align="center">IgNobel prizes celebrate the unusual
align="center">
Scientists who pioneer research into why woodpeckers(1) do not get headaches and whether dung beetles(2) like their diet have at last been recognized for their work.
The IgNobel Prizes, intended as a tongue-in-cheek alternative to their official counterparts, were presented by genuine Nobel prizewinners in the US late on Thursday.
align="center">
"The prizes are intended to celebrate the unusual, honour the imaginative - and spur(3) people's interest in science, medicine and technology," said Marc Abrahams, editor of the science humour magazine Annals of Improbable Research, which sponsors the awards.
The winners were given one minute to deliver their acceptance speech, with the time limit strictly policed by an outspoken(4) eight-year-old girl.
The evening, despite attempts to curb(5) the tradition, involved members of the audience throwing paper aeroplanes at the stage while a Harvard professor, Roy Glauber, dutifully(6) swept up, as he has done for the last 10 years.
Glauber insisted on retaining his sweeping duties for the 16th annual ceremony this year, despite becoming a Nobel physics laureate(7) last year.
Three US scientists - Lynn Halpern, Randolph Blake and James Hillenbrand - were awarded the acoustics(8) prize for conducting experiments to learn why people dislike the sound of fingernails scraping on a blackboard.
The maths prize went to two researchers from Australia's Commonwealth Scientific and Research Organisation who worked out how many photos you need to take to ensure that nobody in a group photo has their eyes closed.
Physics laureates Basile Audoly and Sebastien Neukirch of Paris University were honoured for their insights into why dry spaghetti(9) tends to break into more than two pieces.
The results of study by the University of Valencia and the University of Illes Balears in Spain were not immediately clear, however, the judges deemed(10) their study "Ultrasonic(11) Velocity(12) in Cheddar Cheese as Affected by Temperature" worthy of the chemistry prize.
Also honoured for cheese research, Bart Knols from Wageningen Agricultural University in the Netherlands won the biology award for his part in research showing that female malaria(13) mosquito are equally attracted to limburger(14) cheese and human feet.