The 2004 Ig Nobel Prize Winners

The 2004 Ig Nobel Prizes were awarded at the 14th First Annual Ig Nobel Prize ceremony yesterday. The winners are:

MEDICINE
Steven Stack of Wayne
State University, Detroit, Michigan, USA and James
Gundlach of Auburn University, Auburn, Alabama, USA, for their published
report "The
Effect of Country Music on Suicide."
PUBLISHED IN: Social Forces, vol.
71, no. 1, September 1992, pp. 211-8.

PHYSICS
Ramesh Balasubramaniam
of the University of Ottawa, and Michael
Turvey of the University of Connecticut and Yale University, for exploring
and explaining the dynamics of hula-hooping.
REFERENCE: "Coordination
Modes in the Multisegmental Dynamics of Hula Hooping," Ramesh Balasubramaniam
and Michael T. Turvey, Biological
Cybernetics, vol. 90, no. 3, March 2004, pp. 176-90.

PUBLIC HEALTH
Jillian Clarke of the Chicago High School for Agricultural Sciences, and
then Howard University, for investigating
the scientific validity of the Five-Second Rule about whether it's safe
to eat food that's been dropped on the floor.

CHEMISTRY
The Coca-Cola Company of
Great Britain, for using advanced technology to convert liquid from
the River
Thames into Dasani,
a transparent form of water, which for precautionary reasons has been made
unavailable to consumers.

ENGINEERING
Donald J. Smith and his father, the late Frank J. Smith, of Orlando Florida,
USA, for patenting the combover (U.S. Patent #4,022,227).

LITERATURE
The American Nudist Research Library
of Kissimmee, Florida, USA, for preserving nudist history so that everyone
can see it.

PSYCHOLOGY
Daniel Simons
of the University
of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and Christopher
Chabris of Harvard University, for demonstrating that when people pay
close attention to something, it's all too easy to overlook anything else
— even a man in a gorilla suit.
REFERENCE: "Gorillas
in Our Midst," Daniel J. Simons and Christopher F. Chabris, vol.
28, Perception, 1999, pages
1059-74.
DEMO: <http://viscog.beckman.uiuc.edu/media/ig.html>

ECONOMICS
The Vatican, for outsourcing
prayers to India.

PEACE
Daisuke Inoue of Hyogo,
Japan, for inventing karaoke, thereby providing an entirely new way for
people to learn to tolerate each other

BIOLOGY
Ben Wilson of the University
of British Columbia, Lawrence
Dill of Simon Fraser University [Canada], Robert
Batty of the Scottish Association for Marine Science, Magnus
Whalberg of the University of Aarhus [Denmark], and Hakan Westerberg
of Sweden's National Board of
Fisheries, for showing that herrings
apparently communicate by farting.
REFERENCE: "Sounds
Produced by Herring (Clupea harengus) Bubble Release," Magnus Wahlberg
and Håkan Westerberg, Aquatic
Living Resources, vol. 16, 2003, pp. 271-5.
REFERENCE: "Pacific
and Atlantic Herring Produce Burst Pulse Sounds," Ben Wilson, Robert
S. Batty and Lawrence M. Dill, Biology
Letters, vol. 271, 2003, pp. S95-S97.