Japan-based researchers won the Ig Nobel Prize in Nutrition and Education this year, continuing a trend of Japanese success in the Nobel Prize parodies that honor “research that makes people laugh and then think.”

Here are the achievements that received the prize in the eight other categories this year. Links to related scientific papers are also shown.

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Mechanical Engineering

Given to Daniel Preston at Rice University and others for “re-animating dead spiders to use as mechanical gripping tools”

The researchers found a way to turn a dead spider into a device that grips objects.

A wolf spider was euthanized under freezing temperature. Its eight legs were opened and closed by changing the pressure of a liquid that filled its body.

The researchers said the technology is environmentally friendly because the dead spider is biodegradable, and the development is the first step toward what they call necrobotics, a coinage from necro, the Greek prefix meaning “death,” and robotics.

They said that although human ancestors used bones as tools and furs as clothing, it was the first time to have turned a dead creature into a dynamic robotic device.

https://doi.org/10.1002/advs.202201174

Literature

Given to Chris Moulin at Universite Grenoble Alpes and others for “studying the sensations people feel when they repeat a single word many times”

When people repeatedly write or read the same word, many feel they have forgotten its meaning. The phenomenon is known as “jamais vu,” as opposed to “déjà vu.”

In an experiment by the researchers, 70 percent of people felt that way when they continued to write “door” and other words for a maximum of two minutes.

The researchers’ paper, “The The The The Induction of Jamais Vu in the Laboratory: Word Alienation and Semantic Satiation,” prompted some readers to ask if its title is correct.

Moulin said he actually wanted to use the definite article 28 times because test participants experienced jamais vu after they wrote “the” 28 times on average.

https://doi.org/10.1080/09658211.2020.1727519

Public Health

Given to Seung-min Park at Stanford University and others for “inventing a toilet to monitor and analyze the substances that humans excrete”

The researchers developed a smart toilet that tells a person’s health conditions from excrement.

The Stanford Toilet combines such technologies as a urinalysis dipstick test strip, a computer vision system for defecation analysis, an anal-print sensor paired with an identification camera, and a telecommunications link.

Park said when he told his wife that his team won the Ig Nobel Prize, she asked if that is a good thing for his research.

Park said it is interesting that however epoch-making the award is, it sometimes takes time before its impact touches someone’s heart.

https://doi.org/10.1038/s41551-020-0534-9
https://doi.org/10.1038/s41575-021-00462-0
https://doi.org/10.1038/s41746-022-00582-0
https://doi.org/10.1126/scitranslmed.abk3489

Chemistry and Geology

Given to Jan Zalasiewicz at the University of Leicester for “explaining why many scientists like to lick rocks”

In an essay titled “Eating Fossils,” Zalasiewicz explained that geologists and paleontologists often lick the surface of stones to identify their types partly because patterns become clearer when the surface is wet.

Zalasiewicz said that she has been writing the essay for more than 15 years with a goal similar to that of the Ig Nobel Prize of making people laugh and think.

She said she is happy if she has succeeded, even a little.

https://palass.org/publications/newsletter/eating-fossils

Communication

Given to Adolfo Garcia at Universidad de San Andres and others for “studying the mental activities of people who are experts at speaking backward”

The researchers examined brain activities and other characteristics of two middle-aged Spaniards who are good at speaking words invertedly, such as “ananab” for “banana.”

The researchers said they found the volume of gray matter of these experts in backward speech was larger than those in ordinary persons.

Garcia said their research on the peculiar way of speaking shed new light on the brain’s phonemic sequencing capability, which is an important aspect of language abilities.

https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-020-67551-z

Physics

Given to Bieito Fernandez Castro at the University of Southampton and others for “measuring the extent to which ocean-water mixing is affected by the sexual activity of anchovies”

https://doi.org/10.1038/s41561-022-00916-3

Medicine

Given to Natasha Mesinkovska at the University of California, Irvine, and others for “using cadavers to explore whether there is an equal number of hairs in each of a person’s two nostrils”

Patients of serious spot baldness also lose hairs in nostrils and suffer from infectious diseases and allergies.

Christine Pham, a doctor and member of the research team, said front-line workers on respiratory system diseases needed to understand the role of hairs in nostrils.

Pham said they studied the subject by themselves because even textbooks on anatomy did not provide answers.

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jaad.2020.06.902

Psychology

Given to Leonard Bickman at Vanderbilt University and others for “experiments on a city street to see how many passers-by stop to look upward when they see strangers looking upward”

The prize was awarded to a paper published in 1969 that showed more passers-by look up to the sky when there are more “decoys” looking skyward on a street corner.

Bickman was one of the 17 students who participated in the research, which was conducted as part of a class by Stanley Milgram, a noted U.S. psychologist and the paper’s lead author.

When The Asahi Shimbun asked how he felt about the prize being awarded 54 years after the paper was published, Bickman simply said, “No idea.”

https://doi.org/10.1037/h0028070