While according to studies done on pigs, the entire procedure was safe and caused no internal damage, I somehow wouldn't trust something as precious as my boobs to the Cup&Up. Line up for other procedures that worked in animals, but please just stick to wrapping bras around your breast. [Isreal21c via MedGadget]

This week, Gizmodo is exploring the enhanced human future in a segment we call This Cyborg Life. It's about what happens when we treat our body less as a sacred object and more as what it is: Nature's ultimate machine.

I just really need to know whether the voice over guy or the girl with the measuring tape are included with the purchase or sold separately.

The brassiere is one of the award-winning bits of science and invention from this year's quirky, eccentric and downright entertaining Ig Nobel Awards. These awards are, in the words of organizer Improbable Research, a celebration of achievements that "make people laugh and think." A laundry list of past "winners" from The National reads like this:

In 2001, the physics award was given to Dr. David Schmidt for his research into why shower curtains often to blow inwards. In 2005, a team from Keio University won for "training pigeons to discriminate between the paintings of Picasso and Monet."

Dr. Deborah Anderson, also a former winner, was on hand this year to remind everyone about the effectiveness of Coca-Cola as a spermicide. To conclude, she was allowed seven words to describe her area of expertise—contraception—in detail: "Male contraception. Sheath it or beat it."

Cranking It to 11—With Science!

This year at Harvard's Sanders Theater the awards show didn't let up, with the aforementioned brassiere winning in the Public Health category. Why public health? Well, aside from providing support, the bra doubles as a life-saving gas mask; one that could be handy should a biological attack strike somewhere soon, like the unmentionables department at Macy's.

I kid, but this brassiere seriously works. Those D cups are the brainchild of the voluptuous Dr. Elena Bodnar of Illinois (by way of the Ukraine, backside pictured, above); and Raphael Lee and Sandra Marijan, both of Chicago. Bodnar passed on giving a big speech, and instead gave the audience a live demo. Her "volunteers" were a handful of Nobel laureates assembled on the stage, including Krugman. By the end of the demo, she had removed multiple bra gas masks from under her shirt and no fewer than four Nobel laureates were protected from chemical attack thanks to a hot pink layer of satin.

Brilliant Insanity Ensues

The rest of the night was, sadly, light on gadgets, but it did manage to get this cynical blogger to laugh pretty consistently.

There was a four act banker's opera (left); there were impromptu science experiments; and there were two Mexicans who managed to create diamond film from tequila. There was a researcher from Kitasato University who reduced Japanese household waste by 90% thanks to bacteria found in panda shit.

Acceptance speeches were brief, and if they weren't, an eight-year-old girl was on hand to interrupt the winners and move things along. Benoit Mandelbrot, the man who invented fractals, gave a 60-second keynote, was interrupted by the girl, and then sat down to play poker. Onstage.

All told, the event was a trip, and I encourage any of my Boston brethren to see it at Harvard next year for their 20th anniversary. If you do, then you too will know exactly what 1,000 paper airplanes descending from the rafters to pelt the stage below looks like first hand.

Editors Note: The official Ig Nobel awards video goes live soon at Improbable TV. Check it out.

The garment's described objective is to allow marriage-minded women to essentially wear their ambitions, with a chest-mounted countdown clock (to what?) , pen and seal holster (for signing marriage contracts), and a ring receptacle that beeps "The Wedding March" when filled.

The whole assemblage looks like it would attract more unsolicited boob-touches than marriage proposals, but boob-touching is a known precursor to matrimony. Fact. In other news, somewhere in a quiet suburb of Tokyo, a retired feminism professor just swallowed a gun.

Since it's not currently up for sale, and because it's, well, patently ridiculous, the bra is a jokey publicity stunt more than anything else. But that didn't stop Japanese news outlets from covering it to death, as seen below. As the old saying goes, "If it bleeds involves semi-nude women, it leads." [Reuters via Japanprobe]

This DIY project involves sacrificing a musical toy and fitting its buttons within several layers of fabric and foam within a bra. (From our limited experience, the more layers of foam, the more striking the instruments become.) A battery around the bra's back clasp powers the speaker in the front.

Then, by poking at various spots on your partner's boobs, you can make beautiful music together. And don't let her complain about the noise. You're an artist. [Instructables via Slashgear]

The great thing about the Bra Dryer is how unambiguously designed it is. No one will have any doubts about what this thing is for when they find a pair of wire mesh breasts sitting in your laundry room. And I like to think that if you run out of Bras to dry, you can just use it as a boob-shaped heat fan.

One question: what if your boobs are bigger or smaller than the shapes of the dryer? Will that warp your delicates? Oh, the questions I have about this thing. [Bra Dryer via NotCot]

If ditching the bra and dropping the ambient temperature to a brisk 35 degrees hasn't done the trick, or if nature has simply not provided you with nipples that can protrude sensually from your otherwise PG business casual sweater, the Nipple Pheromone can level the playing field so you can compete with that new, hot cleavage chick from HR. After all, you are an educated, hard-working, handsome man. And dammit, you deserve that promotion. [Tokyo Times]

From what we can make of the photo, this four-wheeled "Bust Roller" promises either an increase in lift and size, or a that a high pressure system will pass across your bosom.

