Ig Nobel winners
Medicine - Gregg Miller from the US for his
invention of Neuticles - rubber replacement testicles for neutered dogs
that are available in varying sizes and degrees of firmness.
"Considering my parents thought I was an idiot when I was a kid, this
is a great honour," said Mr Miller.
Peace - A UK team for their pioneering research
into the activity of locusts' brain cells while the insects watched
clips from the Star Wars films.
Physics - John Maidstone from Australia for his
part in an experiment that began in 1927 in which a glob of black tar
drips through a funnel every nine years. Mr Maidstone shared the prize
with a late colleague who died sometime after the second drop.
Biology - The University of Adelaide for
"painstakingly smelling and cataloguing the peculiar odours produced by
131 different species of frogs when the frogs were feeling stressed".
Chemistry - A University of Minnesota team who set out to prove whether people can swim faster in water or sugar syrup.
Economics - A Massachusetts inventor who designed an alarm clock that runs away and hides when it goes off.
Nutrition - A Japanese researcher who photographed and analysed every meal he had consumed during a period of 34 years.
Literature - The many Nigerians who introduced
millions of e-mail users to a "cast of rich characters... each of whom
requires just a small amount of expense money so as to obtain access to
the great wealth to which they are entitled".
Agricultural History - A study entitled The
Significance of Mr Richard Buckley's Exploding Trousers: Reflections on
an Aspect of Technological Change in New Zealand Dairy-Farming between
the World Wars.
Fluid Dynamics - Pressures Produced When Penguins Pooh - Calculations on Avian Defaecation.