Schnobel-2008
The ceremony of awarding the "Nobel Prizes" took place in the USA: It is traditionally held at Harvard University, which has given the world the most real, Nobel laureates, and is awarded for the most ridiculous, dubious and useless scientific achievements and research. This year, the "scientific world" was interested in the "contraceptive shower" from Coca-Cola, the impact of the drug price on human psychology and women's sexual behavior.
The Nobel Prize in Chemistry was awarded to three researchers led by Deborah Anderson from the Birth control Laboratory at Harvard Medical School. They found that popular "soda" drinks such as Coca-Cola and Pepsi can be used as a means of contraception.
"The Coca-Cola shower was really "popular among the people" in the 1950s and 60s, because then it was quite problematic to get real contraceptives. It was believed that carbon dioxide present in drinks has spermicidal properties. Anderson, her colleague Joe Hill and medical school student Cheri Umpier conducted experiments by placing sperm in a shaken Coca-Cola, writes New Scientist.
Their results showed that the drink really has a certain effect, especially dietary – 59% of spermatozoa "died" in it. Anderson and her colleagues, however, concluded that spermatozoa move too fast for anyone to have time to shake Coca-Cola right after sexual intercourse and arrange an effective "contraceptive shower" for themselves.
Anderson and her assistants shared the same "Nobel Prize" with researchers from Taiwan, whose similar tests showed exactly the opposite result.
The award in the field of medicine was received by Dan Arieli from the University of North Carolina. The scientist conducted an experiment with two groups of volunteers who were given exactly the same placebo (a virtually useless substance used as a drug, the positive therapeutic effect of which is associated with the subconscious psychological expectation of the patient) of painkillers. He told the first group that he was giving them medicine at a price of $ 2.5 per tablet, and the second – at 10 cents.
The test showed that those who received the more expensive medicine reacted less painfully to small current discharges passed through them. According to the scientist, this proves that the price affects the expectations of patients – the more expensive the medicine, the more effect is expected from it.
The Nobel Prize in Economics was awarded to three scientists from the University of New Mexico - Jeffrey Miller, Joshua Tyburu and Brent Jordan. They decided to find out whether women can somehow subconsciously demonstrate that they are in a favorable phase for conception - the way female animals do. To do this, they asked strip dancers in nightclubs to provide reports on their tips at different periods of the month. According to the results, those women who did not take hormonal contraceptives received much more tips than their colleagues who were "on the pill."
Two scientists from the University of Sao Paulo, in turn, tried to study the behavior of animals, in particular, their "craving for antiquities." Knowing what kind of "destruction" at the archaeological site is caused by animals digging the ground, such as, for example, armadillos, scientists painted clay shards in different colors and carefully buried them in several places far from each other, and then launched an armadillo at the research site. He had the pleasure of digging in the ground for two months, after which scientists discovered that all the shards were found by an animal and "mixed up". For this they received the Nobel Prize in Archaeology.
The Peace Prize (which in the present, "Nobel" version is considered the most prestigious and is awarded separately from the rest) was received by the Swiss Federal Commission for Ethics in Biology, defending the opinion that "plants have dignity." A document published by the commission entitled "Dignity of living beings in relation to plants" calls harming plants "morally unacceptable."
In other categories, the "Nobel Prizes" received:
Nutrition: two scientists from Italy and the UK electronically modified the sound of potato chips crunching to create a feeling of greater "freshness and crispness" in the person gnawing them than it actually is.
Biology: Three Frenchmen have found that fleas living on dogs jump higher than those that live on cats.
Cognitology (the science of thinking): four Japanese and a Hungarian found out that fungal mold can solve puzzles.
Physics: a group of Americans proved that a string, a hair, or something like that, sooner or later, will certainly twist into knots.
Literature: David Sims from a business school in London, as is obvious from the title and content, "with love" wrote the book "You bastard! A literary study of the experience of insults in organizations."
The full list of the "Nobel Prizes" of this year is published on the official website.
Portal "Eternal youth" http://vechnayamolodost.ru/03.10.2008