The 2004 Ig Nobel Prize Winners

This year's Ig Nobel Prizes were assigned yesterday evening:

- Steven Stack and James Gundlach (USA) got the Medicine award for their report "The Effect of Country Music on Suicide."

- Ramesh Balasubramaniam and Michael Turvey (USA) received the Physics prize for exploring and explaining the dynamics of hula-hooping.

- Jillian Clarke (USA) got the Public Health award for investigating the scientific validity of the Five-Second Rule about whether it's safe to eat food that's been dropped on the floor.

- The Coca-Cola Company of Great Britain won the Chemistry award for using advanced technology to convert liquid from the River Thames into Dasani, a transparent form of water, which for precautionary reasons has been made unavailable to consumers.

- Donald J. Smith and his father (USA) received the Engeneering award for patenting the combover , a method of styling hair to cover partial baldness using only the hair on a person's head.

- The Vatican won the Economics award for outsourcing prayers to India.

- Daisuke Inoue (Japan) got the Peace prize for inventing karaoke, thereby providing an entirely new way for people to learn to tolerate each other.

- Ben Wilson, Lawrence Dill (Canada), Robert Batty (Scotland), Magnus Whalberg (Denmark), and Hakan Westerberg (Sweden) were granted the Biology award for showing that herrings apparently communicate by farting.

Other winners.