Heat-sink vest could save lives, improve athletic performance

This is a much more interesting idea than it looks (though it actually looks like the reverse of those puffy, quilted-down vests that make everyone look like the Sta-Puf Marshmellow Hunter). It looks here like they're treating this vest like an elaborate comfort accessory -- snivel gear, essentially.

I'd be the last one to denigrate that; I'd probably buy the damn thing just for that reason, especially for anything involving a lot of effort and very little breeze during summer months -- hiking, yardwork, running.

But it turns out that heat is a major contributor to fatigue, especially during exercise. Cooling some part of the body (preferably one wiht a lot of blood circulation) during exercise reduces the core temperature and as much as doubles the endurance of some of the athletes who have participated in the experiments.

This is a fairly limited test, but I've seen others in which runners or cyclists on stationary equipment keep keep one hand stuck in a big heavy cooling mitt (it's not a glove, really, more of an appliance). They were able to keep going looong after they should have had to quit, because their blood was cooled as it circulated through just one hand.

I'd be very surprised if we didn't start seeing some similar bit of cooling gear -- either the vest or the glove or something wrapped around the shoulders or neck -- as a regular piece of equipment for not only race drivers and other competitors for whom weight isn't much of an issue, to even football players, cyclists and others who have to perform at peak over a long period during hot weather.

It could probably not only improve performance, but also reduce the rash of heart attacks and heat-prostration deaths you hear about every year when football teams come back to two-a-day practices in August.