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Slippery banana study wins Ig Nobel prize

Ig Nobel Prizes 2014 Researchers who measured the slipperiness of banana peel, the ability of pork strips to stop nosebleeds, and the reactions of reindeer to people in polar bear suits were among the winners of this year's Ig Nobel prizes.

The annual awards for some of the more unusual or wacky scientific research projects have become the traditional comical counterpart to the prestigious Nobel Prizes, which will be announced in Stockholm next month.

Among this year's ten Ig Nobel awards, four went to researchers who had a peculiar interest in food.

A team of Japanese scientists earned the Ig Nobel prize in Physics for their paper titled "Frictional Coefficient under Banana Skin" which detailed the hazards of stepping on a banana peel.

Prizes were also awarded for studying what happens in the brains of people who see the face of Jesus in their toast, how infant poop can be used in the production of fermented sausages, and how pork strips can be stuffed into nostrils to stop nosebleeds.

Other Ig Nobel prizes went to researchers who measured the relative pain people suffer while looking at an ugly painting, investigating whether cat ownership can be mentally hazardous, and studying to see if people who routinely stay up late can be more psychopathic.

Former winners of real Nobel prizes handed out the awards at a ceremony at Harvard University in Massachusetts.

A personal favourite of Marc Abrahams, architect of the Ig Nobels, was a study by a team of Norwegian and German researchers who tested how reindeer react to seeing humans wearing polar bear costumes.

"I've never in my life met anyone who disguised himself as a polar bear to frighten a reindeer," Abrahams says.

The winners also included scientists from the Czech Republic, Germany and Zambia who determined that dogs prefer to align their body axis with the Earth's north-south geomagnetic field lines while defecating, and the Italian government's National Institute of Statistics for increasing the official size of the economy by including revenues from prostitution, drugs dealing, smuggling and other crimes.