It is a fixed ritual that takes place the day before the winners of the real Nobel prizes. Fully loaded with clichés and regular jokes, the “thirty -five first” presentation of the IG Nobel Prizes for many is a feast of recognition. The event, which is organized by the magazine Annals of Improbable Researchcelebrates “the unusual, honors the imaginative and stimulates the interest in science.”
At the official ceremony in the Sanders Theater in Cambridge near Boston, real Nobel Prize winners on stage are awarding prizes to the ten chosen IG Nobelaars. This year, this is the honor of the Nobelveterans Esther Duflo and her husband Abhijit Bannerji (Economy, 2019), Eric Maskin (Economy, 2007), Svante Pääbo (Medicine, 2022), Moungi Bawendi (Economy, 1997).
This year, the Prize Festival has ‘digestion’ as a coincidental theme. Winners receive a model of a human stomach as a prize, with a laughing face on the one hand and on the other a dissatisfied face to emphasize the dual character of this everyday biological phenomenon.
In previous years, the winners received a cash prize in addition to a plastic, traditionally a note of ten trillion Zimbabwean dollars. But the organization reports that unfortunately, due to increasing inflation, it is no longer possible to purchase such currency. Instead, the prize winners now get a piece of damp toilet paper.
Speech waterGermans speak better Dutch after a drink
Better talking than fighting, that must have been the idea of assigning the IG Nobel Peace Prize to the almost ten-year-old study (2017) showing that one alcohol consumption leads to a better ability to speak a foreign language. It concerned German students in Maastricht who started speaking better Dutch after drinking a glass. The students had all passed their NT2 exam (Dutch as a second language). In the Journal of Psychopharmacology Write the German, Dutch and British researchers that the German students, in particular, went better than the water drinkers after drinks. The researchers explain that greater convenience from the inhibition that is an important effect of alcohol. People dare more. Somewhat surprising, there was no difference in self -confidence with which the German students started the language test, whether they had drunk water or alcohol.
It was already clear from rather speech water research that alcohol consumption deteriorates language power in the mother tongue, but this second language research was done because there stubborn rumors Were that not applied to second languages. The effect of serious drunkenness on the foreign language was not investigated, for ethical reason undoubtedly, but possibly also because the outcome can be guessed.
The case of the positive effect of a low alcoholic junk jig has not yet been decided, because as it went in science found A later investigation (from Groningen) No effect at all, something that was difficult to explain. (Because the statement of the mother tongue was clearly worse in that investigation.)
StreakZebratactics also work for cows
Do you suffer from inserts? Have black and white stripes paint on your body. That seems at least a suitable solution for cows, Japanese researchers discovered in 2019. Now they receive for their publication van then, in magazine Plos Onethe IG Nobel Prize for Biology.
Zebrast bars have been fascinating scientists for a long time. Endless is speculated about possible functions: the pattern would provide social recognition, deter lions or help with thermoregulation. But it could also keep annoying stab insects at bay.
The last hypothesis seems to be endorsed by the Japanese research. The biologists subjected six black Japanese cows to an experiment: in turn they stayed either unpainted or they were decorated with merely black stripes on their already black body or with a black and white stripe pattern.
Subsequently, it was kept track of how much problems they had from insect bites – both by counting actual insects and by making an inventory of which insect -resistant movements made the cows (think of shaking, ear biting, tail waving and leg stamps). For example, the biologists discovered that Dazen and other stitching flies up to 50 percent less often landed on cows with the pedestrian pattern than on other cows.
Incidentally, the Japanese are not the first to remember the usefulness of the zebra racks: from previous research, from 2016, it was already known that horses with black and white striped blankets are bitten by insects less often than horses without those blankets. Such decks are less labor -intensive and simply for sale, albeit perhaps not in cow format.
separationHow do you avoid the dreaded mozzarella phase in the sauce?
It sounds so simple ‘Pepe E Cacio’, or ‘pepper and cheese’, but the preparation of this pasta sauce according to the traditional recipe from Lazio that goes back to the fifteenth century is anything but simple. Why is it so difficult to prepare this dish with a perfect texture and creaminess? It all appears to be explained by the physical principles of phase separation.
Italian pasta previously inspired physicists to deep -growing research. For example, around the issue why dry spaghetti in strong bending never breaks in two, but always in three or more pieces. Basile Audoly and Sebastien Neukirch already received an IG Nobel Prize for the explanatory theory behind this.
