Two Canadian Profs Honoured with Ig Nobel Prizes

Beetles mating with beer bottles and wasabi fire alarms among winning research at good-humoured science awards.

The Ig Nobel Prizes were handed out at Harvard University last night, with two Canadians walking home with the awards for scientific research that "first make people laugh, and then make them think." Among the winners of the Nobel Prize parodies was John Senders of the University of Toronto, who won the public safety award for a study that measured the effects of a visor repeatedly flapping in the face of a driver on a highway. Darryl Gwynne, also of U of T, was awarded for his 1983 study that examined the sad tale of male beetles mating with beer bottles tossed on the side of Australian roads. Other winners included a team that determined, once and for all, that yawning among red-footed tortoises is not contagious, another that studied subjects' decision-making processes when they had to urinate badly, and one for a Japanese team that studied whether the scent of wasabi could be used as a fire alarm.