Every year, just after the esteemed Nobel prizes have been given out to honor people who have made the greatest contribution to humanity, there is another awards ceremony of a completely different kind. The Ig Nobel awards are given out to mark the most ridiculous acts of stupidity, and to award people for scientific research which should never be repeated, or which has little or no apparant value. The whole thing is comedy gold if you ask me, and this year is no different in highlighting some hilarious wierd news. No embellishment is needed to make this stuff funny, so without any further preamble here is a roundup of some of the best of this year's winners, starting with my personal favourite:

• Traffic police in Ireland found that the safety of their roads was being blighted by a one man crime wave. A Polish man named Prawo Jazdy had, according to their records, been clocking up traffic violations at an unprecendented and alarming rate across the whole country. Unable to find him in Ireland and not wanting to let the man get away with it they contacted their couterparts in Poland for more info. They were duly told the Prawo Jazdy simply means 'driving license' in Polish.
• A heart warming piece of research from Catherine Douglas and Peter Rowlinson of Newcastle University in England found that cows who are given names produce more milk than cows who are left nameless.
• A team from the University of Bern in switzerland got a prize for determining whether it is better to be hit on the head with an emtpy bottle of beer or a full one.
• Elena N. Bodnar, Raphael C. Lee, and Sandra Marijan of Chicago represented the US in this years list with the invention of a Bra that can be transformed into a pair of gas masks.
• Javier Morales, Miguel Apatiga and Victor M. Castano of Universidad Nacional Autonoma de Mexico came in with what I think is the most impressive achievement to make the list, after creating a film of diamond out of Tequila.

For a full list of this years winners, alongside list of awards for every year from 1991 take a look at the Ig Nobel prize wikipedia page.