0:00:04.831,0:00:08.537
George and Charlotte Blonsky, who were

0:00:08.537,0:00:12.069
a married couple living in[br]the Brox in New York City,

0:00:12.069,0:00:13.474
invented something.

0:00:13.474,0:00:17.223
They got a patent in[br]1965 for what they call,

0:00:17.223,0:00:22.648
"a device to assist women in giving birth."

0:00:22.648,0:00:26.748
This device consists of a large, round table[br]

0:00:26.748,0:00:28.561
and some machinery.

0:00:28.561,0:00:31.670
When the woman is ready to deliver her child,

0:00:31.670,0:00:32.991
she lies on her back,

0:00:32.991,0:00:35.752
she is strapped down to the table,

0:00:35.752,0:00:38.801
and the table is rotated at high speed.

0:00:38.801,0:00:42.146
The child comes flying out

0:00:42.146,0:00:48.767
through centrifugal force.

0:00:49.717,0:00:54.246
If you look at their patent carefully,

0:00:54.246,0:00:58.455
especially if you have any[br]engineering background or talent,

0:00:58.455,0:00:59.744
You may decide that you see

0:00:59.744,0:01:06.261
one or two points where the[br]design is not perfectly adequate.

0:01:06.261,0:01:09.160
Doctor Ivan Schwab in California

0:01:09.160,0:01:11.154
is one of the people, [br]one of the main people

0:01:11.154,0:01:12.850
who helped answer the question,

0:01:12.850,0:01:18.731
"Why don't Woodpeckers get headaches?"

0:01:18.731,0:01:20.278
And it turns out the answer to that

0:01:20.278,0:01:22.002
is because their brains

0:01:22.002,0:01:23.793
are packaged inside their skulls

0:01:23.793,0:01:26.273
in a way different from the way

0:01:26.273,0:01:28.497
our brains, we being human beings,

0:01:28.497,0:01:32.456
true, have our brains packaged.

0:01:32.456,0:01:35.149
They, the Woodpeckers, typically

0:01:35.149,0:01:37.387
will peck, they will bang their head

0:01:37.387,0:01:41.183
on a piece of wood thousands [br]of times everyday.

0:01:41.183,0:01:43.248
Everyday.

0:01:43.248,0:01:44.231
And as far as anyone knows,

0:01:44.231,0:01:46.027
that doesn't bother them in the slightest.

0:01:46.027,0:01:48.093
How does this happen?

0:01:48.093,0:01:51.209
Their brain does not slosh around like ours does.

0:01:51.209,0:01:53.341
Their brain is packed in very tightly,

0:01:53.341,0:01:56.557
at least for blows coming [br]right from the front.

0:01:56.557,0:01:58.580
Not too many people paid attention

0:01:58.580,0:02:01.644
to this research until[br]the last few years

0:02:01.644,0:02:03.839
when, in this country especially,

0:02:03.839,0:02:05.227
people are becoming curious about

0:02:05.227,0:02:07.932
what happens to the brains[br]of football players

0:02:07.932,0:02:10.630
who bang their heads repeatedly.

0:02:10.630,0:02:15.858
And the Woodpecker maybe relates to that.

0:02:15.858,0:02:17.311
There was a paper published

0:02:17.311,0:02:19.276
in the medical journal "The Lancet"

0:02:19.276,0:02:20.486
in England a few years ago called

0:02:20.486,0:02:28.063
" A man who proceed his finger[br]and smelled putrid for 5 years."

0:02:28.063,0:02:30.071
Dr. Caroline Mills and her team

0:02:30.071,0:02:33.420
received this patient and [br]didn't really know what

0:02:33.420,0:02:34.234
to do about it.

0:02:34.234,0:02:35.670
The man had cut his finger,

0:02:35.670,0:02:39.403
he worked processing chickens,

0:02:39.403,0:02:41.579
and then he started to[br]smell really, really bad.

0:02:41.579,0:02:42.998
So bad that when [br]he got in a room

0:02:42.998,0:02:44.115
with the doctors and the nurses,

0:02:44.115,0:02:47.224
they couldn't stand being [br]in the room with him.

0:02:47.224,0:02:48.945
It was intolerable.

0:02:48.945,0:02:50.174
They tried every drug,

0:02:50.174,0:02:52.232
every other treatment[br]they could think of.

0:02:52.232,0:02:54.223
After a year, he still [br]smelled putrid.

0:02:54.223,0:02:56.032
After two years, still smelled putrid.

0:02:56.032,0:02:59.412
Three years, four years,[br]still smelled putrid.

0:02:59.412,0:03:02.619
After five years, it went away on its own.

0:03:02.619,0:03:06.338
It's a mystery.

0:03:06.338,0:03:08.877
In New Zealand, Dr. Leann Parkin

0:03:08.877,0:03:13.909
and her team tested an old [br]tradition in her city.

