Ig Nobel winner: Using pork to stop nosebleeds

BOSTON (AP) — 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 included a team of researchers who wondered if owning a cat was bad for your mental health; Japanese scientists who tested whether banana peels are really as slippery as cartoons would have us believe; and Norwegian biologists who tested whether reindeer on the Arctic archipelago of Svalbard were frightened by humans dressed to resemble polar bears.

As has become the custom, real Nobel laureates handed out the prizes and winners were given a maximum of 60 seconds to deliver their acceptance speech,

Sticking pork products up the patient's nose was a treatment of last resort when conventional treatments had failed, Saraiya said, and was only used for a very specific condition known as Glanzmann thrombasthenia, a rare condition in which blood does not properly clot.

"We had to do some out-of-the-box thinking," she said. "So that's where we put our heads together and thought to the olden days and what they used to do."

The 4-year-old child's nostrils were packed with cured pork twice, and according to their study, "the nasal vaults successfully stopped nasal hemorrhage promptly (and) effectively."

The method worked because "there are some clotting factors in the pork ... and the high level of salt will pull in a lot of fluid from the nose," she said.

Still, Soraiya does not recommend sticking pork up your nose for a routine nosebleed, as it could cause infection.

Kiyoshi Mabuchi, a professor of biomedical engineering at Kitasato University in Japan, studied the slipperiness of banana peels as an extension of his research into human joint lubrication system.

"I have gotten ... evidence that the friction under banana peels is sufficiently low to make us slip," Mabuchi said via email.

The other good thing about his study is that his colleagues got to eat the bananas.

Several scientists won for studying the mental health of cat owners. The bottom line? Owning a cat may be hazardous to your health.

Dr. David Hanauer, of the department of pediatrics at the University of Michigan and co-author of one of the studies, says there's no reason for cat owners to panic.

"It may simply be that people with depression gets cats because they feel depressed," he said. "I am in no way telling people to get rid of their cats."

Professor Kang Lee at the University of Toronto in Canada was part of a team that won for studying the reactions of people who see human faces in slices of toast. Although the title of the study was called "Seeing Jesus in Toast," no actual images of Jesus were shown. But the study found that in people who merely think they see a face in a slice of toast — or in any other unusual object — the part of the brain involved in facial recognition lights up.

Although his research has legitimate scientific value, he said he's thrilled to win an Ig Nobel.

___

Online: 2014 Ig Nobels, http://www.improbable.c

-- http://news.yahoo.com/ig-nobel-winner-using-pork-stop-nosebleeds-234051532.html

-----------------------------------------------------------------My translation------------------------------------------

“搞笑诺贝尔奖”得主之一：用猪肉止鼻血

美联社消息，来自美国底特律医疗中心研究人员的调查结果显示，当面对严重的医疗问题时，某些偏方和迷信措施的确是有一定的效果。

美国密歇根州的Sonal Saraiya博士和她的同事发现，当小孩子的鼻血无法止住甚至威胁到孩子的生命时，可以在小孩的鼻孔里塞腌猪肉来止血。因为这一发现，他们成为“搞笑诺贝尔奖”获奖者，这个年度奖项虽显得有些荒唐，但令人惊讶的是，这些研究和发现通常显得十分有效和合理。

周四，在哈佛大学举行的颁奖会上，登上幽默科学杂志《不可能的研究之年鉴》的获奖者包括：一组研究养猫是否有害心理健康的研究人员；测试香蕉皮是否真如动画片情节中那样使人易滑倒的日本科学家们；测试生活在北极斯瓦尔巴特群岛的驯鹿是否对打扮成类似北极熊的人类非常惧怕的挪威生物学家们。

就像真正的诺贝尔奖一样，“搞笑诺贝尔奖”的获奖者也能获得奖项，获奖者们同样会做一个1分钟以内的获奖感言。

Saraiya博士说，当常规性治疗无效时，用猪肉来堵住病人的鼻子可以作为最后的治疗手段，或者是用于像典型的“血小板无力症”这样一种特殊情况，这种罕见的血液不能正常凝结的疾病。

Saraiya博士说，我们必须发挥发散性思维，例如，我们共同思考旧时代的人们是如何应对的。

在研究中，一名4岁儿童的鼻孔两次塞满了腌猪肉。结果显示，这样的做法迅速而有效地成功止住鼻血。

Saraiya博士说，这种方法奏效的原因是，腌猪肉里有一些凝血因子，肉中高浓度的盐分将吸收大量的鼻子中的流体。

但是，Saraiya博士并不建议用这种使用腌猪肉的方法来治疗常规的流鼻血。

来自日本北里大学的生物医学工程学的教授Kiyoshi Mabuchi，将香蕉皮的易滑性作为人类共同的润滑系统的拓展研究。

Mabuchih教授称，“我的研究证明，香蕉皮上的摩擦力确实小到能使人滑倒。”

关于这项研究的另一个好处是，他和他的同事们得以吃到很多香蕉。

那些研究养猫对人心理健康的影响的“搞笑诺贝尔奖”得主的答案是什么呢？养猫可能会对人的健康有害。

密歇根大学小儿学科的David Hanauer博士和其某项研究的合作者称，养猫者无需恐慌。

David Hanauer博士说，这可能只是因为抑郁症患者感到抑郁，所以他们才养猫，我也不可能告诉人们不要再养他们的猫了。

加拿大多伦多大学的Kang Lee教授，作为一组研究人员中的一位，研究人们看到面包片上的人脸时的反应。虽然该项研究命名为“面包片上的耶稣”，但是并不是说在面包片上显示真正的耶稣头像。这项研究发现这些仅仅想要在他们的面包片上或者其他不寻常的物体上看到人脸的人们，会直接启动那部分参与面部识别的大脑神经。

Kang Lee教授说，虽然他的研究具有正统的科学价值，但能获得“搞笑诺贝尔奖”（被认为有些荒诞离奇）也十分激动。

--------------------------------------------------------my thoughts-----------------------------------

We have plenty of folk remedies and old wives' tales, and we have got nowhere in the discussion about the truth of them though we believe in science.

Some of the searches are really funny and even odd. Anyway, Creation and efforts are expressing. Science is mysterious by nature and it is to seek answers for the incomprehensible things. It is important for the development to keep a wondering and curious attitude for the unknowns.

Ig Nobel is interesting and humorous. Besides, science and search have no limitation to some degree.