7 ms·

How a cooling vest invented by a furry made it's way into the US military (2019)

jl6 4y ago
Makes me wonder if there is any possibility we could build a portable vest-mounted air conditioner that circulates cooled air around/within clothing, while venting hot air through a rear exhaust.
- adrianN 4y ago
  Building that shouldn't be too difficult, but powering it for reasonable periods would probably be difficult and noise might be a problem for cosplaying applications.
- noughtme 4y ago
  An actual air conditioner would be heavy, you can get a fan jacket: https://www.makitatools.com/products/details/DFJ201ZS https://www.makitatools.com/products/details/DFJ201ZS Liquid and air cooled suits are common in auto racing.
  - iancmceachern 4y ago
    Yeah, in racing they have vests with tubes sewn into them and they circulate cooled water though them. They also have blowers that blow cooler cleaner air directly into the helmet, you can buy special helmets with the air intakes built right in.
- michaelt 4y ago
  I've certainly seen people in costumes with 80mm PC case fans blowing out the back, to provide some air circulation. So circulating and venting ambient air isn't unusual. And there are vests that circulate chilled water [1] for military and astronaut use - although the military one linked puts the chiller in a vehicle and each passenger plugs themselves into it. For portable use I suppose the question is whether a battery-powered cooler provides more cooling than the same weight in ice packs. [1] https://www.med-eng.com/product/cooling-vest/ https://www.med-eng.com/product/cooling-vest/
- nigerian1981 4y ago
  A bigger version of this fan for dogs maybe? [1] [1] https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/aug/02/wearable-fans-help-japans-hot-dogs-beat-the-heat https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/aug/02/wearable-fans-...
- Tade0 4y ago
  I would rather have something that lets me inhale cold, dense air. I ran the numbers and at 45°C(113°F) the oxygen content by volume is so low in comparison to room temperature that it actually approaches the level at which the air is considered "oxygen deficient". Of course you'll get the same effect at higher altitudes, but the difference is that you can acclimatize to them in a matter of days, whereas daily temperature changes are to high to enable the same in response to them. I'm no expert, but considering that the body has to work harder to cool off during heat waves the effect could be non-negligible.
- _tom_ 4y ago
  Inflatable costumes are common now. They have the advantage of being lighter than a lot of other approaches, and they are filled by a constantly running fan, so they are much more plea to to wear. It's a bit like the "dancing man" inflatable you see outside of car dealerships. It's not airtight, but the fan keeps air coming in at the rate it flows out.
0dayz 4y ago
This i think is the primary reason why the very cliché phrase: "diversity is our strength", does have some validity. It gives us the most optimal way to find new ways of solving/improving certain aspects of a problem/product because said problem/product is put in a new unique environment to be tested.
- rafale 4y ago
  Real diversity. Based on each individual's strengths and experience, not characterized by broad traits like skin color and gender.
  - paskozdilar 4y ago
    How would you define "real diversity", as opposed to "fake diversity"?
    - meowkit 4y ago
      With the following context: "Diversity" as a variable input to some bodies ability to problem solve. "Real" diversity are the dimensions that can vary and affect the above context. Different mental models/modes + patterns of human thought can be used to tackle problems in >diverse< and potentially unique ways. "Fake" diversity are the dimensions that can vary and not affect the above context. Superficial characteristics of a human person will not affect problem solving. "Fake" diversity can be used as a statistical measure for "real" diversity. A man and a women likely have different life experiences, resulting in different mental models ("real" diversity). A black person and a white person will likely have different life experiences, resulting in different mental models. Where this all goes awry is when you optimize for superficial diversity. You end up selecting against diversity of thought/character/non-superficial things over time. This sentence is based on conclusions around game theoretic optimization drawn from SSC Meditations on Moloch (https://slatestarcodex.com/2014/07/30/meditations-on-moloch/ https://slatestarcodex.com/2014/07/30/meditations-on-moloch/).
      - paskozdilar 4y ago
hbossy 4y ago
I wonder how we went all the way back to every solider wearing plate armor like it's 1500 again.
- Freak_NL 4y ago
