Fall kicks off the scientific awards season, which revved into high gear last night with the 21st annual Ig Nobel awards. The ceremony, held once again at Harvard's Sanders Theater, played host to scientists, interested academics, Nobel laureates, mini-operas, past Ig Nobel recipients, paper airplanes, and this year's winners, whose research "makes people laugh, then think."

The Ig Nobels are run by The Annals of Improbable Research, a publication that highlights real research from around the world that might be overlooked, but that still has the potential to make people think. The journal is open access and published every other week. It's chock full of research from innumerable journals the world over, containing gems such as "Apples and Oranges -- A Comparison," "The Taxonomy of Barney," and "Does a cat always land on its feet?" Ig Nobel awards recognize the best of the funniest research, and they were handed out last night in ten categories ranging from literature to peace to public safety.

Science

First up was the physiology prize—a category that will also be awarded in the actual Nobel announcements next week. The Ig Nobel went to a team from the UK, Austria, and the Netherlands that found no evidence of contagious yawning in red-footed tortoise (PDF).

The Ig Nobel in biology went to a team of Australian researchers who discovered that a certain type of male Australian beetle (the buprestid beetle) would readily mate with a certain type of Australian beer bottle. (Turns out it has to do with the little grip-enhancing bumpies on the bottom of the bottle.)

Moving from animals to humans, the Ig Nobel award for psychology went to a researcher who wanted to understand the everyday meaning of why people sigh. According to his work, people perceive sighing as an indication that a person is sad, when in reality it just means the person has given up. His method of study: give the subject something so hard to do that they give up and sigh about it.

Rounding out the human-focused work was the Ig Nobel award for Medicine. It went to a pair of research teams which found that people make better decisions about some things, and worse decisions about other things, when they have a strong urge to urinate. As put succinctly by Peter Snyder, principal investigator from one of the teams, "When you gotta go, you gotta go!"

The Chemistry Ig Nobel went to a large team of Japanese researchers who all made the journey to Boston to accept their award in person. Their work? Determining the ideal concentration of airborne wasabi for use in a wasabi-based fire alarm. The alarm needs to wake you from a dead sleep, but not render you incapable of bugging out. (The idea actually has a US patent already.)

The Physics award went to a Dutch team that, while studying the mechanics of human balance, discovered why discus throwers become dizzy even as their track and field brethren, the hammer tossers, do not.

Rounding out the science awards, the Ig Nobel committee went outside the ivory tower of academia to recognize a select group of individuals: Dorothy Martin, Pat Robertson, Elizabeth Clare Prophet, Harold Camping (twice!), Lee Jang Rim, Shoko Asahara, and Credonia Mwerinde for all making failed predictions of the date for the end of the world. Their predictions "taught the world to be careful when making mathematical assumptions and calculations." Good advice for all.

Humanities

In the humanities, the Ig Nobel peace prize went to Arturas Zuokas, the mayor of Vilnius, Lithuania, for showing that the scourge of illegal parking by people who own luxury cars can be solved by the simple act of crushing the cars with a giant armored tank. (He was also there to collect the award, sans tank.)

The prize for public safety went to John Senders for his pioneering work on distractions while driving. Carried out in the 1960s, long before the days of talking or sexting while driving, Senders' research devised a visor (of the sort later worn by Luke Skywalker for his Jedi training) that would blind drivers for short periods of time at certain frequencies to see how well they could still carry out the task of driving. As Obi-Wan said, "your eyes can deceive you, don't trust them."

Finally, the prize for literature, which I must say hit close to home for me, went to John Perry of Stanford University for his Theory of Structured Procrastination. Perry postulates that, to be a high achiever, one must always work on something important, using it as a way to avoid something even more important. (Much as I am doing as I write this article; the bills that need to be paid can wait.)

A proud tradition

Each winner gave a brief acceptance speech. Their speeches were kept short thanks to Miss Sweetie Poo, the eight year old who makes her boredom and displeasure known to all when the speeches have gone on for too long. The original Miss Sweetie Poo is probably in her late 20s now, but the tradition continues. Only one team, the winners of the biology prize for beetle-beer-bottle coitus, thought far enough ahead to bring a grocery bag full of candy to shut the little girl up long enough so they could continue ramble on.

Along with the 24/7 lectures—where world leaders in scientific thought must describe their research in complete technical detail in 24 seconds, then describe it so anyone can understand it in seven words—there was a premiere of a new mini opera about coffee and chemistry, the win-a-date-with-a-Nobel-laureate contest, cameos from Nobel Laureates, and past Ig Nobel winners. The ceremony highlighted the fact that science can pull the meterstick (metric!) out of its backside and have fun for a night.

For those in the Boston area, a second part of the Ig Nobel tradition is that the winners give public lectures on their research the Saturday after the ceremony. This year's lectures will take place at MIT's Building 26, Room 100 at 1:00 PM on Saturday, October 1st. Admission is free, but seating is limited.