Studies of Cockroach Milk, 'Necroprinting' Win Ig Nobels

Ten research teams were honored Thursday at a satirical science awards ceremony that was hosted outside the US for the first time due to travel concerns. Researchers who studied milk from cockroaches and analyzed soil health using underwear received Ig Nobel prizes celebrating unusual and imaginative contributions to science, the AP reports. The awards, organized by the Annals of Improbable Research magazine, shifted to Europe after 35 years in the United States over concerns about attendees being able to get visas. "During the past year, it has become unsafe for our guests to visit the country," Marc Abrahams, master of ceremonies and editor of the magazine, said in March.

At a convention center in Zurich, Switzerland, research teams received a custom trophy resembling a cross between a mushroom and a human foot. Among them were Matilda Brindle and Stuart West from the University of Oxford and the Florida Institute of Technology's Catherine F. Talbot, who reconstructed the evolutionary history of kissing, and the late Dr. Tokuji Unno, who investigated the science of blowing one's nose.

• Another research team buried 1,000 pairs of underwear in more than 25 countries to study how critters in the soil helped them decompose.
• The Economics Prize went to a team that determined that upper-class people are more likely to break the law while driving—and to engage in other unethical behavior, including taking children's candy.
• A Canadian team that won the Physics Prize for their efforts to design a splash-free urinal showed up at the ceremony in bright yellow raincoats, though they stressed that nobody was splashed with urine during their research, the CBC reports.
• The Peace Prize went to a team that documented how people "value friends who are vicious to people we dislike."
• The Technology Prize was awarded to researchers for "pioneering the use of mosquito proboscises as high-resolution 3D printing nozzles," a process they called "Necroprinting."
• Click for a full list of winners, including the Chemistry Prize team, which discovered that "milk proteins from vivaparous cockroaches packs three times as much energy as milk proteins from cows."

As per tradition, audience members fashioned paper airplanes and hurled them toward the stage to kick off the show. For future ceremonies, organizers plan to alternate between Zurich and other European countries. The 2027 ceremony will be held in the Belgian city of Antwerp. Previous iterations took place at Harvard University, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and Boston University, but there are no immediate plans to return to the US. "In many places, and especially in the US, science is being attacked in very fraudulent ways and for fraudulent purposes," Abrahams recently told Chemistry World. "Anything that, even in small ways, is getting people interested in science is extremely helpful."