  Unless you were of noble blood, your chances of having plate armour on the battlefield in 1500 CE were probably pretty low. The comparison does point out the why though. Trained soldiers are an expensive resource, so protecting that investment makes sense. In a medieval battles you would supplement your expensive knights, trained cavalry, and other glorious actors on the battlefield with a common, cheap, and quite disposable resource: peons — commoners pressed into battle with a pointy stick (spear) and little in the way of armour, or, 'meat shields' — to line up and point in roughly the right direction. Nowadays that approach wouldn't do well for morale and popularity, so every soldier gets armoured up.
- idontwantthis 4y ago
  Because it works again. Soldiers largely didn’t wear armor for 300 years because there was no material light enough to carry all day and strong enough to stop bullets. Now there are several.
hereforphone 4y ago
"The Daily Beast"
jwilk 4y ago
(2019)
raverbashing 4y ago
"made its way" - like it's in the title of TFA
orzig 4y ago
Zooming way out, it’s an interesting case study in innovation. The military must be the largest and longest tightly-controlled organization of humans in the US. They certainly have spent time thinking about this issue. But the marketplace (both “of ideas” and literal profit-driven) is even bigger, and found the better solution. I wonder if the military, and other large innovation-seeking organizations, could give members a “Desk Budget” which is carefully tracked as “voting with your dollars” and eventually bring some of the popular items into standard issue through central procurement. Basically crowdsourcing the constant scan for market innovation.
TheChaplain 4y ago
The article must have drawn out the a-holes, twitter-links are all gone or restricted. And the article linked to the dudes Twitter despite him asking to be anonymous due to online threats. muppets...
- blueflow 4y ago
  - brailsafe 4y ago
    Guess you'll want to post this on every article mentioning a product then, because in case you didn't notice, society is hedonism. I understand that you don't care for furries, but maybe don't click on it next time if you don't want to know about them. > Not saying the hate is justified, but some things should better not be normalized. You're implying the hate is justified, otherwise you wouldn't have defended it.
    - blueflow 4y ago
      I said, it should not me normalized. Thats it. > I understand that you don't care for furries I was one of them. Feline. Yiff inclusive. It was a phase, i grew out of it. This is what furrydom should be treated like: a phase young people go trough. If you misconstruct that as hateful, i think this should be your problem. Feel invited to change my mind instead of insulting me.
      - emptyparadise 4y ago
        just be a kitty cat in your free time you don't have to make it about sex
        blueflow 4y ago
        Yeah, it resulted in gay people becoming more interested in me than i liked.
its_Caffeine 4y ago
Companies and even the US military are starting to wake up to the fact that they miss out on a lot of high quality talent by rejecting employees based on traits like their appearance, sexuality or even their lifestyle in this case. At the end of the day companies just want to know whether you can perform the job they are asking for. If yes, then there shouldn’t be any issue.
spoonjim 4y ago
Did anyone else get the sense that this felt a lot like GPT-3 generated text?
- yodon 4y ago
  Please don't cast unsupported GPT-3 aspersions on articles, particularly when the article pre-dates the invention of GPT-3.
  - spoonjim 4y ago
    It’s just written like… someone was a little drunk or very tired when writing it.
Lio 4y ago
The article didn't seem to include much technical detail on how this works but I was hoping it would be closer to the Stanford research on effective body cooling[1] that was around 10 years ago and less just a vest holding frozen packs. From what I remember most traditional body cooling gel based vests have the problem of causing blood capillaries in the skin to close down. That stops the body from transporting warm blood from the core to the surface where sweat is used to cool it. To put it another way, they are too cold to really help with cooling. They idea behind the vacuum glove was that there are certain areas of the body with more capillaries and if you can keep blood flowing to them by not going too cold (say constant 12C) and by using a mild vacuum to draw blood to them you have a much better way to cool the body. I'm guessing that's much harder to work with than a simple vest holding gel packs. Seems a shame though that we don't have anything more effective right now. My own personal usecase would be better cooling than "loads of fans" when riding indoors on Zwift. The cooling vests I've tried so far weirdly just make you feel cold and hot at the same time. 1. https://news.stanford.edu/pr/2012/pr-cooling-glove-research-082912.html https://news.stanford.edu/pr/2012/pr-cooling-glove-research-...
mrlonglong 4y ago
Furries. You gotta love 'em.

