Penguin Poo Paper Earns Ig Nobel

This was the 15th Ig Nobel Prize ceremony, and it was every bit as riotous as its predecessors. Hundreds of students fired paper airplanes toward the Sanders Theatre stage, where they landed at the feet of the real Nobel Laureates who were there to hand out the goofy awards.

There were 10 prizes this year: The Ig Nobel Prize in medicine went to Gregg Miller, inventor of Neuticles, artificial testicle replacements for neutered dogs and other animals, which come in different sizes and levels of firmness.

Another gross-out idea won this year's Ig Nobel Prize in fluid dynamics: Two European researchers calculated the pressure that builds up inside a penguin about to go potty, and reported their findings in a paper entitled "Pressures Produced When Penguins Pooh -- Calculations on Avian Defaecation" (.pdf).

The Ig Nobels, which are organized by the magazine Annals of Improbable Research, recognize the most bizarre and hilarious achievements in science and the arts. Annals editor Marc Abrahams says the Ig Nobels honor research that "first makes people laugh, then makes them think."