Scientists consider meat pie mammography and self heating bathtubs
BMJ 2008; 336 doi: https://doi.org/10.1136/bmj.39517.614097.DB (Published 13 March 2008) Cite this as: BMJ 2008;336:581Scientists who have been honoured with an Ig Nobel prize for science, awarded for work which “first makes you laugh, then makes you think,” have been touring the United Kingdom this week sharing some of their plans for the future.
The past winner Brian Witcombe, a consultant radiologist at Gloucestershire Royal NHS Foundation, showed off his latest project. “I’ll be looking at the whole field of culinary radiology, including the imaging of ingested material and radiology in the food production and retail industries.
“I’ll be exploring the value of meat pie mammography, computed tomography of vegetables, and the cost benefit of fruit radiography,” he said.
Dr Witcombe won his Ig Nobel prize, a spoof of the Nobel prizes, for his report “Sword swallowing and its side effects” (BMJ 2006;333:1285-7; doi: 10.1136/bmj.39027.676690.55). He appeared at the tour’s talks with his coauthor and professional sword swallower Dan Meyer, from Antioch, Tennessee, who demonstrated the art by swallowing a sword live on stage.
Marc Abrahams, organiser of the Ig Nobel prizes and editor of the Annals of Improbable Research, the science magazine, said that there was never a shortage of material for the tour, which takes place each year as part of National Science and Engineering Week, because there is always a glut of nominations from around the world.
He said, “We get 7000 nominations every year for the Ig Nobel awards, and between 10% and 15% of nominations are from people nominating themselves.”
Featuring in some of the shows this year is Fiona Barclay, a biochemist at the Red, Green, and Blue Company who collaborated with the US chemist Theo Gray to assemble the world’s first periodic table—a large, four legged piece of furniture that contains most of the elements of the periodic table, except those that are “overly lethal.”
Wearing a bathrobe and slippers on stage she announced that Theo Gray has been working on a self heating bathtub, using the same technology as in self heating soup, coffee, and hot chocolate, which work by pushing a button on the bottom of the can. He used large floating steel pots, filled with quicklime and water to yield temperatures of about 900°C, which then transmitted heat into the surrounding water through the thin steel walls.
Chris McManus, professor of psychology and medical education at University College London, who wrote the study “Scrotal asymmetry in man and in ancient sculpture,” is still revealing facts about the male anatomy.
This time he told audiences that he had discovered the derivation of the word avocado. The word comes from the Aztec civilization of Central America who called avocadoes “ahuacati,” which means testes because of their resemblance to the fruit when it is hanging on a tree.
Also speaking at the seminar was Jim Gundlach, professor of sociology at Auburn University, Alabama, who won the 2004 Ig Nobel prize for medicine. His research showed that states in the United States where radio stations played a lot of country music had higher suicide rates than those that didn’t (Social Forces 1992;71:211-8).
The Ig Nobel prizes are awarded each year by the Annals of Improbable Research, for work that “celebrates the unusual.” At a gala ceremony at Harvard University in October genuine Nobel laureates hand out the much coveted awards to the winners.
The 2008 Ig Nobel Tour of the UK, sponsored by the Annals of Improbable Research and the British Association for the Advancement of Science, included shows in Oxford, London, and Newcastle.
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