jl6 4y ago

Makes me wonder if there is any possibility we could build a portable vest-mounted air conditioner that circulates cooled air around/within clothing, while venting hot air through a rear exhaust.

adrianN 4y ago
Building that shouldn't be too difficult, but powering it for reasonable periods would probably be difficult and noise might be a problem for cosplaying applications.
noughtme 4y ago
An actual air conditioner would be heavy, you can get a fan jacket: https://www.makitatools.com/products/details/DFJ201ZS https://www.makitatools.com/products/details/DFJ201ZS Liquid and air cooled suits are common in auto racing.
- iancmceachern 4y ago
  Yeah, in racing they have vests with tubes sewn into them and they circulate cooled water though them. They also have blowers that blow cooler cleaner air directly into the helmet, you can buy special helmets with the air intakes built right in.
michaelt 4y ago
I've certainly seen people in costumes with 80mm PC case fans blowing out the back, to provide some air circulation. So circulating and venting ambient air isn't unusual. And there are vests that circulate chilled water [1] for military and astronaut use - although the military one linked puts the chiller in a vehicle and each passenger plugs themselves into it. For portable use I suppose the question is whether a battery-powered cooler provides more cooling than the same weight in ice packs. [1] https://www.med-eng.com/product/cooling-vest/ https://www.med-eng.com/product/cooling-vest/
nigerian1981 4y ago
A bigger version of this fan for dogs maybe? [1] [1] https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/aug/02/wearable-fans-help-japans-hot-dogs-beat-the-heat https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/aug/02/wearable-fans-...
Tade0 4y ago
I would rather have something that lets me inhale cold, dense air. I ran the numbers and at 45°C(113°F) the oxygen content by volume is so low in comparison to room temperature that it actually approaches the level at which the air is considered "oxygen deficient". Of course you'll get the same effect at higher altitudes, but the difference is that you can acclimatize to them in a matter of days, whereas daily temperature changes are to high to enable the same in response to them. I'm no expert, but considering that the body has to work harder to cool off during heat waves the effect could be non-negligible.
_tom_ 4y ago
Inflatable costumes are common now. They have the advantage of being lighter than a lot of other approaches, and they are filled by a constantly running fan, so they are much more plea to to wear. It's a bit like the "dancing man" inflatable you see outside of car dealerships. It's not airtight, but the fan keeps air coming in at the rate it flows out.

0dayz 4y ago

This i think is the primary reason why the very cliché phrase: "diversity is our strength", does have some validity. It gives us the most optimal way to find new ways of solving/improving certain aspects of a problem/product because said problem/product is put in a new unique environment to be tested.

rafale 4y ago
Real diversity. Based on each individual's strengths and experience, not characterized by broad traits like skin color and gender.
- paskozdilar 4y ago
  How would you define "real diversity", as opposed to "fake diversity"?
  - meowkit 4y ago
    With the following context: "Diversity" as a variable input to some bodies ability to problem solve. "Real" diversity are the dimensions that can vary and affect the above context. Different mental models/modes + patterns of human thought can be used to tackle problems in >diverse< and potentially unique ways. "Fake" diversity are the dimensions that can vary and not affect the above context. Superficial characteristics of a human person will not affect problem solving. "Fake" diversity can be used as a statistical measure for "real" diversity. A man and a women likely have different life experiences, resulting in different mental models ("real" diversity). A black person and a white person will likely have different life experiences, resulting in different mental models. Where this all goes awry is when you optimize for superficial diversity. You end up selecting against diversity of thought/character/non-superficial things over time. This sentence is based on conclusions around game theoretic optimization drawn from SSC Meditations on Moloch (https://slatestarcodex.com/2014/07/30/meditations-on-moloch/ https://slatestarcodex.com/2014/07/30/meditations-on-moloch/).
    - paskozdilar 4y ago

hbossy 4y ago

I wonder how we went all the way back to every solider wearing plate armor like it's 1500 again.

