With too much time on his hands, Peter from Grey Lynn has not only opened the information booklet, but he has also done a deep dive (so you don't have to) into the lesser-known Auckland
Sideswipe: September 20: Highlights from your local body election booklet
![Ana Samways](https://s3.amazonaws.com/arc-authors/nzme/63c08bb6-77fe-46c1-831a-1f605b413cdd.png)
Ana Samways
Marlow Park, Dunedin.
Ig Noble Prize
The winners of this year's Ig Nobel Prizes, the annual celebration of weird and wonderful scientific research, include the sad state of affairs for male scorpions.
Doorknob efficiency. A Japanese team led by industrial design researcher Gen Matsuzaki won the engineering Ig Nobel for their study of the most efficient way to turn a doorknob. Matsuzaki, whose research found that the bigger the doorknob, the more fingers are needed to turn it, said he had been honoured for "focusing on a problem that no one cares about".
Two hearts beat as one. Eli ska Prochazkova, leader of a team that won the cardiology prize, says the heart rates of people on blind dates synchronised almost immediately if they were attracted to each other. "Within the first two seconds of the date, the participants made a very complex idea about the human sitting in front of them," she said.
Constipated scorpions. Brazilian researchers scored the biology Ig Nobel for their investigation of constipated scorpions. When scorpions detach their tails to avoid predators, they also lose their anuses, causing constipation that becomes fatal months later. They found that while there was no short-term decrease in running speed, male scorpions without tails slowed down over time, making it harder to find mates. "However, because death by constipation takes several months, males have a long time to find mates and reproduce," they wrote in their study.