The 24/7 Lectures

Jan 23, 2024

Each year at the Ig Nobel Prize Ceremony, we invite some of the world's top thinkers to tell us what they are thinking about.

First, a complete, technical description, in 24 secondsThen, a clear summary that anyone can understand, in 7 words

The Referee. The 24-second time limit is enforced by our referee – who is often Mr. John Barrett, a long time referee at sporting events. Each year he offers this advice to the lecturers: "Gentlemen, keep it clean!" Other referees have included Robin Abrahams, Zachariah Hickman, Dietrich Strauss, and Jeremy Bell.

The NSFW Indicator. This service is usually provided by noted New York Attorney William J. Maloney. He monitors each lecture in a cosmetic attempt to protect the audience's eyes, ears, or (in the case of webcast viewers) fingertips from encountering offensive material. (NOTE: Originally, this on-stage role was called the "V-Chip Monitor.")

Lecturer: Elena Bodnar (Medical doctor, Founder and President of the Trauma Risk Management Research Institute in Chicago. Received an Ig Nobel Prize, in 2009, for inventing the Emergency Bra — a brassiere that in an emergency can be quickly separated into a pair of protective face masks.)In 24 Seconds: "The Emergency Bra is a personal protective garment with the primary function to support the breasts. It can quickly and easily transform into two face masks to decrease the inhalation of harmful particles in case of an emergency. During pandemics, such as COVID, it also serves the additional function of protecting others by reducing exposure to the respiratory secretions of the mask wearer when standard PPE is not readily available.." [Within the time limit]In 7 Words: "Emergency bra masks protect others. Care. Wear. Share."[Actual Number of Words Used: 8]When in the ceremony video: 0:22:20

Lecturer: Marty Chalfie (Nobel Laureate in Chemistry, for discovering and developing Green Fluorescent Protein – "GFP")

In 24 Seconds: "The eleven beta strains and single alpha helix of the Aequorea victoria Green Fluorescent Protein form a beta-can, which auto-catalytically cyclizes the peptide backbone between Serine 65 and Glycine 67 to form a resonance structure that absorbs light at 470 nm and emits light at 509. Transcriptional and translational fusions allow biological processes in eukaryotes, prokaryotes, and archaea to be studied in real time." [Within the time limit]In 7 Words: "GFP: Shine blue, see green, watch life."[Actual Number of Words Used: 7]

When in the ceremony video: 0:24:17

Lecturer: Masako Kishida (Associate Professor at the National Institute of Informatics, Tokyo, Japan)

In 24 Seconds: "A computer bug is an error or flaw in software or hardware, that causes unexpected behaviors. Whether you use Python, Java, Scratch, Matlab, Haskell, Nadesiko, BrainCrash, LOLCODE, or Whitespace to write computer code, the more complex the program is, the more bugs there are. One of the bugs that is fussy/finicky/persnickety to fix is a heisen-bug, which seems to disappear when we try to investigate it.." [Within the time limit]In 7 Words: "Bugs: can't find them, can't avoid them."[Actual Number of Words Used: 7]

When in the ceremony video: 0:37:30

Lecturer: Mark Hostetler (Professor at the Wildlife Ecology & Conservation Department, at the University of Florida. Received the Ig Nobel Prize for his book, "That Gunk on Your Car", which identifies the insect splats that appear on automobile windows)In 24 Seconds: "Insects are the most diverse group of animals, with over 1 million species described. Flying, swimming, and crawling, we encounter them every day, often without even realizing it. Incredibly important as pollinators and as part of the food chain, we cannot live without them. Incredible animals. Think of butterfly eclosing from a chrysalis. I’m sitting here on my porch, there's butterflies all around me, and all kinds of…" [Time called by the Referee]In 7 Words: "Insects are part of everything we eat."[Actual Number of Words Used: 7]

When in the ceremony video: 0:38:47

Lecturer: May Berenbaum (Professor & Head of Entomology at the University of Illinois. Editor-in-Chief of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.)In 24 Seconds: "Long-term studies now document catastrophic declines in insect biomass and diversity, in what's called the "insect apocalypse." Anthropogenic causes include habitat loss via monoculture agriculture, urbanization, resource extraction and greenhouse gas emissions. Declines are consequential because insects contribute irreplaceable ecosystem services, including pollination for the world's angiosperms, nutrient cycling, and biocontrol. They’re keystone species in a myriad of trophic webs on which humans depend." [Within the time limit]In 7 Words: "Insects: you’ll be sorry when they’re gone!"[Actual Number of Words Used: 7]Lecture Notes: The referee signalled time during the final word ("…depend") of the lecture. Using the (baseball) principle that "tie goes to the runner", we have catalogued this lecture as "within the time limit."When in the ceremony video: 0:54:44

Lecturer: Michael Smith (Entomologist at the Max Planck Institute of Animal Behavior, at the University of Konstanz, Germany. Received the Ig Nobel prize 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 and which most painful.)In 24 Seconds: "Honey bee defensive maneuvers typically target key regions on mammalian subjects, suggesting that evolutionary pressures have shaped the superorganism for the efficient delivery of defense. While pressure pain is well characterized during the human experience, we (me) wanted to determine if, and if so, how, the painfulness of honey bee stings would map across the human body, similar to a sting pain somatosensory homunculus. The most painful locations aggregate at airways, suggesting that the human body prioritizes pain to match vulnerability.." [Within the time limit]In 7 Words: "Bee stings: some spots are seriously painful"[Actual Number of Words Used: 7]

When in the ceremony video: 0:56:08

Lecturer: Rich Roberts (Nobel Laureate, Biochemist at New England Biolabs)

In 24 Seconds: "Serendipity is exemplified When your ‘clever’ experiment fails because Nature is trying to tell you something important and it leads to a Nobel Prize winning discovery. It's also exemplified when you’re booked on a plane flying from Boston to Los Angeles on Sept 11th and the meeting you are attending is moved one day earlier, and at the last minute you have to fly on September 10th instead. This happened to me in 2001." [Within the time limit]

In 7 Words: "Serendipity means good luck has struck again"[Actual Number of Words Used: 7]

When in the ceremony video: 0:38:44

Lecturer: Joanna Morris (Professor of cognitive science at Hampshire College)

In 24 Seconds: "Theory of mind is the ability to impute mental states – beliefs, intentions, desires, emotions – to oneself, and to others, and to understand that others have beliefs, desires, intentions, and perspectives that are different from one's own. Theory mind is properly viewed as a theory, because mental states are not directly observable. Each human can only intuit the existence of his or her own mind through introspection, and no one has direct access to the mind of another. The presumption that others have a mind enables one to understand that mental states…" [Time called by the Referee]

In 7 Words: "Surprise! Other people are just like you."[Actual Number of Words Used: 7]

Lecture Notes: Had time allowed, the lecturer might have continued with "…can be the cause of – and thus be used to explain and predict – the behavior of others".

When in the ceremony video: 0:40:03

Lecturer: Julie Skinner Vargas (President of the B.F. Skinner Foundation)

In 24 Seconds: "You told me 24 words, so these are 24 words: A habit is an operant under discriminative control of S.D.s, correlated with facilitating postcedents which are delivered when emitted in their presence" [Within the time limit]

In 7 Words: "A habit is acting as usual, again"[Actual Number of Words Used: 7]

When in the ceremony video: 0:41:09

Lecturer: Cari Cesarotti (Graduate Student at Harvard's Center for the Fundamental Laws of Nature)

In 24 Seconds: "The LHC is a 27-kilometer ring that pumps protons with energy as they cycle around. Any driver knows that fast objects don't make sharp turns, and the large radius is needed to keep the protons on track. When the protons finally collide, we can probe their particle substructure at a billionth of a billionth of a meter, and their energy is converted into sprays of new, heavy, or exotic particles too unstable for our world." [Within the time limit]

In 7 Words: "Measure small by building big; size matters"[Actual Number of Words Used: 7]

When in the ceremony video: 0:55:05

Lecturer: Eric Maskin (Nobel Laureate and Professor of Economics at Harvard University)