0:03:13.909,0:03:16.636
They live in a city that has huge hills,

0:03:16.636,0:03:18.875
San Francisco-grade hills.

0:03:18.875,0:03:20.372
And in the winter there,[br]it gets very cold

0:03:20.372,0:03:21.676
and very icy.

0:03:21.676,0:03:23.840
There are lots of injuries.

0:03:23.840,0:03:25.805
The tradition that they tested,

0:03:25.805,0:03:27.947
they tested by asking people

0:03:27.947,0:03:29.446
who were on their way to [br]work in the morning,

0:03:29.446,0:03:31.989
to stop and try something out.

0:03:31.989,0:03:33.392
Try one of two conditions.

0:03:33.392,0:03:36.555
The tradition is that in the winter,

0:03:36.555,0:03:41.521
in that city, you wear your socks[br]on the outside of your boots.

0:03:41.521,0:03:44.480
And what they discovered by experiment,

0:03:44.480,0:03:46.429
and it was quite graphic when they saw it,

0:03:46.429,0:03:48.244
was that it's true.

0:03:48.244,0:03:51.163
That if you wear socks on the outside[br]rather than the inside,

0:03:51.163,0:03:56.846
you're much more likely [br]to survive and not slip and fall.

0:03:56.846,0:04:02.294
Now, I hope you will agree[br]with me that these things

0:04:02.294,0:04:04.109
I've just described to you,

0:04:04.109,0:04:11.289
each of them, deserves some kind of prize.

0:04:11.289,0:04:12.374
And that's what they got,

0:04:12.374,0:04:15.699
each of them got an Ig Nobel Prize.

0:04:15.699,0:04:19.191
In 1991, I, together with bunch of other people,

0:04:19.191,0:04:22.414
started the Ig Nobel Prize ceremony.

0:04:22.414,0:04:25.306
Every year we give out 10 prizes.

0:04:25.306,0:04:32.009
The prizes are based on just one criteria. [br]Just one criteria, it's very simple.

0:04:32.009,0:04:38.453
It's that you've done something that [br]makes people laugh and then think.

0:04:38.453,0:04:42.127
What you've done makes [br]people laugh and then think.

0:04:42.127,0:04:43.845
[br]Whatever it is, there's something about it

0:04:43.845,0:04:46.582
[br]that when people encounter it at first,

0:04:46.582,0:04:51.373
their only possible reaction is to laugh.

0:04:51.373,0:04:52.156
And then a week later,

0:04:52.156,0:04:54.137
it's still rattling around in their heads

0:04:54.137,0:04:56.757
and all they want to do [br]is tell their friends about it.

0:04:56.757,0:04:58.755
That's the quality we look for.

0:04:58.755,0:05:01.250
Every year, we get in the neighborhood

0:05:01.250,0:05:06.222
of 9,000 new nominations [br]for the Ig Nobel Prize.

0:05:06.222,0:05:08.521
Of those, consistently between 10 percent

0:05:08.521,0:05:11.244
and 20 percent of those nominations

0:05:11.244,0:05:15.054
are people who nominate themselves.

0:05:15.054,0:05:19.261
Those self-nominees almost never win.

0:05:19.261,0:05:23.950
It's very difficult, numerically, [br]to win a prize if you want to.

0:05:23.950,0:05:25.045
Even if you don't want to,

0:05:25.045,0:05:27.901
it's very difficult numerically.

0:05:27.901,0:05:31.411
You should know that when [br]we choose somebody

0:05:31.411,0:05:32.943
to win an Ig Nobel Prize,

0:05:32.943,0:05:35.279
We get in touch with that person.

0:05:35.279,0:05:38.820
Very quietly, we offer them [br]the chance to decline

0:05:38.820,0:05:42.392
this great honor if they want to.

0:05:42.392,0:05:45.776
Happily for us, almost everyone [br]who's accepted a prize

0:05:45.776,0:05:49.805
decides to accept.

0:05:49.805,0:05:52.316
What do you get if you[br]win an Ig Nobel Prize?

0:05:52.316,0:05:53.813
Well, you get several things.

0:05:53.813,0:05:57.083
You get an Ig Nobel Prize.

0:05:57.083,0:05:59.854
The design is different every year.

0:05:59.854,0:06:05.400
These are always handmade[br]from extremely cheap materials.

0:06:05.400,0:06:06.421
You're looking at a picture

0:06:06.421,0:06:10.670
of the prize we gave last year, 2013.

0:06:10.670,0:06:12.446
Most prizes in the world also give

0:06:12.446,0:06:17.094
their winners some cash, some money.

0:06:17.094,0:06:18.117
We don't have any money,

0:06:18.117,0:06:19.498
so we can't give them...

