Reinventing the wheel: You'd think the existing design pretty much had it licked, but apparently not.

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SYDNEY: Strange things are done in the name of research and the more memorable are commemorated by the Ig Nobel prizes, brainchild of the Annals of Improbable Research magazine, which aims to honour achievements that make people laugh and then think.

Handed out by genuine Nobel-laureates at a Harvard University ceremony, the Ig Nobels have been described by Nature as coming with little cash, but much cachet. Here's a few of the most thought-provoking.

RODENT JETSETTERS: How does a hamster feel when you simulate jetlag? Peppier after a shot of Viagra, according to the recipients of the 2007 Ig Nobel prize in aviation, led by Diego Golombek from the National University of Quilmes in Argentina. The results, published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, suggest that the erectile dysfunction treatment may be useful in beating jetlag caused by eastbound flights.

SURPRISING FLAVOUR: Vanilla can come from the most unlikely of sources. Mayu Yamamoto, of the International Medical Center in Tokyo, Japan, won 2007's Ig Nobel prize for chemistry for developing a way to extract vanillin from cow faeces. Why cow dung? It's cheaper than growing vanilla beans, yet produces the same delicious flavour after treatment by heat and pressure. It also encourages recycling.

FLAT BEER: How many mathematicians do you need to watch beer go flat? Just the one. And if you are Arnd Leike of the Ludwig Maximilian University in Munich, Germany, the observation will lead to a proof that beer froth obeys the law of exponential decay. That is, it settles slowly at first, then more rapidly as a function of the initial amount of froth and time. Other physical processes that obey the law include the radioactive decay of certain elements and unchecked population growth. Published in the European Journal of Physics, the study netted the 2002 Ig Nobel in physics.

REINVENTING THE WHEEL: Australian John Keogh, of Dandenong, Victoria, applied for a patent on the wheel in 2001; the Australian patent office, IP Australia, granted him Innovation Patent #2001100012. Keogh's 'circular transportation facilitation device' is described as having a "wide applicability in the transport of goods and persons from one point to another", particularly with further refinements, such as a rubber tire and inflatable tube. Keogh and IP Australia were jointly awarded the 2001 technology Ig Nobel for this novel contraption.

I REALLY, REALLY LOVE YOU: It might be roses and moonlight to you, but to your friends, obsession with your new love may seem more like a disease. The finding that romantic love is biochemically indistinguishable from having severe obsessive-compulsive disorder, published in Psychological Medicine, won psychiatrists led by Donatella Marazziti of the University of Pisa, Italy, the Ig Nobel prize for chemistry in 2000.

MURPHY'S TOAST: Does toast more often land buttered-side down? Are there more odd socks than pairs in our drawers? And will a hosepipe left on its own spontaneously acquire a knot? These illustrations of Murphy's Law – 'if anything can go wrong, it will' – were examined by physicist Robert Matthews of Aston University, England, winning him the 1996 Ig Nobel for physics. The study concluded that toast lands buttered-side down more often, because it flips as it drops off a table.

SMELLY FEET: It might be sweat and bacteria, but the main factor in how bad your feet smell is how you feel about them, according to scientists led by F. Kanda of the Shiseido Research Centre in Yokohama, Japan. The research, published in the British Journal of Dermatology concludes that people who think they have foot odor do, and those who don't, don't, gaining the researchers 1992's Ig Nobel prize in medicine.

HAPPY CLAMS: From excited hamsters to chilled-out clams; the 1998 Ig Nobel for biology was awarded to Peter Fong and his team of biologists at Gettysburg College, Pennsylvania, for contributing to the happiness of clams by giving them Prozac. The research, published in the Journal of Experimental Zoology looked at how the antidepressant's active ingredient causes clams to lay spawn.