Live and recent posts from across the Fediverse tagged #ignobelprize, aggregated by home.social.
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"36 years ago, Marc Abrahams created the Ig Nobel Prize awards — 'for achievements that first make people LAUGH, & then make them THINK.'
This year's featured
▪ the aerodynamics of noseblowing,
▪ buried underpants,
▪ the definition of kissing &
▪ the design of splash-free urinals."
And this years's winner?
🎉 Canadian engineers win 2026 Ig Nobel Technology Prize for:
“necroprinting,” or the use of mosquito proboscides as 3D printer nozzles."
😳 😂 #ignobelprize
“The difference between screwing around and science is writing it down”*…
Quite a feet: Ig Nobel Prize winners took home this statuette, which was designed to celebrate the 2026 ceremony theme, fungiIt’s that time of year again: earlier this month, the Ig Nobel Prizes were awarded…
Scientists who studied cockroach milk proteins, splash-free urinals, and buried underpants garnered top honors at the 36th Ig Nobel Prize ceremony on Thursday, Sept. 3. The humorous honors, which are given “for achievements that first make people LAUGH, and then make them THINK,” were awarded in Zurich for the first time, after 35 years of ceremonies in the US. The Ig Nobel’s organizers at the magazine Annals of Improbable Research moved the ceremony because of safety concerns for international winners and journalists traveling to the US, according to Marc Abrahams, Ig Nobel founder and the master of ceremonies…
… The Ig Nobel in Biomechanics went to the University of Oxford’s Matilda Brindle and coworkers, who have redefined kissing as “non-agonistic interactions involving directed, intraspecific, oral-oral contact with some movement of the lips/mouthparts and no food transfer” after observing the behavior in ants, birds, polar bears, and primates (Evol. Hum. Behav. 2025, DOI: 10.1016/j.evolhumbehav.2025.106788).
The discovery that milk proteins from viviparous cockroaches—insects that nourish their developing offspring within their bodies instead of in an external egg case—possess three times as much energy as cow milk proteins garnered the coveted Chemistry Prize. A team led by Leonard M. G. Chavas at Dectris Japan and Subramanian Ramaswamy at Purdue University studied the proteins from living Diploptera punctata cockroaches (IUCrJ 2016, DOI: 10.1107/S2052252516008903).
For their study “Higher Social Class Predicts Increased Unethical Behavior,” Paul K. Piff at the University of California, Irvine, and coworkers took home the Economics Ig Nobel. Among other things, they learned that drivers of expensive, late-model cars were more likely to cut off other vehicles at a busy four-way intersection (Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A. 2012, DOI: 10.1073/pnas.1118373109)...
“2026 Ig Nobel Prizes” from the American Chemical Society‘s Chemical and Engineering News.
The full list of this year’s Ig Nobel honorees is here; watch the (very amusing) ceremony here.
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As we extol the eccentric, we might spare a thought for Orville Redenbacher; he died on this date in 1995. An agronomist and businessman, he was described by The New York Times as “the agricultural visionary who all but single-handedly revolutionized the American popcorn industry.” Redenbacher’s interest in popcorn blossomed early. It was the favorite snack on his family’s farm, and he grew it (and sold it from the back of his car) to earn extra spending money.
After graduating from Purdue, Redenbacher returned to agriculture, serving as a Farm Bureau extension agent, then working in fertilizer sales. In 1951, Redenbacher and partner Charles F. Bowman bought the George F. Chester and Son seed corn plant in Boone Grove, Indiana. Naming their company “Chester Hybrids,” they tried tens of thousands of hybrid strains of popcorn before settling on a hybrid they named “RedBow.” Over the next two decades, Chester became a worldwide supplier of popcorn seed while also selling its own varieties directly to consumers at its plant in Valparaiso, Indiana.
In 1970, the company introduced a new gourmet hybrid popping corn (developed by plant breeder Carl Hartman) and began distributing it to retail outlets. On the advice of an advertising agency, the product was branded under Orville Redenbacher’s name, and launched as Orville Redenbacher’s Gourmet Popping Corn (in 30-ounce jars)– with the tagline “World’s most expensive popping corn.”
While Orville Redenbacher-branded popcorn is still available, it is (a la last Wednesday’s post) no longer Orville’s passion product. In 1976, Redenbacher sold the company to Hunt-Wesson Foods, a division of Norton Simon, Inc. In 1983, Esmark purchased Norton Simon, which in turn was acquired by Beatrice Foods in 1984. In 1985 Kohlberg Kravis Robert acquired Beatrice with the goal of selling off businesses. In 1990, they sold the popcorn business and other old Hunt-Wesson businesses to agribusiness giant ConAgra.
