一亩二分地

今年终于还是忘记去Boston观摩另类诺贝尔奖(Ig nobel prize)的颁奖礼，还好这年头科技发达，除了Improbable Research自己网站上的链接，视频专家YouTube也提供了特派员报道。明年，明年，争取去捧个现场~~~

今年的Ig Nobel Prize已是十七届，于10月4日晚上在老地方哈佛大学的三德子剧场（Sanders Theater）举行。用“伟哥”帮老鼠倒时差、“同性恋炸弹”各种新奇搞怪的科学创意让众人捧腹的同时，也使人领略到创造性思维之乐趣，正应了该奖的宗旨：honoring achievements that first make people laugh, and then make them think.

每年的仪式都有一个主题，虽然跟得奖课题未必有什么关系，但是贯穿仪式始终。今年的主题是Chicken，招贴画上一只雄赳赳气昂昂的鸡愣是把思想者踹下宝座，一副唯我独尊的架势。主题报告是曾任Google软件工程师的Doug Zongker给出的”Chicken Chicken Chicken Chicken Chicken“，Slides里显示了各种科学报告里常用的图表、流程图和数据图，但是演讲者只用Chicken做讲（chicken一词还有什么特别的典故么），听众是笑疯了，不知道Doug同志如何练就的定力，居然能正经八百的完成报告，还额外回答了两个问题~~~

为了与正式的诺贝尔奖“分庭抗礼”，另类版常提前一周举行。获奖者自费到场领奖，奖品是由廉价材料制成的手工艺品，4个星期内就会土崩瓦解。不过不要小看这个奖，获奖者可都在真正的牛杂志上发过文章，颁奖者也是货真价实的诺贝尔奖得主呢。

今年的获奖名单如下(The 2007 Ig Nobel Prize Winners)——

医药奖：“吞剑及其副作用”——这不是俺们气功大师的表演项目么，啥时候被田纳西的Dan Meyer学了去，还研究发表了”Sword Swallowing and Its Side Effects”, Brian Witcombe and Dan Meyer, British Medical Journal, December 23, 2006, vol. 333, pp. 1285-7. （Brian Witcombe of Gloucester, UK, and Dan Meyer of Antioch, Tennessee, USA, for their penetrating medical report “Sword Swallowing and Its Side Effects.”）

物理学奖：“床单打褶有规律” 在牛刊Nature和PNAS上均有专稿—— “Wrinkling of an Elastic Sheet Under Tension,” E. Cerda, K. Ravi-Chandar, L. Mahadevan, Nature, vol. 419, October 10, 2002, pp. 579-80； “Geometry and Physics of Wrinkling,” E. Cerda and L. Mahadevan, Physical Review Letters, fol. 90, no. 7, February 21, 2003, pp. 074302/1-4；”Elements of Draping,” E. Cerda, L. Mahadevan and J. Passini, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, vol. 101, no. 7, 2004, pp. 1806-10.（L. Mahadevan of Harvard University, USA, and Enrique Cerda Villablanca of Universidad de Santiago de Chile, for studying how sheets become wrinkled.）

生物学奖：“与我们同床共枕的昆虫和细菌” （a census of all the mites, insects, spiders, pseudoscorpions, crustaceans, bacteria, algae, ferns and fungi with whom we share our beds each night, by Prof. Dr. Johanna E.M.H. van Bronswijk of Eindhoven University of Technology, The Netherlands）”Huis, Bed en Beestjes” [House, Bed and Bugs], J.E.M.H. van Bronswijk, Nederlands Tijdschrift voor Geneeskunde, vol. 116, no. 20, May 13, 1972, pp. 825-31；”Het Stof, de Mijten en het Bed” [Dust, Mites and Bedding]. J.E.M.H. van Bronswijk Vakblad voor Biologen, vol. 53, no. 2, 1973, pp. 22-5；”Autotrophic Organisms in Mattress Dust in the Netherlands,” B. van de Lustgraaf, J.H.H.M. Klerkx, J.E.M.H. van Bronswijk, Acta Botanica Neerlandica, vol. 27, no. 2, 1978, pp 125-8；”A Bed Ecosystem,” J.E.M.H. van Bronswijk, Lecture Abstracts — 1st Benelux Congress of Zoology, Leuven, November 4-5, 1994, p. 36.

