Vanilla from Cow Dung

Mayu Yamamoto, a Japanese researcher has won Ig Nobel Prize for developing a method to extract vanillin from cow dung. Vanillin is the primary component of the extract of the vanilla bean, used in vanilla fragrance and flavoring.

Ig Nobel prize is a parody on the Nobel Prizes, where the prizes are given out for achievements that “first make people laugh, and then make them think.”