#agribusiness #agriculture #culture #history #humor #IgNobel #IgNobelPrize #OrvilleRedenbacher #Popcorn #Science
A mosquito’s mouthpart became a 3D-printing nozzle.
A pair of buried underpants became an instrument for measuring soil activity.
And a badly designed urinal became a problem in applied mathematics.
The Ig Nobel Prize winners are always entertaining, of course, but the awards also celebrate where improbable-sounding research can lead. We explored the serious science behind the Pythonesque fun.
#IgNobelPrize #science #research #innovation #deeptech #engineering
https://www.europesays.com/ch/126412/ Research on cockroach milk and nose-blowing wins Ig Nobel prizes #AssociatedPress #CockroachMilk #Country #DigitalMagazine #FutureCeremony #IgNobelPrize #QuirkyScience #ResearchTeam #SoilHealth #technology #TravelConcern #underwear #UnitedStates #University #Zürich
Have you been blowing your nose wrong? Japanese scientist posthumously wins satirical Ig Nobel for 1977 study
Japanese researcher Tokuji Unno wins the Ig Nobel Prize for a study on blowing the nose. Have you…
#EuropeSays #Japan #JP #2026IgNobelAwards #IgNobelPrize #Japanese #MikiTakahara #noseblowingstudy #TokujiUnno
https://www.europesays.com/japan/86623/
https://www.europesays.com/ch/126194/ Late Japanese researcher wins Ig Nobel Prize for study on blowing one’s nose #IgNobelPrize #Zürich
https://www.europesays.com/ch/126122/ Ig Nobel Prize Honors Cockroach Milk Chemistry and Scientific Kissing at Zurich Ceremony #cockroach #IgNobelPrize #kiss #Trump #Zürich #바퀴벌레 #이그노벨상 #키스 #트럼프
Urinal Dynamics Win Ig Nobel Prize
Thirteen years ago, I made a prediction that work on how to avoid urinal splashback would win an Ig Nobel Prize. Today, I am, at last, vindicated. Randy Hurd, Zhao Pan, Tadd Truscott, and Kaveeshan Thurairajah shared the 2026 Ig Nobel Prize in Physics for their work designing a splash-free urinal.
The culmination of this decade-plus of research are two urinal designs, the Cornucopia (“Cornucopeea”) and the Nautilus (“Nauti-Loo”). Both designs minimize splash, in part, through their geometry. As you may have noticed when rinsing dishes, having a stream of droplets hit a surface at a high impact angle creates lots of splash. But at a low impact angle, very little splash occurs. The team took this observation and created designs that minimized impact angle no matter where a user aimed.
How splashback varies with impact angle. High and medium impact angles (left and middle, respectively) generate a lot of splashing from a stream of impacting droplets. In contrast, below a critical impact angle, the splashing is negligible (right).Naturally, they tested the two new designs, alongside two existing urinal designs, finding that the new urinals reduced splashing by as much as 95% across a range of flow rates and user heights. Although the Cornucopia was the least splashy urinal, the team gave the Nautilus an overall edge because its design is easier to clean and works for children, adults, and wheelchair users.
Considering the estimated 1 million liters of urine contemporary urinals splash across U.S. restrooms daily, the Nautilus could save significant labor and cleaning costs, if implemented. (Image credits: urinals and experiment – K. Thurairajah et al., poster – R. Hurd et al.; research credit: K. Thurairajah et al. and R. Hurd et al.)
P.S. – As indicated, I’ve followed this work for a long time. In addition to this post, we did a webcast (10 years ago, yikes!) that touched on the topic. But my most in-depth coverage of the story is still to appear in print; you’ll get to enjoy the whole tale–stretching all the way back to 2012–in a chapter of my forthcoming book. More on that soon! In the meantime, please enjoy this gem of a scientific poster from the project’s early days in 2013:
One of the best research posters of all time, designed to look like it’s been written on a tiled bathroom wall. The text reads, “Confessions of a Sitzpinkler. Though Sitzpinklers, men who sit to urinate, are held in low-esteem within the male community, they have reasonable scientific justification for their actions. Due to the Plateau-Rayleigh instability, a simulated average male urine stream breaks into droplets approximately 15-20 cm after emerging from the urethra. For a typical male and toilet, the opening of the urethra is 13 cm or less above the surface of the water when sitting. The urine stream does not fully transition into droplets before it enters the water as shown in the image on the left. This stream-surface interaction causes bubble entrainment and limited splashing. The resulting satellite droplets lack the necessary momentum to rise above the rim of a typical toilet, not to mention that they toilet bowl is covered when sitting.
