Why can’t you read the contract forever? Why do you eat ice cream during chemotherapy? Why do ducklings line up when swimming? After people fall in love, their heartbeats become synchronized… Recently, the 32nd Ig Nobel Prize was officially announced. What kind of wonderful research has been brought this year?
It is reported that the Ig Nobel Prize was founded by the Journal of Science Humor in 1991. It is an interesting imitation of the Nobel Prize. Interest in the fields of medicine and engineering. The Ig Nobel Prize is not grandstanding, and some of its presenters are even Nobel Prize winners.
Recently, the 32nd Ig Nobel Awards Ceremony was held online, and 8 real Nobel Prize winners, including British biochemist Sir Richard Roberts, served as award presenters. It is reported that 10 research teams from different fields won the award. So, what interesting findings did they have.
Medicine Award: Eat ice cream to ease the pain of chemotherapy Before performing hematopoietic stem cell transplantation
on cancer patients, doctors need to pre-condition with high-dose chemotherapy drugs. This treatment destroys the epithelial cells that line the gastrointestinal tract and is highly likely to cause oral mucositis in cancer patients.
The winner of the Medicine Prize found that eating ice cream during chemotherapy can lower the temperature of the mouth, constrict blood vessels, reduce the dose of drugs that mucosal tissues come into contact with, and ultimately reduce the side effects of chemotherapy. The study also found that cancer patients treated with ice cream, especially childhood cancer patients, had a lower rate of oral mucositis than those who did not eat ice cream.
Applied Cardiology Award: Love at First Sight Synchronizes Heartbeats How does it feel when
two people fall in love at first sight? The winner of the Applied Cardiology Prize answers this “heartbeat” question scientifically.
The researchers recruited 140 volunteers to conduct an experiment. Volunteers wear professional sensors and go on dates. When dating, there will be a partition between the two parties. The partition will be opened for 3 seconds to give them a first impression of each other. After that, the partition will be opened two more times, allowing the two parties to have a visual interaction for 2 minutes. Next, the researchers asked whether the volunteers wanted to go on another date. The findings showed that if a person is attracted to his or her date, their heart rates tend to sync up. For example, when the heartbeat of the other party increases, both of them will increase. In addition, the perspiration level of the skin on both sides will become the same.
Peace Prize: When do gossipers tell the truth and when do they lie? A research team
from the Key Laboratory of Behavioral Science, Institute of Psychology, Chinese Academy of Sciences conducted a model analysis on the strategy of spreading rumors, trying to find out what kind of scenarios gossipers are in. The next will choose to tell lies. The study found that whether or not to lie depends on the relationship between the gossip teller, the gossip listener and the subject of the gossip. Specifically, the better the relationship, the more honest the gossip person will behave, otherwise they may “carry private goods”.
Literary Award: Why Contracts Are Always Written in an Unintelligible Way When
most people see contracts and other legal documents, they feel like they are reading “a book from heaven”. Why is this? Francis Morica of the University of Edinburgh and others found through analysis that legal documents often contain seldom-used terms, lengthy narratives, and other writing methods that are difficult for ordinary people to understand. However, the most difficult thing to understand in legal texts is not professional concepts, but poor writing style. Writers always embed a lot of clauses in the sentence, which makes the sentence very awkward and the key information is scattered. The researchers therefore suggest that it is better to use fewer clauses in the contract.
Physics Prize: Why do ducklings line up when swimming
Why do ducklings line up when swimming? Frank Fish of West Chester University in Pennsylvania, USA, found through simulation calculations that the amplitude of the water waves generated by the mother duck when swimming can offset the resistance of the ducklings in the row behind it, and can also make the ducklings gain about 60%. thrust. Moreover, even the ducklings at the end of the team will not suffer, because the water waves generated by the ducklings in the front row will be superimposed and pass on the labor-saving waves. From the third duckling in line, the wave resistance suffered by the individual is close to zero, which can effectively prevent the energy consumption of the individual. That is to say, if they line up in a “one” shape, each duckling not only enjoys the benefits of labor-saving paddling, but can also pass this effect along the queue.
Economics Award: The key to success is “luck”
What does success depend on? The economics laureate tried to find out by simulating the rise and fall of a group of people over 40 years of work. The most talented people are rarely the most successful, and luck plays a bigger role in success than people thought, research has found. The researchers performed 10,000 life sims on 1,000 people and found that the “successful” people tended to have about the same talents as the average. Its success has a lot to do with its luck.
Still, the study doesn’t completely deny the importance of talent. According to the researchers, in an environment where the overall quality of the people is high, highly talented people have more chances to succeed. In addition, a good industrial environment and more opportunities will also help high-talented individuals perform better.
Art History Prize: What Happened to the “Enema” Scene on Mayan Claypots
”Give yourself an enema” is a grotesque scene to modern eyes, but it was very common on ancient Mayan clay pots. The old view was that the Mayans were treating a disease. However, the researchers found that the Mayans were performing some kind of religious ritual after analyzing enema scenes depicted on several pieces of pottery and the language glyphs that appear in these scenes. They may have gutted themselves with fermented alcoholic beverages and even added some natural hallucinogens. The researchers also found that alcohol was better absorbed when poured directly into the intestines.
Engineering Award: How Many Fingers It Takes to Turn a Knob
Matsuzaki Moto and his team, an industrial design researcher at Chiba Institute of Technology in Japan, made more than 40 wooden cylindrical knobs with diameters ranging from 7 to 130 mm. They invited 32 subjects to individually turn these knobs and analyzed the changes in their movements. The results show that when the diameter of the knob reaches 10 to 11 mm, it needs 3 fingers to rotate; when the diameter of the knob reaches 23 to 26 mm, it needs 4 fingers to rotate; when the diameter of the knob reaches 45 to 50 mm, it needs 5 fingers Finger to spin. The central takeaway from this set of experiments is that the bigger the knob, the more fingers it takes to turn it.
Matsuzaki believes that these observations can inform industrial designers so that they can invent appropriately shaped faucets and volume control knobs.
Biology Prize: Docked-tailed scorpions can also mate Scorpions
have long used a very extreme survival strategy to fight predators-docked tails. Unlike geckos, scorpions don’t just lose their tails, they also lose their nerves, the back of their digestive system, stingers, venom glands and anus. It is reported that the scorpions who lost their anuses even faced the risk of death from severe constipation. However, the researchers found that these tail-docked scorpions were still able to mate successfully, and the females continued to produce offspring, although the number and health of the offspring would be affected.
Safety Engineering Award: Realistic Fake Deer Collision Model
According to statistics, there are hundreds of thousands of moose in Sweden, and there are about 13 car-moose collision accidents every day. In order to improve traffic safety, the safety engineering award winner has produced a moose version of the crash test model. The model is assembled from pieces of rubber and steel wire ropes. The researchers carefully selected soft and extremely tough rubber varieties, and adjusted the density and mass distribution to be very similar to real deer. The researchers used the moose model to simulate the scene after the vehicle collision, and found that the moose’s leg was broken first during the collision, and then the body rotated and hit the windshield directly. In other words, the moose’s center of gravity actually goes over the hood that normally absorbs crash energy, causing massive damage.
