Ig Noble prizes

* Peace: Howard Stapleton for inventing a teenager repellent - a device that makes a high-pitched noise that is annoying to teenagers but inaudible to most adults. (teehee! )

* Nutrition: two gentlemen from Kuwait took this home for noting that the dung beetle is actually very particular about which dung it fancies. (finicky eaters )

* Acoustics: a multi-institutional team takes this home for exploring fingernails scraping the blackboard in a paper entitled, "Psychoacoustics of a Chilling Sound." (argghhh!)

* Medicine: not one, but two separate publications explored how otherwise incurable hiccups could be brought to an end with a digital rectal massage.

* Literature: the lone winner from Princeton got it for looking into pretentious word choice in the redundantly titled "Consequences of Erudite Vernacular Utilized Irrespective of Necessity: Problems with Using Long Words Needlessly." (woaahh!)

* Physics: two workers in Paris looked into why spaghetti never breaks in half, but instead shatters into multiple pieces.

* Chemistry: Spaniards reel in the chemistry prize for measuring how the speed of sound in cheddar cheese is influenced by temperature. I checked the abstract, and it's not clear whether we're talking sharp or mild, so a further award in this topic is possible.

* Biology: continuing the cheese theme, an international team, including a member at the Atomic Energy Agency, take this home for a series of papers on how malaria-bearing mosquitos respond to the aroma of Limburger cheese.

* Mathematics: Nic Svenson and Piers Barnes of the Australian Commonwealth Scientific and Research Organization, for calculating the number of shots a photographer must take to almost ensure that nobody in a group photo will have his eyes closed.

http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/nationworld/2003291381 _ignobel06.html