In 24 Seconds: "In most American elections each citizen votes for one candidate and the one with the most votes wins. This is a flawed system, it led to Donald Trump. Trump won Republican primaries by less than a majority because the anti-Trump vote was split over fifteen other candidates. A better system lets voters rank candidates. If no one gets a majority of first-place votes, the least favorite is dropped, second-ranked choices move into first place, and the process continues until there is a majority." [Time called by the Referee]

In 7 Words: "Let a majority choose who's in authority"[Actual Number of Words Used: 7]

When in the ceremony video: 0:56:05

Lecturer: Rebecca Nesson (Associate Dean of the Harvard College Curriculum and Lecturer on Computer Science)

In 24 Seconds: "Gödel proved that no consistent formal system that's expressive enough for arithmetic could derive all mathematical truths. In his system each proposition encodes both an arithmetical and a logical claim. His proposition P is an arithmetical proposition which encodes also the logical claim that it's not provable. If P is provable then it's false, but also true." [Time called by the Referee]

In 7 Words: "We can know truths that we can't prove"[Actual Number of Words Used: 8]

When in the ceremony video: 0:57:14

Lecturer: Suzana Herculano-Houzel (Brazilian Neuroscientist who figured out how to figure out how many cells are in a brain)

In 24 Seconds: "The sustained activity of excitable cerebral cells requires post-discharge repolarization against the membraned electrochemical gradient and demands energy influx that, absent photosynthesis, must be supplied by alimentation at a rate of 6 kilocalories per billion neurons a day, which exceeds the provisional capacity of unadulterated fodder in natura (?) and curtails the evolutionary expansion of the encephalon unless counteracted by technologies for preliminary extra-corporeal digestion." [Time called by the Referee]

In 7 Words: "brains are expensive, cooking allows more neurons"[Actual Number of Words Used: 7]

When in the ceremony video: 0:39:01

Lecturer: Dakota McCoy (Harvard graduate student in Evolutionary Biology, who discovered a previously unrecognized form of the color black in certain animals )

In 24 Seconds: "Most colors in nature are produced by chemical pigments, whereby photons of particular energy excite electrons within the pigment, causing a change in the color of reflected or transmitted light, but some animals evolved mechanism in their integuement that multiply scatter light between the 3-dimensional micro structures leading to near-complete incremental absorption broadband featureless black. This is mechanistically analogous to man-made materials such as silicon structured by femto laser blasting." [Within the time limit]

In 7 Words: "Some animals are very, very, very black."[Actual Number of Words Used: 7]

When in the ceremony video: 0:40:20

Lecturer: Oliver Hart (Economist who won a Nobel Prize for developing a practically complete, theoretical understanding of incomplete contracts )

In 24 Seconds: "Look up many contracts and they will have gaps and ambiguities. Take my agreement with Marc Abrahams to give this lecture; the agreement doesn't say what should happen if there is a hurricane – quite topical – or Sanders Theatre burns down – heaven forbid. Lawyers and economists call such agreements incomplete. Incompleteness can explain why firms are sometimes superior to markets." [Time called by the Referee]

In 7 Words: "Good contracts are remarkably difficult to write"[Actual Number of Words Used: 7]

When in the ceremony video: 0:48:55

Lecturer: Natalia Berry (Heart specialist based at Brigham and Women's Hospital, and an instructor at Harvard Medical School)

In 24 Seconds: "Cardiology is the domain of medicine pertaining to the heart and blood vessels. Cardiologists treat coronary disease, heart failure, valvular pathologies, vascular diseases, cardiac arrhythmias, congenital heart defects, and cardiomyopathies. Cardiologists listen to their patients’ stories as well as their heart sounds, and use EKGs, echocardiograms, stress tests, cardiac catheterization, advanced imaging, electrophysiological studies, as well as a vast array of powerful drugs and other innovative interventions to save and prolong life." [Time called by the Referee]

In 7 Words: "The Heart: Engine of Life… and love"[Actual Number of Words Used: 7]

When in the ceremony video: 0:50:28

Lecturer: Pardis Sabeti (Professor of Organismic and Evolutionary Biology and of Immunology and Infectious Diseases. Pioneer in computational biology)

In 24 Seconds: "The 2013-16 West African ebola outbreak led to over 28,000 confirmed cases starting from a single entry into the human population. Over numerous rounds of human to human transmission ebola virus genome replication generated thousands of mutations including an alanine availing non-synonymous change in ebola's glycoprotein. Based on multiple in-vitro studies, this mutation increases infectivity of ebola in a variety of human and non-human primate cell types." [Time called by the Referee]

In 7 Words: "Viruses can change very fast, they’re scary"[Actual Number of Words Used: 7]

When in the ceremony video: 0:51:53

Lecturer: Aleksandra Przegalinska (Professor of Artificial Intelligence and the Philosophy of Technology at Kozminski University in Poland, and a researcher at MIT)

In 24 Seconds: "We presented a study of human-bot interaction based on an experiment that consisted of two parts: measurement of psychophysiological reactions to chatbot users and a detailed questionnaire that focused on assessing willingness to talk to a robot or chatbot. Our particular focus was on the "Uncanny Valley" effect, and in the experiment, we juxtaposed the EDA channel with a digital input channel, and the data indicated a very strong positive correlation between the uncanny valley effect and negative affect evaluation. " [Time called by the Referee]

In 7 Words: "Robots that talk are perceived as stupid"[Actual Number of Words Used: 7]

When in the ceremony video: 0:38:00

Lecturer: Eric Maskin (Nobel Laureate and Professor of Economics at Harvard University)

In 24 Seconds: "Uncertainty is the heart of economic life. What do oilmen, poker players, and bond traders have in common? Oilmen drill their wells, poker players look for tells, and traders time their sells in order to exploit other people's uncertainty. A party who does this well will earn a profit. Then the other parties will cry if they want to." [Within the time limit]

In 7 Words: "Uncertainty is the only sure thing – perhaps"[Actual Number of Words Used: 7]

When in the ceremony video: 0:39:23

Lecturer: Elizabeth Henske (Head of Henske Labs at Brigham and Women's Hospital and Professor of Medicine at Harvard Medical School)

In 24 Seconds: "Biomedical Research is the investigation of health and disease by physicians and scientists worldwide, partnering with patients, driven by data, and seeking to prevent, treat and cure devastating diseases like AIDS, cancer, diabetes, leukemia, lupus, parasitic disease, tuberous sclerosis, and lymphangioleiomyomatosis, using tools including genetics, genomics, epigenomics, metagenomics, proteomics, metabolomics, high throughput screens, and Phase I, II, and III clinical trials." [Within the time limit]

In 7 Words: "Biomedical research is good for your health"[Actual Number of Words Used: 7]

Lecture Notes: While onstage, the lecturer checked the heart rate of Referee John Barrett with her stethoscope.

When in the ceremony video: 0:48:15

Lecturer: John Culvenor (Expert in Industrial Ergonomics, Human Factors Engineering and Occupational Health and Safety. Co-Author of the study, "An Analysis of the Forces Required to Drag Sheep Across Various Surfaces")

In 24 Seconds: "Greetings folks. The title of the speech is "Rejoice".

Rejoice:After searching all nightIt was there in the lightHey mate, a sheep, what a wonderful sightSo woolly, so brightBut watch out cobber, that jumbuck's not lightIt is not slightYou must drag it from a heightRemember…" [Within the time limit]

In 7 Words: "…Newton was right, eat apples and Vegemite"[Actual Number of Words Used: 7]

When in the ceremony video: 0:49:37

Lecturer: Alicia Pérez-Porro (Doctor of Zoology and Animal Biology, specializing in marine sponges, at the Smithsonian Institute and Harvard University. Member of Homeward Bound 2018)

In 24 Seconds: "Marine sponges are sessile filter-feeder invertebrates at the base of Metazoan's evolutionary tree. They have a key role in marine ecosystems and different levels of resiliency to climate change. Because of this, some reefs have been reportedly switching from coral to sponge dominated. I use genomic techniques to reveal the genetic toolkit behind acclimation to climate change in reef sponges." [Within the time limit]

In 7 Words: "Our earliest animal ancestors are marine sponges"[Actual Number of Words Used: 7]

When in the ceremony video: 0:51:24

Lecturer: Rich Roberts (Nobel Laureate, Biochemist at New England Biolabs)

In 24 Seconds: "The original Circadian Locomotor Output Cycles Kaput or CLOCK gene encodes a basic helix-loop-helix-PAS transcription factor called CLOCK that is one of a family of genes that control circadian rhythm in mammals. More than 20 genes are involved with such catchy names as "Period" and "Cryptochrome". The products of many of them are activate on others in…" [Time called by the Referee]

In 7 Words: "Clock genes are responsible for jet lag."[Actual Number of Words Used: 7]

Lecture Notes: Had time allowed, the lecturer might have continued with "…successive fashion making up an auto-regulatory feedback loop for which one complete cycle takes about 24 hours".

