U.K., who picked up the veterinary medicine prize for showing that cows who have names give more milk than cows that are nameless.

* Katherine K. Whitcome of the University of Cincinnati, Daniel E. Lieberman of Harvard and Liza J. Shapiro of the University of Texas, given the physics prize for analytically determining why pregnant women do not tip over.

Those other Nobels start going out next week.