To laugh, then to think
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The 2025 Ig Nobel Awards.
I read this:
for studying whether ingesting alcohol can impair bats' ability to fly and also their ability to echolocate.
as
their ability to eat chocolate
Oops.
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Scientists that won an infamous 2024 IgNobel Prize for "discovering that many mammals are capable of breathing through their anus" may indeed have the last laugh. They've now completed a successful human trial testing the safety and tolerability of enteral ventilation, a technique that gets oxygen into the body via an unconventional route.
Japanese and US researchers, led by the Cincinnati Children's Hospital, have completed the first-ever human trial testing the viability of enteral ventilation, where patients with severe respiratory failure could potentially have oxygen delivered through the intestine, allowing the lungs to recover and to prevent further injury. The procedure's safety and tolerability was examined on 27 healthy male adults in Japan, who had oxygen-rich fluid pumped into their anus.
“This is the first human data, and the results are limited solely to demonstrating the safety of the procedure and not its effectiveness," said researcher Takanori Takebe, MD, PhD, from the Cincinnati Children’s and the University of Osaka. "But now that we have established tolerance, the next step will be to evaluate how effective the process is for delivering oxygen to the bloodstream."
