Even seemingly silly science can be useful — for example, it's good to know that if you're experiencing a raging nosebleed, shoving a slice of cured pork up your nose just might save your life. Or that it's normal to see the face of Jesus on a piece of toast. 
 
 Those published scientific findings, and many more, won the highest honors at the 24th annual Ig Nobel Prize ceremony, conducted at Harvard's Sanders Theater on Thursday. The Ig Nobels are traditionally given out during the buildup to the real Nobel Prize announcements, under the auspices of a humor magazine called the Annals of Improbable Research. 
 
 "Every winner has done something that first makes people laugh, and then makes them think," said Marc Abrahams, the magazine's editor and impresario for the event. 
 
 Some of the winners go on to win honest-to-goodness Nobels — such as the University of Manchester's Andrei Geim, who won an Ig Nobel for his work with levitating frogs and then shared the 2010 Nobel Prize for physics, thanks to his work with graphene. 
 
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 The winners of the Ig Nobel Prize for neuroscience may not get a Nobel for their research into what happens in the brains of people who see Jesus' face in toast. But the University of Toronto's Kang Lee, one of the laureates, said the study could provide those people with valuable reassurance. 
 
 "You're completely normal if you see non-existent faces in everyday objects," Lee told the crowd. 
 
 In fact, if you can't see patterns where they don't really exist, you may be lacking in the creativity department, Lee said. But he offered a remedy: "I just found out you can buy a Jesus-face toaster on eBay," he said. 
 
 In contrast, the pork-in-the-nose trick was truly a life-and-death matter. Physicians at Detroit Medical Center used strips of cured pork as a treatment of last resort when they treated a 4-year-old girl with an uncontrollable nosebleed. The girl had a rare genetic condition known as Glanzmann thrombasthena, which causes prolonged bleeding. 
 
 Cured pork has been used in the past as a folk remedy for nosebleeds. The physicians remembered that, and discovered that the remedy really, really worked, thanks to clotting factors in the pork as well as the salt's tendency to draw out fluids from the nose. 
 
 It's not the recommended therapy, but one of the winners of the Ig Nobel Prize for medicine, Sonal Saraiya, told The Associated Press that "we had to do some out-of-the-box thinking." 
 
 Thursday's ceremony had the usual Ig Nobel trappings, including the traditional throwing of paper airplanes and a "Win-a-Date-With-a-Nobel-Laureate" contest. (A rendezvous with 1986 chemistry laureate Dudley Herschbach was the prize.) In accordance with this year's food theme, the event featured a three-act mini-opera about faddish pill diets, titled "What's Eating You"; and a quickie talk by Rob Rhinehart, the inventor of Soylent instant all-in-one food. 
 
 Here's the full list of this year's Ig Nobel Prizes: 
 
 Physics: Kiyoshi Mabuchi, Kensei Tanaka, Daichi Uchijima and Rina Sakai, for measuring the amount of friction between a shoe and a banana skin, and between a banana skin and the floor, when a person steps on a banana skin that's on the floor. Scientific reference: Mabuchi et al. 
 
 Neuroscience: Jiangang Liu, Jun Li, Lu Feng, Ling Li, Jie Tian and Kang Lee, for trying to understand what happens in the brains of people who see the face of Jesus in a piece of toast. Scientific reference: Liu et al. In the news: "Why it's perfectly normal to see Jesus in toast." 
 
 Psychology: Peter K. Jonason, Amy Jones and Minna Lyons, for amassing evidence that people who habitually stay up late are, on average, more self-admiring, more manipulative and more psychopathic than people who habitually arise early in the morning. Scientific reference: Jonason et al. In the news: "Night owls are more likely to be jerks, new study suggests." 
 
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 Public health: Jaroslav Flegr, Jan Havlicek, Jitka Hanusova-Lindova, David Hanauer, Naren Ramakrishnan and Lisa Seyfried, for investigating whether it is mentally hazardous for a human being to own a cat. Scientific references: Fleger and Havlicek, Fleger et al., Hanauer et al. In the news: "Cat poop parasite controls minds early — and permanently, study finds." 
 