When in the ceremony video: 0:37:16

Lecturer: Patricia Brennan (Evolutionary Biologist and Behavioral Ecologist, specializing in the morphological evolution of reproductive structures)

In 24 Seconds: "In many species of ducks, males often fail to attract a mate, so they resort to forcing copulations on females. Males can sexually force females because their penis functions with an explosive eversion mechanism that quickly and forcefully inseminates females, despite their resistance. Females however have coevolved vaginas with dead ends and spirals that prevent full penis eversion when she is not receptive" [Time called by the Referee]

In 7 Words: "Deviant duck dicks foiled by fabulous vaginas."[Actual Number of Words Used: 7]

Lecture Notes: Had time allowed, the lecturer might have continued with "…This genital coevolution shows how sexual conflict results in evolutionary arms races.".

When in the ceremony video: 0:38:23

Lecturer: Dudley Herschbach (Nobel Laureate, Professor of chemistry at Harvard University)

In 24 Seconds: "Time is precisely the difference between now and then. Cosmologists assure us that it began in a Big Bang 13.7 billion years ago. The universe has been expanding ever since. Recent discoveries show the expansion is accelerating. If that continues the cosmos will become both infinite and eternal… " [Time called by the Referee]

In 7 Words: "Time and tide won't wait for us."[Actual Number of Words Used: 7]

Lecture Notes: The Lecturer received a Yellow Warning Card from the Referee for ignoring the whistle (multiple times) and continuing with, "…But within 5 billion years the sun will turn into a red giant and swallow our earth… ".

When in the ceremony video: 0:52:23

Lecturer: Nicole Sharp (Engineer, Ph.D, and creator of FYFD, the world's most popular web site about fluid dynamics)

In 24 Seconds: "Fluid Dynamics – A branch of classical mechanics derived from 19th century hydrodynamics and hydrology that recapitulates the locomotion of mutable substances. Governed by a series of unsteady, nonlinear partial differential equations of the second order including continuity, energy, Navier-Stokes, and in some cases Maxwell's equations and multi-species reactions. Subdisciplines include rheology, combustion, granular mechanics, aeroelasticity, magnetohydrodynamics, hemodynamic, lubrication theory, and quantum hydrodynamics." [Within the time limit]

In 7 Words: "If it can flow, we study it."[Actual Number of Words Used: 7]

When in the ceremony video: 0:53:59

Lecturer: Sara Lewis (Tufts Professor of Evolutionary Behavioral Ecology, author of "Silent Sparks")

In 24 Seconds: "Fireflies are beetles in the family Lampyridae that use bioluminescent signals to find mates. Flying males broadcast signals as they search for females, who respond to intraspecific variation in male flash timing: Females prefer longer flashes and faster flash rates. Firefly females mate with multiple males, so postcopulatory sexual selection has driven males to invest heavily in nuptial gifts. These are nutritious sperm-containing spermatophores that females use to provision their eggs. Males with larger gifts benefit because they sire more offspring." [Time called by the Referee]

In 7 Words: "Female fireflies favor fancy food-filled flashers"[Actual Number of Words Used: 7]

Lecture Notes: The lecturer brought a firefly finger-puppet to use as a visual aid.

When in the ceremony video: 0:47:22

Lecturer: Frank Wilczek (Nobel Laureate and Professor of Physics at MIT)

In 24 Seconds: "Beauty is what we experience when the external world stimulates our reward system, causing a release of dopamine we feel as pleasure. Natural selection uses this device to encourage behavior that increases fitness. Sexual partners are beautiful; so are things that makes sense." [Within the time limit]

In 7 Words: "Beauty: We like it when we see it."[Actual Number of Words Used: 8]

When in the ceremony video: 0:49:00

Lecturer: Deborah Anderson (Boston University Medical School Professor of Obstetrics, Gynecology, & Microbiology, and 2008 Ig Nobel Prize Winner)

In 24 Seconds: "Life depends on reproduction; All living organisms do it. Unicellular organisms do it by asexual, binary fission. Multicellular organisms produce gametes which fuse. Human reproduction involves internal fertilization by sexual intercourse. During this process, the male inserts his erect penis into the female's moist vagina and ejaculates semen which contains sperm." [Within the time limit]

In 7 Words: "Protists multiply by dividing, humans prefer sex"[Actual Number of Words Used: 7]

Lecture Notes: The V-Chip Monitor appeared to be concerned, but did not halt this lecture.

When in the ceremony video: 0:50:17

Lecturer: Jack Szostak (Nobel Laureate, Professor of Genetics at Harvard Medical School, Alexander Rich Distinguished Investigator at Massachusetts General Hopital)

In 24 Seconds: "The first protocells used nonenzymatic chemical processes to replicate ribonucleic acid templates by primer extension with 2-methyl-5′-phosphorimidazole-activated nucleotide monomers. To understand and improve this process we look at monomer binding by nuclear magnetic resonance spectroscopy, x-ray crystallography, and study reaction kinetics using synthetic substrate analogs, kinetic isotope effects, quantum mechanical modeling, and molecular dynamics. [Time called by the Referee]

In 7 Words: "Life from chemistry: how did it happen?"[Actual Number of Words Used: 7]

When in the ceremony video: 0:58:09

Lecturer: Jessica Gall Myrick (Assistant Professor at Indiana University Media School)

In 24 Seconds: "My study, called ‘Emotion regulation, procrastination, and watching cat videos online: Who watches Internet cats, why, and to what effect?’, published in the journal Computers in Human Behavior, provided empirical data on predictors and subsequent effects of consuming audiovisual feline-focused media. Mood management theory successfully predicted respondents’ reports that post-consumption emotions were more positive than pre-consumption, and the experience also left viewers feeling energized. A moderation-mediation model demonstrated that guilt from using online felines to procrastinate could be overcome by the positive emotional payoff of viewing this genre." [Time called by the Referee]

In 7 Words: "Grumpy Cat can actually make us happy"[Actual Number of Words Used: 7]

When in the ceremony video: 0:59:30

Lecturer: Eric Maskin (Nobel Laureate and Professor of Economics at Harvard University)

In 24 Seconds: "The dispersion of the income distribution as measured by the Gini coefficient – not to be confused with the ‘I dream of Gini’ coefficient – has expanded in many developed and emerging economies. One explanation is skilled-biased technical change, wherein the productivity of high-skill workers is enhanced by technical progress more than for their lower-skilled contemporaries. An alternative theory by Thomas Piketty works through the interest rate exceeding population growth. Critics say Piketty's theory is ricketty. He says they’re too persnickety." [Time called by the Referee]

In 7 Words: "The rich get richer. The poor… don't"[Actual Number of Words Used: 7]

Lecture Notes: The Lecturer's written notes point out that Picketty's theory works through the differential between interest and population growth rates.

When in the ceremony video: 0:36:21

Lecturer: Corky White (Professor of Anthropolopgy at Boston University, Co-Author of The Ig Nobel Cookbook vol.1)

In 24 Seconds:"Pacojet, Taco lab, Vat meat, Soylent.Nathan Myrvold, Harold McGee, Ferran Adria, Sous vide.Michael Pollan, Colonel Sanders, Uncle Ben.Roy Choi, Roy Rogers, Ottolenghi, Julia Child.Forager, Paleo, Locavore, Gleaner.Insectivore, Gluten-free, Cannibal, Vegan.Hostess Twinkies, Chicharrones, Ramen, Haggis!" [Within the time limit]

In 7 Words: "Pemmican to Nordic – Ess ess mein kind"[Actual Number of Words Used: 7]

Lecture Notes: The lecturer divided her "Food Rap" into these categories: Food Science, Food People, Food Diets, and Food.