Either way, it sounds like an interesting proposition only because it involves breasts. I have the distinct feeling that this same gadget is sold as a mundane meat tenderizer elsewhere in the world—a task which it fulfills dutifully. [Tokyo Times]

The Magnetic CoreBra features a front clasp that closes not via standard hooks but magnetic clasps. To breach the bustier, one only needs gently yank each breast in an opposite direction, surely evoking a positive response from one's partner while dropping all fabric between you and holy boobage to the floor.

One catch: CoreBra technology is technically intended for special needs customers. And no, your "needs" are in no way special. [Corebra via Inventorspot]

Often times, these facilities account for 50% of the entire world's production of that particular product, a mind-blowing number by any account. If you ever wondered how the actual people who make these products live and work, check out the National Geographic feature. It's a nice contrast to see the beginning of the lifecycle of a gadget to contrast with the end of one we saw last week. [National Geographic via Boing Boing - Photo by Mark Leong]

The team, at Wollongong University in Australia, tested two women, one 36D, the other 38DD on a treadmill at two speeds: 4.3mph; and 6.2mph. Their studies found that it was the bra straps that took the brunt of the strain, putting pressure on the women's shoulders, and leading to numbness and tingling. The jiggling (technical term is, I believe, vertical breast displacement) was as much as 2.7 inches in the case of the larger woman.

"As breast mass increases," deduced the researchers, "breast bounce momentum also increases, placing large loads on the straps and, in turn, excessive pressure on the wearer's shoulders. Apart from strap-related pain, many females, particularly large-breasted women, are restricted from participating in physical activity due to exercise-induced breast pain."

The findings are due to be published in the latest Journal of Biomechanics later this week. [Daily Mail]

While we always thought you didn't need electronics to play games by touching each other, but in the interest of technological innovation, such things have been invented. With this far-fetched flight of fancy, there are two controllers involved: one mounted in a bra that you see in the picture here, and the other in a pair of boxer shorts. Of course the bra was intended for the women and the boxer shorts for the men, but being the pervs that we are, we figure they might be interchangeable according to which type of game you're playing. Each one has six sensors on board, some of them placed in much more intimate spots than others, and all controlling various parts of games.

The solar bikini is making an encore appearance from last year, and this year it has 1"x 4" photovoltaic film strips sewn together, pumping out 5 volts of juice into a (of course) female USB connection. We're not seeing a lot of difference between this one and last year's, but we do like this model a lot better, although we'd like to see a lot more of her. But this year there's also a solar speedo for guys in the show, and it's reported to have really, really voluminous surface area to soak up lots of energy. Real he-man stuff. [Siggraph Unravel]

Those brassieres have been around for a while, though, but the real eye-opener is the way the company demonstrates the characteristics of its products with its Bounce -O-Meter, a Flash app on its website. It lets you input a bra and cup size and then simulates what happens to those magnificent mamms under various exercise conditions, starting with naked breasts (NSFW), then a normal bra, and ultimately the Shock Absorber sports bra.

Take the jump for the Bounce-O-Meter:

Besides appealing to the prurient interest, it's an exceptionally well-done animation, demonstrating a real problem solved by a product that looks like it can get the job done. Even the A cups do a whole lot of bouncing around, graphically vouching for the gal who invented the brassiere almost a century ago, and the Shock Absorber creators who dramatically improved that invention. Yes, they certainly had better reasons than we do for studying breasts so carefully. – Charlie White

Bounce-O-Meter (NSFW) [Shock Absorber]

Product Page [Enlighted]

The line of underwear is created by French designer Sophie Young and her company she calls g=9.8, a nod to physicists who know that g=9.81m/s2 is the equation for gravitational acceleration. An added bonus is that you can buy these unmentionables guilt-free because they're made of wood, making them biodegradable. And now that we've seen this buxom and randy-looking model, we're now feeling some kind of gravitational acceleration, and are made out of wood, too. – Charlie White

g=9.8: Sexy Lingerie from Tree Pruning Scraps [treehugger]

We'd rather get up close and personal with that babe wearing the bra, lovely supermodel Karolina Kurvoka, than the absurd garment itself. But if you find yourself coming up short of cash for one of these bejeweled brassieres this Christmas, perhaps that $1.89 million solid gold bra would be more in your price range. – Charlie White

Like this bra? Snap it up for just $6.5M [USA Today, via BornRich]

It was originally a design project gone commercial. You can program the bra to flash any message you want, which is nice...erm.

Product Page [Enlightened via ShinyShiny]

Heated bra aims to save the world [BBC]