Slashdot Mirror
2004 Ig Nobel Prizes Announced
ancice writes "The
2004 Ig Nobel prizes are out.
Article by New Scientist. An 'invisible gorilla has scooped the 2004 Ig Nobel Prize for Psychology'. And 'dropped food is safe to eat if it has spent no more than five seconds on the floor' - Public Health. Finally, there's proof for the 5 second rule! And for Engineering, 'Patenting of the combover'. Official page with
ceremony and
lectures."
The 2004 Ig Nobel Prize Winners
The 2004 Ig Nobel Prizes were awarded on Thursday evening, September 30, at the 14th First Annual Ig Nobel Prize Ceremony, at Harvard's Sanders Theatre.
MEDICINE
Steven Stack of Wayne State University, Detroit, Michigan, USA and James Gundlach of Auburn University, Auburn, Alabama, USA, for their published report "The Effect of Country Music on Suicide."
PUBLISHED IN: Social Forces, vol. 71, no. 1, September 1992, pp. 211-8.
WHO ATTENDED THE IG NOBEL CEREMONY: James Gundlach.
PHYSICS
Ramesh Balasubramaniam of the University of Ottowa, and Michael Turvey of the University of Connecticut and Yale University, for exploring and explaining the dynamics of hula-hooping.
REFERENCE: "Coordination Modes in the Multisegmental Dynamics of Hula Hooping," Ramesh Balasubramaniam and Michael T. Turvey, Biological Cybernetics, vol. 90, no. 3, March 2004, pp. 176-90.
WHO ATTENDED THE IG NOBEL CEREMONY: Ramesh Balasubramaniam and Michael Turvey.
PUBLIC HEALTH
Jillian Clarke of the Chicago High School for Agricultural Sciences, and then Howard University, for investigating the scientific validity of the Five-Second Rule about whether it's safe to eat food that's been dropped on the floor.
WHO ATTENDED THE IG NOBEL CEREMONY: Jillian Clarke
CHEMISTRY
The Coca-Cola Company of Great Britain, for using advanced technology to convert liquid from the River Thames into Dasani, a transparent form of water, which for precautionary reasons has been made unavailable to consumers.
ENGINEERING
Donald J. Smith and his father, the late Frank J. Smith, of Orlando Florida, USA, for patenting the combover (U.S. Patent #4,022,227).
WHO ATTENDED THE IG NOBEL CEREMONY: Donald Smith's son, Scott Jackson Smith, and daughter, Heather Smith.
LITERATURE
The American Nudist Research Library of Kissimmee, Florida, USA, for preserving nudist history so that everyone can see it.
WHO ATTENDED THE IG NOBEL CEREMONY: Pamela Chestek, the daughter of ANRL director Helen Fisher.
PSYCHOLOGY
Daniel Simons of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and Christopher Chabris of Harvard University, for demonstrating that when people pay close attention to something, it's all too easy to overlook anything else -- even a man in a gorilla suit.
REFERENCE: "Gorillas in Our Midst," Daniel J. Simons and Christopher F. Chabris, vol. 28, Perception, 1999, pages 1059-74.
DEMO:
WHO ATTENDED THE IG NOBEL CEREMONY: Daniel Simons and Christopher Chabris.
ECONOMICS
The Vatican, for outsourcing prayers to India.
PEACE
Daisuke Inoue of Hyogo, Japan, for inventing karaoke, thereby providing an entirely new way for people to learn to tolerate each other
WHO ATTENDED THE IG NOBEL CEREMONY: Daisuke Inoue.
BIOLOGY
Ben Wilson of the University of British Columbia, Lawrence Dill of Simon Fraser University [Canada], Robert Batty of the Scottish Association for Marine Science, Magnus Whalberg of the University of Aarhus [Denmark], and Hakan Westerberg of Sweden's National Board of Fisheries, for showing that herrings apparently communicate by farting.
REFERENCE: "Sounds Produced by Herring (Clupea harengus) Bubble Release," Magnus Wahlberg and Håkan Westerberg, Aquatic Living Resources, vol. 16, 2003, pp. 271-5.
REFERENCE: "Pacific and Atlantic Herring Produce Burst Pulse Sounds," Ben Wilson, Robert S. Batty and Lawrence M. Dill, Biology Letters, vol. 271, 2003, pp. S95-S97.
WHO ATTENDED THE IG NOBEL CEREMONY: Lawrence Dill, Robert Batty, Magnus Whalberg, Hakan Westerberg.
