Avi Blizovsky
One of the studies that won the Ig-Nobel was the one that investigated why woodpeckers do not have headaches
A device that repels teenagers won this year's Ig-Nobel prize, the Italian alternative prize to the more serious Nobel prizes. The device invented by the Welshman Howard Stapleton that emits sounds at frequencies that are beyond the hearing threshold of adults but annoy teenagers.
Other winners are researchers in a joint American-Israeli study of how poking a finger in the butt cures hiccups, and a report detailing why woodpeckers don't get headaches. All studies are real and published in prestigious journals. Unlike the winners of the prestigious Nobel Prize, Ig Nobel winners do not receive a monetary award.
However, eight of the ten winners this year paid out of their own pockets to attend the award ceremony in Cambridge, Massachusetts. The award website stated that the winners made people laugh and then made them think. Mark Abrahams, the editor of the humorous scientific journal "The History of Researches that cannot or should not be repeated", the partners in financing the ceremony, said: "The awards are intended to celebrate the unusual, and to respect the imagination - and to encourage people's interest in science, medicine and technology."
The speakers are given one minute to give a speech of thanks, and in order for them to stick to the schedule, their time is timed by an eight-year-old girl.
This year's winners include, among others, the following awards:
Math: How Many Photographs Need to Be Taken to Ensure No One in the Picture Gets Red-Eyed, by Nick Swanson and Piers Barnes.
The Field of Bird Theory: Why Woodpeckers Don't Get a Headache, by Ivan Schwab, and the late Philip May.
Nutrition: Why Dung Beetles Have Eating Manners, by Washima Al-Houti and Faten Al Musallam.
Acoustics" Why the Sound of a Fingernail Scratching a Chalkboard is So Annoying by Lynn Halpern, Randolph Black, and James Hillerbrand
Medicine: Stopping persistent yawning with digital buttock massage by Francis Persmir, Majed Odeh, Harry Bassan, and Aryeh Olivan.