When in the ceremony video: 0:38:13

Lecturer: Carol Greider (Nobel Laureate and Professor of Molecular Biology and Genetics at Johns Hopkins University)

In 24 Seconds: "Telomeres are repeated DNA sequences, TTAGGG, TTAGGG, etc. that protect chromosome ends. Every time a cell divides, some sequence is lost and telomeres shorten. However! Telomerase can come to the rescue and elongate telomeres by adding TTAGGG, TTAGGG, etc… So telomeres are in a continuous equilibrium: shortening and lengthening, shortening and lengthening, when they are too short, cells die. " [Within the time limit]

In 7 Words: "Telomeres: keeping your cells alive since… forever"[Actual Number of Words Used: 7]

When in the ceremony video: 0:58:53

Lecturer: Rob Rhinehart (Creator of Soylent, an "open-source nutritional drink")

In 24 Seconds: "Metabolism can be understood as two complimentary processes: Catabolism, which breaks down organic matter into constituent matter and energy via cellular respiration, and anabolism, which builds these components back up into useful complexes, such as proteins and nucleic acids. Enzymes are the proteins that are keys to these chemical transformations. Fundamentally, metabolism is about controlling the flow of energy which originates in the super-hot core of the sun via fusion." [Within the time limit]

In 7 Words: "Thanks to enzymes, humans are solar powered"[Actual Number of Words Used: 7]

Lecture Notes: After this lecturer was done, The attending Nobel Laureates were given glasses of soylent to drink. Most of them drank it.

When in the ceremony video: 1:00:15

Lecturer: Dudley Herschbach (Nobel Laureate, Professor of chemistry at Harvard University)

In 24 Seconds: "Torque is a force proportional to the rate of change of angular momentum with time. Applied to any object torque will accelerate or decellerate its rotation. The extent of the acceleration is inversly propotional to the moment of inertia of the object. Among myriad applications are gyrations of ballet dancers, launching of boomerangs, and birthing of elephants." [Within the time limit]

In 7 Words: "To start or stop spinning apply torquet"[Actual Number of Words Used: 7]

Lecture Notes: The Lecturer's written notes point out that Picketty's theory works through the differential between interest and population growth rates.

When in the ceremony video: 0:45:25

Lecturer: Xiao Li Meng (Professor of Statistics at Harvard University. Department Chair. Dean of Harvard Graduate School of Arts and Sciences)

In 24 Seconds: "Z-test, T-test, chi-squared test, I can help you to face any test. Bayes, frequentist, fiducial: let me make you feel influential. Regression, correlation, causation: what else can generate more passion? Skewedness, kurtosis, heteroscedasticity: boy, do I feel sexy!" [Within the time limit]

In 7 Words: "The only crystal ball approved by God"[Actual Number of Words Used: 7]

When in the ceremony video: 0:46:20

Lecturer: Melissa Franklin (Professor of Physics at Harvard University. First tenured female in Harvard Physics faculty)

In 24 Seconds: "Force keeps me down, spins me round, keeps my atoms bound, keeps my motion Brown makes my coffee drip my muscles rip my protons flip my DNA zip and unzip it makes my cells divide my brain decide my microtubules grow and subside. Force makes things go and not go, and/or go and not go." [Within the time limit]

In 7 Words: "Equal opposite attractive repulsive bang ding crash ow!"[Actual Number of Words Used: 8]

When in the ceremony video: 0:47:30

Lecturer: Roy Glauber (Nobel Laureate, Professor of Physics at Harvard University, Ig Nobel Paper Airplane Sweeper)

In 24 Seconds: "Well, Astronomy as I know it is a peaceful study; think of the milky way and the early image of the andromeda nebula. But then we began using more of the spectrum and seeing everything from microwaves to x-rays. Cosmic rays, evidently of violent origin, and pulsars and quasars and black holes and now planets…" [Time called by the Referee]

In 7 Words: "Why does such a universe keep us enrapt, because it's the ony one we’ve got"[Actual Number of Words Used: 15]

When in the ceremony video: 0:50:30

Lecturer: Erika Ebbel Angle (Biochemist, Founder the education group Science from Scientists. 2004 Miss Massachusetts)

In 24 Seconds: "A mass spectrometer separates and detects ions according to the mass-to-charge ratios. Identification of an unknown compound begins with a determination of its molecular mass. Additional structural information is derived from fragmentation, and SMS [Scanning Mass Spectrometry] of the parent, or intact, molecules. Through interpretation of fragmentation patterns, it is possible to piece together the structures of potential compounds of interest." [Within the time limit]

In 7 Words: "It weighs the bits in your gunk"[Actual Number of Words Used: 7]

When in the ceremony video: 0:51:54

Lecturer: Rich Roberts (Nobel Laureate, Biochemist at New England Biolabs)

In 24 Seconds: "Arsenic, element number 33, is a fearsome poison beloved by royalty for centuries. NASA space scientists improbably suggested that some bugs could live on arsenic. Now arsenic and phosphorus are related in the periodic table, forming similar compounds: phosphates, arsenates, phospholes, arsoles – yes, arsoles! Pure arsole awaits isolation, but pentaphenylarsole was described in 1961, showing that even chemists have a sense of humor….." [Time called by the Referee]

In 7 Words: "Only arsoles believe arsenic can support life"[Actual Number of Words Used: 7]

When in the ceremony video: 0:53:10

Lecturer: Elena Bodnar (Manager of the Electrical Trauma Research Program at the University of Chicago, Founder and President of Trauma Risk Management Research Institute)

In 24 Seconds: "Electro-muscular incapacitation is the physiological response to use of devices such as tasers, stun guns, batons and other so-called less-lethal weapons which liberally apply electric pulses in the microsecond range, causing muscle contraction followed by a period of induced incapacitation. Uncertainties and gaps in knowledge exist about cellular systemic mechanism and human consequences. Risks associated with these effects…" [Time called by the Referee]

In 7 Words: "You really don't want to be tased"[Actual Number of Words Used: 7]

When in the ceremony video: 0:54:28

Lecturer: Susan Lindquist (Professor of Biology at MIT, 2010 National Medal of Science)

In 24 Seconds: "Brief sub-lethal exposures to diverse proteotoxic stresses induces a highly orchestrated cellular response that counteracts [unintelligible] and necrotic cell death pathways through the deployment of molecular osmolytes, protein folding reagents, remodelling factors, and deubiquidating and ubiquidating ligases" [Within the time limit]

In 7 Words: "What doesn't kill you makes you strong"[Actual Number of Words Used: 7]

When in the ceremony video: 0:56:03

Lecturer: Donna Nelson (Professor of chemistry at University of Oklahoma, Nanotechnology Researcher, Science Advisor to TV show Breaking Bad)

In 24 Seconds: "We analyzed functionalized single-wall carbon nanotubes by using NMR. Initially we found that the analyses were not reproducible. They seemed to depend upon how long the samples sat before analysis. We thought the nanotubes might be rebundling, so we tried sonicating the sample just before taking the NMR. That produced consistent results." [Within the time limit]

In 7 Words: "Nanotube analyses should be shaken not stored"[Actual Number of Words Used: 7]

When in the ceremony video: 0:57:13

Lecturer: Dudley Herschbach (Nobel Laureate, Professor of chemistry at Harvard University)

In 24 Seconds: "Laser-induced fluorescence spectra have been obtained for OH radicals produced when hydrogen atoms and NO2 react in thermal energy collisions in the region where two beams containing the reagents intersect. Spectra of the (0,0), (1,1), (0,1), (1,2), (0,2), and (1,3) bands of the A doublet sigma to X doublet pi system have been observed. Distributions of OH over the whole energetically accessible range of rovibrational levels have been determined using surprisal analysis…" [Time called by the Referee]

In 7 Words: "Molecules are seldom vicious although often capricious"[Actual Number of Words Used: 7]

When in the ceremony video: 0:58:30

Lecturer: Kate Clancey (Assistant Professor of Anthropology at University of Illinois, author of Blog Context and Variation)

