http://msnbc.msn.com/id/15147877/

Wacky Ig Nobel prizes celebrate the unusual
Research into stinky feet, inventor of teenager repellent win awards

By Mark Pratt
Updated: 8:55 p.m. ET Oct. 5, 2006

WASHINGTON - {AP} The sound sets teeth on edge, makes skin crawl and
sends a shiver down the spine. Just thinking about it gives some people
the heebie-jeebies.

But what is it about the sound of fingernails scratching on a blackboard
that elicits such a universal reaction?

Randolph Blake and two colleagues think they know — the sound's
frequency level.

Their research has earned them an Ig Nobel, the annual award given at
Harvard University by Annals of Improbable Research magazine for weird,
whacky and sometimes worthless scientific research.

This year's winners honored — or maybe dishonored — at a raucous
ceremony Thursday at Harvard's inappropriately opulent Sanders Theater
include a doctor who put his finger on a cure for hiccups; two men who
think there is something to the old adage that feet smell like cheese;
and researchers who discovered that dung beetles won't tuck in to just
any old pile of ... well, dung.

What started as a small event in 1991 to honor obscure and humorous
scientific achievements has grown into an international happening, with
some of this year's winners traveling from Australia, Kuwait and France.
The awards are given out by real Nobel laureates, including Harvard
physics professor Roy Glauber, who stays behind afterward to sweep up.

The nails on a blackboard research was part of a bigger, legitimate
project, said Blake, a Vanderbilt University psychology professor who
specializes in vision. He, along with Dr. D. Lynn Halpern and James
Hillenbrand, did the research two decades ago while at Northwestern
University.

Blake remembers some volunteers refusing to participate after learning
they'd have to endure the obnoxious screeching.

Howard Stapleton's research into noise has more practical applications.
He invented teenager repellant.

His device, called the Mosquito, emits a high frequency siren-like noise
that is painful to the ears of teens and those in their early 20s, but
inaudible to adults.

The invention grew out of his 15-year-old daughter's trip to the local
store last year to buy milk. She came back empty-handed, having been
intimidated by a group of teenage boys loitering outside the store.

Stapleton, who has sold and installed security systems for more than two
decades, thought back to when he was 12 years old and he visited his
father at work.

"I walked into this room with six people doing ultrasonic welding, and
immediately ran right back out again the noise was so painful,"
Stapleton said. "I asked an adult, 'What's that noise.' And he said,
'What noise?'"

Stapleton's company, Compound Security Systems of Merthyr Tydfil, Wales,
has sold hundreds of the units to retailers, local governments, police
departments and homeowners all over the United Kingdom. The company is
shipping its first Mosquito units for sale in the United States next
week.

"The success of this has knocked my socks off," Stapleton said.

Dr. Francis Fesmire said he wasn't sure whether he was honored or
embarrassed when he learned he'd won an Ig Nobel for his paper called —
ahem — "Termination of Intractable Hiccups with Digital Rectal Massage."

"I'm a serious guy, and something I wrote in 1987 is coming back to
haunt me," said Fesmire, an emergency physician and director of the
emergency heart center at Erlanger Medical Center in Chattanooga, Tenn.

Fesmire, who stresses he is a real doctor who "someday wishes to be
truly be remembered for my cardiac research," tried the technique for
the first and last time nearly 20 years ago.

He knew that the technique could be used to slow a rapid heartbeat by
stimulating the vagus nerve. The same nerve, when stimulated, can stop
hiccups.

"I saw this patient who couldn't stop his hiccups, I tried these other
maneuvers, and then I stuck my finger in his bottom," Fesmire said,
emphasizing that it was the treatment of last resort. "Will I ever do it
again? No!"

Dr. Ivan Schwab accepted his Ig Nobel for his work explaining why
woodpeckers don't get headaches. Schwab, an opthamologist, said his
writings are based on the research of deceased UCLA professor Phillip
R.A. May, who received an Ig Nobel posthumously.

"I had heard about the Igs and this sounded like too much fun to pass
up," said Schwab, who planned on dressing up as a woodpecker for the
ceremony. "I'm very proud to be part of it."

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