 Biology: Vlastimil Hart, Petra Novakova, Erich Pascal Malkemper, Sabine Begall, Vladimír Hanzal, Milos Jezek, Tomas Kusta, Veronika Nemcova, Jana Adamkova, Katerina Benediktova, Jaroslav Cerveny and Hynek Burda, for carefully documenting that when dogs defecate and urinate, they prefer to align their body axis with Earth's north-south geomagnetic field lines. Scientific reference: Hart et al. In the news: "Do dogs have a poop compass?" 
 
 Art: Marina de Tommaso, Michele Sardaro and Paolo Livrea, for measuring the relative pain people suffer while looking at an ugly painting, rather than a pretty painting, while being shot (in the hand) by a powerful laser beam. Scientific reference: de Tommaso et al. In the news: "Beautiful art eases pain." 
 
 Economics: ISTAT, the Italian government's National Institute of Statistics, for proudly taking the lead in fulfilling the European Union mandate for each country to increase the official size of its national economy by including revenues from prostitution, illegal drug sales, smuggling and other unlawful financial transactions. Reference: ISTAT website. 
 
 Medicine: Ian Humphreys, Sonal Saraiya, Walter Belenky and James Dworkin, for treating "uncontrollable" nosebleeds, using the method of nasal-packing-with-strips-of-cured-pork. Scientific reference: Humphreys et al. In the news: "Is bacon a cure-all for nosebleeds?" 
 
 Arctic science: Eigil Reimers and Sindre Eftestøl, for testing how reindeer react to seeing humans who are disguised as polar bears. Scientific reference: Reimers and Eftestol. 
 
 Nutrition: Raquel Rubio, Anna Jofré, Belén Martín, Teresa Aymerich and Margarita Garriga, for their study titled "Characterization of Lactic Acid Bacteria Isolated from Infant Faeces as Potential Probiotic Starter Cultures for Fermented Sausages." Scientific reference: Rubio et al. In the news: "Baby-poop bacteria help make healthy sausages." ||||| BOSTON (AP) — A Cornell University graduate student who allowed honeybees to sting him in 25 places and a group of scientists who concluded it's possible for one man to father 888 children are among the winners of this year's Ig Nobels, which honor humorous scientific achievement. 
 
 Gregory Weiss, of the University of California-Irvine, holds up two eggs in plastic bags while being honored during a performance at the Ig Nobel Prize ceremony at Harvard University, in Cambridge, Mass.,... (Associated Press) 
 
 While wearing a toilet seat on his head, David Hu accepts the Physics Prize, for his research on the principle that all mammals empty their bladders of urine in about 21 seconds, while being honored during... (Associated Press) 
 
 Audience members launch paper airplanes during a performance at the Ig Nobel Prize ceremony at Harvard University, in Cambridge, Mass., Thursday, Sept. 17, 2015. The Ig Nobel prize is an award handed... (Associated Press) 
 
 While wearing a toilet seat on his head, David Hu accepts the Physics Prize, for his research on the principle that mammals empty their bladders of urine in about 21 seconds, from Dudley Herschbach, right,... (Associated Press) 
 
 Nobel Laureates, from left, Dudley Herschbach, Eric Maskin and Carol Greider wear hologram viewing glasses during a performance at the Ig Nobel Prize ceremony at Harvard University, in Cambridge, Mass.,... (Associated Press) 
 
 Michael Smith, left, accepts his trophy from Dudley Herschbach, the 1986 Nobel Laureate in Chemistry, while being honored during a performance at the Ig Nobel Prize ceremony at Harvard University, in... (Associated Press) 
 
 Biologist Elisabeth Oberzaucher, of the University of Vienna, accepts the prize for mathematics while being honored during a performance at the Ig Nobel Prize ceremony at Harvard University, in Cambridge,... (Associated Press) 
 
 With a toilet plunger attached to the seat of his pants, Bruno Grossi, a researcher from Chile, shows how a chicken would walk like a dinosaur with a weighted stick attached to its tail, while being honored... (Associated Press) 
 
 The Ig Nobel trophy, made from an empty flower pot and letters from the element charts, is hoisted up during a performance at the Ig Nobel Prize ceremony at Harvard University, in Cambridge, Mass., Thursday,... (Associated Press) 
 
 Nobel Laureates Carol Greider, left, and Jack Szostak embrace an audience member, who won a double-date with the two Nobel winners, during a performance at the Ig Nobel Prize ceremony at Harvard University,... (Associated Press) 
 
 Michael Smith, a Cornell University graduate student who allowed himself to be stung about 200 times by bees to determine where you feel the most pain on the body from a sting, makes an acceptance speech... (Associated Press) 
 
 Michael Smith estimates he was stung about 200 times during his 2012 honeybee study. His conclusion: The three most painful places to get stung are the nostril, the upper lip and the male sex organ. 
 
