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A Japanese doctor was recognized Thursday with an Ig Nobel prize, which honor comical but practical scientific studies, for devising the most comfortable colonoscopy technique by using himself as a test subject. ... Doing a self-colonoscopy while sitting, Horiuchi discovered the method facilitated entry. After a series of trials, he shared his personal experiences in a 2006 medical report titled, “Colonoscopy in the Sitting Position: Lessons Learned From Self-Colonoscopy.” But Horiuchi isn’t recommending that you give yourself a colonoscopy in the comfort of your home. He said via email that many people are afraid of getting a colonoscopy and he...

There's some truth to the effectiveness of folk remedies and old wives' tales when it comes to serious medical issues, according to findings by a team from Detroit Medical Center. Dr. Sonal Saraiya and her colleagues in Michigan found that packing strips of cured pork in the nose of a child who suffers from uncontrollable, life-threatening nosebleeds can stop the hemorrhaging, a discovery that won them a 2014 Ig Nobel prize, the annual award for sometimes inane, yet often surprisingly practical, scientific discoveries. This year's winners honored Thursday at Harvard University by the Annals of Improbable Research magazine

Ig Nobel Prize in physics goes to research about walking on water on the moon.Every year in December, the Swedish Academy of Sciences hands out Nobel Prizes for the most important discoveries in science. A few months before, in less grand circumstances, the magazine Annals of Improbable Research The Ig Nobels are given to research that ‘first makes people laugh, and then makes them think’. The categories vary year to year but mostly cover science and engineering, with peace and literature occasionally thrown in, too. Previous awards have been handed out to projects like minimizing the risk of colonoscopy...

Gustano A. Pizzo's Anti-hijacking System for Aircraft, an insane system of trap doors on commercial planes to capture and eject terrorists ... has finally received what it so richly deserves: an Ig Nobel prize. Handed out at Harvard University by the Annals of Improbable Research, the annual spoof Nobels honor "achievements that first make people laugh, then make them think." [The patent reads:] "A partition or barrier located immediately aft of the pilots cabin is adapted to be raised dividing the aft section longitudinally into port and starboard areas, the floors of which are dropped on command to lower the...

Al Gore, Nobel laureate, former vice president of the United States and author of the global warming documentary An Inconvenient Truth, will deliver the opening address at a conference on "Renewable Energy and Beyond," scheduled to be held at Tel Aviv University May 20-21, the university said Sunday. Gore will be arriving on a special visit to Israel as guest of the Dan David Prize. The 2008 Dan David Prize will be awarded to Gore on May 19 for social commitment to environmental protection and the prevention of a global ecological disaster, a statement from the university read. Tel Aviv...

SAN FRANCISCO -- A Pakistani national who falsely told U.S. immigration authorities that he was a Nobel Prize nominee has been deported from the Bay Area, federal immigration officials said today. Shehrezad Faruk Czar, 38, pleaded guilty in September to providing false information on his visa application, according to court records. As part of his plea, he agreed to be deported to Pakistan and waived his right to a hearing before an immigration judge, according to the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency. Czar arrived in Pakistan on a commercial flight Saturday, immigration officials said. Czar, who had been in...

SAN FRANCISCO - A condemned US inmate who turned from a gang leader to an anti-gang advocate behind bars has been nominated for the 2006 Nobel peace prize, the college professor behind the nomination said. Professor Philip Gasper of Notre Dame de Namur University in California has nominated convicted killer Stanley "Tookie" Williams for the prize five years in a row, according to Alice Kim of the Campaign to Stop the Death Penalty. A Swiss parliamentarian was the first to recommend Williams for the prize, Kim said. "I respect him for his willingness to be public with his stand against...

Wednesday 05 October 2005, 11:41 Makka Time, 8:41 GMTThe awards are presented by genuine Nobel winners​ ​​​​It is difficult to judge exactly where the scientific world would be without Professor Bernard Vonnegut's seminal 1975 study on Chicken Plucking as a Measure of Tornado Wind Speed. What is clear is that Vonnegut's groundbreaking research may have languished in undeserved obscurity but for Marc Abrahams, founder of the annual Ig Nobel Prizes for scientific achievement that "cannot or should not be reproduced". A prestigious gathering of genuine Nobel laureates will help present the awards at the 15th Ig Nobel ceremony to be...

Just watching the broadcast.

Researchers who found a link between country music and suicide, and a man who patented his combover hairstyle have won IgNobel Awards for true but funny experiments. Other prizes went to a soft drink maker that bottled Thames River water in London and sold it as a designer drink, and to a woman who investigated the "five-second rule", according to which if food falls to the floor for fewer than five seconds, it is safe to eat. The annual awards, presented at Harvard University in Massachusetts by the publishers of the Annals of Improbable Research, are a spoof of the...

Researchers who found a link between country music and suicide, and a man who patented his comb-over hairstyle have won IgNobel Awards for true but funny experiments. Other prizes went to a soft drink maker that bottled Thames River water in London and sold it as a designer drink, and to a woman who investigated the "5-second rule", according to which if food falls to the floor for fewer than 5 seconds, it is safe to eat. The annual awards, presented at Harvard University in Massachusetts by the publishers of the Annals of Improbable Research on Thursday, are a spoof...