Ig Nobels Honor Bladder Control, Beer Bottle Mating

"The prizes are intended to celebrate the unusual, honor the imaginative — and spur people's interest in science, medicine, and technology." improbable.com/ig/

news.sciencemag.org/sciencenow/2011/09/i...-control-.html?rss=1
Ig Nobels Honor Bladder Control, Beer Bottle Mating
by John Bohannon on 30 September 2011

A full bladder can be maddening, especially if you've got to go in the middle of a complex psychological experiment. But that's just what a team of researchers was counting on when it measured the impact of urination urgency on human decision-making. The study hasn't changed the world, but it was one of several honored here last night at Harvard University as part of the 2011 Ig Nobel Awards. The annual honors are meant to make people "laugh and then think," says Marc Abrahams, the Ig Nobel master of ceremonies and editor of the Annals of Improbable Research.

The study of urination urgency , which won the medicine Ig Nobel, revealed seeming contradictions about the mind. In the first of two experiments, an Australian and U.S. team revealed that a full bladder affected short-term memory and attention span as powerfully as 24 hours of sleep deprivation.

But a second experiment, conducted by a team in the Netherlands, found that for some mental abilities, a full bladder is sometimes a boon. When offered the choice between receiving $16 tomorrow or $30 in 35 days, people tend to grab the smaller reward, even though it makes more sense to delay gratification. But subjects who needed to pee were better able to control that impulse and choose the larger, later reward. That supports the aptly named theory of "inhibition spillover," the idea that inhibiting one impulse helps you control other, unrelated impulses.

The ceremony had a somber moment this year as two longtime Ig Nobel participants were memorialized. Mathematician Benoît Mandelbrot, 85 and pioneer of fractal geometry, and Harvard University chemist William Lipscomb, 91 and winner of a real Nobel Prize, both passed away since last year's ceremony. They were frequent participants in the traditional Ig Nobel "Win a Date With a Nobel Laureate" contest. This year, the prize was a date with Lou Ignarro (Nobel Prize for physiology or medicine 1998).

www.physorg.com/news/2011-09-zany-scient...ernative-nobels.html
Zany scientists honored in alternative Nobels
In the ultimate accolade for the world's mad scientists, spoof Nobel prizes were awarded Thursday for studies into beetle sex, yawning, the desperation of people dying to urinate, and other daffy investigations.
September 29, 2011 by Sebastian Smith

The annual Ig Nobel prizes, now in their 21st year, were given out at Harvard University in front of 1,200 spectators, with real Nobel Prize winners handing out the honors. To win, scientists must "first make people laugh, and then make them think," according to the Ig Nobel ethos.

The biology prize -- often a good source of humor at the Igs -- went to Darryl Gwynne of Canada, Australia and the United States, and David Rentz of Australia, for their ground breaking paper titled: "Beetles on the Bottle: Male Buprestids Mistake Stubbis For Females." Which to the layman translates as: beetles tragically attempting to mate with an Australian beer bottle.

A French-Dutch group won the physics prize "for determining why discus throwers become dizzy and why hammer throwers don't."

The mathematics prize was awarded jointly to six academics who over the years have emphatically predicted the end of the world, and are still around to hear of their mock-honor. The citation thanks them "for teaching the world to be careful when making mathematical assumptions."

Earlier I had posted the video of the man who won the peace prize (although I think the video was staged)!

The 2011 Ig Nobel prizes in full
The video of the ceremony and other videos in the archives

The Improbable Research Collection videos are three-minute videos about research that makes people laugh, then makes them think. Each collection — each episode — is about three minutes long, composed of bits and pieces and people from the magazine Annals of Improbable Research, from Ig Nobel Prize lectures and ceremonies and other live events, and from many other sources. We have been collecting this material for almost twenty years. The format, roughly speaking, is similar to Monty Python. But the content is all real. Mostly, it's about science, technology, and medicine. And people.