Ig Nobel Prize ceremony 2011 – live webcast

Watch the Ig Nobel Prize ceremony, transmitted live from Harvard University’s Sanders Theatre The ceremony will begin at 12.30am BST (7.30pm EDT) Founded 20 years ago by Marc Abrahams, editor of the Annals of Improbable Research , the Ig Nobel awards recognise genuine academic research and “honour achievements that first make people laugh, and then make them think”. At 7.30pm EDT on Thursday (12.30am on Friday, British Summer Time), this year’s crop of winners will collect their awards in front of a 1,200-strong crowd who will throw paper planes onto the stage as the newly minted laureates make their 60-second acceptance speeches. A flavour of what to expect Last year, psychologists Simon Rietveld and Ilja van Beest at the University of Amsterdam shared the medicine Ig Nobel for their discovery that breathing difficulties brought on by asthma can be alleviated by repeated rollercoaster rides . The 2010 biology prize went to Gareth Jones at Bristol University and collaborators in China for showing that female fruit bats that performed oral sex on their mates copulated for longer . “It is the first documented case of fellatio by adult animals other than humans to my knowledge, and opens questions about whether female animals can manipulate males via sexual activity, perhaps in this case to improve their chances of successful fertilisation,” Jones told the Guardian . Have you ever thought that your boss is promoting all the wrong people? Show them last year’s management Ig Nobel, awarded to Alessandro Pluchino at the University of Catania for demonstrating mathematically that companies work more efficiently if staff are promoted at random . Further back in the archives, who can forget the 2006 medicine prize? Francis M Fesmire, Majed Odeh, Harry Bassan and Arie Oliven showed that hiccups can be cured with digital rectal massage . Apparently a whole range of other treatments – gagging and tongue-pulling manoeuvres, pressing the eyeball, swallowing a teaspoon of granulated sugar, even strong drugs – had failed to work where the massage succeeded. Over two decades and hundreds of prizes, the Ig Nobels have brought the world’s attention to homosexual necrophiliac ducks , an alarm that makes an annoying noise that teenagers can hear but that is inaudible to adults , why woodpeckers don’t get headaches , why dry spaghetti often breaks into more than two pieces when bent , how female malaria mosquitos are attracted equally to the smell of Limburger cheese and the smell of human feet and that dung beetles are actually quite particular about what they eat . This year’s crop of new laureates might want to look to one of their own when out celebrating in Cambridge after the ceremony at Harvard on Thursday night. In 2009, Javier Morales of the National University of Mexico, was awarded the chemistry Ig Nobel for finding a way to turn the national drink, tequila, into diamonds . Thin films of the precious material were produced by heating 80%-proof tequila blanco in a pressure vessel. Something, I’m sure you’ll agree, that demonstrates why the curiosity-driven, blue-skies research celebrated by the Ig Nobels will always come in handy some day. Ig Nobel Prizes Science prizes People in science United States Alok Jha guardian.co.uk

Posted by on September 29, 2011. Filed under News, Politics, World News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.