Congratulations to Elena N. Bodnar, Raphael C. Lee, and Sandra Marijan of the University of Chicago for winning this year’s Ig Nobel Prize for Public Health. The group earned this significant honor for their invention of a bra which, as the Annals of Improbable Research committee puts it, “in an emergency, can be quickly converted into a pair of gas masks, one for the brassiere wearer and one to be given to some needy bystander.” (Please click here for a diagram of the device in action.) Truly an achievement for our time.

Previous South Side laureates include Jillian Clarke, then at the Chicago High School for Agricultural Sciences, for studying the effectiveness of the five-second rule.