Beetle Beer Bottle Sex and Full Bladders Win Ig Nobel Prize

The 2011 Ig Nobel prize for medicine has been won by Mirjam Tuk from the Netherlands and her colleagues who found that people have a tendency to make fewer impulsive decisions when they have the urge to urinate.

Their research demonstrated that people make better decisions about some kinds of things but worse decisions about other kinds of things when they have a strong urge to urinate.

The research was titled Inhibitory spillover: Increased Urination Urgency Facilitates Impulse Control in Unrelated Domains.

The award for Biology went to Darryl Gwynne and David Rentz for discovering that a certain kind of beetle mates with a certain kind of Australian beer bottle. Research was titled Beetles on the Bottle: Male Buprestids Mistake Stubbies for Females (Coleoptera).

The ceremony also recognized researchers from Japan who found the ideal density of airborne wasabi awakens sleeping people in case of a fire or other emergency and for applying this knowledge to invent the wasabi alarm. They won the Chemistry Prize.

Anna Wilkinson from the UK and her colleague won the Physiology Prize for their study No Evidence of Contagious Yawning in the Red-Footed Tortoise.

The Literature Prize went to John Perry of Stanford University, U.S., for his Theory of Structured Procrastination, which says, to be a high achiever, always work on something important, using it as a way to avoid doing something that's even more important.

Philippe Perrin of France and his colleagues won the Physics Prize for determining why discus throwers become dizzy, and hammer throwers don't.

Marc Abrahams, the editor of the Improbable Researchers' Annals of Improbable Research magazine, served as the emcee for the evening.

Improbable Research will host the Ig Informal Lectures Saturday at MIT.

Hosted by, Improbable Research, the Ig Nobel Prize Ceremony honors scientific research that makes people laugh and think, according to the Improbable Research Web site.