How best to blow one's nose? The late professor Tokuji Unno detailed some techniques in a 1977 paper, for which he was awarded the Ig Nobel Medicine Prize on Thursday. https://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2026/09/04/japan/science-health/ig-nobel-prize-nose-blowing/?utm_medium=Social&utm_source=mastodon #japan #sciencehealth #ignobelprize
Meet the 2026 #IgNobelPrize winners
Established in 1991, #IgNobel are a good-natured parody of the #NobelPrize; they honor “achievements that first make people laugh and then make them think.” The unapologetically campy awards ceremony features miniature operas, scientific demos, and “24/7 lectures,” whereby experts must explain their work twice: once in 24 seconds and the second in just seven words
They range from candy snatching, to snake bites, to a splash-free urinal!
https://arstechnica.com/science/2026/09/meet-the-2026-ig-nobel-prize-winners/
@tanyakaroli I think I did #IgNobelPrize in the past, but shorter is better.
Useless Facts, Badly Drawn #303: Eschew Obfuscation!
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#eschewobfuscation #princeton #linguistics #language #science #what #wtf #nasa #ignobel #ignobelprize #ignobelaward #ignobelprizewinners #strangebuttrue #webcomic #comics #uselessfacts #uselessfactsbadlydrawn
Vacas pintadas de zebras viram arma anti-moscas no Japão e garantem Ig Nobel para cientistas
Useless Facts, Badly Drawn #514: Manatee and Herring farts.
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#fart #marinebiology #manatees #herring #ignobelprize #science #facts #funfacts #webcomic #uselessfacts #uselessfactsbadlydrawn
In this episode you'll learn
• What the Ig Nobel Prize is and how it began
• Why unusual research can produce valuable discoveries
• How music and science intersect
• What rhythm and sound reveal about human cognition
#IgNobelPrize
#ScienceAndMusic
#MusicScience
youtu.be/w2fV2Cox5JU
Ig Nobel Prizes and the Harmon...
In this episode you'll learn
• What the Ig Nobel Prize is and how it began
• Why unusual research can produce valuable discoveries
• How music and science intersect
• What rhythm and sound reveal about human cognition
#IgNobelPrize
#ScienceAndMusic
#MusicScience
youtu.be/w2fV2Cox5JU
Ig Nobel Prizes and the Harmon...
@swilua.bsky.social used this article in a classroom exercise https://www.bmj.com/content/bmj/363/bmj.k5094.full.pdf recently.
It is a work of genius, and I amazed that it appears not to have been shortlisted for an #IgNobelPrize .
The annual Ig Nobels, the awards for odd and funny scientific achievement, will be held outside the United States for the first time in its 36 years because of concerns about attendees' safety. The 2026 ceremony, which takes place in September ahead of the Nobel Prizes, will be held in Zurich. “We cannot in good conscience ask the new winners, or the international journalists who cover the event, to travel to the USA this year," Marc Abrahams, editor of event organizers the Annals of Improbable Research, told @AssociatedPress.
#Science #IgNobels #IgNobelPrize #TrumpAdministration #USPolitics
A scientifically important fMRI study of a deceased salmon won an IgNobel Prize a while back. It’s still important.
Bennett et al. "Neural Correlates of Interspecies Perspective Taking in the Post-Mortem Atlantic Salmon: An Argument For Proper Multiple Comparisons Correction" Journal of Serendipitous and Unexpected Results, 2010
Ima just leave this right here....
The 2025 #IgNobelPrize in #Psychology went to Marcin Zajenkowski & Gilles Gignac for showing that simply telling people they’re intelligent can instantly boost their #narcissism. Even more ironic: those who got positive feedback trusted the “scientific validity” of the #IQ test much more:
:doi: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.intell.2021.101595
Just like in academia: we believe in the scientific truth of h-index, or Scopus, or GS, or even RG likes, depending on which one flatters us most.
Cows Painted Like Zebras and Pizza-Eating Lizards: The Ig Nobel Prizes Are Back
https://ground.news/article/cows-painted-like-zebras-and-pizza-eating-lizards-the-ig-nobel-prizes-are-back_21f92e?utm_source=mobile-app&utm_medium=newsroom-share
Meet the #2025 #IgNobelPrize winners
Established in 1991, the Ig Nobel are a good-natured #parody of the #NobelPrize; they honor "achievements that first make people laugh and then make them think."
Does alcohol enhance one's foreign language fluency? Do West African lizards have a preferred pizza topping? And can painting cows with zebra stripes help repel biting flies? These and other unusual #research questions were honored!
https://arstechnica.com/science/2025/09/meet-the-2025-ig-nobel-prize-winners/
A group of Japanese researchers won this year's Ig Nobel Prize for biology — a spoof of the Nobel Prize — for discovering that painting cows in a zebra pattern makes them attract fewer blood-feeding insects. https://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2025/09/19/japan/japanese-researchers-ig-nobel-prize-zebra-painted-cows/?utm_medium=Social&utm_source=mastodon #japan #ignobelprize
