Japanese researchers who worked out the best way to blow your nose and German scientists who found out why teenagers smell worse than young children have won prizes at this year's Ig Nobel awards, the spoof science prizes that reward research that first makes people laugh and then think.
The Ig Nobel prizes are handed out annually by the Annals of Improbable Research, a science humour magazine that says it celebrates the unusual and honours the imaginative. Genuine Nobel laureates present the awards each year, and winners are traditionally pelted with paper aeroplanes thrown by the audience once they collect their prize.
Best way to blow your nose
The Ig Nobel medicine prize went to a team from Wakayama Medical College in Japan for a study, published nearly 50 years ago, that measured the speed and amount of air expelled when people blew their noses forcefully. "The purpose of this paper is...to give good instructions to those who do not understand how to blow the nose," the researchers wrote. They concluded that a "big and long" blow clears nasal secretions better than a short, sharp puff. The prize was awarded posthumously to the study's lead author, Dr Tojuki Unno.
Why teenagers smell worse than young children
The olfaction prize was given to a group of German researchers who collected evidence that babies smell wonderful to their parents, but teenagers do not. Their study, published in 2017 in the journal Chemosensory Perception, asked 235 parents to rate the personal odour pleasantness of their children. It found that while young children were rated as smelling nice, that rating dropped sharply once the children reached puberty. "Our study suggests that perception of young children's personal odour as pleasant may contribute to bonding and thereby caretaking, which is needed to a lesser degree after puberty than before," the researchers wrote.
Peace prize for valuing vicious friends
The Ig Nobel peace prize went to scientists from Oklahoma State University who discovered that people value friends who are mean to those they dislike. "People sometimes prefer friends who are more vicious than prosocial, for instance to one's enemies," the team wrote in the journal Evolution and Human Behaviour.
The economics prize was awarded to researchers who found that upper class people are more likely to steal sweets meant for children. Their study left participants with a jar of candy labelled as being for youngsters, and found that higher class participants took more for themselves than lower class participants did.
Kissing, snakebites and cockroach milk
A study on the evolution of kissing, published earlier this year, won the biomechanics prize. It found evidence that ancient humans were locking lips with Neanderthals 50,000 years ago. The researchers were praised for devising a more precise definition of kissing, described in their paper as "non-agonistic interactions involving directed, intraspecific, oral-oral contact with some movement of the lips/mouthparts and no food transfer."
The biology prize went to researchers who gently stepped on various venomous snakes to find out what makes them want to bite.
The chemistry prize was awarded to a team that discovered milk proteins from cockroaches pack three times as much energy as milk proteins from cows.
And the technology prize recognised researchers who used 3D printing to recreate a mosquito's proboscis, the mouthpart the insect uses to suck blood.
Splash-free urinals and buried underpants
The physics prize was given for attempts to design a splash-free urinal. In 2022, a team from the University of Waterloo in Canada designed a device that promised zero splash-back regardless of where the user aimed.
The final award, the soil science prize, went to researchers from the University of Zurich who buried 1,000 identical pairs of underpants in more than 25 countries, then dug them up two months later to study how they had decomposed. The project was designed to assess the health of soil and the worms, insects and bacteria living in it. "We provided the citizen scientists with personalized feedback, including soil analysis results, interpretation tools, and tips for sustainable soil management," the team said. "Hopefully, the sensory experience of recovering a decomposed pair of underwear from their own land has inspired the participants to see soil as a living system and a vital resource and empowered them to serve as conscientious soil stewards."
