Australian scientist Colin Raston wins Ig Nobel prize for ‘unboiling’ an egg

Among other honorees were a trio of linguists who discovered that almost every language in the world uses the word “huh” as a fallback and business researchers who determined that corporate executives take less professional risk if they had lived through natural disasters during childhood.

The 25th edition of the annual Igs was held at Harvard University on Thursday, organised by the humoristic science magazine Annals of Improbable Research.

The winners of the biology prize for example have seemingly caught the attention of most for their interesting discovery that when a weight is attached to the rear of a chicken, it will walk similar to how we believe dinosaurs did when they roamed the earth.

The paper “Walking Like Dinosaurs: Chickens with Artificial Tails Provide Clues about Non-Avian Therapod Locomotion” was published in the journal PLOS One. Now in its 25 year, the spoof Nobels do what all good satire should do: “make people laugh, and then think.” It turns out that all mammals over three kilograms (6.6 pounds) take 21 seconds, plus or minus 13 seconds, to empty their bladders, regardless of overall body size.

Schmidt is the inventor of the Schmidt Sting Pain Index, which rates the relative pain people feel when stung by different insects – and then Smith used this index to look into which parts of the body experience the most pain when stung by a honey bee.

Fortunately, it was all worth it, for it earnt him an Ig Nobel prize for physiology and entomology, according to a report in The Mirror.

Professor Nick Enfield of the University of Sydney has won an Ig Nobel Prize for breakthrough research in linguistics that found evidence of a universal trait in human conversation.

His conclusion the most painful places to be stung are the nostril, the upper lip and the shaft of the penis.

The scientists and inventors who win the award achieve tremendous fame, often at the expense of their own comfort, sanity… and dignity.

And finally, the Economics Prize was awarded to the Bangkok Metropolitan Police for offering to pay policeman extra cash if they refused to take bribes.

And what you don’t expect can be a powerful force for not only entertaining science, but also for the boundary-pushing science we call innovation.

Scientists from Japan and Slovakia received the Ig Nobel prize for medicine after studying biological effects of intense kissing and discovering that a long kissing session can decrease skin allergies. Another victor was a pair of German and Austrian mathematicians named Elisabeth Oberzaucher and Karl Grammer who investigated if the 17th century Moroccan king Moulay Ismail the Bloodthirsty could have fathered 600 children as the legend goes.

Among them was Diallah Karim, a Canadian who worked with a team of doctors in the U.K.to develop one of the latest techniques for diagnosing appendicitis: driving over speed bumps.