This year’s Ig Nobel Prize winners have been announced, and one of this year’s winners is a Japanese woman, Mayu Yamamoto, “who developed a way to extract a vanilla fragrance and flavor from cow dung“.

Or, officially -

CHEMISTRY: Mayu Yamamoto of the International Medical Center of Japan, for developing a way to extract vanillin — vanilla fragrance and flavoring — from cow dung.
REFERENCE: “Novel Production Method for Plant Polyphenol from Livestock Excrement Using Subcritical Water Reaction,” Mayu Yamamoto, International Medical Center of Japan.
WHO ATTENDED THE CEREMONY: Mayu Yamamoto
PRESS NOTE: Toscanini’s Ice Cream, the finest ice cream shop in Cambridge, Massachusetts, has created a new ice cream flavor in honor of Mayu Yamamoto. The flavor is called “Yum-a-Moto Vanilla Twist.”

Other winners included studies on hamster jetlag, the side-effects of sword swallowing, and fans of Dr Nakamats will be delighted that he scooped the Nutrition prize “for photographing and retrospectively analyzing every meal he has consumed during a period of 34 years (and counting).”