0:06:19.498,0:06:22.094
in fact, the winners have to[br]pay their own way

0:06:22.094,0:06:25.378
to come to the Ig Nobel ceremony,

0:06:25.378,0:06:27.201
which most of them do.

0:06:27.201,0:06:30.234
Last year, though, we did manage[br]to scrap up some money.

0:06:30.234,0:06:34.685
Last year, each of the 10[br]Ig Nobel Prize winners

0:06:34.685,0:06:40.333
received, from us, 10 trillion dollars.

0:06:40.333,0:06:45.876
A 10 trillion dollar bill from Zimbabwe.

0:06:45.876,0:06:48.300
You may remember that [br]Zimbabwe had a little adventure

0:06:48.300,0:06:51.125
for a few years there of inflation.

0:06:51.125,0:06:52.515
They ended up printing bills

0:06:52.515,0:06:56.741
that were in denominations as[br]large as 100 trillion dollars.

0:06:56.741,0:06:59.156
The man responsible, who runs[br]the national bank there, by the way,

0:06:59.156,0:07:02.769
won an Ig Nobel Prize in mathematics.

0:07:02.769,0:07:04.201
The other thing you win is an invitation

0:07:04.201,0:07:05.784
to come to the ceremony,

0:07:05.784,0:07:07.766
which happens at Harvard University.

0:07:07.766,0:07:09.181
And when you get there,

0:07:09.181,0:07:11.578
you come to Harvard's biggest [br]meeting place and classroom.

0:07:11.578,0:07:12.673
It fits 1,100 people,

0:07:12.673,0:07:13.459
it's jammed to the gills,

0:07:13.459,0:07:14.480
and up on the stage,

0:07:14.480,0:07:16.084
waiting to shake your hand,

0:07:16.084,0:07:18.306
waiting to hand you your Ig Nobel Prize,

0:07:18.306,0:07:21.025
are a bunch of Nobel Prize winners.

0:07:21.025,0:07:22.384
That's the heart of the ceremony.

0:07:22.384,0:07:24.184
The winners are kept secret until that moment,

0:07:24.184,0:07:26.611
even the Nobel laureates [br]who will shake their hand

0:07:26.611,0:07:30.284
don't know who they are[br]until they're announced.

0:07:30.284,0:07:33.504
I am going to tell you [br]about just a very few

0:07:33.504,0:07:36.268
of the other medical related prizes we've given.

0:07:36.268,0:07:38.684
Keep in mind, we've given 230 prizes. [br]

0:07:38.684,0:07:40.828
They're lots of these people[br]who walk among you.

0:07:40.828,0:07:42.928
Maybe you have one.

0:07:42.928,0:07:45.202
A paper was published about 30 years ago

0:07:45.202,0:07:48.092
called "Injuries due to Falling Coconuts."

0:07:48.092,0:07:50.077
It was written by doctor Peter Barss,

0:07:50.077,0:07:52.438
who is Canadian.

0:07:52.438,0:07:54.134
Dr. Barrs came to the ceremony

0:07:54.134,0:07:55.961
and explained that as a young doctor,

0:07:55.961,0:07:57.472
he wanted to see the world.

0:07:57.472,0:07:59.671
So he went to Papua New Guinea.

0:07:59.671,0:08:02.130
When he got there, he went to work[br]in a hospital, and he was curious,

0:08:02.130,0:08:07.195
what kinds of things happen to people[br]that bring them to the hospital.

0:08:07.195,0:08:08.263
He looked through the records, and he discovered

0:08:08.263,0:08:11.803
that a surprisingly large number of people

0:08:11.803,0:08:12.699
in that hospital were there

0:08:12.699,0:08:16.866
because of injuries due to falling coconuts.

0:08:16.866,0:08:18.182
One typical thing that happens is

0:08:18.182,0:08:21.971
people will come from the highlands[br]where there are not many coconut trees,

0:08:21.971,0:08:24.269
down to visit their relatives on the coast

0:08:24.269,0:08:25.429
where there are lots.

0:08:25.429,0:08:27.339
And they'll think that a coconut tree

0:08:27.339,0:08:29.688
is a fine place to stand and maybe lie down.

0:08:29.688,0:08:32.425
A coconut tree that is 90-feet-tall,

0:08:32.425,0:08:34.178
and has coconuts that weigh two pounds

0:08:34.178,0:08:38.590
that can drop off at any time.

0:08:38.590,0:08:40.443
A team of doctors in Europe

0:08:40.443,0:08:43.902
published a series of papers[br]about colonoscopies.

0:08:43.902,0:08:45.562
You're all familiar with colonoscopies,

0:08:45.562,0:08:46.444
one way or another.

0:08:46.444,0:08:48.219
Or in some cases,

0:08:48.219,0:08:51.964
one way and another.

