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  BBC 6 Oct 06
Teen repellent is Ig Nobel winner

Yahoo News 5 Oct 06
Stinky feet, annoying noise top IgNobel prize list
By Maggie Fox, Health and Science Editor

Yahoo News 5 Oct 06
Ig Nobels honors odd scientific research
By Mark Pratt, Associated Press Writer

BOSTON - The sound sets teeth on edge, makes skin crawl and sends a shiver down the spine. Just thinking about it gives some people the heebie-jeebies. But what is it about the sound of fingernails scratching on a blackboard that elicits such a universal reaction?

Randolph Blake and two colleagues think they know — the sound's frequency level. Their research has earned them an Ig Nobel, the annual award given at Harvard University by Annals of Improbable Research magazine for weird, wacky and sometimes worthless scientific research.

This year's winners honored — or maybe dishonored — at a raucous ceremony Thursday at Harvard's inappropriately opulent Sanders Theater include a doctor who put his finger on a cure for hiccups; two men who think there is something to the old adage that feet smell like cheese; and researchers who discovered that dung beetles won't tuck in to just any old pile of ... well, dung.

What started as a small event in 1991 to honor obscure and humorous scientific achievements has grown into an international happening, with some of this year's winners traveling from Australia, Kuwait and France.

The awards are given out by real Nobel laureates, including Harvard physics professor Roy Glauber, who stays behind afterward to sweep up.

The nails on a blackboard research was part of a bigger, legitimate project, said Blake, a Vanderbilt University psychology professor who specializes in vision. He, along with Dr. D. Lynn Halpern and James Hillenbrand, did the research two decades ago while at Northwestern University.

Blake remembers some volunteers refusing to participate after learning they'd have to endure the obnoxious screeching.

Howard Stapleton's research into noise has more practical applications. He invented teenager repellant. His device, called the Mosquito, emits a high frequency siren-like noise that is painful to the ears of teens and those in their early 20s, but inaudible to adults.

The invention grew out of his 15-year-old daughter's trip to the local store last year to buy milk. She came back empty-handed, having been intimidated by a group of teenage boys loitering outside the store.

Stapleton, who has sold and installed security systems for more than two decades, thought back to when he was 12 years old and he visited his father at work.

"I walked into this room with six people doing ultrasonic welding, and immediately ran right back out again the noise was so painful," Stapleton said. "I asked an adult, 'What's that noise.' And he said, 'What noise?'"

Stapleton's company, Compound Security Systems of Merthyr Tydfil, Wales, has sold hundreds of the units to retailers, local governments, police departments and homeowners all over the United Kingdom. The company is shipping its first Mosquito units for sale in the United States next week.

"The success of this has knocked my socks off," Stapleton said.

Dr. Francis Fesmire said he wasn't sure whether he was honored or embarrassed when he learned he'd won an Ig Nobel for his paper called — ahem — "Termination of Intractable Hiccups with Digital Rectal Massage."

"I'm a serious guy, and something I wrote in 1987 is coming back to haunt me," said Fesmire, an emergency physician and director of the emergency heart center at Erlanger Medical Center in Chattanooga, Tenn.

Fesmire, who stresses he is a real doctor who "someday wishes to be truly be remembered for my cardiac research," tried the technique for the first and last time nearly 20 years ago.

He knew that the technique could be used to slow a rapid heartbeat by stimulating the vagus nerve. The same nerve, when stimulated, can stop hiccups. "I saw this patient who couldn't stop his hiccups, I tried these other maneuvers, and then I stuck my finger in his bottom," Fesmire said, emphasizing that it was the treatment of last resort. "Will I ever do it again? No!"

Dr. Ivan Schwab accepted his Ig Nobel for his work explaining why woodpeckers don't get headaches. Schwab, an opthamologist, said his writings are based on the research of deceased UCLA professor Phillip R.A. May, who received an Ig Nobel posthumously.

"I had heard about the Igs and this sounded like too much fun to pass up," said Schwab, who planned on dressing up as a woodpecker for the ceremony. "I'm very proud to be part of it."

Yahoo News 5 Oct 06
Stinky feet, annoying noise top IgNobel prize list
By Maggie Fox, Health and Science Editor

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Research into stinky feet, a study on the sound of fingernails on a blackboard and a device that repels teen-agers with an annoying high-pitched hum on Thursday won IgNobel prizes -- the humorous counterpart to this week's Nobel prizes.

Other winning research included a U.S. and Israeli team's discovery that hiccups could be cured with a finger up the rectum and a study into why woodpeckers do not get headaches.

"The prizes are intended to celebrate the unusual, honor the imaginative -- and spur people's interest in science, medicine and technology," said Marc Abrahams, editor of the science humor magazine "Annals of Improbable Research," which sponsors the awards with the Harvard-Radcliffe Science Fiction Association and Harvard-Radcliffe Society of Physics Students.

All the research is real and has been published in often-prestigious scientific and medical journals.

However, unlike the Nobel prizes awarded this week by the Swedish Academy of Sciences, IgNobel winners receive no money, little recognition and have virtually no hope of transforming science or medicine.

Even the name of the award, a play on the word "ignoble," is meant to be deprecating.

But they receive their awards from real Nobel winners in an event broadcast on the Internet at http://www.improbable.com on Thursday evening.

Some of the 2006 IgNobel winners:

-- BIOLOGY - Bart Knols of Wageningen Agricultural University in the Netherlands, the National Institute for Medical Research in Tanzania and the International Atomic Energy Agency in Vienna, Austria and colleague Ruurd de Jong for showing that the female Anopheles gambiae mosquito, which carries malaria, is attracted equally to the smell of limburger cheese and to the smell of human feet.

"We have shown that three different Anopheles mosquito species prefer to bite different parts of a naked motionless volunteer and that this behavior is influenced by odors from those body regions," they wrote in their report, published in the Lancet medical journal in 1996.

-- ORNITHOLOGY - Ivan Schwab of the University of California Davis, and the late Philip R.A. May of the University of California Los Angeles, for explaining why woodpeckers do not get headaches.

-- NUTRITION - Wasmia Al-Houty of Kuwait University and Faten Al-Mussalam of the Kuwait Environment Public Authority, for showing that dung beetles are finicky eaters.

-- PEACE - Howard Stapleton of Merthyr Tydfil, Wales, for inventing a teen-ager repellent -- a device that makes a high-pitched noise that is annoying to teen-agers but inaudible to most adults; and for later using the technology to make cellphone ringtones that teenagers can hear but not their teachers.

-- ACOUSTICS - D. Lynn Halpern, Randolph Blake and James Hillenbrand of Chicago's Northwestern University for a 1986 experiment aimed at discovering why the sound of fingernails scraping on a blackboard is so irritating.

-- MEDICINE - Francis Fesmire of the University of Tennessee College of Medicine and the team of Majed Odeh, Harry Bassan and Arie Oliven of Bnai Zion Medical Center in Haifa, Israel who both published studies entitled "Termination of Intractable Hiccups with Digital Rectal Massage."

-- 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 their eyes closed.

BBC 6 Oct 06
Teen repellent is Ig Nobel winner

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. Unlike the recipients of the more illustrious awards, Ig Nobel winners get no cash reward.

Nevertheless eight of the 10 winners this year paid their own way to receive their prizes in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

Photography Marc Abrahams, editor of science humour magazine Annals of Improbable Research, which co-sponsors the awards, said: "The prizes are intended to celebrate the unusual, honour the imaginative - and spur people's interest in science, medicine and technology."

The winners are given a one-minute acceptance speech, the time policed by a loud eight-year-old girl.

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.
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