Nobel prize

You get to a point in your life where things stop surprising you. Today I switched on the TV to find the news to find that Barack Obama has been awarded the Nobel peace prize. As much as I like the guy, I just think that maybe he should have been a chance to prove his worth, after all he has inherited a country that is involved with an ongoing war. War and peace aren’t exactly easily exchangeable terms. Anyway I know all the Nobel prizes are well documented but whilst surfing the web I came across the IG nobel awards; an award that celebrates the unusual side of nature and has no cash prize, just a certificate.

I picked the following as the most funniest/ interesting from the IG winners from each year as they made me chuckle...

2009 –
PUBLIC HEALTH PRIZE:
People – Elene N. Bodnar, Raphael C. Lee, and Sandra Marijan of Chicago, Illinois, USA.
Research – Inventing a brassiere that, in an emergency, can be quickly converted into a pair of protective face masks, one for the brassiere wearer and one to be given to some needy bystander.
Paper – U.S. patent # 7255627, granted August 14, 2007 for a “Garment Device Convertible to One or More Facemasks.”

2008 –
CHEMISTRY PRIZE:
People – Sharee A. Umpierre of the University of Puerto Rico, Joseph A. Hill of The Fertility Centers of New England (USA), Deborah J. Anderson of Boston University School of Medicine and Harvard Medical School (USA).
Research –Discovering that Coca-Cola is an effective spermicide, and to Chuang-Ye Hong of Taipei Medical University (Taiwan), C.C. Shieh, P. Wu, and B.N. Chiang (all of Taiwan) for discovering that it is not.
Paper 1 – "Effect of 'Coke' on Sperm Motility," Sharee A. Umpierre, Joseph A. Hill, and Deborah J. Anderson, New England Journal of Medicine, 1985, vol. 313, no. 21, p. 1351.Paper 2 – "The Spermicidal Potency of Coca-Cola and Pepsi-Cola," C.Y. Hong, C.C. Shieh, P. Wu, and B.N. Chiang, Human Toxicology, vol. 6, no. 5, September 1987, pp. 395-6.

2007 –
PEACE PRIZE:
People – The Air Force Wright Laboratory, Dayton, Ohio, USA.
Research – Instigating research and development on a chemical weapon - the so-called "gay bomb" - that will make enemy soldiers become sexually irresistible to each other.
Paper – "Harassing, Annoying, and 'Bad Guy' Identifying Chemicals," Wright Laboratory, WL/FIVR, Wright Patterson Air Force Base, Ohio, June 1, 1994.

2006 –
MEDICINE PRIZE:
People –
1) Francis M. Fesmire of the University of Tennessee College of Medicine
And
2) Majed Odeh, Harry Bassan, and Arie Oliven of Bnai Zion Medical Center, Haifa, Israel,
Research –
1) His medical case report "Termination of Intractable Hiccups with Digital Rectal Massage"
and
2) Their subsequent medical case report also titled "Termination of Intractable Hiccups with Digital Rectal Massage."
Paper 1 - "Termination of Intractable Hiccups with Digital Rectal Massage," Francis M. Fesmire, Annals of Emergency Medicine, vol. 17, no. 8, August 1988 p. 872.
Paper 2 - "Termination of Intractable Hiccups with Digital Rectal Massage,"Majed Odeh, Harry Bassan, and Arie Oliven, Journal of Internal Medicine, vol. 227, no. 2, February 1990, pp. 145-6. They are at the Department of Internal Medicine, Bnai Zion Medical Center, Haifa, Israel.
Paper 3 - "Hiccups and Digital Rectal Massage," M. Odeh and A. Oliven, Archives of Otolaryngology -- Head and Neck Surgery, vol. 119, 1993, p. 1383.

Some of them do make you wonder why or how they even came up with the idea for this research, lol.