Ignoble Prize winners of the year. A TudoRama report on unusual research findings

Send us Fan MailIgnoble Prize winners of the year. A TudoRama report on unusual research findings.Every year, The Nobel Prize ceremonies are preceded by awards for unusual or even crazy research projects in the IgNobel prize awards.These awards were created in 1991 by Mark Abrahams, editor of the annals of improbable research. He has been the master of ceremonies at all award ceremonies since the awards are presented for discoveries that cannot or should not be reproduced. However, the event has created its own mock-serious Ceremony. The prizes are presented by real Nobel laureate at Harvard University, followed by public lectures from the winners at the Massachusetts Institute of technology. This year, the IgNobel Mechanical engineering prize was awarded to work on reanimating dead spiders for use as mechanical, gripping tools. The team included Te Faye Yap and Daniel Preston from Rice University, Texas.“ while setting up our lab, we noticed a dead curled up spider at the edge of the hallway, “ said Yap. “ our ‘Aha moment’ occurred when we found that spiders only have flexor muscles to contract the legs inward and rely on hydraulic pressure to extend their legs outward… we set out to determine whether we could re-purpose spiders after they had died of course as robotic components which we achieved by tapping into this hydraulic actuation mechanism” ...Stay up-to-date with all of Tudor's podcasts, blogs and current affairs commentary by signing up to our newsletter! Email [email protected] to sign up!Follow Tudor on Twitter @TudortweetFollow Tudor's blogs:everydaycreativity.ukleaderswedeserve.wordpress.com