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I live my life no context, but if you do, I'll blame you
Arisia has begun. Tonight in Dramatic Readings from the Ig Nobel Prizes, I performed selections from Paul G. Becher et al.'s "The scent of the fly" (Journal of Chemical Ecology, 2018) and Lindie H. Liang et al.'s "Righting a wrong: Retaliation on a voodoo doll symbolizing an abusive supervisor restores justice" (The Leadership Quarterly 2018). The latter paper confirms that it makes downtrodden workers feel better to torment effigies of their horrible bosses; the former determined that a fly can be detected in a glass of wine by taste provided it is a female of the species Drosophila melanogaster whose volatile pheromone Z4-11Al consequently makes the wine taste, quote, technical term, "off." I also joined a chantey chorus supplementing a dramatic reading of William McGonagall's "The Tay Bridge Disaster" with a filk on the subject by Marc Abrahams. I feel I've done my bit for the arts this weekend.
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Not as much of a pain in the ass as wasp control when winemaking, sometimes, mind you.
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I believe it! This study just seems to have evaluated the question strictly from the perspective of a person with a fly in their glass of wine, wondering if they should finish drinking it:
"A wine-tasting panel finds that we sense as little as 1 ng Z4-11Al in a glass of wine, and 10 ng Z4-11Al is perceived as a loud off-flavour. This corroborates the observation that a glass of wine is spoilt by a single D. melanogaster fly falling into it, which we here show is caused by Z4-11Al."
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I am an alumna of Dundee Uni too. :o)
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He went over well with the audience!
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