Dr. Bodnar demonstrates mask/bra on Nobel winner Wolfgang Ketterle
Designers of a bra that turns into gas masks and a team who found that named cows produce more milk were among the winners of the 2009 Ig Nobel prizes.
The aim of the awards is to honour achievements that “first make people laugh and then make them think”.
The peace prize went to a Swiss research team who determined whether it is better to be hit over the head with a full or empty bottle of beer.
The Ig Nobel Prizes were presented to the winners by genuine Nobel laureates.
Dr Elena Bodnar won the public health prize for the bra that, in an emergency, can be converted into two gas masks.
She demonstrated her invention and gave one to each of the Nobel laureates as a gift.
Past winners also returned to take part in the celebrations. They included Kees Moeliker, the discoverer of homosexual necrophilia in the mallard duck, and Dr Francis Fesmire, who devised the digital rectal massage as cure for intractable hiccups.
RTFA. My personal fave – because it involves computational analysis – the award to three American researchers for determining why pregnant women do not tip over.
