Assorted brasBras are an essential item of any woman's wardrobe. But in the event of a chemical attack, the option to convert one's bra into a gas mask would indeed be invaluable.

Which is why the designers of the above-mentioned item of clothing have won this year's Ig Nobel prize.

Set up to honour achievements that "first make people laugh and then make them think", the awards champion the bizarre and the bonkers in the world of research.

Dr Elena Bodnar won the public health prize for her gas mask bra, while the peace prize went to Swiss students, whose research determined whether it is better to be smashed over the head with a full bottle of beer or an empty one.

This year's ceremony saw only one UK winner. Catherine Douglas and Peter Rowlinson of Newcastle University made the astonishing discovery that cows with names produced more milk and were duly rewarded with the veterinary medicine prize.

Other winners included a group of Mexicans who succeeded in creating diamonds from tequila (chemistry) and the unfortunate Irish police service who wrote more than 50 traffic tickets to a frequently offending driver – Prawo Jazdy – meaning "Driving Licence" in Polish (literature).

But perhaps the most worthy winners were those in the fields of economics and mathematics.

The directors, executives and auditors of four Icelandic banks whom we must thank for the state of the national economy were awarded the economics prize and Gideon Gono, governor of Zimbabwe's Reserve Bank, received the honour of the mathematics prize for printing notes ranging from one cent to one hundred trillion dollars.

We don't think anyone would argue they were certainly deserved winners.