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Stanford Device Cools Body Inside Out
polished look 2 writes "This is a way cool invention: Those bright, eager scientists at Stanford invented a device that cools the body by drawing the blood to an extremity (such as the hand) and pulling the heat away it - thus the blood becomes cooler which is then re-circulated through the body. The net effect is that the entire body is cooled via this relativly small device."
So the diff is they use a gentle vacuum to draw the blood to the surface in the hand, only. Same concept, but with a little tech thrown in to make it work faster. Presumably there aren't any side-effects of tinkering with the blood-flow like that, like a permanent hickey over the entire hand.
Another side-note: apparently Stanford has already licensed the technology, "to AVAcore Technologies Inc., an Ann Arbor, Mich., firm that Grahn and Heller founded to develop the device for commercial application."
I wonder if they're planning on testing using some of the UMich sports teams here (I live in Ann Arbor)... Football especially is HUGE here -- the whole city practically shuts down on football Saturdays like today. The stadium has a greater capacity than the city population, and no parking, so as you can imagine it's chaos. I'm sure the Wolverines wouldn't mind the little boost during training that this might provide.
Living here in the Sonoran Desert of Arizona where temperatures are 100+ degress for 5-6 months of the year, I can some practical uses for something like this:
- Athletic departments of colleges, high schools, etc; every summer, especially when football programs start up, students are taken to the hospital due to heat exhaustion and heat stroke
- Emergency Medical Response teams
- Anywhere where workers are required to be outdoors during the heat of the day
On average, 29 people a year die of heatstroke in Arizona alone. (That doesn't include the illegal immigration deaths, of which were 172 documented so far in 2004, probably more all told.) Something like this could be very useful, commercially, it just depends on how practical and expensive it would be.
Sig cancelled due to lack of interest
Couldn't this be used to warm people rather than cool them, by replacing the cooling part with a heating part?
Linux Wireless Hardware in the UK
Yeah wow great science. When I was a kid I had horrendous headaches. So when I couldn't sleep it off or had too many pills that weren't working I....
Laid on the couch with an arm hanging off the side a and wrapped my hand in a cloth that also held ice cubes. It worked. Or I would freeze a compress and lay it on my head.
So instead of a 'subatmospheric pressure environment' I used gravity. And instead of using a special water pumping coil I used, a washcloth and ice. Sure there was bit of a mess, but that was fixed by a mixing bowl.
Last time I listen to anyone who says I'm not good enough for Stanford