Well, the Nobel for Medicine was announced today at least. Yes, it’s the start of the Awards season.

Congratulations to the winners of the 2009 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine – Drs. Elizabeth H. Blackburn, Carol W. Greider and Jack W. Szostak – for the discovery of how chromosomes are protected by telomeres and the enzyme telomerase. Why is this important? Aging and the Big C. That’s why.

Nice to see that Dr. Szostak also came out of my alma mater. I actually had my nickel on stem cells, but I guess I can’t have my former grad supervisor getting back onto his soapbox to scream at me that “stem cells are an affront to G*d and humanity”. If it’s all good and fine with everyone, we’ll leave that argument to the medical ethicists and personal choice.

Of course, what are the Nobel Prizes if not direct competition for the IgNobels? Yes, Science’s answer to the Razzie, though much cooler since it’s Real Science as opposed to just very bad film. The List of Winners can be found here (it’s sequential so the current year is always at the top of the list).

The 2009 IgNobel for Medicine went to Donald L. Unger for “investigating a possible cause of arthritis of the fingers, by diligently cracking the knuckles of his left hand — but never cracking the knuckles of his right hand — every day for more than sixty (60) years”. Ouch! That’s dedication, baby. The reference is available online as Unger DL. 1998. Does Knuckle Cracking Lead to Arthritis of the Fingers? Arthritis and Rheumatism 41(5):949-950, but let’s just say that Wiley Interscience is currently experiencing “unexpected server load”.

While the Nobel is limited to six categories (medicine, physics, chemistry, economics, literature, peace), the IgNobel is more expansive and also offers up a Biology Prize. Previous winners have included herring flatus as a means of inter-fish communication (shared by Swedes Walhberg and Westerberg and Ben Wilson) and interspecies romance in the UK, but this year’s prize goes to a Japanese research team headed by Dr. Fumiaki Taguchi, who demonstrated that kitchen refuse can be reduced more than 90% in mass by using bacteria extracted from the feces of giant pandas. Take a look at:

• Taguchi F, S Guofua and Z Guanglei. 2001. Microbial Treatment of Kitchen Refuse With Enzyme-Producing Thermophilic Bacteria From Giant Panda Feces. Seibutsu-kogaku Kaishi 79(12):463-469. and
• Taguchi F, S Guofu, Y Sugai, H Kudo and A Koikeda. 2003. Microbial Treatment of Food-Production Waste with Thermopile Enzyme-Producing Bacterial Flora from a Giant Panda. J Japan Soc Waste Management Exp 14(2):76-82.

The latter article is in Japanese, but they’re riveting reading (seriously).

I guess this year’s Biology Award says volumes for me, since my current employment does have me thinking daily about new ways to deal with poo.

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