8 October 2007: Cutting edge research

Scientists who investigate more obscure things rarely get a mention, but the now annual Ig-Nobel Awards have addressed that.

Notable research from this year's 17th Ig-Nobel Award ceremony include the team which discovered that Viagra also works on hamsters, a Spanish group who asked whether rats could tell the difference between Japanese and Dutch spoken backwards, and a study into how sheets wrinkle.

Winners receive a small trophy affixed with a chicken and an egg.

SaintFM is fascinated by the report of the Japanese researcher who demonstrated that it is possible to extract vanilla flavouring from cow dung; not to know how, but simply: why?