Top News Stories –

‘Universal urination duration’ wins Ig Nobel prize –
A study showing that nearly all mammals take the same amount of time to urinate has been awarded one of the 2015 Ig Nobel prizes at Harvard University. These spoof Nobels for “improbable research” are in their 25th year.
The team behind the urination research, from Georgia Tech, won the physics Ig. Using high-speed video analysis, they modelled the fluid dynamics involved in urination and discovered that all mammals weighing more than 3kg empty their bladders over about 21 seconds. Run by the science humour magazine Annals of Improbable Research, this is a jubilantly irreverent affair. It has become world famous for recognising scientific achievements that “make people laugh, and then think”. This year’s Ig winners travelled from six continents to accept their trophies. The triumphant research included a chemical recipe to partially un-boil an egg, and the discovery that the word “huh?” occurs in every human language. [BBC] See List of the Day

Valcke’s reign at FIFA likely to be at an end –
For the second time in his career, Jerome Valcke leaves FIFA with a cloud hanging over him. Sepp Blatter’s lieutenant for the past eight years, Valcke became the highest profile figure in the corruption-plagued organization to fall during the current series of scandals when he was “released from his duties” on Thursday and it appears unlikely he will return. The Frenchman has not been formally dismissed but Blatter is standing down in February and Valcke had already suggested he would probably go at that time as well. The 54-year-old, however, is now being investigated by FIFA’s ethics committee after allegations he was involved in a plan to re-sell 2014 World Cup tickets for a lucrative profit. [Reuters]
Jérôme_Valcke

Sperm banks attract customers by offering them enough cash to buy a new iPhone –
Chinese sperm banks have been saying that there is no need to sell a kidney to afford an iPhone, just your bodily fluids. Renji Hospital in Shanghai is one among several facilities offering enough money to buy an iPhone if men donate sperm. The hospital wrote in an online posting: “No need to sell your kidneys – you can easily have a 6s,” which refers to cases where people actually sold their organs to be able to afford Apple products. The advert says that if a man passes a health test and then regularly donates his sperm, he can earn enough money to purchase an iPhone. This amounts to 6,000 yuan (£610) which is enough to buy the new iPhone 6s. [Daily Telegraph]

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Does Your School Matter? – ASAP Science

List of the Day –

Winners of the Ig Awards 2015 [BBC]

Chemistry – Callum Ormonde (University of Western Australia) and colleagues, for inventing a chemical recipe to partially un-boil an egg.

Physics – Patricia Yang (Georgia Institute of Technology, US) and colleagues, for testing the biological principle that nearly all mammals empty their bladders in about 21 seconds (plus or minus 13 seconds).

Literature – Mark Dingemanse (Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics, The Netherlands) and colleagues, for discovering that the word “huh?” (or its equivalent) seems to exist in every human language – and for not being quite sure why.

Management – Gennaro Bernile (Singapore Management University) and colleagues, for discovering that many business leaders developed in childhood a fondness for risk-taking, when they experienced natural disasters (such as earthquakes, volcanic eruptions, tsunamis, and wildfires) that – for them – had no dire personal consequences.

Economics – The Bangkok Metropolitan Police (Thailand) for offering to pay policemen extra cash if the policemen refuse to take bribes.

Medicine – joint award: Hajime Kimata (Kimata Hajime Clinic, Japan) and also Jaroslava Durdiaková (Comenius University, Slovakia) and her collagues, for experiments to study the biomedical benefits or biomedical consequences of intense kissing (and other intimate, interpersonal activities).

Mathematics – Elisabeth Oberzaucher and Karl Grammer (University of Vienna, Austria) for trying to use mathematical techniques to determine whether and how Moulay Ismael the Bloodthirsty, the Sharifian Emperor of Morocco, managed, during the years from 1697 through 1727, to father 888 children.

Biology – Bruno Grossi (University of Chile) and colleagues, for observing that when you attach a weighted stick to the rear end of a chicken, the chicken then walks in a manner similar to that in which dinosaurs are thought to have walked.