Not to be pedantic about the poster's phrasing, but I would have though the proof went *against* the five-second rule (although this is the first I've heard of such a rule - up until now I've always thought of food on the floor as being garbage-fodder... Catching it in mid-fall is the thing to do, thus managing to foil the buttered-toast rule :-)
It depends on which part of the claim you are looking at. If you take the claim as "Food that has been on the floor less than 5 seconds is safe to eat" then the claim holds up, mostly because he proved that the time doesn't matter much at all. What he seems to have demonstrated is that most of the floors he looked at were clean enough to eat from. He did disprove that the time is the relevant factor, however.
There's always a difference between clean and sanitary. Relevant to this is that we may actually be too clean.
Never confuse volume with power.
I think that may be true in the US, but in the European Union water that calls itself `Natural Mineral Water' has to come from an accredited spring. Most of the big brands such as Evian, Vittel, Perrier, San Pellegrino, etc. fall into this category. There'a a long tradition of spas with putative health benefits, and no doubt the legislation exists to protect these brands.
On the other hand, `Pure' or `Spring' water are unprotected terms and can indeed be nothing more than tap water - these are typically somewhat cheaper. However, Dasani is priced at the same level as mineral water. Many people in Europe seem to think it's worth paying a premium for water that comes from a special `natural' source, but I don't see Dasani making much headway at the same price.
http://harridanic.com
Durrr...
Unless you live in a major metropolis the water that comes out of your tap has far fewer impurities than the bottled stuff.
I've had my water tested for nitrates and coliform (mandatory for every new well). Guess what standards the bottling companies are held up to for water? That's right: none.
You *are* aware that the Dasani water that Coca Cola is selling in the US is purified tab water, too, are you?
Maybe tat just shows that the US consumer-or the US media-are bigger suckers than the ones in the UK.
I have heard from three different dentists that the rate of cavities in adults is climbing, and they attributed it to increased consumption of bottled water over tap water. They tell me this is because tap water generally contains flouride, while bottled water does not. Additionally, my friend working at Boston Water and Sewer drinks his tap water over bottled water, because tap water is subject to far more rigorous testing than is bottled water.
The 5 second rule has been covered by /. more than a year ago here.
It's not water from the Thames, it is water from a company called "Thames Water" that provides water in the UK (originally from the Thames river valley) I would imagine that none of this water is from the Thames itself, and certainly the catchment area and resevoirs are much more widely distributed than just the Thames.
As the original paper points out, tap water is actually validated to a much higher standard than all of that bottled crap people pay for.
"The first thing to do when you find yourself in a hole is stop digging."
It's not really as hard to standardize a "taste" for water as you might think. They all start off with different water sources, but when they send it through reverse osmosis they are pretty much left with pure H20, then they can add in their trace minerals that give it the mouthfeel they are after. I would actually be amazed if it DIDN'T all taste the same...
I'm not sure if this is local to France or European but there are three major terms :
- "spring" water is *very* heavily monitored and has some very stringent restrictions on it's composition. Notably on included minerals. Very few springs actually qualify. You can drink this water daily without trouble.
- "mineral" water is also monitored but without the restrictions on composition, therefore there *might* be too much sodium (or fluoride, or whatever) for regular consumption. Most waters fall into this category. You are supposed to read the label and to know what the limits of each mineral is for a healthy diet (although even if you overdo it you typically won't die because of mineral water, although some can be quite salty).
- "purified" water is any kind of water that has been mechanically and chemically purified.
All three kinds can be carbonated, the gas may or may not be originally present at the spring (the label normally says so).
In conclusion, people here buy a lot of bottled water for an obscure reason, I only buy carbonated water (because it isn't available on tap). The amount spent in advertising by water companies is astounding.
May contain traces of nut.
Made from the freshest electrons.
Ok, try this one then.
Ask your dentist to reaffirm that statement.
Then ask him why the miniscule amount (flouride is toxic after all) of flouride added to drinking water is so much more effective than the flouride in toothpaste, which is a much higher concentration. Not to mention the fact that one is scrubbed into your teeth, and the other has brief, limited contact before it's swallowed.
If he can't answer that, or gives a lame response about "both" being the key, ask if maybe...just maybe...that the widespread flouridation of toothpaste at about the same time that drinking water started getting it, might be responsible for the overall increase in oral health.
Or maybe people just brush their teeth more these days than 50 years ago.
We have flouride in drinking water because it's easy, and some is better than none. But pretending that people who otherwise practice decent toothcare are having decay because the water wasn't flouridated is ridiculous.