0:08:51.964,0:08:55.313
They, in these papers,

0:08:55.313,0:08:58.351
explained to their fellow doctors[br]who perform colonoscopies,

0:08:58.351,0:09:01.782
how to minimize the chance

0:09:01.782,0:09:03.823
that when you perform a colonoscopy,

0:09:03.823,0:09:08.233
your patient will explode.

0:09:08.233,0:09:09.653
Dr. Emmanuel Bensoussan

0:09:09.653,0:09:10.807
one of the authors,

0:09:10.807,0:09:14.136
flew in from Paris to the ceremony,

0:09:14.136,0:09:15.597
where he explained the history of this,

0:09:15.597,0:09:16.983
that in the 1950s,

0:09:16.983,0:09:22.111
when colonoscopies were becoming[br]a common technique for the first time,

0:09:22.111,0:09:24.870
people were figuring out how to do it well.

0:09:24.870,0:09:27.730
And there were some difficulties at first.

0:09:27.730,0:09:30.761
The basic problem, I'm sure you're familiar with,

0:09:30.761,0:09:37.040
that you're looking inside a [br]long, narrow, dark place.

0:09:37.040,0:09:40.895
And so, you want to have a larger space.

0:09:40.895,0:09:42.726
You add some gas to inflate it

0:09:42.726,0:09:44.590
so you have room to look around.

0:09:44.590,0:09:47.187
Now that's added to the [br]gas, the methane gas,

0:09:47.187,0:09:49.035
that's already inside.

0:09:49.035,0:09:52.165
The gas that they used at first[br]in many cases was oxygen.

0:09:52.165,0:09:54.574
So they added oxygen to methane gas.

0:09:54.574,0:09:56.359
And then they wanted to be able to see,

0:09:56.359,0:09:57.247
they needed light,

0:09:57.247,0:09:58.972
so they'd put in a light source,

0:09:58.972,0:10:00.828
which in the 1950s was very hot.

0:10:00.828,0:10:03.836
So you had methane gas, which is flammable,

0:10:03.836,0:10:07.108
oxygen and heat.

0:10:07.108,0:10:12.086
They stopped using oxygen pretty quickly.

0:10:12.086,0:10:13.997
Now, it's rare that patients will explode,

0:10:13.997,0:10:20.156
but it does still happen.

0:10:20.156,0:10:23.311
The final thing that I want to[br]tell you about it is a prize

0:10:23.311,0:10:26.172
we gave to Dr. Elena Bodnar.

0:10:26.172,0:10:30.117
Dr. Elena Bodnar invented a brassiere

0:10:30.117,0:10:31.585
that in an emergency,

0:10:31.585,0:10:33.128
can be quickly separated [br]

0:10:33.128,0:10:36.567
into a pair of protective face masks.

0:10:36.567,0:10:38.354
One to save your life,

0:10:38.354,0:10:43.608
one to save the life of[br]some lucky bystander.

0:10:43.608,0:10:46.415
"Why would someone do this?", you might wonder.[br]

0:10:46.415,0:10:48.677
Dr. Bodnar came to the ceremony

0:10:48.677,0:10:51.348
and she explained that [br]she grew up in Ukraine.

0:10:51.348,0:10:53.324
She was one of the doctors who treated victims

0:10:53.324,0:10:55.778
of the Chernobyl power plant meltdown.

0:10:55.778,0:10:57.562
And they later discovered that

0:10:57.562,0:10:59.947
a lot of the worst medical problems

0:10:59.947,0:11:02.299
came from the particles people breathed in.

0:11:02.299,0:11:03.667
So she was always thinking after that

0:11:03.667,0:11:05.494
about could there be some simple mask[br]

0:11:05.494,0:11:09.990
that was available everywhere[br]when the unexpected happens.

0:11:09.990,0:11:11.853
Years later, she moved to America,

0:11:11.853,0:11:12.817
she had a baby,

0:11:12.817,0:11:14.203
One day she looked, and on the floor,

0:11:14.203,0:11:17.674
her infant son had picked up her bra,

0:11:17.674,0:11:19.683
and had her bra on his face.

0:11:19.683,0:11:20.994
And that's where the idea came from.

0:11:20.994,0:11:23.317
She came to the Ig Nobel ceremony

0:11:23.317,0:11:25.567
with the first prototype of the bra

0:11:25.567,0:11:30.031
and she demonstrated:

0:11:30.031,0:12:43.909
(Laughter and Applause)

0:12:43.909,0:12:47.713
I myself own an emergency bra.

0:12:47.713,0:12:50.101
It's my favorite bra,

0:12:50.101,0:12:52.623
but I would be happy to [br]share it with any of you,

0:12:52.623,0:12:54.122
should the need arise.

0:12:54.122,0:12:55.078
Thank you.

0:12:55.078,0:13:00.075
(Applause)