イグノーベル賞

The 2006 Ig Nobel Prize Winners
http://improbable.com/ig/ig-pastwinners.html#ig2006

ORNITHOLOGY: Ivan R. Schwab, of the University of California Davis, and the late Philip R.A. May of the University of California Los Angeles, for exploring and explaining why woodpeckers don't get headaches.

NUTRITION: Wasmia Al-Houty of Kuwait University and Faten Al-Mussalam of the Kuwait Environment Public Authority, for showing that dung beetles are finicky eaters.

PEACE: Howard Stapleton of Merthyr Tydfil, Wales, for inventing an electromechanical teenager repellant -- a device that makes annoying noise designed to be audible to teenagers but not to adults; and for later using that same technology to make telephone ringtones that are audible to teenagers but not to their teachers.

ACOUSTICS: D. Lynn Halpern (of Harvard Vanguard Medical Associates, and Brandeis University, and Northwestern University), Randolph Blake (of Vanderbilt University and Northwestern University) and James Hillenbrand (of Western Michigan University and Northwestern University) for conducting experiments to learn why people dislike the sound of fingernails scraping on a blackboard.

MATHEMATICS: Nic Svenson and Piers Barnes of the Australian Commonwealth Scientific and Research Organization, for calculating the number of photographs you must take to (almost) ensure that nobody in a group photo will have their eyes closed.

LITERATURE: Daniel Oppenheimer of Princeton University for his report "Consequences of Erudite Vernacular Utilized Irrespective of Necessity: Problems with Using Long Words Needlessly."

MEDICINE: Francis M. Fesmire of the University of Tennessee College of Medicine, for his medical case report "Termination of Intractable Hiccups with Digital Rectal Massage"; and Majed Odeh, Harry Bassan, and Arie Oliven of Bnai Zion Medical Center, Haifa, Israel, for their subsequent medical case report also titled "Termination of Intractable Hiccups with Digital Rectal Massage."

PHYSICS: Basile Audoly and Sebastien Neukirch of the Université Pierre et Marie Curie, in Paris, for their insights into why, when you bend dry spaghetti, it often breaks into more than two pieces.

CHEMISTRY: Antonio Mulet, José Javier Benedito and José Bon of the University of Valencia, Spain, and Carmen Rosselló of the University of Illes Balears, in Palma de Mallorca, Spain, for their study "Ultrasonic Velocity in Cheddar Cheese as Affected by Temperature."

BIOLOGY: Bart Knols (of Wageningen Agricultural University, in Wageningen, the Netherlands; and of the National Institute for Medical Research, in Ifakara Centre, Tanzania, and of the International Atomic Energy Agency, in Vienna Austria) and Ruurd de Jong (of Wageningen Agricultural University and of Santa Maria degli Angeli, Italy) for showing that the female malaria mosquito Anopheles gambiae is attracted equally to the smell of limburger cheese and to the smell of human feet.

http://www.asahi.com/international/update/1006/008.html

ユーモアにあふれ、科学への関心を高めた研究に贈られる「イグ・ノーベル賞」の０６年の受賞者が５日発表され、平和賞には高周波雑音発生装置「モスキート」を発明した英国のハワード・ステイプルトンさんが選ばれた。

これは、若者しか聞き取れない高周波の雑音を発して、街にたむろする若者を追い払うための装置。だが、その技術が「教師に聞こえない携帯電話の着信音」として欧米で大ブレークし、米国では今年に入って「モスキート着信音」を使って教室で携帯電話をかける若者が増え、社会問題に発展しているほど。新たな若者文化をつくったことなどが評価された。

鳥類学賞に「キツツキはなぜ頭が痛くならないのか」（米カリフォルニア大デービス校など）
物理学賞に「乾燥スパゲティを曲げると、しばしば二つより多くの部分に折れてしまうのはなぜか」（仏ピエール・マリー・キュリー大）

この２つの研究いいね。

産経ニュース
音響学賞は「黒板をつめで引っかく音をなぜ人間は嫌うかの実験」
数学賞は「グループ写真で誰も目を閉じていない写真を撮るために必要な撮影回数の計算」