At the end of the awards program, the editor of The Annals -- Marc Abrahams -- offered condolences to those who were disappointed. “If you didn’t win an Ig Nobel prize this year, and especially if you did, better luck next year,” he said.

The prizes are:

PHYSIOLOGY: To Anna Wilkinson, Natalie Sebanz, Isabella Mandl and Ludwig Huber for finding no evidence of contagious yawning in the red-footed tortoise.

CHEMISTRY:  To Makoto Imai, Naoki Urushihata, Hideki Tanemura, Yukinobu Tajima, Hideaki Goto, Koichiro Mizoguchi and Junichi Murakami for determining the density of airborne wasabi (pungent horseradish) to awaken sleeping people in case of emergency and creating the Wasabi Alarm.

PSYCHOLOGY: To Karl Halvor Teigen For research into why in daily life people sigh. One experiment gave subjects puzzles they could not figure out. They gave up and sighed.