The 2009 Ig Nobel Prizes were awarded on Thursday night, October 1, at the 19th First Annual Ig Nobel Prize Ceremony, at Harvard's Sanders Theatre.

Notable winners include: 

BIOLOGY PRIZE: Fumiaki Taguchi, Song Guofu, and Zhang Guanglei of Kitasato University Graduate School of Medical Sciences in Sagamihara, Japan, for demonstrating that kitchen refuse can be reduced more than 90% in mass by using bacteria extracted from the feces of giant pandas.

MEDICINE PRIZE: Donald L. Unger, of Thousand Oaks, California, USA, 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.

PEACE PRIZE: Stephan Bolliger, Steffen Ross, Lars Oesterhelweg, Michael Thali and Beat Kneubuehl of the University of Bern, Switzerland, for determining — by experiment — whether it is better to be smashed over the head with a full bottle of beer or with an empty bottle.

PUBLIC HEALTH PRIZE: Elena N. Bodnar, Raphael C. Lee, and Sandra Marijan of Chicago, Illinois, USA, for inventing a brassiere that, in an emergency, can be quickly converted into a pair of protective face masks, one for the brassiere wearer and one to be given to some needy bystander.

Details on these and the other winners, as well as links to the research articles and patents that led to their award, are on the Improbable Research web site. Also there are past years' winners, including several from the University of California.

Were you perhaps wondering what to do with all those citations you've collected during your years at UC Berkeley once you are no longer affiliated? Fret no more! RefWorks recently announced their Alumni Program, whereby UC Berkeley alumni will have free lifetime access to the RefWorks program.

From the FAQs: 

How much will it cost? It's free!

Who is eligible? All alumni are eligible, whether they've ever used RefWorks before or not!

Need help setting up an account? Contact the Public Health Library!

The National Board of Public Health Examiners tells us that becoming a Certified Public Health Professional has multiple benefits:

• Sets a standard of knowledge and skills in public health
• Encourages life-long learning
• Adds credibility to public health profession
• Increasing public health awareness
• Fosters environment of a professional community

Registration for the 2010 exam recently opened.

The Public Health Library has two resources that will help you!

CPH exam quick reference review, call no. RA430 .H65 2009

CPH study guide : certified in public health, call no. RA430 .A87 2008 (on reserve at the Circulation Desk)

Good luck!

Due to campus budget reductions, most libraries at UC Berkeley (including the Public Health Library) are closed on Saturdays through June 30, 2010.  See below for exceptions.

Libraries and units affected

• Doe Library building
  • Art History/Classics Library
  • Current Periodicals
  • Data Lab
  • Exhibit Gallery
  • Graduate Services
  • Morrison Library
  • Newspapers and Microforms
  • Reference Center
  • South/Southeast Asia Library
• Anthropology
• Bancroft
• Biosciences and Natural Resources
• Business/Economics
• Chemistry
• Earth Sciences/Map
• East Asian
• Education/Psychology
• Engineering
• Environmental Design
• Math/Statistics
• Music
• Optometry
• Physics/Astronomy
• Public Health
• Social Welfare

Exceptions

Open on Saturdays for University of California ID, UC Berkeley Library Card, and Stanford ID holders only:

• Moffitt Library
• Gardner (Doe) Stacks
  (The stacks are accessible via the Moffitt Library entrance)

Also open Saturdays:

• Ethnic Studies Library
• Law Library

As a reminder, the Public Health Library's hours are:

• Monday-Thursday 9-8
• Friday 9-5
• Sunday 1-5 

Hours for all the UCB libraries may be found on the library web.

Here's just a sample of some of the new books just added to our collection.  They'll be on our New Book Shelf till Monday September 28.

Creating effective conference abstracts and posters in biomedicine: 500 tips for success
Jane Fraser; Louise Fuller, Ph. D.; Georgina Hutber
Oxford ; New York: Radcliffe Pub., 2009.
Call number: R119 .F733 2009

Making sense of global health governance: a policy perspective
Kent Buse; Wolfgang Hein; Nick Drager
Basingstoke ; New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2009
Call number: RA441 .M35 2009

Statistical methods in environmental epidemiology
Duncan C Thomas
Oxford ; New York: Oxford University Press, 2009
Call number: RA566 .T52 2009

Social inequality and public health
Salvatore J Babones
Bristol ; Portland, OR: Policy Press, 2009
Call number: RA418 .S63 2009