South China Morning Post
Saturday, October 19, 2002
Research laid Ig-Nobelly bare
STEVE CRAY
What do asymmetrical testicles, amorous ostriches, belly button lint and a
washing machine for cats and dogs have in common?
The answer is simple. They all won gongs in this year's alternative Nobel prizes
- the Ig Nobel awards - announced at a Harvard University gala bash last week.
The winners were among a wide range of subjects that formed worldwide research
projects considered by Ig Nobel organisers to "make people laugh, then
make them think".
The UK led the field in biology with a paper published in British Poultry Science
with the title Courtship Behaviour of Ostriches Towards Humans Under Farming
Conditions in Britain (a study of why farmed ostriches tend to fancy human birds
rather than their feathered kind). Physics was represented by research that
demonstrates how beer froth obeys the mathematical law of exponential decay,
closely followed by an University of Sydney's comprehensive survey of human
belly button lint - who gets it, when, what colour, and how much.
Other awards included: maths - An Estimation of the Total Surface Area in Indian
Elephants (Kerala Agricultural University, India); literature - The Effects
of Pre-Existing Inappropriate Highlighting on Reading Comprehension (University
of Nevada-Reno); hygiene - Inventing a washing machine for cats and dogs (Lavakan
de Aste, Spain) and medicine - Scrotal Asymmetry in Man and in Ancient Sculpture
(University College, London).
But the highlight must be the peace prize that rivalled former US president
Jimmy Carter's Nobel award. Japan's Kogure Veterinary Hospital took top honours
for promoting peace and harmony between species by inventing Bow-Lingual, a
computer-based automatic dog-to-human language translation device. Now that's
ruff justice!