07 October 2007

Holy Vanillin!

In my family, we like to gather for brunch every Sunday and discuss the latest developments in dung research. As you can imagine, we were very excited over the latest news.

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.

Yamamoto says that widespread adoption of her method could help the environment because companies would make greater use of cow dung, which arguably contributes to global warming.

As a bonus prize, Toscanini’s Ice Cream in Cambridge, Massachusetts has invented a new flavor — Yum-A-Moto Vanilla Twist — to honor Yamamoto...

The annual Ig Nobel Prizes are meant to honor scientific achievements that “first make people laugh, and then make them think,” according to the founders...


And hopefully that stretch of I-65 between Lafayette and Chicago will smell better someday.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Dogs, rabbits, and God knows how many other animals love the all natural goodness of feces but for some reason, eating some artificial chemical slop seems more appetizing.