Cannibal Nutrition and Self-Colonoscopies Win Accolades at the 2018 Ig Nobels.

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Credit: The Annals of Improbable Research
A night to remember
Scientists from around the world gathered at Harvard University on Sept. 13 to accept unconventional prizes for their highly unusual research. The 2018 Ig Nobel Prize ceremony took place at 6 p.m. ET, awarding the scientific efforts of 10 teams. Their research might sound ridiculous, but it represents rigorous investigation and delivers fascinating findings. Of all the peculiar studies submitted for consideration this year, here are the dedicated weirdos that came out on top.

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Bumpy ride
The winner of the 2018 Ig Nobel in medicine was a studythat had its ups and downs; the scientists questioned whether the high-speed twists and turns of a roller coaster would be able to effectively dislodge a kidney stone.
The researchers placed actual kidney stones of different sizes in an anatomic model of a human renal system, suspending the stones in human urine. Next, they sent the model on 20 roller-coaster rides on Walt Disney World's Big Thunder Mountain Railroad in Florida. They discovered that seat position made a big difference — 23 of 36 stones passed when the model was seated at the back of the cars, while only four of 24 stones were dislodged when the model was sitting in the front.

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The imitation game
When people visit chimpanzees at the zoo, they often "ape" their primate cousins, imitating their facial expressions and gestures. The winners of the 2018 Ig Nobel in anthropology reported that chimps in zoos indulge in a similar pastime, imitating people about as frequently and as accurately as their human audiences.
Their findingssuggested that both humans and chimps copied the others' moves more often when they were physically closer to each other. Humans' imitations of chimpanzees were generally more accurate than the chimps' versions of human behavior. And when both humans and chimps recognized that they were being imitated, they responded in kind 36 percent of the time, the scientists found.

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Scent of a fly
If a fly landed in your glass of chardonnay, could you taste the difference? Winners of the Ig Nobel Prize in biology demonstrated that wine experts could reliably detect the presence of a fruit fly in their vino — by the taste the flies left behind in the wine.
In the study, eight participants tasted wine. In some of the glasses, a fruit fly had been kept in the empty glass for 5 minutes prior to the test. The scent produced by female fruit flies was found to be so potent that the tasters could identify its flavor even in minuscule amounts when it was present in their wine. (▪ ▪ ▪)

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