Necrobiotic spiders, a smart loo, and a repetitive words study — all win 2023 Ig Nobel prizes
Ig Nobel health prize winner Seung-min Park and the Stanford toilet. The 'smart' toilet that can identify a person from their 'analprint' has won one of this year’s spoof Ig Nobel prizes. Picture: Ig Nobel/Seung-min Park/Stanford University/PA Wire
If you've ever wondered if people have the same number of hairs in both nostrils or if you've been thinking your toilet could be doing a lot more for you then this is a very good day for you.
The Ig Nobel prizes have saluted researchers who have taken on these and other pressing issues of our time.
These awards are billed as "Ig® Nobel Prize Winners For achievements that first make people LAUGH then make them THINK".
And if you don't like toilet puns then urine trouble now...
A 'smart' toilet that can identify a person from their 'analprint' has scooped one of 2023's Ig Nobel prizes.
Just like fingerprints, the creases in the lining of a person’s anus — known as analprint — is said to be unique.
The toilet — developed by experts at Stanford University in the US — features cameras that take photos of a person’s bottom to analyse these distinctive creases.
The main aim of the Smart Healthcare Toilet is to look for signs of diseases by analysing stools and urine. And the cameras also take pictures of stools to look for signs of cancer and other conditions such as irritable bowel syndrome.
This Stanford Toilet — officially called A Mountable Toilet System for Personalized Health Monitoring via the Analysis of Excreta — has been awarded the Public Health Prize and no doubt its creator, Seung-min Park and team are flushed with success.
The annual Ig Nobel prizes are awarded by the science humour magazine the Annals of Improbable Research.
Winners get a 10 trillion dollar bill from Zimbabwe alongside a trophy.
Other awards at the virtual ceremony on Thursday included the psychology prize for experiments on a city street to see how many passersby stop to look upward when they see strangers looking upward.
The medicine prize went to a team that used cadavers to explore if there is an equal number of hairs in each of a person’s two nostrils. That paper is titled 'The Quantification and Measurement of Nasal Hairs in a Cadaveric Population' in case you need to read more on that.
And the nutrition prize for experiments to research how electrified chopsticks and drinking straws can change the taste of food.
The education award was scooped up by the research team studying the boredom of teachers and students.
Dr Wijnand Van Tilburg, a University of Essex experimental social psychologist said their studies show that “the mere expectation that classes will be boring caused students to feel bored”.
He said studying boredom is very important because it has been blamed for behaviours like lacking attention, loss of motivation, and even students dropping out.
Dr Van Tilburg told PA: “Beyond education, boredom is associated with poor mental health, such as depression and anxiety.
“To combat the negative outcomes of boredom, it is crucial to study it scientifically.
“This will help us answer questions such as who is likely to get bored and why, what the causes are of boredom, and what can we do to avoid (it).”
The mechanical engineering award went to a team who re-animated dead spiders to use them as 'necrobotic' mechanical gripping tools.
Faye Yap, a PhD student at Rice University in the US, said the findings, published in the journal Advanced Science, showed that spiders “are able to grasp objects greater than their own weight”, potentially opening the doors to a new area of robotics.
A study of the “unfamiliar or peculiar” sensations people feel when they repeat a single word many many many many many times was awarded the literature prize. [The the the the induction of jamais vu in the laboratory: word alienation and semantic satiation]
The chemistry and geology prize went to Jan Zalasiewicz, emeritus professor of palaeobiology at the University of Leicester, for explaining why geologists like to lick rocks: “These days field geologists sometimes lick rock samples they’ve collected before examining them with a hand lens, because it’s easier to see the mineral particles on a wet rock surface. A couple of centuries ago and more, though, some geologists had learnt to tell different rocks and minerals apart by their taste — that’s a skill we’ve now almost completely lost.”
And, of course, we can't forget the physics prize which went to a team examining the extent to which ocean-water mixing is affected by the sexual activity of anchovies.
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