Among the laureates were researchers studying why coffee closhes in a cup while you’re walking (the fluid dynamics prize), doctors who showed that MRI machines can find brain activity even in dead fish (the neuroscience prize), a Russian company that can convert old ammunition into diamonds (the peace prize), and, for the acoustics prize, the inventors of a jamming device that can stop blowhards from bloviating. (No, they don’t mean Miss Sweetie-Poo.)