Ok, so you’ve heard of the Nobel Prize winners. They’re the ones who’ve brought about huge advancements in medicine, promoted peace throughout the world. Blah, blah, blah. The same old song and dance year in and year out. How about a different set of award winners, ones who fly under the radar but who’s research is still of some value? Even if the value is to give us a chuckle.

That’s where the Ig Nobel Prize ceremony comes in. It’s a celebration of research that has been conducted under the radar. Actually, the website’s tag line says it best - “For achievements that first make people LAUGH then make them THINK”

Or if you’re still feeling apprehensive here’s another quote: “The Ig Nobel awards are arguably the highlight of the scientific calendar.” - Nature

You don’t want to upset nature now do you? Good, so here’s the winners of this years Ig Nobel Prizes:

VETERINARY MEDICINE PRIZE: Catherine Douglas and Peter Rowlinson of Newcastle University, Newcastle-Upon-Tyne, UK, for showing that cows who have names give more milk than cows that are nameless.

PEACE PRIZE: Stephan Bolliger, Steffen Ross, Lars Oesterhelweg, Michael Thali and Beat Kneubuehl of the University of Bern, Switzerland, for determining — by experiment — whether it is better to be smashed over the head with a full bottle of beer or with an empty bottle.

ECONOMICS PRIZE: The directors, executives, and auditors of four Icelandic banks — Kaupthing Bank, Landsbanki, Glitnir Bank, and Central Bank of Iceland — for demonstrating that tiny banks can be rapidly transformed into huge banks, and vice versa — and for demonstrating that similar things can be done to an entire national economy.

CHEMISTRY PRIZE: Javier Morales, Miguel Apátiga, and Victor M. Castaño of Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, for creating diamonds from liquid — specifically from tequila.

MEDICINE PRIZE: Donald L. Unger, of Thousand Oaks, California, USA, for investigating a possible cause of arthritis of the fingers, by diligently cracking the knuckles of his left hand — but never cracking the knuckles of his right hand — every day for more than sixty (60) years.

PHYSICS PRIZE: Katherine K. Whitcome of the University of Cincinnati, USA, Daniel E. Lieberman of Harvard University, USA, and Liza J. Shapiro of the University of Texas, USA, for analytically determining why pregnant women don’t tip over.

LITERATURE PRIZE: Ireland’s police service (An Garda Siochana), for writing and presenting more than fifty traffic tickets to the most frequent driving offender in the country — Prawo Jazdy — whose name in Polish means “Driving License”.

PUBLIC HEALTH PRIZE: Elena N. Bodnar, Raphael C. Lee, and Sandra Marijan of Chicago, Illinois, USA, for inventing a brassiere that, in an emergency, can be quickly converted into a pair of gas masks, one for the brassiere wearer and one to be given to some needy bystander.

MATHEMATICS PRIZE: Gideon Gono, governor of Zimbabwe’s Reserve Bank, for giving people a simple, everyday way to cope with a wide range of numbers — from very small to very big — by having his bank print bank notes with denominations ranging from one cent ($.01) to one hundred trillion dollars ($100,000,000,000,000).

BIOLOGY PRIZE: Fumiaki Taguchi, Song Guofu, and Zhang Guanglei of Kitasato University Graduate School of Medical Sciences in Sagamihara, Japan, for demonstrating that kitchen refuse can be reduced more than 90% in mass by using bacteria extracted from the feces of giant pandas.

If you’re looking for some serious entertainment then check out the rest of the list at Ig Nobel Prize’s website.

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If you ever watched the Exo Squad cartoon, or loved the alien vs. Sigourney Weaver in huge mech armor fight then you’ll appreciate today’s post.

Lockheed Martin, has developed an exo skeleton set that could greatly impact the duties of US soldiers. LM states the reason behind developing the technology, “Dismounted Soldiers often carry heavy combat loads that increase the stress on the body leading to potential injuries. With a HULC exoskeleton, these loads are transfered to the ground through powered titanium legs without loss of mobility.”

Here are some specs for the exoskeleton suit:

• Range: 1 hour walk at 3 mph per 4 lbs of batteries
• Payload: Can carry up to 200 lbs; can carry front and back loads
• Max Speed: 7 mph for long duration; 10 mph burst speed
• Fits Soldiers between 5’4” and 6’2”
• HULC can be used as the backbone for integrated systems that include armor, heating or cooling systems, sensors and other custom attachments.

The coolest feature the suit has, is the ability to add systems to the suit. I’m thinking dual, shoulder mounted machine guns for those wide spread, and open field battles. But that’s just what I run into on a daily basis.

Here’s a video of the exo skeleton in action. It’s not as sexy as the suits in Exo Squad, or a behemoth as Ripley’s mech but we’re getting there…

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Honda tends to be at the front end of automotive technology. Many people stand by their products, and now some of them are walking with Honda.

It creeps me out for some reason…

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I can’t seem to get the song, It’s The End Of The World As We Know It by R.E.M out of my head today. The song was released in the late 80’s, and made famous during the early-mid 90’s. Most of it due to its’ association with Independence Day, a movie about aliens invading Earth. I now know of something else the famous apocalypse song can attach itself to, the Large Hadron Collider (LHC).

The LHC which is referred to as the “Big Bang Machine” was finally turned on today. Deep underground at a CERN (Conseil Européen pour la Recherche Nucléaire) facility, rests the largest particle collider ever constructed. Everyone, specifically the engineers working on the project held their breath today, as the machine that has been 14 years in the making powered up. As the beams of protons were sent around the LHC for the first time, the engineers cheered as all went smooth. The machine won’t reach its full potential for doing what it was made to until about a month after being turned on.
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