The Japan Times reports:
Team behind wasabi smoke detector reveals their long road to triumph
By JUN HONGO, Staff writer
Genius, as Thomas Edison put it, may be 1 percent inspiration and 99 percent perspiration, but inventing the groundbreaking wasabi-scented smoke detector also involved respiration, and literally a lot of lost sleep, the winners of this year’s Ig Nobel Prize in chemistry revealed Wednesday in Tokyo.
“We’ve always wanted to contribute to the well-being of human lives through our research,” Hideki Tanemura, one of the directors of Tokyo-based Seems Inc., said during a news conference at the Japan National Press Center.
Tanemura, along with six other researchers, including Shiga University professor Makoto Imai, received the 21st annual Ig Nobel Prize for chemistry last month for his studies related to the invention of smoke detectors that emit a strong wasabi scent instead of an ear-piercing screech….