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Meet the Ig Nobel Prize Winners

Meet the Ig Nobel Prize Winners

mkl

Comments (25)

  • embedding-shape
    Some great winners this time, personal favorite:> IG NOBEL ECONOMICS PRIZE 2026 [USA, MEXICO, CANADA] Paul Piff, Daniel Stancato, Stéphane Côté, Rodolfo Mendoza-Denton, and Dacher Keltner, for amassing evidence that upper class people are more likely to snatch from a children’s supply of candy, and engage in other kinds of unethical behavior. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, vol. 109, no. 11, 2012, pp. 4086-4091. <doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1118373109>
  • varjag
    A paper am a coauthor of uses an Ig Nobel winning article as a reference. Because in fact it was a serious piece of research with practical implications.
  • D-Coder
    This article had me at pneumotachometers (emphasis mine):> Unno used a pair of pneumotachometers (instruments to measure volume flow of respired gases) in parallel for his experiments to determine the velocity, volume, and time scale of blowing through each side of the nose over 60 trials.
  • mkl
    The official list is at https://improbable.com/ig/winners/?amp=1#ig2026 but Ars Technica has a lot more detail.
  • magneticnorth
    It wasn't clear to me in the article, but the best splash-free urinal ("nautilus"), is the tall skinny one second-from-right in the photo.In addition to having the correct angle to minimize splash, it also fits a wide range of heights and is easier to clean than some of the other designs they tried.
  • sandworm101
    Are they still using the little girl?THAT invention deserves its own ignoble category for contribution to public discord.This: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xAnVNXaa5oA
  • peter_d_sherman
    >"But this year’s winning team didn’t go the robot route; instead, they adapted a female mosquito proboscis to work as a nozzle in a super-precise 3D printer. [...] The team called the device a “3D necroprinter.” The necroprinter achieved a resolution ranging from 18 to 22 microns, which was two times smaller than the printers using the smallest commercially available metal dispensing tips."Strangely, this idea has at least a small amount of merit... The idea that an organic, carbon-based structure (in the above case, a mosquito proboscis -- but it could have been a separate, non-living individually 3D printed from organic materials, organic part) would make a good 3D print head with exceedingly fine resolution, is not a terrible idea!(Note that for the record, I do not endorse killing mosquitos, or any other insect to make 3D print heads, or really, anything else!)
  • jmclnx
    >The 36th ceremony took place on September 3rd in the Congress Center of Zurich, Switzerland, and was hosted by the University of Zurich and ETH Domain, with Abrahams saying that the United States had become "unsafe" for guests.Another loss for the US thanks to Trump.https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ig_Nobel_PrizeAlso, every political speech needs a "Miss Sweetie Poo".
  • jdw64
    [dead]