 "A sting to the nostril is so painful it's like a whole body experience," he said. 
 
 Other winners being honored Thursday night at the 25th annual ceremony at Harvard University include a trio of linguists who discovered that almost every language in the world uses the word "huh" for clarification in a conversation and researchers who found that corporate CEOs take less professional risk if directly affected by natural disasters as children. 
 
 Real Nobel laureates hand out the prizes, and each winner receives a cash award: a Zimbabwean 10 trillion-dollar bill, the equivalent of a couple of U.S. dollars. 
 
 Smith shared the Ig Nobel for physiology and entomology with Justin Schmidt, an adjunct professor at the University of Arizona who devised a pain scale for insect stings. 
 
 His advice: Do not get stung by the tarantula hawk, a nasty looking wasp found in the Southwestern U.S. with a stinger about a quarter-inch long. 
 
 "The sting is entirely nontoxic but hurts like the bejesus," Schmidt said. 
 
 Mark Dingemanse and two colleagues at the Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics in Nijmegen, Netherlands, won the Ig Nobel for literature for determining that the word "huh" is used in languages around the world, including some of the most obscure. 
 
 "A system for fixing misunderstandings is clearly a crucial part of language," he said. "'Huh?' is one element of this system: It's the basic error signal people fall back on if all else fails." 
 
 Elisabeth Oberzaucher and a colleague at the University of Vienna in Austria won the mathematics prize for figuring out whether it was possible for Moroccan Emperor Moulay Ismael to have sired 888 children — and that's the conservative estimate. 
 
 Ismael fathered the children during a roughly 30-year reign that ended in 1727. It sounds exhausting, but the bottom line is, yes, it is possible to father that many children if he had sex daily. The study found that it could be done with as few as 65 women, not the 500 in his harem. 
 
 Raghu Rau, professor of finance at the University of Cambridge, and his colleagues won for their study that found business leaders more directly affected by natural disasters as children took less risk during their careers. 
 
 Rau uses Apple as an example. Late CEO Steve Jobs, who lived through a deadly landslide near his home in San Francisco as a child, ran the company conservatively. His successor, Tim Cook, witnessed few fatalities despite regular tornadoes while growing up in Alabama and has made more risky business decisions. 
 
 "Think of yourself as a member of a board of directors: When you try to hire a CEO, do you want a risk taker or not?" Rau said. 
 
 As usual, the winners were thrilled with the honor. 
 
 "Sometimes these crazy things provide a lot of insight," said Schmidt, the bug guy. 
 
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 Online: 
 
 Annals of Improbable Research magazine, http://www.improbable.com
– More than 1,000 people gathered at Harvard's Sanders Theatre yesterday to celebrate the 24th annual Ig Nobel Prize ceremony, which includes such traditions as throwing paper airplanes and seeing who wins a date with a Nobel laureate. But the real treat is the science itself—which, in addition to being funny or preposterous, can also be extremely useful; it's not unheard of for someone who wins an Ig Nobel to go on to win an actual Nobel Prize, reports NBC News. (There is, for instance, the University of Manchester's Andre Geim, who both claimed an Ig Nobel for studying levitating frogs and later a Nobel for physics due to his research on graphene.) Here's a quick list of some of the highlights from the 2014 Ig Nobel winners: The Physics prize goes to a team that measured the amount of friction between a shoe and a banana skin and then a banana skin and the floor, when a person steps on a banana skin that's on the floor. The Neuroscience prize goes to a team that attempted to dissect the inner workings of the brains of people who see Jesus in their toast. The Biology prize goes to a team that discovered when dogs poop and pee, they tend to align their body axis with Earth's north-south geomagnetic field lines. The Medicine prize goes to a team that was able to treat "uncontrollable" nosebleeds using strips of cured pork. The Arctic Science prize goes to a team that observed how reindeer behave upon seeing humans disguised as polar bears. (Check out last year's winners, which involved swallowing a parboiled dead shrew whole and outlining the best ways to surgically remove a penis as long as it hasn't been chomped by a duck.)