This year, Swedish live TV coverage of Nobel Week is spiced with (unrelated but delightful) Ig Nobel snippets. Interspersed in their traditional dignified, lengthy coverage of the grand Nobel Week events in Stockholm, the Swedish television network SVT is broadcasting bits of something rather different, unrelated, and delightful-if-not-exactly-pertinent: brief reports about several of this year’s Ig Nobel Prize winners. Take a […]
Tag: Sweden
The curious true tale of the the Swedish prime minister, a Soviet submarine, and farting herring
Professor Magnus Whalberg took part, many years ago, in an odd historic passage that involved the Swedish prime minister (Carl Bildt), a Soviet submarine, and farting herring. Years after the event, in 2004, Whalberg and his colleague Håkan Westerberg were awarded an Ig Nobel Prize — though the Ig Nobel Board of Governors was at the time completely unaware […]
The 2014 Ig Nobel tour of Europe
A bevy of Ig Nobel Prize winners — scientists who have done things that make people LAUGH, then THINK — will strut their stuff in the 2014 Ig Nobel tour of Europe. It happens March 14—April 2. Here’s a quick list of events: Fri, March 14 …. LONDON, Imperial College. Mon, March 17 …. COVENTRY, […]
Smelov’s investigation of HPV on toilet seats in international airports
Lead author Smelov and colleagues write, in this letter to a medical journal, about a careful investigation that may (and may not) have small or nonexistent implications: “Are human papillomavirus DNA prevalences providing high-flying estimates of infection? An international survey of HPV detection on environmental surfaces,” Vitaly Smelov [pictured here], Carina Eklund, Laila Sara Arroyo […]