Freak_NL 4y ago
Unless you were of noble blood, your chances of having plate armour on the battlefield in 1500 CE were probably pretty low. The comparison does point out the why though. Trained soldiers are an expensive resource, so protecting that investment makes sense. In a medieval battles you would supplement your expensive knights, trained cavalry, and other glorious actors on the battlefield with a common, cheap, and quite disposable resource: peons — commoners pressed into battle with a pointy stick (spear) and little in the way of armour, or, 'meat shields' — to line up and point in roughly the right direction. Nowadays that approach wouldn't do well for morale and popularity, so every soldier gets armoured up.
idontwantthis 4y ago
Because it works again. Soldiers largely didn’t wear armor for 300 years because there was no material light enough to carry all day and strong enough to stop bullets. Now there are several.

hereforphone 4y ago

"The Daily Beast"

jwilk 4y ago

(2019)

raverbashing 4y ago

"made its way" - like it's in the title of TFA

orzig 4y ago

Zooming way out, it’s an interesting case study in innovation. The military must be the largest and longest tightly-controlled organization of humans in the US. They certainly have spent time thinking about this issue. But the marketplace (both “of ideas” and literal profit-driven) is even bigger, and found the better solution. I wonder if the military, and other large innovation-seeking organizations, could give members a “Desk Budget” which is carefully tracked as “voting with your dollars” and eventually bring some of the popular items into standard issue through central procurement. Basically crowdsourcing the constant scan for market innovation.

TheChaplain 4y ago

The article must have drawn out the a-holes, twitter-links are all gone or restricted. And the article linked to the dudes Twitter despite him asking to be anonymous due to online threats. muppets...

blueflow 4y ago
- brailsafe 4y ago
  Guess you'll want to post this on every article mentioning a product then, because in case you didn't notice, society is hedonism. I understand that you don't care for furries, but maybe don't click on it next time if you don't want to know about them. > Not saying the hate is justified, but some things should better not be normalized. You're implying the hate is justified, otherwise you wouldn't have defended it.
  - blueflow 4y ago
    I said, it should not me normalized. Thats it. > I understand that you don't care for furries I was one of them. Feline. Yiff inclusive. It was a phase, i grew out of it. This is what furrydom should be treated like: a phase young people go trough. If you misconstruct that as hateful, i think this should be your problem. Feel invited to change my mind instead of insulting me.
    - emptyparadise 4y ago
      just be a kitty cat in your free time you don't have to make it about sex
      - blueflow 4y ago
        Yeah, it resulted in gay people becoming more interested in me than i liked.

its_Caffeine 4y ago

Companies and even the US military are starting to wake up to the fact that they miss out on a lot of high quality talent by rejecting employees based on traits like their appearance, sexuality or even their lifestyle in this case. At the end of the day companies just want to know whether you can perform the job they are asking for. If yes, then there shouldn’t be any issue.

spoonjim 4y ago

Did anyone else get the sense that this felt a lot like GPT-3 generated text?

yodon 4y ago
Please don't cast unsupported GPT-3 aspersions on articles, particularly when the article pre-dates the invention of GPT-3.
- spoonjim 4y ago
  It’s just written like… someone was a little drunk or very tired when writing it.

Lio 4y ago

The article didn't seem to include much technical detail on how this works but I was hoping it would be closer to the Stanford research on effective body cooling[1] that was around 10 years ago and less just a vest holding frozen packs. From what I remember most traditional body cooling gel based vests have the problem of causing blood capillaries in the skin to close down. That stops the body from transporting warm blood from the core to the surface where sweat is used to cool it. To put it another way, they are too cold to really help with cooling. They idea behind the vacuum glove was that there are certain areas of the body with more capillaries and if you can keep blood flowing to them by not going too cold (say constant 12C) and by using a mild vacuum to draw blood to them you have a much better way to cool the body. I'm guessing that's much harder to work with than a simple vest holding gel packs. Seems a shame though that we don't have anything more effective right now. My own personal usecase would be better cooling than "loads of fans" when riding indoors on Zwift. The cooling vests I've tried so far weirdly just make you feel cold and hot at the same time. 1. https://news.stanford.edu/pr/2012/pr-cooling-glove-research-082912.html https://news.stanford.edu/pr/2012/pr-cooling-glove-research-...

mrlonglong 4y ago

Furries. You gotta love 'em.