Improbable Research

2007 IgNobel Prizes announced

Aviation: Patricia V. Agostino, Santiago A. Plano and Diego A. Golombek, for discovering that hamsters recover from jetlag more quickly when given Viagra.

Biology: Johanna E.M.H. van Bronswijk, for taking a census of all the mites and other life forms that live in people's beds.

Chemistry: Mayu Yamamoto for extracting vanilla flavor from cow dung.

Economics: Kuo Cheng Hsieh, for patenting a device to catch bank robbers by ensnaring them in a net.

Linguistics: Juan Manuel Toro, Josep B. Trobalon and Nuria Sebastian-Galles, for determining that rats sometimes can't distinguish between Japanese, played backward, and Dutch, played backward.

Literature: Glenda Browne, for her study of the word "the".

Medicine: Dan Meyer and Brian Witcombe, for investigating the side-effects of swallowing swords.

Nutrition: Brian Wansink, for investigating people's appetites by secretly feeding them a self-refilling bowl of soup.

Peace: The Air Force Wright Laboratory in Dayton, Ohio, for research and development of a "gay bomb," which would cause enemy troops to become sexually attracted to each other.

Physics: L. Mahadevan and Enrique Cerda Villablanca for their theoretical study of how sheets become wrinkled.