The 36th Ig Nobel prize ceremony – which celebrates research that ‘makes people laugh, then think’ – saw an international team of researchers take home the chemistry prize last night for finding that milk-producing cockroaches are more efficient than cows.
Leo Chavis, Subramanian Ramaswamy and Nathan Coussens accepted the prize on behalf of the whole team. The trio took centre stage, adorned with cockroach hats and t-shirts, to sing a song about their research journey, while advocating for cockroach milk as an alternative dairy source. The team used x-ray crystallography to analyse a milk protein from the only known cockroach that nurtures an embryo inside the mother’s body (Diploptera punctata), revealing that the protein contains three times more energy than milk proteins from cows.
At the ceremony, awards were given in a total of 10 categories. The technology prize was awarded to researchers who used the noses of mosquitoes as 3D-printing nozzles, while a Japanese team scored the prize in medicine for the aerodynamics of nose blowing. The physics prize went to a splash-free urinal and burying 1000 pairs of underpants and digging them up after two months scooped the soil science prize for better understanding of soil health.
Researchers from the US and Israel won last year’s Ig Nobel prize for chemistry for suggesting a ‘Teflon diet’ – adding particles of polytetrafluoroethylene to food as a calorie-free filler to bulk up meals. Other previous chemistry awards have been given for understanding why scientists like to lick rocks, analysing the smell of cinema audiences and using ‘drunk’ worms as models of large polymers.
This year’s prize ceremony took place in Zurich, Switzerland – the first time the awards were held outside the US since the Ig Nobel prizes started in 1991 after the organisers said that the country was ‘unsafe for our guests to visit’. Organisers of the event announced the decision to move in March, after four of the 10 winners last year decided not to go to the ceremony, citing concerns over visas and feeling uncomfortable about entering the US.
Marc Abrahams – who created the awards and hosts the ceremony each year – recently spoke to Chemistry World about why the award ceremony was moving to Switzerland. ‘In many places, and especially in the US, science is being attacked in very fraudulent ways and for fraudulent purposes,’ he said. ‘Anything that, even in small ways, is getting people interested in science is extremely helpful.’
Moving forward, there are no plans to move the ceremony back to the US. Abrahams has said that the annual prize-giving will now alternate between Switzerland and a different country around the world. Next year’s ceremony will be in Antwerp in Belgium.
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