Compiled from news reports
In the ultimate accolade for the world's mad scientists, spoof Nobel prizes were awarded Thursday for studies into beetle sex, turtles yawning, the desperation of people dying to urinate and other daffy investigations.
The annual Ig Nobel prizes, now in their 21st year, were given at Harvard University in front of 1,200 spectators, with real Nobel Prize winners handing out the honors.
To win, scientists must "first make people laugh, and then make them think," according to the Ig Nobel ethos.
The 2011 Ig Nobel winners awarded by the Annals of Improbable Research magazine include:
PHYSIOLOGY: Anna Wilkinson, Natalie Sebanz, Isabella Mandl and Ludwig Huber for their study ``No Evidence of Contagious Yawning in the Red-Footed Tortoise.''
CHEMISTRY: Makoto Imai, Naoki Urushihata, Hideki Tanemura, Yukinobu Tajima, Hideaki Goto, Koichiro Mizoguchi and Junichi Murakami for their wasabi alarm.
MEDICINE: Matthew Lewis, Peter Snyder, Robert Feldman, Robert Pietrzak, David Darby, Paul Maruff along with Mirjam Tuk, Debra Trampe and Luk Warlop for studying the effects of holding in urine.
PSYCHOLOGY: Karl Halvor Teigen for trying to understand why people sigh.
LITERATURE: John Perry for his theory of procrastination: To be a high achiever, always work on something important, using it as a way to avoid doing something that's even more important.
BIOLOGY: Daryll Gwynne and David Rentz for discovering that certain kinds of beetles try to mate with certain kinds of Australian beer bottles.
PHYSICS: Philippe Perrin, Cyril Perrot, Dominique Deviterne, Bruno Ragaru and Herman Kingma for trying to determine why discus throwers become dizzy, and why hammer throwers don't.
MATHEMATICS: Assorted doomsday predictors throughout history for teaching the world to be careful when making mathematical assumptions and calculations.
PEACE: Arturas Zuokas for solving the problem of illegally parked cars by crushing them with an armored vehicle.
PUBLIC SAFETY: John Senders for his experiments in which a driver on a major highway repeatedly has a visor flapped down over his face.