'Slipperiness of banana peels' study amongst winners of 2014 Ig Nobel Awards

The brains behind the most bizarre studies have been nominated for the 2014 Ig Nobel awards at Harvard University by the Annals of Improbable Research magazine.

The researchers who have been studying the slipperiness of banana peels have made it to the list in the Physics category, while those studying what happens in the brains of people who see human faces in a piece of toast and published their study "Seeing Jesus in Toast" were the winners in the Neuroscience category, the Huffington Post reported.

In the Public Health list, researchers investigating whether it is mentally hazardous to own a cat, and those carefully documenting that dogs align themselves with earth's magnetic field when defecating were also nominated in the Biology section.

The list also includes study measuring the relative pain people suffer while looking at an ugly painting, rather than a pretty painting, research into treating "uncontrollable" nosebleeds with strips of-cured pork, and the test into how reindeer react to humans disguised as polar bears.