Liquid cats and didgeridoos? Must be Ig Nobel Prize season...

September 15, 2017 10:06 PM

Top Boffins looking at whether cats are liquid or solid, why old men have big ears, and the effects of playing the didgeridoo have on sleep apnea were among the laureates at the 2017 Ig Nobel Prizes. (Previously)

This year's version of the annual awards organized by the Annals of Improbable Research were awarded in the following categories:

• PHYSICS PRIZE to Marc-Antoine Fardin, for using fluid dynamics to probe the question "Can a Cat Be Both a Solid and a Liquid?"
• PEACE PRIZE to Milo Puhan, Alex Suarez, Christian Lo Cascio, Alfred Zahn, Markus Heitz, and Otto Braendli, for demonstrating that regular playing of a didgeridoo is an effective treatment for obstructive sleep apnoea and snoring.
• ECONOMICS PRIZE to Matthew Rockloff and Nancy Greer, for their experiments to see how contact with a live crocodile affects a person's willingness to gamble.
• ANATOMY PRIZE to James Heathcote, for his medical research study "Why Do Old Men Have Big Ears?"
• BIOLOGY PRIZE to Kazunori Yoshizawa, Rodrigo Ferreira, Yoshitaka Kamimura, and Charles Lienhard, for their discovery of a female penis, and a male vagina, in a cave insect.
• FLUID DYNAMICS PRIZE to Jiwon Han, for studying the dynamics of liquid-sloshing, to learn what happens when a person walks backwards while carrying a cup of coffee.
• NUTRITION PRIZE to Fernanda Ito, Enrico Bernard, and Rodrigo Torres, for the first scientific report of human blood in the diet of the hairy-legged vampire bat.
• MEDICINE PRIZE to Jean-Pierre Royet, David Meunier, Nicolas Torquet, Anne-Marie Mouly and Tao Jiang, for using advanced brain-scanning technology to measure the extent to which some people are disgusted by cheese.
• COGNITION PRIZE to Matteo Martini, Ilaria Bufalari, Maria Antonietta Stazi, and Salvatore Maria Aglioti, for demonstrating that many identical twins cannot tell themselves apart visually
• OBSTETRICS PRIZE to Marisa López-Teijón, Álex García-Faura, Alberto Prats-Galino, and Luis Pallarés Aniorte, for showing that a developing human fetus responds more strongly to music that is played electromechanically inside the mother's vagina than to music that is played electromechanically on the mother's belly. (Note Bene: They also offer a product based on this research named "Babypod".

posted by Ranucci (15 comments total)

I love all of these. Fluid cats though, hits that good good crazy science sweet spot!
posted by Homo neanderthalensis at 10:25 PM on September 15, 2017 [1 favorite]

I probably have sleep apnea and have a didgeridoo within reach! Unfortunately my GF is already asleep and my attempting to play the thing, which I have never succeeded at before now, would probably be even worse than my snoring! Please halp!
posted by Navelgazer at 10:59 PM on September 15, 2017 [6 favorites]

I have just informed Mr. Palmcorder that we need to get a didgeridoo because of SCIENCE.

He seems ok with it.
posted by palmcorder_yajna at 11:19 PM on September 15, 2017 [2 favorites]

Oh come on, boffins! Let's get this sorted! Ahem. Sorry, I was channeling Raymond Terrific for a moment.

I live alone, snore, and already own too many musical instruments that I can't play - what's a didgeridoo in among the rest? I would like to find out if my ears will grow, but not at the cost of a free trial. I can wait to find out.
posted by sysinfo at 12:10 AM on September 16, 2017

As a musician who probably has a mild sleep apnea, I was delighted by the didgeridoo paper.

One of the challenges in the treatment of sleep disorders is poor compliance.1 20 Thus new treatments not only need to be effective but also be ones that people are motivated enough to use. Didgeridoo playing seems to meet these requirements. Participants were highly motivated during the trial and practised, on average, on almost six days a week, which was even more than the protocol asked for.

posted by shapes that haunt the dusk at 1:06 AM on September 16, 2017 [5 favorites]

I do not own a didgeridoo, but my wife does have sharp elbows. I am lead to believe they are a wonderful remedy for snoring and any other nighttime behaviors that annoy her.
posted by Mr.Encyclopedia at 4:14 AM on September 16, 2017

...we need to get a didgeridoo because of SCIENCE.

I'll quote Marge Simpson from the episode where they visited Australia:

“Mmm, that seems very noisy and expensive for a souvenir.”

posted by Fizz at 5:08 AM on September 16, 2017 [1 favorite]

I highly recommend the babypod website for a commercialized dose of wtfness. There's a picture of what you are buying and... it is exactly what you think it is but not. My only concern though is that whether the speaker is truly tuned to the acoustics of a vagina... You can tell this wasn't designed by Dr. Amar Bose.
posted by Nanukthedog at 5:27 AM on September 16, 2017

Having read the cat study, I'm baffled as to why the melting points of various breeds was not in consideration.
posted by radwolf76 at 6:24 AM on September 16, 2017 [12 favorites]

SPOILER ALERT!


"The Fluid Dynamics prize winning paper reveals that they're much less likely to spill their coffee than when walking forwards, but warns that: "walking backwards, much more than suppressing resonance, drastically increases the chances of tripping on a stone or crashing into a passing by colleague who may also be walking backwards (this would most definitely lead to spillage)".
posted by girl Mark at 8:23 AM on September 16, 2017 [1 favorite]

I was a little disappointed that resistance to shear stress was not brought up in the "Are cats fluid?" paper per se, but the number of dimensionless variables was satisfying. I'll tuck this away for then next time I teach Fluid Mechanics.

Side note: This was published in the Society of Rheology newsletter, and rheologists seem like a fun bunch.
posted by BrashTech at 9:14 AM on September 16, 2017 [1 favorite]

Delighted by the use of the word 'diswant'. I can see myself getting good value out of that one.
posted by spielzebub at 9:25 AM on September 16, 2017

They do, BrashTech! That paper on the rheology of cats is a masterpiece of tongue-in-cheek bullshittery. It reads like a very nerdy joke that got out of hand, and the whole newsletter is just a lot more fun than you'd expect it to be for what it is.
posted by Anticipation Of A New Lover's Arrival, The at 8:40 PM on September 16, 2017

You can see if you could play a diggeridoo by going to your local hardware store and trying to play a suitable length of domestic waste pipe.
posted by Burn_IT at 9:54 AM on September 17, 2017

Burn_IT, someone actually made a didgeridoo for my dad out of a length of PVC pipe. My dad had just lost his job and was really depressed. This guy he knew said "man, you need a 'didge." And the next time my dad saw the guy, he had this PVC 'didge for him. To my knowledge, he has never played it. He's had it for almost 15 years now.
posted by shapes that haunt the dusk at 12:46 AM on September 18, 2017