=================================== The Express March 9, 2003 ================================== 86 YEARS OLD AND STILL CONTEMPLATING NAVELS. . . WHAT do belly-button fluff, ostriches and beer froth have in common? The answer, as any reader of that splendid publication Annals Of Improbable Research (AIR) will know, is that all inspired academic papers which won Ig Nobel Prizes last year. The Ig Nobels, believed to have been founded by Alfred Nobel's lesser known brother Ignatius, are presented for "research that cannot or should not be reproduced". An additional criterion is that it should "first make people laugh, then make them think". Typical titles of winning papers include Scrotal Asymmetry In Man And In Ancient Sculpture; Demonstration Of The Exponential Decay Law Using Beer Froth; and Courtship Behaviour of Ostriches Towards Humans Under Farming Conditions In Britain. A Comprehensive Survey Of Human Belly Button Lint was not in any journal, but was clearly too important to ignore. As part of National Science Week, a group of Ig Nobel Laureates are currently touring Britain with a series of lecture- demonstrations. If you want to see how to use magnetic currents to levitate a frog, or learn the scientific way to dunk a biscuit, you can catch their final performances in Bristol this evening, or in Oxford tomorrow (call 020 7973 3062 for details, or the British Association's National Science Week web site at www. the-ba. net/nsw). I was fortunate to catch their first performance in London last Friday, when the Ig Nobel Laureates were on sparkling form. When you have scientists of the quality of Dr Len Fisher, of Bristol, explaining the finer points of biscuit dunking, and Robert Matthews, of Aston University, reporting his findings on Murphy's Law in general, and the tendency of dropped toast to land buttered side down in particular, you know you are in the presence of unusual talent. What gave the whole evening an enviable momentum was the deadpan chairmanship of Marc Abrahams, editor of AIR. Pre-empting any accusations of frivolity, he pointed out at the start that "it was the other lot in Stockholm who gave Kissinger the Peace Prize". He then introduced the first of AIR's 24/7 seminars to find Britain's Most Succinct Scientist. Candidates had to explain their research in 24 seconds, then produce a seven-word summary. In general, this was not very enlightening, though I thought one biologist's description of her subject was spot on: "If it can get infected, it's biology". At the Ig Nobel awards themselves, winners have a full minute for their acceptance speeches. If they overrun, an eight-year-old Shirley Temple lookalike walks over to the podium and starts a repetitive chant of "I'm bored, you've got to stop; I'm bored, you've got to stop . . ." at gradually increasing volume until they shut up. In London, no such sanction was needed. Did I learn anything useful? Yes, two things come to mind: 1) "kantling" is the word for the courtship behaviour of ostriches; 2) If you still have a 1997 calendar, you can use it again this year. Who said scientists were impractical?