Ig Nobel Award

The 23rd year for the Ig Nobel award (a play on the word ignoble, meaning of low origin), sponsored by the science humor magazine Annals of Improbable Research and given out to honor weird and humorous scientific discoveries from all over the world have been officially handed out. Ig Nobels are meant to amuse and to think about the sometimes crazy scientific research that is routinely done each day. The winners this year fit that profile well.

There are 10 Ig Nobels handed out each year in categories just like those other Nobel prizes ranging from categories in medicine, physics to a peace prize. I suspect the winners are not as happy about receiving an Ig Nobel as those who get a real Nobel prize. But almost no "winner" of an Ig Nobel has ever refused that award, proving that science also has a thick skin and a sense of humor.
The winners, with names excluded to protect the reputation of the scientists who won, and their "achievement" include:

*Medicine- for assessing the effects of listening to opera , on heart transplant patients who are mice.

for confirming, by experiment, that people who think they are drunk also think they are attractive. - See more at: http://www.improbable.com/ig/winners/#ig2013

Psychology- for confirming by experiment, that people who think they are drunk also think they are attractive

for assessing the effect of listening to opera, on heart transplant patients who are mice. - See more at: http://www.improbable.com/ig/winners/#ig2013

for assessing the effect of listening to opera, on heart transplant patients who are mice - See more at: http://www.improbable.com/ig/winners/#ig2013

for assessing the effect of listening to opera, on heart transplant patients who are mice - See more at: http://www.improbable.com/ig/winners/#ig2013

for assessing the effect of listening to opera, on heart transplant patients who are mice. - See more at: http://www.improbable.com/ig/winners/#ig2013

for assessing the effect of listening to opera, on heart transplant patients who are mice. - See more at: http://www.improbable.com/ig/winners/#ig2013

* Biology and Astronomy- for discovering that when dung beetles get lost, they can navigate their way home by looking at the Milky Way.
* Safety Engineering- for inventing a system that traps airline hijackers.......... it drops a hijacker through trap doors, seals them into a package, then drops the hijacker through the airplane's specially installed bomb bay doors, which then parachutes the hijacker to police waiting on ground for the hijacker's arrival.
* Physics- for discovering that some people would be physically capable of running across the surface of a pond, if the pond and people were on the moon.
* Chemistry- for discovering that the biochemical process by which onions make people cry is even more complicated that scientists realized.
* Archaeology- for parboiling a dead shrew and then swallowing the shrew without chewing, and then carefully examining the excreted shrew after the bowel elimination to see which bones dissolved inside the human digestive system and which bones would not.
* Peace- Dual winners from Belaus. one for making it illegal to applaud in public and the other for arresting a one armed man for applauding.
* Probability- for cow studies showing that the longer a cow has been lying down, the more likely that cow will soon stand up, and for showing that once a cow strands up it can not be predicted how soon that cow will lie down again.
* Public Health- for the medical technique called "Surgical management of an Epidemic of Penile Amputations in Siam, techniques which they recommend except in cases where the amputated penis has been partially eaten by a duck.

The winners received cash prizes of $10 trillion each, but it's in Zimbabwe dollars. So they'll each get about four U.S. dollars. I think they may be overpaying them, but it's all for science, I guess.