Mayu Yamamoto, a former researcher at the International Medical Center of Japan, has won this year's Ig Nobel Chemistry Prize for developing a method for extracting vanillin -- an ingredient in vanilla fragrance and flavoring -- from cow dung
As a bonus prize, Toscanini's Ice Cream in Cambridge, Massachusetts has invented a new flavor -- Yum-A-Moto Vanilla Twist -- to honor Yamamoto, and is offering a free public tasting to its customers on October 5.
annual Ig Nobel Prizes are meant to honor scientific achievements that "first make people laugh, and then make them think," according to the founders at science humor magazine Annals of Improbable Research.