Ig Nobel Prize Awards

Extracts from an article taken from Wikipedia, the Free Enyclopedia

A live frog is magnetically levitated in an experiment that earned André Geim from the University of Nijmegen and Sir Michael Berry from Bristol University the 2000 Ig Nobel Prize in physics.

The Ig Nobel Prizes are a parody of the Nobel Prizes and are given each year in early October — around the time the recipients of the genuine Nobel Prizes are announced — for ten achievements that "first make people laugh, and then make them think." Organized by the scientific humour magazine "Annals of Improbable Research" (AIR), they are presented by a group that includes genuine Nobel Laureates at a ceremony at Harvard University's Sanders Theatres.

The first Ig Nobels were awarded in 1991, at that time for discoveries "that cannot, or should not, be reproduced." Ten prizes are awarded each year in many categories, including the Nobel Prize categories of physics, chemistry, physiology/medicine, literature, and peace, but also other categories such as public health, engineering, biology, and interdisciplinary research. With the exception of three prizes in the first year, the Ig Nobel Prizes are for genuine achievements.

The awards are sometimes veiled criticism , as in the two awards given for homeopathy research, prizes in "science education" to Kansas and Colorado state boards of education for their stance regarding the teaching of evolution.

Most often, however, they draw attention to scientific articles that have some humorous or unexpected aspect. Examples range from the discovery that the presence of humans tends to sexually arouse ostriches, to the statement that black holes fulfil all the technical requirements to be the location of Hell, to research on the "five-second rule," a tongue-in-cheek belief that food dropped on the floor won't become contaminated if it is picked up within five seconds.

Here are a couple examples of Ig Nobel awards that were presented at a ceremony at Harvard University, New Scientist reports:

- A new use for Viagra earned the Ig Nobel aviation prize for three researchers from Argentina who found that a suitable dose helped hamsters recover more quickly from jet lag . They have yet to test it for alleviating human jet lag.

- A paper entitled "Effects of backward speech and speaker variability in language discrimination by rats" earned the Ig Nobel linguistics prize for three Spanish researchers who found that rats can discriminate between sentences spoken in Dutch and Japanese by recognising rhythmic differences, but they can't if the sentences are played backwards. Human infants and cotton-top tamarin monkeys apparently exhibit the same ability.

Isn't it good to be living in an era of such great scientific progress?
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------
VOCABULARY

Magnetically levitate: léviter magnétiquement
To earn: mériter
Achievement: réussite
Veiled criticism: critique voilée
Stance: attitude
To arouse: exciter
To fulfil all the technical requirements: remplir toutes les conditions techniques
A tongue-in-cheek belief: croyance ironique, idiote
Jet-lag: décalage horaire
To alleviate: soulager
Speaker variability: différence d'interlocuteur
Discrimination: (ici) différence
Cotton-top tamarin: type de singe
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------
(427 words)

Les questions servent d'orientation dans votre commentaire. Vous n'êtes pas contraints d'y répondre.

- Present what type of text this is.
- Sum up the text in your own words.
- Give your opinion on the purpose of such research.
- In your opinion, can it fulfil a particular purpose or is it of marginal utility?