Dr. Elena Bodnar, winner of the Ig Nobel Public Health Prize, displays a bra she designed that converts into a pair of gas masks, during the Ig Nobel awards ceremony last week. Click on the photo to read Chuck's rundown on these amazing, life-saving B cups. (AP Photo/Steven Senne)

As you might have noticed, a few of us here at HowStuffWorks.com devoted a little blog time this week to run down this year’s Ig Nobel Prizes, the absurdest cousin of the more prestigious awards. Barack Obama may have just made the headlines winning the Nobel Peace Prize, but the Ig Nobel honors in this category went to some Swiss scientists who studied the effects of beer bottle smashes on the human cranium.

Below you’ll find the links to the rest of the Ig Nobel blog entries from Josh, Chuck, Allison, Sarah and myself. But first, I thought I’d run through the two remaining winners.

Panda Poop: Yes, the Ig Nobel Prize in biology went to a 2001 study published in the Journal of Bioscience and Bioengineering titled “Microbial Treatment of Kitchen Refuse With Enzyme-Producing Thermophilic Bacteria From Giant Panda Feces.” The team of researchers from Japan’s Kitasato University demonstrated that bacteria extracted from giant panda droppings can reduce kitchen refuse by 90 percent. Hey, it’s nice to see these animals are useful for something other than amusing YouTube videos and drumming up lines at the zoo.

Economy Wrecking: This pick is decidedly less fun than the rest of the winners, but certainly topical. The Ig Nobel committee recognized the management and auditors of four Icelandic banks for experimentally demonstrating “that tiny banks can be rapidly transformed into huge banks, and vice versa, and for demonstrating that similar things can be done to an entire national economy.”

The Ig Nobel prizes regularly demonstrate something very important: It’s OK to laugh at science — it’s even OK for scientists to take it all in stride and inject a little fun into everything.

Explore the Igs at HowStuffWorks.com:
How do the Ig Nobel Prizes work?
Stuff You Should Know: What is an Ig Nobel Prize?
How Banks Work
Why don’t pandas hibernate?

More Ig Nobel Prizes on the blogs:
Josh Clark on Prawo Jazdy and the state of math in Zimbabwe
Sarah Dowdey on the advantages of naming dairy cows
Allison Loudermilk on why pregnant ladies walk funny
Chuck Bryant on knuckle cracking and gas mask bras
Robert Lamb on bar fights and tequila diamonds