Page 16 - IAV Digital Magazine #507

iAV - Antelope Valley Digital Magazine
Wroclove Dr Wins International Prize For Kissing Research
By Nick Westerby
A Wrocław scien- tist has bagged an international prize for her ‘improbable’ research into kissing.
Dr Agnieszka Żelaźniewicz from the University of Wrocław won the Ig Nobel prize as part of an interna- tional team after looking into how inequalities in national incomes affect how people kiss.
Entitled ‘National income inequality predicts cultural variation in mouth-to-mouth kissing’, the research pub- lished in Nature’s Scientific Reports found that in poorer countries, romantic mouth-
to-mouth kissing is more important in long-term rela- tionships.
According to the researchers, mouth-to-mouth kissing is an effective way to check your part-
ner for pathogens, to see if they are healthy and it helps main- tain a monoga- mous relationship which can help survival in harsh environments.
Dr. Żelaźniewicz
told TFN: “It's a great pleasure and nice distinc- tion. However, the biggest congratu- lations are due to Chris Watkins, the main author of our research. I hope that Ig Nobels will
increase the pub- lic interest in sci- ence, studies results and researchers' work.”
Established in 1991, the Ig Nobel prize is awarded in cele-
bration of ten unusual or trivial achievements in scientific research, the aim of which is to “make people laugh and then make them think.”
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