But now it’s the sauce’s turn. You can make Cacio e Pepe with finely grassed pecorino, a lot of coarsely ground black pepper and cooking liquid of the pasta (preferably Tonnarelli, a kind of square spaghetti). Adding that cooking liquid is crucial in combination with temperature and cheese, Discovered Giacomo Bartolucci and his team In a study they published this spring in Physics of Fluids. The sauce fails when he ends up in the ‘Mozzarella phase’. This happens especially if the added cooking water contains too little starch, according to a series of controlled experiments. Too little starch, less than 1 percent compared to the cheese, quickly leads to “systemwide lump formation” and therefore a failed sauce.
The chef’s secret is to first let the pasta water cool a little before mixing it with the cheese. But that only delivers a small bandwidth for a perfect sauce, because the temperature is too high, the protein still clumps.
The Bartolucci team now comes with a safer solution: first let the cooking fluid evaporate somewhat so that the starch concentration rises (make the water ‘risottata’ on its Italian). Then even at 95 degrees Celsius there is no more lump formation.
That makes Bartolucci and his team very rightly winners of the IG Nobel Prize in Physics 2025.
DietTeflon challenges to a saturated feeling
Teflon, the commonly used non-stick coating in pans, has no best name. For example, take the truth -based Dark Waters from 2020. That Hollywood film was completely about manufacturer Dupont that would have disguised the harmful effects of this chemical product from the PFAS family for years. Deep scratches in the stick coating can ensure that small flakes of Pfas end up in the works, so is the main care.
But what if you deliberately add large quantities of Teflon powder to your diet? According to three American researchers Can that help with weight loss because it gives a saturated feeling without taking calories. It would also be completely safe.
The winning study refers to earlier research in which rats were presented with a diet that consisted of a quarter of Teflon powder. The rats remained healthy and lost weight. Teflon does not respond to other substances and is impossible to digest. Moreover, the grains are not small enough to end up in the bloodstream.
The plastic powder is easy to process in a meal, the Americans write in an attached patent application. “A hamburger mixture consisting of one hundred grams of meat can, for example, be mixed with a hundred grams of tasteless plastic powder to produce a larger burger.”
The health claims will not reassure everyone. Certainly because the quoted research on rats was conducted by the Dupont manufacturer. Who Dark Waters Still remembers from the cinema, it probably finds that hard to digest.
IQ testFeel more special by being called special
Narcissistic types overestimate their own intelligence because they are so narcissistic is often thought. But it is not (also) the other way around, a Polish and a Canadian psychologist working in Australia wondered. Are people not (also) more narcissistic because they think they are intelligent?
The psychologists conducted one investigation (published in 2021 in Intelligence) In which they gave 361 Polish participants an IQ test and then the (fictional) feedback that they had scored high or low and that their IQ was above or below average. The people to whom were told that they had a high score, then also scored higher on one very specific subscaling of a daffodil test: they felt more unique than the so -called ‘low scorers’. The ‘high scorers’ did not think they were great and deserved fame, glory and attention, but they felt a little more special, so they were told that they were a bit special.
In the meantime, the so-called ‘low scorers’ have more often questioned the IQ test. People who are doing badly blame the test, write the psychologists. But of course those participants were simply right with their distrust: 97 percent of the participants studied or had completed a study. They also knew that they did not have below average IQ.
FragranceBabies appreciate garlic in the milk
That you start to stink from an excess of garlic from your mouth, and sometimes even from your pores, that can be determined empirically fairly easily. But suppose you are a young mother, do that taste and odor also end up in your breast milk? And if so, are babies keen on such garlic milk, or not? A research group from Philadelphia figured it out in 1991 and was rewarded 34 years later with the IG Nobel Pediatric Prize in Pediatrics.
The short answer: yes, milk from mothers who have eaten garlic takes a specific scent two to three hours later. We know that because a panel of eleven adults was asked to smell the milk. Then babies were filmed while they were breastfed, only after their mother followed a garlic -free diet for a few days, and later after garlic consumption. The conclusion: babies also love garlic, because they suck the nipple longer and more often. Whether it is the smell of the milk that she is on, or that the garlican breath or body odor of the mother was predominant, that was not entirely clear from the study. Not the milk, but the nipple could have smelled of garlic, the researchers suggest.
Based on their findings, the researchers wondered aloud whether the infants may like garlic because they were already exposed to the taste as a fetus via the amniotic fluid. For example, it is known that the amniotic fluid and the skin of unborn babies can take over the smell of the dish in the womb. And they raised the question of what the usefulness of this behavior can be: perhaps breast milk that the scent of the mother’s diet prepares the baby to like to like many different flavors later in life.