Ig Nobels 2006

Hey, I missed this.
The Ignobel Prizes are back!

A device that repels teenagers has won the peace prize at this year's Ig Nobels - the spoof alternative to the rather more sober Nobel prizes. Welshman Howard Stapleton's device makes a high-pitched noise inaudible to adults but annoying to teenagers.

Other winners included a US-Israeli study into how a finger up the rectum cures hiccups and a report into why woodpeckers do not get headaches.

All the research is real and published in often prestigious journals.....

.....This year's winners included:

Maths: How many photos must be taken to almost ensure no-one in a group shot has their eyes closed, by Nic Svenson and Piers Barnes

Ornithology: Why woodpeckers do not get headaches, by Ivan Schwab and the late Philip RA May

Nutrition: Why dung beetles are fussy eaters, by Wasmia al-Houty and Faten al-Mussalam

Acoustics: Why the sound of fingernails scraping on blackboards is so annoying, by D Lynn Halpern, Randolph Blake and James Hillenbrand

Medicine: The Termination of Intractable Hiccups with Digital Rectal Massage, by Francis Fesmire, Majed Odeh, Harry Bassan and Arie Oliven.

Too cool, too cool. No guessing which one's my favourite!


UPDATE
Tried to surf for more details on the Ig Nobels. Turns out that the day-to-day applications are very very real.

Fesmire, a specialist in emergency medicine and cardiology, probably did not have a real Nobel in mind when he published "Termination of intractable hiccups with digital rectal massage" in Annals of Emergency Medicine (vol 17, p 872). He was, it transpires, attempting to help a man who walked into the emergency room after hiccuping for 72 hours at up to 30 times a minute.

Runaway electrical impulses in the vagus nerve cause intractable hiccups, so Fesmire aattempted to block them by stimulating the nerve. Gagging, tongue pulling, sinus massage and pressing the eyeball to stimulate the vagus all failed to stop the hiccups. Then he remembered reading about a case in which digital rectal massage – inserting a finger into a patient’s anus – had slowed a racing heartbeat, an effect similar to runaway hiccups.

"It worked, and the rest is history," he says

Amazing. That's all I can say.......