Slightly on topic, this year's IgNobel prize in the category obstetrics goes to the research team of Marisa López-Teijón from Spain,
for 'proving that a developing fetus responds more strongly to music that is played inside the mother's vagina than to music played on the belly'
Searching for a way to detect auditive handicaps at an early stage, López wanted to determine if sounds played intra-vaginal were better audible to the fetus than outside sounds, and developed a 'fetal acoustic stimulation device'. And indeed, with the intra-vaginal sounds, the fetus showed more mouth and tongue movements in response to the sounds.
Some other notable IgNobel prizes of this year:
Physics: Marc Antoine Fardin, France
awarded for: using fluid dynamics to explore the question: "is a cat both a fluid and a solid?"
Using photos of cats in vases, cats in washing tubs, and cats on bathroom floors, Fardin calculates that cats exhibit more characteristics of a fluid when they relax more, using theory of flow as a mathematical foundation.
Biology: Kazunori Yoshizawa and colleagues, Japan
awarded for: discovering a female penis and a male vagina in a species of cave insect
The biologists discovered a small species of fly in caves in Brasil were the females had evolved a penis, and the males a vagina.
Anatomy: James Heathcote, UK
awarded for: his research paper titled 'why do old men have big ears?'
For the 1995 christmas edition of the UK medical magazine BMJ, he had asked his fellow doctors to start measuring the lenght of the ears of 206 patients, to find out if a man's ears really keep getting larger with age. Conclusion: yes, ears keep growing as we age, with an average of about 0.22mm per year.
Peace: Milo Puhan and colleagues, Switzerland
awarded for: 'proving that regularily playing a didgeridoo is an effective treatment for snoring and sleep apnea
One of the team members is a didgeridoo teacher, and heard an anekdote that didgeridoo players snore less. This sparked the team's interest, and systematic research has now shown that for some patients, playing a didgeridoo did indeed alleviate their complaints a bit, possibly through the training of the respiratory muscles by playing.
All winners were rewarded with a crappy home made trophy, a handshake of a real Nobel prize winner, and a 10 billion dollar bill. Zimbabwean dollar that is.
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Topic: Medical breakthroughs (Read 20812 times)