化学奖：“从牛粪中提取香草精华素”（ for developing a way to extract vanillin-vanilla fragrance and flavoring-from cow dung) Cambridge当地的一家冰淇淋店Toscanini’s Ice Cream为纪念这个奖项，还专门推出一款”Yum-a-Moto Vanilla Twist”，取名正源自得奖人Mayu Yamamoto（from the International Medical Center of Japan）

语言学：“老鼠有时候分不清倒着读的日语和荷兰语”（for showing that rats sometimes cannot tell the difference between a person speaking Japanese backwards and a person speaking Dutch backwards.”Effects of Backward Speech and Speaker Variability in Language Discrimination by Rats,” Juan M. Toro, Josep B. Trobalon and Núria Sebastián-Gallés, Journal of Experimental Psychology: Animal Behavior Processes, vol. 31, no. 1, January 2005, pp 95-100.) 获奖者Juan Manuel Toro, Josep B. Trobalon and Núria Sebastián-Gallés, of Universitat de Barcelona.(人家老鼠只是有时候分不清，我可是所有时候都分不清哪~~~)

文学奖：“引起排序混乱的’The’字” （Glenda Browne of Blaxland, Blue Mountains, Australia, for her study of the word “the” — and of the many ways it causes problems for anyone who tries to put things into alphabetical order.）
REFERENCE: “The Definite Article: Acknowledging ‘The’ in Index Entries,” Glenda Browne, The Indexer, vol. 22, no. 3 April 2001, pp. 119-22.

营养学奖：“喝不饱的人”（for exploring the seemingly boundless appetites of human beings, by feeding them with a self-refilling, bottomless bowl of soup）美国Cornell University消费者行为和应用经济学教授Brian Wansink让研究对象用一种特制碗喝汤，这种碗装有导管，可以在研究对象喝汤时，慢慢注入更多的汤而不被察觉。研究证明，“用这种碗喝汤的人，比正常情况下多喝73％的汤，却没觉得更饱。” Bottomless Bowls: Why Visual Cues of Portion Size May Influence Intake,” Brian Wansink, James E. Painter and Jill North, Obesity Research, vol. 13, no. 1, January 2005, pp. 93-100；Mindless Eating: Why We Eat More Than We Think, Brian Wansink, Bantom Books, 2006, ISBN 0553804340. 看来减肥的时候换小碗吃饭是很有道理的。

经济学奖：“蜘蛛网擒贼法”专利所有人Kuo Cheng Hsieh of Taichung, Taiwan（for patenting a device, in the year 2001, that catches bank robbers by dropping a net over them）U.S. patent #6,219,959, granted on April 24, 2001, for a “net trapping system for capturing a robber immediately.”

航空航天学：“伟哥帮助仓鼠克服时差”。阿根廷Universidad Nacional de Quilmes的研究人员Patricia V. Agostino, Santiago A. Plano和Diego A. Golombek利用不同时间开关灯造成仓鼠产生时差，然后给它们服用“伟哥”，他们发现仓鼠服用“伟哥”后，适应6小时时差所需时间减少了50％。”Sildenafil Accelerates Reentrainment of Circadian Rhythms After Advancing Light Schedules,” Patricia V. Agostino, Santiago A. Plano and Diego A. Golombek, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, vol. 104, no. 23, June 5 2007, pp. 9834-9.

这次见报率最高的大概要数获得和平奖的“同性恋炸弹”（the so-called “gay bomb” — that will make enemy soldiers become sexually irresistible to each other），这种炸弹能让被击中的敌方士兵互相产生爱慕之情，从而丧失战斗意志。但是得奖者美过空军居然没有一个人愿意代表军队前来领奖，被“另类诺贝尔奖”创始人、《不可能的研究纪录》杂志编辑马克·亚伯拉罕批评为“落后保守”。The Air Force Wright Laboratory, Dayton, Ohio, USA “Harassing, Annoying, and ‘Bad Guy’ Identifying Chemicals,” Wright Laboratory, WL/FIVR, Wright Patterson Air Force Base, Ohio, June 1, 1994.

“另类诺贝尔奖”颁奖仪式上，每位得奖人发言时间仅有短短一分钟，其间还要冒着被一个小姑娘打断的危险——这是“另类诺贝尔奖”的传统项目，“演讲时间到”由一名8岁小姑娘宣布，不过她宣布的方式是不断大喊：“停，我听烦了。”

另类诺贝尔奖自1991年开始，每年颁奖一次。入选的科学成果必须不同寻常，能激发人们对科学、医学和技术的兴趣。按照传统，观众会在颁奖典礼上向讲台抛纸飞机。11年来，典礼结束后现场都由哈佛大学物理学家罗伊·格劳伯负责打扫。尽管格劳伯2005年获得真正的诺贝尔物理学奖，可至今他仍然坚守职责。

颁奖实况将于11月23日在NPR专门报道——“Talk of the Nation/ Science Friday with Ira Flatow.” 记得到时收听啊~~~~