Official News - page 8

REAL LIFE NEWS: 2006 IGNOBEL PRIZES ANNOUNCED

by Hazed

Over the past few weeks, the serious scientists of the world have been honored with Nobel prizes. Now it's the turn of the more bizarre achievements to be heralded by the IgNobel Prizes. These are awarded to people whose research first makes you laugh and then makes you think.

The winners were announced at an award ceremony held a few days ago at Harvard University. Amongst the achievements receiving prizes were :

• Physics prize - a paper discussing "Insights into why, when you bend dry spaghetti, it often breaks into more than two pieces
• Chemistry prize - a paper entitled "Ultrasonic Velocity in Cheddar Cheese as Affected by Temperature"
• Medicine prize - two separate studies on the same subject: how hiccups can be cured in a very unusual fashion
• Other prizes were awarded to those who conducted studies on woodpeckers not suffering headaches, dung beetles, smelly feet, and the sound of fingernails scratching on a blackboard.

You can read the full results on the Annals of Improbable Research site.

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