In 24 Seconds: "The pH of a healthy premenopausal vagina is 3.8-4.5. This means that your vag is more acidic than your skin, water, and semen, which is 7.2-7.8. The vagina will even produce more acid in the presence of semen, in order to regulate pH. When vaginal pH is more basic you are susceptible to bacterial infections. Douching makes it more basic and flushes out your normal vaginal flora more extensively and forcefully than ejaculate. Then the fragrance irritates vaginal tissue. So those ads that tell you to Hail to the V with their weird talking hand vaginas? If you really want to Hail to the V you will let your vag be." [Time called by the Referee]

In 7 Words: "Leave your acidic vagina alone, don't douche"[Actual Number of Words Used: 7]

Lecture Notes: This lecturer provided an alternate 7 word version: "Vaginas should smell like vaginas not flowers"

When in the ceremony video: 1:00:05

Lecturer: Toshiyuki Nakagaki (Professor of Complex and Intelligent Systems at Future University, Hakodate. Winer of 2 Ig Nobel Prizes for his research on slime mold)

In 24 Seconds: "Slime mold looks like just a spread of mustard and mayonnaise. But it is very organized as an organism. So slime molds can solve puzzles and find out the shortest connection path in a maze. And slime molds can anticipate periodic environmental events. And slimes molds…" [Time called by the Referee]

In 7 Words: "The blob we shouldn't look down upon"[Actual Number of Words Used: 7]

When in the ceremony video: 1:14:49

Lecturer: Mary Ellen Davey (Research Biologist at the department of Molecular Genetics, The Forsyth Institute)

In 24 Seconds: "There's an extremely complex community of organisms that lives in the oral cavity. In order to survive, they must attach. They tend to attach along the gum line, on the tooth. Here, they make a tenacious, extracellular polysaccharide matrix that holds them together and protects them, thus creating dental plaque." [Within the time limit]

In 7 Words: "A sticky, slimy structured medley of microbes"[Actual Number of Words Used: 7]

When in the ceremony video: 1:15:59

Lecturer: Neil Gaiman (Author, winner of Hugo, Nebula, and Carnegie Prizes)

In 24 Seconds: "Whenever you are in doubt as to whether the thing on the back of the book jacket is a writer or a bacterium, given the human population of six billion people and positing that no more than half of them are published writers, that give us a maximum of three billion writers. There are about five nonillion bacteria on this planet. So the chances of a random life form on the back of the book jacket being a bacterium and not a writer are roughly three sextillion to one." [Within the time limit]

In 7 Words: "It's probably a bacterium, not a writer"[Actual Number of Words Used: 7]

When in the ceremony video: 1:17:00

Lecturer: Wade Adams (Professor at Rice University, Nanotechnology Researcher)

In 24 Seconds: "$2.7 trillion industry by 2015 solutions to the top 10 problems facing humanity in the next 50 years. Gold nanoshells: cancer therapy. Buckyballs: MRI contrast enhancers. Graphene ribbons: oil recovery. Carbon nanotubes: ballistic conducting grid wire. Nanoelectronics: smaller, faster, cheaper. Nanophotonic: sensors. Nanomembranes: water filtration. Ultra-lightweight, strong nanocomposites: energy-efficient SUVs. Rick Smalley's challenge be a scientist save the world!" [Time called by the Referee]

In 7 Words: "Nanotechnology: making small stuff do big things"[Actual Number of Words Used: 7]

When in the ceremony video: 1:06:31

Lecturer: Paul Krugman (Nobel Laureate, Professor of Economics at Princeton University)

In 24 Seconds: "Decentralized constrained optimization by maximizing agents with well-defined convex objective functions and/or convex production functions, engaging in exchange and production with free disposal, leads, in the absence of externalities, market power, and other distortions, to convergence on equilibrium characterized by Pareto optimality." [Within the time limit]

In 7 Words: "Greedy people, competing, make the world go round"[Actual Number of Words Used: 8]

Lecture Notes: The lecturer wrote an opinion piece about hs 24/7 lecture for the New York times in which he offers and explanation for using 8 words, and suggests an alternate version using only 7-words. The piece includes, "Wow. I admit that I wrote that pretty fast – and somehow never noticed that it was 8 words! Let's chalk it up to rounding error."

When in the ceremony video: 1:07:40

Lecturer: Stephen Wolfram (Creator of Wolfram-Alpha and of Mathematica, and author of the book, A New Kind of Science)

In 24 Seconds: "Everyday, lots gets discovered and invented. It's actually pretty predictable. There's a flow to it. Genius is something alien. It's hard to measure or classify – that's the point. One day, most of it’ll come from machines, but for now it's just us, single people with, at most, one big idea per lifetime." [Within the time limit]

In 7 Words: "A surprise to the sequence of civilization"[Actual Number of Words Used: 7]

When in the ceremony video: 1:08:54

Lecturer: Deborah J. Anderson (Professor of Obstetrics/Gynecology and Microbiology at Boston University School of Medicine, and 2008 Ig Nobel Medicine Prize winner)

In 24 Seconds: "Reliable, reversible contraception. Women have pills, rings, patches, implants, sponges, and IUDs, spermicides, diaphragms, cervical caps, female condoms, and Plan B. Men have condoms, and did I mention condoms?" [Within the time limit]

In 7 Words: "Male contraception: sheathe it or beat it"[Actual Number of Words Used: 7]

When in the ceremony video: 1:10:04

Lecturer: Anna Lysyanskaya (Associate Professor of computer science at Brown University)

In 24 Seconds: "A cryptographic system is secure if, no matter what probabilistic polynomial-time algorithm the bad guys are using, they still can't hurt the good guys. To prove security, we typically relate the computational complexity of launching an attack to that of a computational task known or believed to be impossible. Although for certain scenarios unconditionally secure solutions exist, security of others relies on established complexity-theoretic assumptions." [Within the time limit]

In 7 Words: "It ain't secure 'til you prove it"[Actual Number of Words Used: 7]

When in the ceremony video: 1:01:43

Lecturer: Dany Adams (Biologist at the Forsyth Center)

In 24 Seconds: "Biology is full of redundancy. At the molecular level proteins can act as surrogates. For example two wingless receptors, Frizzled and Dfrizzled2¹, can function redundantly upstream of the armodillo gene, while regulation of the armadillo protein is by the redundantly Src64 and Src42A². At the organismal level, the reproductive strategy of the nine-banded armadillo also exploits redundancy: females invariably give birth to identical quadruplets³." [Within the time limit]

In 7 Words: "The armadillo's message: have a plan B"

[Actual Number of Words Used: 7]

Lecture Notes: The lecturer later sent us references for her 24-7 Lecture:1. "Frizzled and Dfrizzled-2 Function as Redundant Receptors for Wingless During Drosophila Embryonic Development," P. Bhanot, M. Fish, J.A. Jemison, R. Nusse, J. Nathans and K.M. Cadigan, Development, vol. 126, no. 18, 1999, pp. 4175-86.2. "Requirements of Genetic Interactions Between Src42A, armadillo and shotgun, a Gene Encoding E-cadherin, for Normal Development in Drosophila," Mayuko Takahashi, Fumitaka Takahashi, Kumiko Ui-Tei, Tetsuya Kojima, and Kaoru Saigo, Development, vol. 132, no. 11, 2005, pp. 2547-59.3. "Heredity and Organic Symmetry in Armadillo Quadruplets," H.H. Newman, Biology Bulletin, vol. 24, no. 1, 1915, p. 1.