Diagnostic medicine – Diallah Karim (Stoke Mandeville Hospital, UK) and colleagues, for determining that acute appendicitis can be accurately diagnosed by the amount of pain evident when the patient is driven over speed bumps.

Physiology and entomology – Awarded jointly to two individuals: Justin Schmidt (Southwest Biological Institute, US) for painstakingly creating the Schmidt Sting Pain Index, which rates the relative pain people feel when stung by various insects; and to Michael L. Smith (Cornell University, US), for carefully arranging for honey bees to sting him repeatedly on 25 different locations on his body, to learn which locations are the least painful (the skull, middle toe tip, and upper arm). and which are the most painful (the nostril, upper lip, and penis shaft).

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Other News Stories –

Armed conflicts and attacks

• Iraq War (2014–present)
  • At least 21 people are killed in multiple attacks in Baghdad with more than 70 others injured. (BBC), (Headlines & Global News)
• Saudi Arabian-led intervention in Yemen
  • Houthi militants parade captured Saudi soldiers on pro-Houthi Al Masirah TV. (AFP via Yahoo)
  • Arab Coalition warplanes bomb Yemen‘s capital Sanaa targeting a high-profile Houthi leader’s house. At least nine civilians are killed in the attack. (Reuters)
• Syrian Civil War
  • The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights claims that the government has used barrel bombs resulting in the deaths of 21 people in the rebel held town of Bosra in the Daraa Governorate. (AFP via France 24)

Business and economy

• The United States Federal Reserve decides to leave interest rates at a record low. (Reuters)
• US car maker General Motors pays $900 million fine to settle a criminal lawsuit over problems with the ignition system in its small cars. (AP via Yahoo! Autos)

Disasters and accidents

• 2015 Illapel earthquake
  • Thousands of people in the Chilean town of Illapel sleep outside following yesterday’s 8.3 magnitude earthquake as the death toll rises to 11. (CBS News), (Reuters)
  • Waves of up to 4.5 meters are recorded at Coquimbo, Chile. The Pacific Tsunami Warning Center, the U.S. National Tsunami Warning Center, etc., issue tsunami advisories for Pacific Ocean coastlines. (The Guardian), (Westside Today)
• Nearly 180 people are killed in South Sudan after an oil tanker truck veers off the road and explodes. (RT), (The Independent), (Voice of America)
• 2015 California wildfires
  • The death toll rises to five in the Butte and Valley Fires. Most bodies have been found in mandatory evacuation areas. The Calaveras County Sheriff’s Office says the majority of missing persons have been located at shelters or evacuation centers.(Sacramento Bee), (Reuters)
• American Airlines halts flights for 90 minutes at its major hubs in Chicago, Dallas, and Miami because of a computer glitch. The incident produces a cascading effect of delays throughout all US airlines. (UPI)

Health

• Fourteen people have died of dengue fever in the Indian city of Delhi. (NDTV)

International relations

• European migrant crisis
  • Seven thousand migrants arrive in Croatia with the President of Croatia Kolinda Grabar-Kitarovic placing the army on standby. (WA Today)
  • The European Parliament approves (372–124 with 54 abstentions) a European Commission plan to relocate 120,000 asylum seekers around the EU. (Australian Broadcasting Corporation), (EuroNews)

Politics and elections

• 2015 Burkinabé coup d’état
  • The provisional government of Burkina Faso is overthrown in a military coup. (The Daily Telegraph), (BBC)
  • Coup leaders announce on national television and radio that General Gilbert Diendéré is now the head of state of a new transitional body, the “National Council for Democracy”. (AP via Huffington Post), (Al Jazeera America)
  • At least three people were killed and more than 60 injured after members of the presidential guard acted to disperse crowds protesting the takeover. (Irish Times)
• Fist-fights erupt between legislators in the National Diet of Japan over a security bill that would allow Japan Self-Defense Forces to fight abroad. Japan had previously sent only a small amount of troops to Iraq. (AFP via StraitsTimes), (BBC)
• Brazil’s Supreme Court issues a decision that bans corporate money in elections. This ruling comes as a major investigation is underway in the country on a campaign financing bribery and corruption scandal. (Singapore Today Online), (AP via Fox News)

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