Gas Mask Bra Honoured With IgNobel Prize
The gas mask bra can be easily fitted to any passer-by.
Dr. Elena Bodnar triumphantly holds her winning bra aloft
http://www.metro.co.uk/weird/article.html?Gas_mask_bra_honoured_with_IgNobel_prize&in_article_id=747119&in_page_id=2
British researchers also win award for their work on giving cows names
By TOM PHILLIPS - Friday, October 2, 2009
Engineers who invented a bra that converts into a gas mask, pathologists who determined that beer bottles can crack your skull even when empty, and Irish police officers who mistakenly wrote speeding tickets to somebody called 'Driver's License' were all honoured for their dubious achievments at the IgNobel prizes on Thursday.
Prizes also went to Zimbabwe for issuing banknotes that range in value from one Zimbabwean cent to 100 trillion Zimbabwean dollars, to Mexican scientists who made diamonds out of tequila and to the directors, executives, and auditors of four Icelandic banks that suffered spectacular collapses.
The IgNobel prizes - a cheeky counterpoint to the Nobel prizes awarded every October - are given out by the Harvard-based magazine Annals of Improbable Research.
Gas mask bra iventor Elena Bodnar of Hinsdale, Illinois and her colleagues won the Public Health prize for their patented design: a bra that can be quickly converted into a pair of gas masks, one for the bra-wearer and one to be given to some needy bystander.
The UK's only representatives in the awards were a pair of researchers, Peter Rowlinson and colleague Catherine Douglas of the University of Newcastle, who found that dairy cows who are given names yield more milk than unnamed cows.