Named-cow researcher recognizes merit in research on sheep recognizing people

“I was asked if, as an Ig Nobel laureate myself, I thought this recent Cambridge sheep study would be a contender for an Ig Nobel award, the prize for science that “first makes you laugh, then makes you think”. Celebrity-spotting sheep might sound funny but the science involved in this study actually isn’t sniggerable.” So writes Catherine Douglas […]

The trouble with emoji: Misinterpreted emotions

The world suffers from miscommunication due to ambiguous interpretation of emoji, explains a soon-to-be-published study: The study is called ” ‘Blissfully happy’ or ‘ready to fight’: Varying Interpretations of Emoji.” Authors Hannah Miller, Jacob Thebault-Spieker, Shuo Chang, Isaac Johnson, Loren Terveen, and Brent Hecht, are in the GroupLens Research group at the University of Minnesota. In the […]

Partially drunk people can appear more attractive

There’s yet another twist in research news about drunkenness and the perception of beauty. The 2013 Ig Nobel psychology prize was awarded to Laurent Bègue [FRANCE], Brad Bushman [USA, UK, the NETHERLANDS, POLAND], Oulmann Zerhouni [FRANCE], Baptiste Subra [FRANCE], and Medhi Ourabah [FRANCE], for confirming, by experiment, that people who think they are drunk also think they […]

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