- The Ig Nobel Prize celebrates the most bizarre achievements in academia
- Studies on zombie spiders, nostril hairs and licking fossils are among winners
Keeping count of nostril hairs and investigating the promiscuity of anchovies may seem completely unrelated.
But these studies are among 10 others to win this year’s spoof ‘Ig Nobels’, thanks to their ability to make scientists chuckle.
Traditionally hosted at Harvard University, this ceremony is the 33rd of its kind, and sees genuine Nobel laureates handing out awards to lucky academics.
The prize is ten trillion Zimbabwean dollars, which might sound like a huge amount, but is actually only the equivalent of 30p in the UK (40 cents in the US).
MailOnline spoke with some of the wackiest prize winners of 2023.
Keeping count of nostril hairs and investigating the promiscuity of anchovies may seem completely unrelated. But these studies are among numerous others to win this year’s spoof ‘Ig Nobels’, thanks to their ability to make scientists chuckle
USING DEAD SPIDERS AS GRIPPING TOOLS
Turning dead spiders into mechanical gripping zombies may sound like something out of a nightmare.
But academics at Texas’ Rice University did just this, which bagged them the Mechanical Engineering Prize for 2023.
In research conducted last year, the US-based team pumped wolf spider corpses with air to make their legs unfurl and clasp around objects.
These grippers were able to lift 130 per cent of their own body weight and could even switch off LED lights.
‘While setting up our lab, we noticed a dead, curled-up spider in the corner,’ PhD student, Faye Yap, told MailOnline today.
‘Driven by curiosity, we found that spiders only have flexor muscles to contract their legs inward and rely on hydraulic pressure to extend their legs outward.
‘We set out to determine whether we could repurpose deceased spiders as robotic components, which we achieved by tapping into this hydraulic actuation mechanism.’
Rice University mechanical engineers have found a way to convert the bodies of deceased spiders into necrobotic grippers. Pictured is a gripper being used to lift a jumper and break a circuit to turn off an LED. The team hope the gripper could be useful in microelectronics
Albeit nightmarish, the US team hopes that tools such as this can one day be used in microelectronics.
‘We watch the Ig Nobel Prize ceremony every year to see the creative and thought-provoking work it highlights, and several scientists we look up to have won in the past, so receiving this recognition means a lot to us,’ Assistant Professor Daniel Preston also told MailOnline.
‘The concept of necrobotics where we use a biotic material – in this case, a dead spider – as a robotic component, allows nature to do all the work of creating the system for us, guided by millennia of evolution.
‘Fabrication of small-scale robotic grippers becomes much easier, and this approach also has the potential to reduce waste because the source material is biodegradable.’
In light of their progress, the team is now taking the creepy crawly experiments one step further.
Mr Preston said: ‘We are now developing independent control of each individual leg, which will enable us to systematically study the gait of arachnids and inform improved robot locomotion.’
Daniel Preston (left) and Faye Yap (right) hope that their spider gripper will open the door to a new area of robotics they are calling ‘necrobotics’, which will have real-world applications
SEX LIVES OF ANCHOVIES
Researchers at the University of Southampton have been awarded this year’s Physics Prize for their study on the sex lives of anchovies.
Believe it or not, the spawning of anchovies actually plays a crucial role in maintaining the health of our oceans.
Their birth causes pockets of the ocean to shift, helping nutrients and oxygen to circulate through the water.
‘Our research represents probably the first solid observational record of the effect of marine animals in ocean mixing,’ Oceanographer Bieito Fernández Castro told MailOnline today.
‘So far, the general belief was that this effect was either non-existent or too small to be measured.’
Researchers at the University of Southampton have been awarded this year’s Physics Prize for their study on the sex lives of anchovies
While the ocean may just seem like one massive blob, it’s actually made up of countless pockets of water with different temperatures and properties.
Oceanic mixing takes place when these pockets are merged together as a result of ‘small whirls’ in our oceans caused by winds and numerous other factors.
Dr Castro and his team set out to discover whether algae can effect this too, but they instead stumbled upon an unexpected discovery.
‘In our project, we did not intend to study biologically driven ocean mixing – let alone its relationship to the sexual activity of anchovies,’ Oceanographer Bieito Fernández Castro told MailOnline today.
‘In fact, we wanted to study how the changes in mixing impact the formation of harmful algal blooms in the region off the Galician coast, northwest Spain.
‘These blooms have are negative impact on mussel cultures, which are a huge economical resource for the region.
‘To test this hypothesis, we set out a field campaign to monitor mixing for two weeks. We were surprised when we observed very strong mixing every night, which we couldn’t explain by the effects of tides or wind.
‘However, the acoustic signals from the ship echosounder suggested that strong mixing may be linked to the presence of fish aggregations.’
Samples collected with fishing nets revealed huge numbers of recently spawned eggs of European anchovy. This suggests that anchovies’ frantic behaviour during spawning was responsible for the increased water turbulence
Dr Castro explained that nets were then deployed to investigate further, which came back brimming with thousands of anchovy eggs.
He added: ‘That’s how we concluded that the strong mixing was caused by the sexual activity of anchovies, which gathered in the area at night for the purpose of spawning.’
HOW IT FEELS TO REPEAT WORDS
We’ve all been there – you say a word over and over again until it strangely loses all meaning.
One group of experts studied this strange phenomenon, and was awarded this year’s Literature Prize for their wacky findings.
The researchers, led by France’s Université Grenoble Alpes, conducted two major people-based experiments on the subject.
They believe that saying words many times over generates a similar sensation to ‘jamais vu’ – the strange feeling of finding something unfamiliar when in reality we know it should feel familiar.
Today, Dr Akira O’Connor, at the University of St Andrews, told MailOnline: ‘We know that people sometimes feel strange things when they stare at or repeat a word over and over, and wondered if this strange feeling might be something related to the sensation of jamais vu.
