Bra-cum-gas mask inventor, panda poop researcher among 2009 Ig Nobel award winners

The winners were honoured Thursday at Harvard University's Sanders Theatre at the annual tribute to scientific research that "first make people laugh and then make them think."

The 19th annual event with the theme "Risk," sponsored by the Harvard-based scientific humour journal Annals of Improbable Research, featured real Nobel laureates handing out the prizes.

While a 15-minute risk cabaret concert by the Penny-Wise Guys preceded the ceremony, during which the band paid special tribute to fraudster Bernie Madoff, the recipients were allowed no more than 60 seconds to deliver their acceptance speech, a time limit enforced by an eight-year-old girl.

However, for many of the winners, their research meant serious business, they said.

For instance, Dr. Elena Bodnar who invented a bra that converts into a pair of gas masks — one for the wearer, the other for a friend, feels that her invention has serious and practical value.

Bodnar, a Ukraine native who now lives in Chicago, started her medical career studying the effects of the 1986 Chernobyl nuclear plant disaster and she realized that if people had had cheap, readily available gas masks in the first hours after the disaster they could have avoided breathing in Iodine-131, which causes radiation sickness.

According to Bodnar, her bra-turned-gas masks could have also been useful during the 9/11 terrorist attacks, and for women caught outside during the dust storms that recently enveloped Sydney.

"You have to be prepared all the time, at any place, at any moment, and practically every woman wears a bra," she said, noting that a bra cup, no matter what size, is the perfect shape to fit over the human mouth and nose.

Her patented devices also look pretty, no different from a conventional bra, she added.