How do you wake a deaf person, especially if the building that they are in is on fire? You squirt a puff of wasabi at them, obviously. Seven Japanese researchers were awarded the Ig Nobel prize for chemistry in the 21st annual Ig Nobel awards, a spoof of the real Nobel awards, at Harvard University last night for their invention.

The researchers bravely determined the ideal concentration of airborne wasabi to awaken sleeping people in case of a fire or any other emergency.

The awards, which will be officially announced next week, honour achievements that “first make people laugh, and then make them think”.

The wasabi alarm team consisted of Makoto Imai, Naoki Urushihata, Hideki Tanemura, Yukinobu Tajima, Hideaki Goto, Koichiro Mizoguchi and Junichi Murakami and they were applauded for reaching the right consistency – not too strong and not too weak.

The Japanese condiment normally enjoyed with sushi, contains the active ingredient, allyl isothiocyanate, which acts as a nuisance to the nose, and was found to work pretty well even when someone was fast asleep.

Other categories for the awards ceremony included medicine, physiology, psychology, literature, biology, physics, peace and public safety.

Harold Camping was a joint winner in the mathematics category for incorrectly predicting the world would end on 6 September 1994, and again on 21 October 2011.

John Perry, a Stanford University attendee, won the literature prize for his Theory of Structured Procrastination, which states:

To be a high achiever, always work on something important, using it as a way to avoid doing something that’s even more important.

The editor of the “Annals of Improbable Research”, regular Guardian writer and founder of the prizes, Marc Abrahams, closed the ceremony rather fittingly:

If you didn’t win an Ig Nobel prize tonight, and especially if you did, better luck next year.

The wasabi fire alarm remains well received, however.

[Source: Mail&Guardian]