lg Nobel Award Hamster Viagra Cure for Jet Lag
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Patricia Agostino of Buenos Aires, Argentina, 1 of 10 researchers for this year’s Ig Nobel prize discovered that a hamster on Viagra recovers faster from jet lag than those which aren’t taking the drug. Patricia and her team found that hamsters given Viagra required 50% less time to recover from a 6 hour time zone change. But they didn’t catch a plane — they simply turned the lights off and on at various times. Quirky as it seems, the discovery could provide a major impact for millions of flyers.
lg Nobel prize 2007. Photo – Charles Krupa / AP
The lg Nobel prize for quirky, funny and sometimes legitimate scientific achievements is a parody of the Nobel prizes awarding people for scientific inventions that ‘first make people laugh, and then make them think.’
America’s Air Force in Dayton, Ohio won the Ig Nobel Peace Prize for making a chemical weapon dubbed the ‘gay bomb’ — a chemical weapon that would make heterosexual enemy soldiers want to make love with the enemy, not war.
Brian Wansink of Cornell University lg Nobel-winning bottomless bowl of soup.
Photo – Stan Honda / AFP / Getty Images
The lg Nobel for nutrition went to Cornell University professor Brian Wansink for a bottomless bowl of soup. Bowls were engineered with tubes that slowly and indiscernibly refilled them with creamy tomato soup to see if participants ate more than they would with a regular bowl.
“We found that people eating from the refillable soup bowls ended up eating 73 percent more soup, but they never rated themselves as any more full” said Professor Wansink. “They thought ‘How can I be full when the bowl has so much left in it?’. We as Americans judge satiety with our eyes, not with our stomachs.”
Dan Meyer sword swallower. Photo – Stan Honda / AFP / Getty Images
lg Nobel prize for medicine went to Dan Meyer and Brian Witcombe of Antioch, Tennessee, for studying the side effects of sword swallowing as the world’s first inclusive study of sword swallowing injuries, published in the British Medical Journal last year. Dan Meyer is one of but a few dozen active sword swallowers in the world. No big surprise here that throat abrasions, perforated esophagi and punctured blood vessels were the most common injuries.
“Most sword swallowing injuries happen either after another smaller injury when the throat is tender and swollen, or while doing something out of the ordinary, like swallowing multiple swords.” commented Meyer.
lg Nobel winners for science and in technology, Harvard professor L. Mahadevan and professor Enrique Cerda Villablanca of Universidad de Santiago in Chile found that the wrinkle patterns seen on sheets are replicated in nature on human and animal skin.
Dutch winner Johanna E.M.H. van Bronswijk for biology performed studies determining the population of dust mites and other insects that share our beds.
Kuo Cheng Hsieh won for economics with his patented Batman-like device to catch bank robbers that drops a net over the would-be thieves.
The most bizarre hands down went to Mayu Yamamoto of the International Medical Center of Japan in chemistry for “developing a way to extract vanillin–vanilla fragrance and flavoring from cow dung.” Toscanini’s Ice Cream named a flavor after Mayu Yamamoto called “Yum-A-Moto Vanilla Twist.”
Real Nobel award winners Craig Mello, Roy Glauber and Dudley Herschbach sample Mayu Yamamoto’s vanilla ice-cream flavored with extract of cow dung. Photo – Stan Honda / AFP / Getty Images
Toscanini’s Ice Cream will have a free public tasting of the ice cream at Central Square, 899 Main Street, Cambridge, MA.
The lg Nobel awards were founded in 1991 by science magazine editor Marc Abrahams to shed light on some of the bizarre projects embarked upon by researchers across the globe. “Some of the projects were staggering.” said Abrahams. “It made you laugh and then it made you think, and from the beginning that’s what this has been about.”
The recipients of the annual award handed out by the Annals of Improbable Research magazine were honored at Harvard University on Thursday night. The prizes are hand-constructed by Eric Workman.
Tags:award awards bizarre fun funny lg Nobel Prize odd science unusual weird
Who gets the grants for this kind of stuff? I don’t care if viagra can reduce jet lag, I am not taking that stuff. I’d probably be the 1 in whatever that suffers a heart attack from it.
I guess the ‘gay bomb’ hasn’t had much effect in Iraq then!! I’ll definitely pass on the Yum-A-Moto Vanilla Twist, I wonder why? And now we might end up with many frequent fliers on Viagra, God help us hahahaha
Finally feeling good enough to surf around to my favorite blogs! Seriously–you’re one of the best bloggers there are imho! I always love your strange, quirky and WELL-DONE posts!
RT, I shake my head at times myself over the things people get grants for. It happens the same here in Canada, whereas some who really deserve a grant don’t receive a second look. I’m not one for taking pills either, other than aspirins for the wicked head aches I get at times. That’s as far as it goes.
Colin, I don’t think they’ve taken the ‘gay-bomb’ that far
‘Frequent flyers’ on Viagra’ … haha, good one! I’m passing on the cow-dung flavored ice cream as well 
Great to see your smiling face again Kuanyin! Glad you’re feeling better. I think I need to see you around a lot more frequently when you shower me with praise to help boost my ego, hahaha! Thanks so much
Very interesting idea! You have the point!
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