Dr. Elena Bodnar‘s 2009 Ig Nobel Prize-winning Emergency Bra may be the most spectacular and fashionable instance of brassiere design and protective-face-mask design intersecting. But it is not the first. The 3M company’s N95 mask grew from an-early-1960s bra-cup design by Sara Little Turnbull, according to reports (“How One Woman Inspired The Design For The […]
Tag: brassiere
Ten Years Ago and Again at AAAS: The Emergency Bra
Ten years ago, an emergency defense against airborne viruses (and much else) starred in the Improbable Research session at the Annual Meeting of the AAAS (Association for the Advancement of Science), held that year (2011) in Washington, DC. Johnathan Gitlin wrote about it—and took part in the event—for Ars Technica: At this point, forgetting the […]
Van Der Waals bra (new patent)
“[…] brassieres (primarily strapless brassieres and but also those with straps), dresses, swimsuits, socks, tops and other articles of clothing (or the like) have a tendency to fall down or off […]” – explains a new (Aug 2016) US patent. The novel methodology for holding them up makes use of intermolecular electrostatic attractive forces known […]
A logistical support bra for regulating eating behavior
BBC News reports “Microsoft working on a smart bra to measure mood.” The researchers, some of whom are at Microsoft Research, others at the University of Rochester, NY, USA and at the University of Southampton, UK, themselves report details in a paper: “Food and Mood: Just-in-Time Support for Emotional Eating,” Erin A. Carroll [pictured here], Mary Czerwinski, […]