Researchers say that jamais vu is often referred to as a dissociative experience, meaning that it results from the break down of our ‘conscience experience’
‘To test this, we asked people to write out words over and over to see if they experienced anything strange, and whether their descriptions of these strange feelings resembled our understanding of jamais vu.’
Researchers say that jamais vu is often referred to as a dissociative experience, meaning that it results from the break down of our ‘conscience experience’.
Dr O’Connor continued: ‘In this case, there is something about repeatedly encountering the same word that causes your awareness of that word being a proper word to remain unchanged, whilst your subjective experience of encountering that word starts to feel a little strange.
‘As psychologists, we are used to reading about dissociative experienced being caused by neurological problems, brain injuries etc., so to have a procedure that can reliably generate this sort of dissociative experience in healthy people is something we were very happy to have found.’
Despite winning an Ig Nobel award for this research, Dr O’Connor has expressed his concerns for what this truly means.
He continued: ‘We worried that the particular sort of attention that comes with an Ig Nobel award might suggest that our work in these domains is less serious or important that the research we do in more established areas of cognitive psychology.
‘Over the years, as scientific interest in these experiences has grown, and we ourselves have become a little more established, I think we have developed enough confidence to ride this out.’
EATING FOSSILS
Ever thought about eating a fossil? Me neither.
But it seems that many geologists have, and Jan Zalasiewicz has bagged the Chemistry and Geology prize for explaining why.
In an investigation for the Paleontological Association, Professor Zalasiewicz claims that licking fossils is an age-old technique that’s often used in the field.
While it’s quite unnecessary for identifying fossils, it’s commonly believed that moisture enhances the visibility of minerals, allowing experts to take a closer look.
‘I was a little bemused at winning the prize, but it’s nice that the Ig Nobel Committee liked the story. And it’s kind of fun not to have to take the science seriously all of the time,’ Professor Zalasiewicz told MailOnline today.
In an investigation for the Paleontological Association, Professor Zalasiewicz claims that licking fossils is an age-old technique that’s often used in the field
‘Different kinds of rock and mineral can be hard to tell apart, even for an experienced geologist. So, when you’re out in the hills collecting and analysing rock samples it’s a common trick – at least among geologists of the old school like me – to give a quick lick to a small patch before looking at them with a hand lens.
‘It’s not a must-do thing, of course, but it was useful enough for me to have often become almost force-of-habit when I was doing fieldwork, especially when I came across tricky and hard-to-identify rocks. We don’t think about it much (if at all).’
While investigating how this taste for fossils came to be, Professor Zalasiewicz closely examined ancestral stratigrapher Giovanni Arduino.
This 17th century geologist documented the taste of rocks – referring to burnt coal as ‘bitter and urinous’ with a sweet aftertaste.
‘The surprise for me, which I wrote about, was discovering how a pioneering Italian geologist of the 18 century, Giovanni Arduino, took this trick to a much deeper level to use the taste and smell of rocks and minerals as clues to help him work out what they were,’ Professor Zalasiewicz continued.
‘It clearly worked for him – and sometimes he ‘cooked’ the rocks first by burning them and sometimes he just tasted them raw. It clearly worked for him, but it’s a skill we’ve long lost.
‘Instead, we use complicated machines for geochemical analysis, which you might regard as cheating.’
COUNTING NOSTRIL HAIRS
Counting nostril hairs is another task that may never have occurred to you.
But researchers at the University of California sought to do just that, and were later granted the Ig Nobels Medicine Prize.
The US-based study was created with patients of alopecia areata in mind who suffer from a loss of nose hair.
While this may seem trivial to some, nasal hairs serve as a crucial filtration system that prevents the tiniest particles from passing into our bodies.
Loss of these hairs can not only increase a person’s exposure to disease and infections but also allergens in the air.
The US-based study was created with patients of alopecia areata in mind who suffer from a loss of nose hair
After studying 20 men and women, the academics found there were no significant differences between genders or patients with a history of heart disease.
But those who had suffered various types of cancer, including breast, colon and lung varieties, had significantly less nasal hair than the average person.
This has since presented an unexpected yet major gap in research that they believe should be explored further.
‘Nasal vibrissae examinations are not common in dermatologic practice,’ the study reads.
‘However, screening questions addressing the issues and limited physical exams in patients affected by severe hair loss should be considered.’
ELECTRIC CHOPSTICKS
Whether it’s macaroni cheese or a hamburger, many of the most popular dishes around the world are laden with unhealthy levels of salt.
So, researchers from Meiji University developed a bizarre pair of electric chopsticks to reduce the need for sodium by simulating its taste.
Co-developed by Professor Homei Miyashita and beverage maker Kirin Holdings Co, the chopsticks enhance tastes using electrical stimulation and a mini-computer worn on a wristband.
The device uses a weak electrical current to transmit sodium ions from food, through the chopsticks, to the mouth where a sense of saltiness is created.
Researchers from Meiji University have developed electric chopsticks that transmit sodium ions to your mouth via a wristband, to recreate the sensation of saltiness
The taste-enhancing chopsticks may have particular relevance in Japan, where the traditional diet favours salty tastes
‘As a result, the salty taste enhances 1.5 times,’ he said.
The World Health Organisation recommends that adults should consume less than 5 grams of salt per day – which is just under a teaspoon.
At a time when Japanese adults consume a worrying 10 grams per day, this invention has bagged the 2023 Nutrition Prize.
‘To prevent these diseases, we need to reduce the amount of salt we take,’ said Kirin researcher Ai Sato.
‘If we try to avoid taking less salt in a conventional way, we would need to endure the pain of cutting our favourite food from our diet, or endure eating bland food.’
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