Recounting the number of nostril hairs and exploring the promiscuity of anchovies may appear to have no correlation whatsoever. However, these studies, along with several others, have been recognized and honored with the prestigious spoof Ig Nobel Awards for their ability to tickle the funny bones of scientists. The 33rd installment of this event, usually held at Harvard University, witnessed genuine Nobel laureates presenting the awards to deserving academics. The grand prize consists of ten trillion Zimbabwean dollars, which may sound like a substantial amount but is only equivalent to 30p in the UK or 40 cents in the US. MailOnline interviewed some of this year’s most eccentric winners of the Ig Nobel Awards.
Why the Ig Nobel Awards? The Ig Nobel Prize, organized by the science humor magazine Annals of Improbable Research, is a parodical award aimed at celebrating peculiar or trivial achievements in scientific research. First established in 1991, its primary objective is to “honor achievements that first make people laugh, and then make them think.” The name of the award is wordplay on the Nobel Prize, which it satirizes, as well as the term “ignoble,” meaning not noble.
Transforming dead spiders into mechanical gripping devices may seem like a scene from a nightmare, but researchers at Texas’ Rice University have successfully accomplished this feat, earning them the Mechanical Engineering Prize for 2023. In their study conducted last year, the team from the US injected air into wolf spider corpses, causing their legs to unfurl and grip objects. These grippers proved capable of lifting 130 percent of their own body weight and even had the ability to switch off LED lights. Faye Yap, a PhD student at Rice University, shared, “While setting up our lab, we stumbled upon a dead, curled-up spider in the corner. Driven by curiosity, we discovered that spiders utilize flexor muscles to retract their legs and depend on hydraulic pressure to extend them outward. We wanted to explore if we could repurpose deceased spiders as robotic components, leveraging this hydraulic actuation mechanism.” The mechanical engineers at Rice University believe that these grippers could potentially be employed in microelectronics. Assistant Professor Daniel Preston added, “We watch the Ig Nobel Prize ceremony every year to witness the innovative and thought-provoking work it recognizes. Several scientists whom we look up to have won in the past, so receiving this acknowledgment means a great deal to us. The concept of ‘necrobotics,’ employing deceased spiders as robotic components, allows nature to handle the creation of the system for us, utilizing thousands of years of evolution. It simplifies the fabrication of small-scale robotic grippers and has the added benefit of being environmentally friendly, as the source material is biodegradable.” Building upon their progress, the team is now pushing the boundaries of these eerie experiments. Preston revealed, “We are currently working towards achieving independent control of each leg, which will enable us to analyze arachnid locomotion and inform advancements in robot movement.”
The University of Southampton’s researchers have clinched this year’s Physics Prize for their investigation into the romantic escapades of anchovies. Believe it or not, the spawning behavior of anchovies plays a vital role in preserving the health of our oceans. Their reproduction causes shifts in the ocean, facilitating the circulation of nutrients and oxygen. Oceanographer Bieito Fernández Castro shared, “Our research represents one of the first substantial observational records of the impact of marine animals on ocean mixing. Up until now, it was believed that this effect was either non-existent or too minuscule to be measured.” Although the ocean may seem like one vast expanse, it comprises numerous pockets of water with distinct temperatures and properties. Oceanic mixing occurs when these pockets merge due to various factors, such as wind-generated whirls. Dr. Castro and his team initially aimed to investigate the role of algae in this process, but their research led them to an unexpected discovery. Castro explained, “Our intention was not to study biologically driven ocean mixing, let alone its connection to the sexual activity of anchovies. In fact, we intended to examine how changes in mixing influenced the formation of harmful algal blooms off the Galician coast in northwest Spain. These blooms adversely affect mussel farming, a crucial economic resource for the region. To test our hypothesis, we conducted a two-week field study monitoring mixing patterns. Surprisingly, we observed intense mixing every night, which couldn’t be attributed to tides or wind effects. However, echosounder data collected from our ship indicated that strong mixing might be linked to the presence of fish aggregations.” Further investigations involving fishing nets confirmed their suspicion, revealing extensive amounts of recently spawned European anchovy eggs. This suggested that the frenzied actions of anchovies during spawning were responsible for the heightened water turbulence.
Exploring the perplexing experience of repeating words, a group of experts earned this year’s Literature Prize for their intriguing findings. Led by France’s Université Grenoble Alpes, the researchers conducted two significant experiments involving human participants. They hypothesized that repeatedly uttering words generates a comparable sensation to “jamais vu” – the peculiar feeling of encountering something unfamiliar despite its inherent familiarity. Dr. Akira O’Connor from the University of St Andrews explained, “We know that people sometimes experience peculiar sensations when they stare at or repeat a word multiple times. We conjectured that this peculiar experience might be linked to the sensation of jamais vu. Therefore, we asked participants to write out words repeatedly to determine if they experienced any strange sensations and if their descriptions aligned with our understanding of jamais vu.” Jamais vu is often characterized as a dissociative experience, indicating a breakdown in conscious perception. Dr. O’Connor continued, “In this experiment, repeatedly encountering the same word seems to preserve one’s awareness of the word’s legitimacy while generating an increasingly peculiar subjective encounter. As psychologists, we frequently encounter discussions of dissociative experiences resulting from neurological disorders or brain injuries. Therefore, discovering a procedure that reliably elicits this form of dissociative experience in healthy individuals brought us immense satisfaction.” Despite winning an Ig Nobel award for this research, Dr. O’Connor voiced concerns regarding the implications of their findings. She added, “We were concerned that the particular kind of attention typically associated with-winning an Ig Nobel award might lead to the perception that our research was less meaningful or serious. However, this was not the case, as the Ig Nobel Awards are primarily a lighthearted celebration of scientific humor and peculiar achievements.”
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