When in the ceremony video: 1:02:51

Lecturer: William Lipscomb (Nobel Laureate, Professor of Chemistry at Harvard University, d.2011)

In 24 Seconds: "Redundancy. Exceeding what is unnecessary. Superfluous. Verbose. You find this throughout, and yet the content is not there, but the content is always there…" [Time called by the Referee]

In 7 Words: "The source of real original thought is not present in the definition of redundancy"[Actual Number of Words Used: 14]

When in the ceremony video: 1:03:55

Lecturer: Massimo Marconi (Assistant Professor of Food Science, University of Guelph)

In 24 Seconds: "Food science is an interdisciplinary applied science which uses principles of experimental design and statistical analysis in the examination of all aspects of food from harvest of ingredients to their behaviour during formulation, processing, storage and evaluation as consumer food products. It incorporates concepts from a variety of fields including chemistry, microbiology, and process engineering. In a nutshell, food science is concerned with all quality, nutritional, sensory, cultural, and safety aspects of foods." [Within the time limit]

In 7 Words: "Foods that don't kill make you fatter"[Actual Number of Words Used: 7]

When in the ceremony video: 0:47:54

Lecturer: Fariba Houman (Interim Director of Human Subjects Administration at the Harvard School of Public Health)

In 24 Seconds: "The ethical conduct of non-exempt human subjects research is governed a set of rules codified by 45 CFR part 46. In a phase II trial of avian flu vaccine in a cohort of animal handlers processing broiler chickens…" [Time called by the Referee]

In 7 Words: "Research on animal handlers needs IRB approval"[Actual Number of Words Used: 7]

When in the ceremony video: 0:49:04

Lecturer: William Lipscomb (Nobel Laureate, Professor of Chemistry at Harvard University, d.2011)

In 24 Seconds: "It is very surprising how many references there are on the internet for chicken. Unbelievable. I could go through them but I don't have much time here. No one has asked why a chicken crosses the road: to cross the road…" [Time called by the Referee]

In 7 Words: "Chicken lays egg. It's a standing ovation"[Actual Number of Words Used: 7]

Lecture notes: after the lecturer completed this 24/7, the audience gave him a standing ovation.

When in the ceremony video: 1:03:21

Lecturer: Missy Cummings (Associate Professesor at Duke University, Director of the Humans and Automation Laboratory at MIT, US Navy Fighter Pilot)

In 24 Seconds: "In-vehicle telematics can significantly load the visual channel, resulting in structural interference which can negatively impact driving performance. Cognitive load disrupts recognition memory, resulting in longer latencies to perterbations of the driving ecology as well as trajectories that violate critical safety boundaries. Telematic interaction degrades the encoding and transfering of…" [Time called by the Referee]

In 7 Words: "Don't talk. Don't email. Just drive"[Actual Number of Words Used: 6]

When in the ceremony video: 0:52:09

Lecturer: Frank Wilczek (Nobel Laureate, Professor of Physics at MIT)

In 24 Seconds: "Everything we’re familiar with is made up of quarks, gluons, photons, and electrons. But something else is holding galaxies together, and something else again is blowing the universe apart. The part we understand is five per cent of the total. Maybe the rest is axions, maybe photinos, maybe something else. I hope to live to see the day when we find out what it is." [Within the time limit]

In 7 Words: "What you see isn't what you get"[Actual Number of Words Used: 7]

When in the ceremony video: 0:53:23

Lecturer: Benoit Mandelbrot* (Professor of Mathematics at Yale University, father of Fractal Geometry, d.2010)

In 24 Seconds: "Let X be a metric space, and let me define Hausdorff measure and Hausdorff dimension. Don't, don't, don't let me – it has very little to do with the story. In fact Hausdorf dimension was discovered by a man named Besicovitch, who was a very funny…" [Time called by the Referee]

In 7 Words: "Beautiful, damn hard, increasingly useful, that's fractals"[Actual Number of Words Used: 7]

When in the ceremony video: 0:54:33

Lecturer: Irene Pepperberg (Professor of Psychology at Brandeis University, Director of the Alex Foundation, Researcher on animal cognition, particulrly in birds)

In 24 Seconds: "For thirty years I’ve used a modeling technique to establish communicative competence with Psittacus erithacus. They can identify colors, shapes, manner, and numbers. We study communicative competence, transitive inference, stimulus equivalence. They understand concepts of bigger, smaller, same, different, and absence. We also study mutual exclusivity and conjunctive recursive tasks." [Within the time limit]

In 7 Words: "Parrots use English to demonstrate exceptional intelligence"[Actual Number of Words Used: 7]

When in the ceremony video: 1:09:37

Lecturer: William Lipscomb (Nobel Laureate, Professor of Chemistry at Harvard University, d.2011)

In 24 Seconds: "When I was approached, it occurred to me to talk about the Higgs mechanism – how particles get their mass, which of course gives them inertia. However, it's too complicated to present, so I come back to the physiological effects only. And, and I went to sleep, I woke up, and I found…" [Time called by the Referee]

In 7 Words: "Inertia makes me go back to sleep"[Actual Number of Words Used: 7]

Lecture Notes: The lecturer was the graduate school advisor of fellow-24/7 Lecturer Irene Pepperberg

When in the ceremony video: 1:11:51

Lecturer: Rebecca German (Vice Chair for Research at the Dep't for Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation at Johns Hopkins University)

In 24 Seconds: "Morphology is a property of an object with the visual appearance that exists in some two, three dimensional space. It can be measured by eigenfunctions of the bending energy matrix, interpreted as the actual warped surfaces over the picture of the original landmark configuration as the product of the phenotypic process portrayed by Procrustes’ paradigm of partial [unintelligible] of PCA." [Within the time limit]

In 7 Words: "It's not just size, shape matters too"[Actual Number of Words Used: 7]

When in the ceremony video: 0:49:09

Lecturer: William Lipscomb (Nobel Laureate, Professor of Chemistry at Harvard University, d.2011)

In 24 Seconds: "Did you know that there are just as many even numbers as there are even and odd numbers together, when you have inifinities – when they are at inifinity. In fact, Cantor defined a collection is infinite if some of…" [Time called by the Referee]

In 7 Words: "Weird things can happen with these infinities"[Actual Number of Words Used: 7]

When in the ceremony video: 0:50:17

Lecturer: Richard Jakowski (Associate Professor at Tufts Cummings School of Veterniary Medicine)

In 24 Seconds: "Purring results from the low-frequency oscillation of the caudal portion of the soft palate, which is more elongated in cats than other mammalian species. This places the feline soft palate and the laminal airstream betwen the posterior choana and the rima glottis, resulting fluttering from the posterior portions producing an audible sound in the range of 50 to 200 hertz. The purring mechanism is similar to the flapping uvula of a snoring person however, rather than keeping us awake…" [Time called by the Referee]

In 7 Words: "The cat's purr is a melodious snore"[Actual Number of Words Used: 7]

When in the ceremony video: 0:51:27

Lecturer: Robin Abrahams (Psychologist, Miss Conduct columnist, author)

In 24 Seconds: "The complexity and efficiency of the human mind was not fully appreciated until attempts to create artificial inteligence systems led to the discovery that so called ‘common sense’, such as the ability to understand jokes, or that it is inadvisable to begin building a tower of blocks starting at the top, is in fact extraordinarily difficult to program into computers. Turns out we’re smarter than we knew. However, research also shows that human cognition is prone to an infinite number of ‘bugs’, such as binary thinking…" [Time called by the Referee]

In 7 Words: "People are brilliantly stupid, and stupidly brilliant"[Actual Number of Words Used: 7]

When in the ceremony video: 1:01:02

Lecturer: Lynn Margulis (Distinguished University Professor at University of Massachusetts)

In 24 Seconds: "The secret of life: Up beyond the termite's asshole – that's the anus – in her murky gut, the wood feeding termite harbors the secret of life. What is it? A community becomes an individual the arithmatic of the living. One plus one is one." [Within the time limit]

In 7 Words: "If you feel you’re falling apart, you are"[Actual Number of Words Used: 8]

When in the ceremony video: 1:02:12

Lecture Notes: The Lecturer may have been addressing the topic, "The Secret of Life"

Lecturer: Rich Roberts (Nobel Laureate, Biochemist at New England Biolabs)

In 24 Seconds: "Heredity is a chronic, incurable disease that is sexually transmitted and caused by a lethal mixing of human genes in parents. Certain parentental unions produce an acute form, as found in the House of Lords, Appalacia, and most of Saudi Arabia. Genghis Khan was personally responsible for 25% of the current pandemic. New research shows that President Bush may have a cure in hand; he advocates abstinence or, as they say in Texas, ‘keep it in your jeans'" [Time called by the Referee]

In 7 Words: "Heredity means blame your parents, not yourself"[Actual Number of Words Used: 7]

