Some of the titles of academic papers that won prizes were:

• Consequences of Erudite Vernacular Utilized Irrespective of Necessity: Problems with Using Long Words Needlessly.
• Ultrasonic Velocity in Cheddar Cheese as Affected by Temperature.
• Blink-Free Photos, Guaranteed. (The research calculated the number of photographs a person must take to ensure that nobody in a group photo will have their eyes closed.)
• Termination of Intractable Hiccups with Digital Rectal Massage.
• Fragmentation of Rods by Cascading Cracks: Why Spaghetti Does Not Break in Half.
• Psychoacoustics of a Chilling Sound. (basically, why people hate the sound of fingernails scraped on a blackboard.)

Others were honoured for their research into why woodpeckers don't get headaches, and for inventing an electromechanical teenager repellent device.

Ig Nobel Prizes

[ 06 October 2007: Message edited by: M. Spector ]

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# Termination of Intractable Hiccups with Digital Rectal Massage.

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# Termination of Intractable Hiccups with Digital Rectal Massage.
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Oh my

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Earlier in the week, Mr. Rae spent some time in Northern Ontario with Rick Mercer, of the CBC's Rick Mercer Report, canoeing, fishing and . . . skinny-dipping. The Rae segment is to be aired Tuesday night. During the shooting, as the two were sitting in a boat fishing, Mr. Rae remarked that they weren't catching anything. Said Mr. Mercer: "That's okay, we're only doing catch and release." He paused. "Of course, if I were with Ignatieff, this would be catch, torture and then release!"

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The Coming Singularity

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Vinge writes that superhuman intelligences, however created, will be even more able to enhance their own minds faster than the humans that created them. "When greater-than-human intelligence drives progress," Vinge writes, "that progress will be much more rapid." This feedback loop of self-improving intelligence, he predicts, will cause large amounts of technological progress within a short period of time.

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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 appetite for mindless eating by secretly feeding them a self-refilling bowl of soup.

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