Chopsticks that change the taste of food, the use of spider corpses as robotic tools, the mental ability of people who can talk backwards or the effect of alopecia on nose hairs are some of the award-winning studies. Nobel, the American parody of the prestigious Swedish competition.

The 2023 edition will be celebrated in two acts. The first took place on Thursday, September 14 in a webcast and not in a theater as usual to announce the award-winning projects. The The second part is the awards ceremony, which will take place on November 11 at the MIT Museum in Cambridge. And it is urged that this occasion will be a personal event.

Generalities of the award

Unlike what happens with the real Nobel Prize winners, there are no fixed categories. This time the combination of geology and chemistry, literature, mechanical engineering, public health, communications, medicine, nutrition, psychology, education and physics.

The Ig Nobel Prizes, a parody of the Swedish Nobel Prizes, are organized by the American academic journal ‘Annals of Improbable Research’ and sponsored by students from the prestigious Harvard University.

Chopsticks with electric impulse

“I feel very honored to receive this award,” Professor Homei Miyashita, whose Meiji University laboratory is leading the project that allows chopsticks to change taste together with the Kirin company, said today via social networks. electrical stimuli. It has been awarded in the Nutrition category.

Miyashita recalled that the study in this regard was written thirteen years ago, but in recent years the technologies of electric taste and its means have developed in many directions and been implemented in a practical way.

Professor Homei Miyashita (c), leader of the Japanese team that created chopsticks that can change the salty taste of food through electrical stimuli, poses with the prize for his research awarded in 2023 in the Nutrition category of the Nobel Ig . Photo: EFE

The technology developed by the team consists of a device equipped with a battery that applies electric waves to chopsticks while guests hold food, causing changes at the atomic level of the food.

In particular, weak electrical stimuli, imperceptible to the human body, adjust the ions of compounds such as sodium chloride (table salt) or sodium glutamate (related to the sweet taste), causing changes in the taste of the food, which would be useful can be to improve the taste of the food. healthier diets.

Robotic spiders

The study on using spider corpses as mechanical grasping tools was conducted by researchers from China, Malaysia, India and the US.

The academics, explained Te Faye Yap, one of the study’s authors, decided to tap into the “hydraulic system” of a dead spider’s legs, using a needle and applying pressure to the limbs. to stretch.

“We call it necrotics,” the Rice University researcher said upon receiving the award, assuring that she hopes these types of techniques will be more explored by other scientists in the field of mechanical engineering in the future.

Talking backwards

The awards, which have been held virtually since 2020 instead of in the traditional Sanders Theater at Harvard University, also honored the work of a group of academics from France, the United Kingdom and Finland who researched the mental abilities of people who face the other can speak. a way around.

Adolfo García, one of the authors of this study, explained about his award that one of the phenomena they focused on was “lunfardo,” a particular way of speaking in Argentina, his country of origin, “very popular in prison jargon.” ‘

“They invert sound for sound and can even do that with a complete sentence,” he pointed out.

Although the ceremony has not taken place in person since 2020, due to the coronavirus pandemic, organizers invited attendees (via the Internet) to launch paper airplanes at the 2023 Ig Nobel Prize announcement ceremony.

A ‘big’ prize

Other studies that received this remarkable prize focused on the effect of alopecia on nose hairs, the effect of repeating the same word many times or the ability to walk on water on the moon.

The prizes, which have been awarded for 33 years, are intended to “make people laugh and then think” and have the support of numerous scientists from different countries, including some real Nobel Prize winners.

As for the price, it is not a large financial amount, but 10 trillion Zimbabwean dollars; While it sounds like a great exchange rate, it turns out to be about 30 cents in US dollars. (JO)