When in the ceremony video: 0:53:20

Lecturer: Eugenie Scott (Executive Director of National Center for Science Education)

In 24 Seconds: "In the beginning there was a big bang, then hydrogen, stars, galaxies, planets, a pale blue dot, a replicating molescule, then a cell, tissues, photosynthesis, metazoa, an inordinate number of beetles, lions and tigers and steves oh my, and consciousness to figure it out and wonder at it all." [Within the time limit]

In 7 Words: "Evolution is the mystery of the universe"[Actual Number of Words Used: 7]

When in the ceremony video: 0:54:34

Lecturer: Barry Sears (Creator of "The Zone Diet")

In 24 Seconds: "How do you balance protein carbohybate and fat at every meal to keep your hormones – insulin, glucagon, and eicosanoids – in a zone" [Within the time limit]

In 7 Words: "Hormonally speaking, you are what you eat"[Actual Number of Words Used: 7]

When in the ceremony video: 1:12:20

Lecturer: Sylvia Earle (National Geographic Society Explorer In Residence)

In 24 Seconds: "The science of exploring 60,000 kilometers of mountains, 97% of life on earth, 97% of earth's water with .0097% of the funding needed to do the job. Accomplished by boat-loads of people who naturally go overboard, are always in deep thought or deep in trouble, who's business is going under, who pride themselves in being all wet and deal with drips all the time." [Within the time limit]

In 7 Words: "Scientific exploration of most of the earth"[Actual Number of Words Used: 7]

Lecture Notes: The Lecturer provided an alternate 7 word version: "Scientifically plunging in way over your head".

When in the ceremony video: 1:13:18

(n.b. In honor of the 2003 ceremony's theme, Nano, this year's lectures were known as "The Nano Lectures")

Lecturer: Lene Hau (Professor at Harvard. "First Human being to slow light to a crawl and then to a dead stop")

In 24 Seconds: "Secret recipe for beating light on your bike: Atom refrigerator, candlestick, atomic beam source, Zeeman slower, resonant radiation pressure force, optical molasses, polarization gradient cooling, 4D magnet, magnetic resonance spectroscopy, nano-Kelvin, field-effect transistor, avalanche breakdown, superfluid Bose Einstein condensate, ultra-high vacuum, laser illumination, polarization control, light pulse injection, entangled atoms, quantum interference, superposition dark state, light pulse compression, superfluid shock waves. Voila: SLOW PHOTONS!" [Time called by the Referee]

In 7 Words: "Stop light: warm up exercise. Real goal: time stop"[Actual Number of Words Used: 9]

When in the ceremony video: 0:52:55

Lecturer: Yan Emily Yuan (Junior at Boston Latin Secondary School)

In 24 Seconds: "Investigations in neuronal and non-neuronal memory encodings are usually based on memory acquired and retained during classical conditioning techniques, or socialized aproaches such as auto-biographical memory priming, combined with neuro-behavioral, neuro-pathological, and neuro-physiological studies of functional anatomic correlations such as hippocampal synaptic plasticity." [Within the time limit]

In 7 Words: "Remember this will be on the test"[Actual Number of Words Used: 7]

When in the ceremony video: 0:54:04

Lecturer: William Lipscomb (Nobel Laureate, Professor of Chemistry at Harvard University, d.2011)

In 24 Seconds: "According to Tom Lehrer: hydrogen, lithium, berylium, boron, carbon, nitrogen, oxygen, fluorine, [unknown] sodium, magnesium, aluminum, silicon, phosphorous, sulphur, [unknown], Argon, potassium, scandium, titanium, venadium, chromium, manganese, iron, cobalt, nickle, copper, germanium, arsenic, selenium, bromine, rubidium, strontium, ytterbium, zirconium, melibdinum…" [Time called by the Referee]

In 7 Words: "What is chemistry? Elementary my dear Watson"[Actual Number of Words Used: 7]

Lecture Notes: The Lecturer's 7 word answer, wasn't delivered quite as cleanly as here transcribed

When in the ceremony video: 0:55:11

Lecturer: Genevieve Reynolds (Senior at Harvard College)

In 24 Seconds: "Education: learn to remember, but an whole lot more. Sensory integration, processing proprioceptive feedback. Learning to build neural networks complex enough to handle complex thought. Auditing sensory feedback. learning what you need to know; do you need to study that page? I don't think so. And a whole lot of acronyms: we have SUPs, we have SIPs, we have under-performing schools, it's really all about learning to remember the acronyms." [Within the time limit]

In 7 Words: "Harvard University taught me that learning is…"[Actual Number of Words Used: 7]

When in the ceremony video: 1:15:34

Lecture Notes: Lecturer kept her 24-second lecture handy by writing it on a paper airplane stuck into her hairdo

Lecturer: Eric Lander (Founder of The Whitehead Instute, MIT Center for Genome Research)

In 24 Seconds: "Human genome project biology's moonshot. 15 years, 6 countries, 20 centers. 3 billion dollars, 3 billion letters; one dollar per letter such a deal. 23 chromosomes supposed to contain 100,000 genes, turns out to contain 30,000 maybe 25,000 could be 40,000 – check back with us next year. Supposed to have the answer to everything, absolutely everything: Diabedes, asthma, cancer, evolution, population, migration, life, death, taxes, even the Boston Red Sox, only problem is, no index." [Within the time limit]

In 7 Words: "Genome: bought the book; hard to read"[Actual Number of Words Used: 7]

When in the ceremony video: 1:16:30

Lecturer: Rich Roberts (Nobel Laureate, Biochemist at New England Biolabs)

In 24 Seconds: "Biochemistry describes ant acids, beetle biotins, crab kitins, dog DNAs, elk enzymes, frog fats, giraffe genes, hog hormones, ivy introns, jumping genes, krill keratins, lamb lipids, mass mutants, newt nuclei, owl oleates, pig periplasm, quahog quadruplets, rabbit RNA, shrew sugars, tadpole trioses, urchin ureasers, viper venoms, welk warts, xerophyte xanthates, [unknown] yaks, zebra zygotes" [Time called by the Referee]

In 7 Words: "Biochemistry explains life for chemists, not physicists"[Actual Number of Words Used: 7]

When in the ceremony video: 0:26:33

Lecturer: Anne Hart (Assistant Professor of Pathology at Harvard Medical School)

In 24 Seconds: "To elucidate and explicate our ability to cogitate with principles enumerated by Hebb, Cajal, and Sherington. Intrepid neuroscientists study the cortex and the cerebellum, neurons glial astrocytes and corpus colossum, using immuno-histology, neuro-anatomy, molecular biology, electro physiology, classical genetics and neuro pharmacology. Augmented by double stranded RNA and protein mass spectrometry , ethology, behavior, and electronmicroscopy, biochemistry, and more elctrophysiology, attempt to integrate the data from homo sapiens to C. elegens to clarify the fundemental basis of our consciousness…" [Time called by the Referee]

In 7 Words: "The brain still fails to understand itself"[Actual Number of Words Used: 7]

When in the ceremony video: 0:27:40

Lecturer: Ira Flatow (Host of NPR's "Science Friday" program)

In 24 Seconds: "It is well established that many technologies, under certain conditions and when influenced by the geopolitical and egalitarian conflicts, result in the frank exchange of views by competing parties who desire to influence the very acts and infrastructures that bring them to the present state, and yield nothing but significant and necessary conditions for the triumph of meaningless and widespread techno-jargon." [Within the time limit]

In 7 Words: "Hal, open the pod bay doors, Hal"[Actual Number of Words Used: 7]

When in the ceremony video: 0:52:00

Lecturer: Jean Berko-Gleason (Professor of Psychology at Boston University, creator of The Wug Test)

In 24 Seconds: "Language is a hierarchically structured cognitive and psycho-linguistic system encompassing phonology, morphology, syntax, semantics, and pragmatics. The Wug Test reveals the presence of internalized inflectional morphology in pre-operational individuals. Development procedes in stages from reduplicated open syllables through hic et nunc utterances to ultimate adult communicative competence." [Within the time limit]

In 7 Words: "Babies babble, children prattle, adults create haiku"[Actual Number of Words Used: 7]

