http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2009/10/091002-ig-nobels-2009-winners.html
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Gas-Mask Bra
Elena Bodnar and colleagues won the Ig Nobel in public health for designing a fashionable bra that, in a matter of seconds, can be converted into a pair of emergency HEPA-filter gas masks.
"It only takes 25 seconds for any woman to use," she joked. "Five seconds to convert and wear her own mask, and 20 seconds to wonder who the lucky man is to wear the second mask."
During an onstage demonstration, those lucky men were Nobel laureates Paul Krugman, winner of the 2008 economics prize, and Wolfgang Ketterle, recipient of the 2001 prize in physics.
Despite the levity, the invention stemmed from a very serious situation—Bodnar's experiences as a young Ukrainian medical student helping victims of the 1986 Chernobyl disaster.
"I realized that just having a simple mask could reduce major contributions to internal radiation, like iodine-131," which caused significant damage to people who breathed in radioactive dust, Bodnar said. The brassiere, she added, could prove to be an important, always-available defense against all manner of disasters or terrorist attacks.
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Tequila Diamonds
Meanwhile, Miguel Apátiga and colleagues put alcohol to good use by creating diamonds from tequila, scoring themselves the 2009 Ig Nobel in chemistry.
"Tequila had the right composition of carbon, hydrogen, and oxygen to produce diamonds," explained Apátiga, of the Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México.
The process is inexpensive, and cheap tequila works just fine. But don't expect an 80-proof ring anytime soon: The technique produces microscopic diamond films for industrial applications such as optical instruments and electronics.
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