2008 Improbable Research Award Winners.

Full list here... http://improbable.com/ig/winners/

Some highlights

NUTRITION PRIZE. Massimiliano Zampini of the University of Trento, Italy and Charles Spence of Oxford University, UK, for electronically modifying the sound of a potato chip to make the person chewing the chip believe it to be crisper and fresher than it really is.


http://www3.interscience.wiley.com/journal/118784133/abstract?CRETRY=1&SRETRY=0

OF particular importance to Rachel and her sister:

ARCHAEOLOGY PRIZE. Astolfo G. Mello Araujo and José Carlos Marcelino of Universidade de São Paulo, Brazil, for measuring how the course of history, or at least the contents of an archaeological dig site, can be scrambled by the actions of a live armadillo.

http://www3.interscience.wiley.com/journal/104081908/abstract?CRETRY=1&SRETRY=0


MEDICINE PRIZE. Dan Ariely of Duke University (USA), Rebecca L. Waber of MIT (USA), Baba Shiv of Stanford University (USA), and Ziv Carmon of INSEAD (Singapore) for demonstrating that high-priced fake medicine is more effective than low-priced fake medicine..
http://jama.ama-assn.org/cgi/content/full/299/9/1016

PHYSICS PRIZE. Dorian Raymer of the Ocean Observatories Initiative at Scripps Institution of Oceanography, USA, and Douglas Smith of the University of California, San Diego, USA, for proving mathematically that heaps of string or hair or almost anything else will inevitably tangle themselves up in knots.

http://www.pnas.org/content/104/42/16432.abstract

And the most awesome one cause I love menstrual cycle work.

ECONOMICS PRIZE. Geoffrey Miller, Joshua Tybur and Brent Jordan of the University of New Mexico, USA, for discovering that professional lap dancers earn higher tips when they are ovulating.

http://www.sciencedirect.com/science?_ob=ArticleURL&_udi=B6T6H-4PS640T-4&_user=10&_rdoc=1&_fmt=&_orig=search&_sort=d&view=c&_acct=C000050221&_version=1&_urlVersion=0&_userid=10&md5=8ab256182d3cbfef93ca7b34b5116303