When in the ceremony video: 0:53:06

Lecturer: Sip Siperstein (Veterinarian at Angel Memorial Hospital)

In 24 Seconds: "A veterinarian's day is fraught with hazards, namely the risk of precious Fifi's mandibles. Frankly, she's none to pleased with the unsolicited rectal palpations. In the last year alone, I have accrued numerous bites, requiring: 4 accident reports, 2 regimens of wide spectrum antibiotics, and 1 rabies booster. The dermal insult to my face was delivered by a disoriented, heavily medicated, otherwise well-intentioned greyhound, who once off his pain medications returned to his former friendly self. Bite wounds can be delivered by any of a number of genus/species: Canis familiaris (dog); Felis catus (cat); Amazona Oratrix (yellow-headed amazon); and Iguana Iguana (Iguana)." [Within the time limit]

In 7 Words: "It's truly a dog eat Doc world"[Actual Number of Words Used: 7]

Lecture Notes: This lecturer brought a dog onstage with her

When in the ceremony video: 0:54:21

Lecturer: Alyssa Goodman (Professor of Astronomy at Harvard University, Smithsonian Research Associate)

In 24 Seconds: "At least eleven dimensions are needed to explain the formation of the universe. After the vacuum energy during the period of inflation, quarks began to form hadrons, but leptons persist. The universe's surface of last scattering at z of a thousand is imaged by observing the cosmic microwave background. The DASI interferometer discovery of the polarization of the CMB gives important new constraints on key cosmological perameters such as omega, lamda, and H-naught. It is debatable whether adaptive measure SPH codes can properly simulate the next 3 billion years…" [Time called by the Referee]

In 7 Words: "Star light, star bright, it's my job"[Actual Number of Words Used: 7]

Lecture Notes: The Referee's ruling seems particularly startling in this caseGiven more time, it is believed that the lecturer would have continued her lecture thus: "…the next 3 billion years, which, in reality, produced elliptical, lenticular, and spiral galaxies. The study of those galaxies’ evolution from redshift ten to zero requires that we understand the formation and evolution of dark matter, intergalactic and interstellar dust, stars, and planets. My colleagues’ recent discovery that dark energy may also pervade the Universe makes all of our jobs significantly more complicated."

When in the ceremony video: 1:13:30

Lecturer: Robert Marshall (Professor of Music at Brandeis University)

In 24 Seconds: "Music, traditionally, is a series of hierarchically layered, temporal prolongations of a teleologically focused harmonic melodic ursatz, projected onto the sounding foreground by means of horizontalization of simultaneities, composing-out of diminutions and Stimmtausch operations. Of course, matters are no so simple today with dodecaphonic serial techniques, microtonal pitch spectrums, and structured silence." [Within the time limit]

In 7 Words: The lecturer delivered his synopsis in musical notes rather than words (see Lecture Notes, below)[Actual Number of Words Used: 0]

Lecture Notes: The lecturer provided this notation for his synopsis:

After delivering his 7-word synopsis musically, rather than in words, the lecturer added, "but if I had to do it in 7 words, I would say, ‘If it sounds good it is music'"

When in the ceremony video: 1:14:38

Lecturer: Margo Seltzer (Professor of Computer Science at Harvard)

In 24 Seconds: "All the computer's electronic, the hardware and software merely players. It has its bytes and its bit, each bit taking on many values. It's cardinality being two. At first the zero: grounding and sinking in its memory array. And then the one: with shiny electrons flashing, counting powers of two in increasing numbers. Last state that teminates this strange binary existance is re-booting…" [Time called by the Referee]

In 7 Words: "Computer software: good fast, cheap – pick two."[Actual Number of Words Used: 7]

When in the ceremony video: 0:23:23

Lecturer: Dany Adams (Professsor at Smith College)

In 24 Seconds: "Biology recapitulates life's relationships. For example there are initiation factors such as [unknown]. Vocal contacts and complements stimulate countercurrent exchange histo-compatiability and zinc fingers can give rise to chemiosmotic coupling but germ cells can cause sticky ends. while degenerate codons and gross anatomy such as [unknown] epiphytes which usually result in a…" [Time called by the Referee]

In 7 Words: "If it can get infected, it's biology"[Actual Number of Words Used: 7]

Lecture Notes: The Lecturer provided this annotative key to be helpful:Chemiosmotic coupling: the connection of ATP production to proton diffusion in mitochondriaComplement: non-immunoglobulin protein components of the immune responseCountercurrent exchange: any system wherein molecules or heat move between tubes containing fluids flowing in opposite directionsDegenerate codons: a collection of more than one triplet DNA sequence, each of which encodes the same amino acidEpiphytes: non-parasitic plants that live on the surfaces of other plantsFocal contacts: the site of attachment of a cell to its substrateGerm cells: the cells that will differentiate into gametesGross primary production: the total energy captured by plants in a particular areaHistocompatibility: the measure of whether tissues will trigger an immune response; it is determined by proteins on the surfaces of cellsInitiation factors: proteins required for the initiation of DNA transcriptionPeroxisomes: Cellular organelles containing peroxidesResonance hybrids: two equally stable forms of a moleculeSpongy parenchyma: loosely packed photosynthetic cells, usually found in the lower epidermis of leavesSticky ends: single stranded sequences found at the ends of otherwise double stranded that has been cut with certain endonucleasesTATA box: a DNA sequence found approximately 32 base pairs upstream of the transcription initiation siteZinc Fingers: proteins that bind DNA and affect transcription rates

When in the ceremony video: 0:24:55

Lecturer: Don Featherstone (Creator of the plastic pink flamingo, Ig Nobel Prize Winner, d.2015)

In 24 Seconds: "Whether you’re doing something classical, or whether you’re doing something impressionistic, modernistic – art must have some basics. Balance, design, color and if you’re just throwing paint on a canvas, you have to know when you’ve hit it just right to have the combination. Otherwise it’ll be another Museum of Very Bad Art. [to the referee] I’ve got more time?" [Within the time limit]

In 7 Words: "Art is the appreciation of creation"[Actual Number of Words Used: 6]

When in the ceremony video: 0:51:06

Lecturer: Ellen Spertus (Professor of Computer Science at Mills College. Declared 2001 "Sexiest Geek Alive")

In 24 Seconds: "A conundrum of habnid evolution is the runaway growth of the human brain in the past 2500 millennia at a pace inexpicable through natural selection is evidenced by the long delay in technological innovation. The neural explosion is better explained through sexual selection which can explain runaway hypertrophy as the result of female mate selection for cranially endowed men." [Within the time limit]

In 7 Words: "Brainy ancestors considered sexy, why not us?"[Actual Number of Words Used: 7]

When in the ceremony video: 0:52:16

Lecturer: David Jones (Chemist and author of Nature Magazine's Daedalus column)

In 24 Seconds: "Science is those recipes which always work – experimental observations. It is the theories and principles built on those observations; the universe in priciple. It is the attitude of those who make the recipes to extend their theories and principles. It is tentative, [unknown] dogmatic [unknown], but the facts behind it make it immensely powerful" [Within the time limit]

In 7 Words: "Science is predictively understanding the physical world"[Actual Number of Words Used: 7]

When in the ceremony video: 1:23:27

Lecturer: Melissa Franklin (Professor of Physics at Harvard University. First tenured female in Harvard Physics faculty)

In 24 Seconds: "Describe any physical phenomema: ham in box, ham with fox, ham on train, ham in rain. In different space times: ham here, ham there. Generalize: ham anywhere. Wite equasions, notice similarities, make one equasion, make it shorter, make it greek, make new symbols that are short, make them script, make it really really short, just three symbols. Stop, scratch your head, draw stick figures instead. Take equasion: predict past and future, pause. Describe many phenomena: ham in boat, ham with goat" [Within the time limit]

In 7 Words: "Describe motion of matter and ask why"[Actual Number of Words Used: 7]

When in the ceremony video: 1:25:01

Before the The 24/7 Lectures were invented, there were….

These lectures are named after The Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle, which in turn is named after Nobel Laureate Werner Heisenberg. The Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle states that, while you can determine either the location or the momentum of a sub-atomic particle, it is impossible to accurately measure both of them at the same time.

(Past lectures are currently being added to the site — stay tuned!)