The scientists at Improbable Research announced the winners of the 2006 Ig Nobel prizes.
Among this year's honorees are the following:
Orinthology: Ivan R. Schwab, for studying why woodpeckers don't get headaches.
Nutrition: Wasmia Al-Houty and Faten Al-Mussalam, for studying the eating preferences of dung beetles. Their study showed, for example, that dung beetles prefer horse dung to sheep dung, and prefer sheep dung to camel dung.
Mathematics: Physicist Dr. Piers Barnes and photographer Nic Svenson, for calculating the number of group photos needed to be reasonably sure of getting one photo with no one's eyes closed.
Medicine: A tie between Francis M. Fesmire and the team of Majed Odeh, Harry Bassan,and Arie Oliven, for their case reports titled "Termination of intractable hiccups with digital rectal massage."
Physics: Basile Audoly and Sebastien Neukirch, for examining why, when you bend spaghetti, it never breaks into just two pieces.
Chemistry: Antonio Mulet, José Javier Benedito and José Bon, for their study of the correlation between temperature and ultrasonic velocity in cheddar cheese.