Of plucked chickens and taped windshields
There is one consolation for most of the scientists who again did not receive a Nobel Prize this year: they have at least not been "awarded" with the Ig Nobel Prize Forgive experiments that cannot or should not be duplicated. In the hallowed halls of Harvard University, the "inaugural" presentation of the annual Ig Nobel Prize took place for the seventh time. However, only one of the ten laureates who were honored was present.
In contrast to the conventional Nobel Prizes, the Annals of Improbable Research award can also be awarded posthumously if required. For example, to Bernard Vonnegut from the State University of New York, Albany (USA). He received the award in meteorology for his investigations into whether the wind speed in tornadoes can be determined using dead chickens. However, in his report, which appeared in the October issue of Weatherwise, he states that this method is unsuitable. The technique, developed between 1842 and 1890, called for shooting dead chickens into the tornado with a cannon. But then it could no longer be proven whether the chickens were actually plucked by the tornado or perhaps by the cannon.
The discovery that background music in elevators appears to boost the immune system brought Carl Charnetski and Francis Brennan of Wilkes University, Wilkes-Barre (USA), and James Harrison of Muzak Ltd. in Seattle (USA), earned his laurels in medicine. They had students listen to light jazz for 30 minutes and then measured the amount of immunoglobulin A in the saliva - it was 14 percent higher than without irrigation."It's a very serious and well-conducted scientific investigation," says Charnetski. So could music in the elevator protect against a cold?
The urban ecologist Mark Hostetler from the University of Florida (USA) was the only winner to attend the ceremony in person. The newly graduated researcher indirectly examined 12,000 miles of country roads by scraping from the windshields of intercity buses all the insects that had died and stuck there. His findings can be read in the book That Gunk on Your Car: A Unique Guide to Insects of North America, published by Ten Speed Press. There you will find wonderful color photos - of animals before and after contact with the windscreen - as well as natural history information. Hostetler said at the awards ceremony, "At least these insects didn't die in vain.".
