IJMC - The Fifth First Annual Ig Nobel Prize Winners

Sorry folks, no witty commentary tonigh,. I'm beat.	-dave


     For those of you following the real Nobel prizes last week, this is a 
     ceremony held yearly at Harvard, with awards given for actual 
     research/papers ...
     
     The 1995 Ig Nobel Prizewinners
     
     The Fifth First Annual Ig Nobel Prize Ceremony was held at Harvard 
     University on the evening of Friday, Oct. 6, 1995.  Ten prizes were awarded 
     to individuals whose achievements "cannot or should not be reproduced."  
     Two of the winners (nutrition and chemistry) were present, and received 
     their Prizes from (genuine) Nobel Laureates Sheldon Glashow (Physics '79), 
     Dudley Herschbach  (Chemistry '86), William Lipscomb (Chemistry '76), 
     Joseph Murray (Physiology or Medicine '90) and Richard Roberts  (Physiology 
     or Medicine '93).   Three other winners (physics, literature and dentistry) 
     graciously sent taped acceptance speeches.
     
     The Ceremony was mounted by The Annals of Improbable Research and 
     co-sponsored by the Harvard Computer Society and by Tangents (the 
     Harvard-Radcliffe mathematical bulletin).
     
     Here is a complete list of the 1995 Ig Nobel Prizewinners.
     
     
     
     NUTRITION   John Martinez of J. Martinez & Company in Atlanta, for Luak 
     Coffee, the world's most expensive coffee, which is made from coffee beans 
     ingested and excreted by the luak (aka, the palm civet), a bobcat-like 
     animal native to Indonesia.
     
     PHYSICS   D.M.R. Georget, R. Parker, and A.C. Smith, of the Institute of 
     Food Research, Norwich, England, for their rigorous analysis of soggy 
     breakfast cereal, published in the report entitled 'A Study of the Effects 
     of Water Content on the Compaction Behaviour of Breakfast Cereal Flakes."  
     [Published in the research journal "Powder Technology," November, 1994, 
     vol. 81, no. 2, pp. 189-96.]
     
     ECONOMICS   Awarded jointly to Nick Leeson and his superiors at Barings 
     Bank and to Robert Citron of Orange County, California, for using the 
     calculus of derivatives to demonstrate that every financial institution has 
     its limits.
     
     MEDICINE   Marcia E. Buebel, David S. Shannahoff-Khalsa, and Michael R. 
     Boyle, for their invigorating study entitled "The Effects of Unilateral 
     Forced Nostril Breathing on Cognition."  [Published in "International 
     Journal of Neuroscience," vol. 57, 1991, pp. 239-249.]
     
     LITERATURE   David B. Busch and James R. Starling, of Madison Wisconsin, 
     for their deeply penetrating research report, "Rectal foreign bodies: Case 
     Reports and a Comprehensive Review of the World's Literature." The 
     citations include reports of, among other items: seven light bulbs; a 
     knife sharpener; two flashlights; a wire spring; a snuff box; an oil can 
     with potato stopper; eleven different forms of fruits, vegetables and 
     other foodstuffs; a jeweler's saw; a frozen pig's tail; a tin cup; a beer 
     glass; and one patient's remarkable ensemble collection consisting of 
     spectacles, a suitcase key, a tobacco pouch and a magazine. [Published in 
     the medical journal "Surgery," September 1986, pp. 512-519.]
     
     PEACE  The Taiwan National Parliament, for demonstrating that politicians 
     gain more by punching, kicking and gouging each other than by waging war 
     against other nations.
     
     PSYCHOLOGY  Shigeru Watanabe, Junko Sakamoto, and Masumi Wakita, of Keio 
     University, for their success in training pigeons to discriminate between 
     the paintings of Picasso and those of Monet. [Their report, entitled 
     "Pigeons' Discrimination of Paintings by Monet and Picasso," was published 
     in "Journal of the Experimental Analysis of Behavior," vol. 63, 1995, pp. 
     165-174.]
     
     PUBLIC HEALTH  Martha Kold Bakkevig of Sintef Unimed in Trondheim, Norway, 
     and Ruth Nielson of the Technical University of Denmark, for their 
     exhaustive study, "Impact of Wet Underwear on Thermoregulatory Responses 
     and Thermal Comfort in the Cold."  [Published in "Ergonomics," vol 37, no. 
     8, Aug. 1994 , pp. 1375- 89.]
     
     DENTISTRY   Robert H. Beaumont,  of Shore View, Minnesota, for his 
     incisive study "Patient Preference for Waxed or Unwaxed Dental Floss." 
     [Published in the research journal "Journal of Periodontology," vol. 61, 
     no. 2, Feb. 1990, pp. 123-5.
     
     CHEMISTRY  Bijan Pakzad of Beverly Hills, for creating DNA Cologne and DNA 
     Perfume, neither of which contain deoxyribonucleic acid, and both of which 
     come in a triple helix bottle.