Ig Nobel awards presented at Harvard

CAMBRIDGE, Mass., Oct. 6 (UPI) -- A scientist who discovered why woodpeckers do not get headaches was among the honorees at the 2006 Ig Nobel Prize ceremony in Cambridge, Mass.

The 16th First Annual Ig Nobel Prize Ceremony, at Harvard's Sanders Theater, distributed prizes in the fields of ornithology, nutrition, peace, acoustics, mathematics, literature, medicine, physics, chemistry and biology.

Ivan Schwab, of the University of California Davis, and the deceased Philip May of the University of California Los Angeles, won the top ornithology prize for a paper explaining why woodpeckers never get headaches.

The top prize in nutrition went to Wasmia Al-Houty of Kuwait University and Faten Al-Mussalam of the Kuwait Environment Public Authority for research into the eating habits of dung beetles.

The peace prize was awarded to Howard Stapleton of Merthyr Tydfil, Wales, who invented a "teenager repellent" using sounds audible only to teenagers and not adults.

The mathematics award was given to Nic Svenson and Piers Barnes of the Australian Commonwealth Scientific and Research Organization, for conducting research into the number of photographs necessary to ensure that nobody in a group picture has their eyes closed.