Dressing up to cool down? It may seem counterintuitive, but that's the idea of a German engineering professor.
Wilhelm Stork, from the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT), has invented a 200-gram air-conditioned jacket that keeps its wearer cool on hot days and during heavy physical exertion.
Air circulating in the jacket's ventilation ducts facilitates the evaporation of perspiration, which lowers body temperature.
The prototype of the "KlimaJack" resembles a bulletproof vest, which is unsurprising given that a company in that line of business helped develop the jacket.
So far, the unnamed company is the only partner that sees potential in the product.
Worn under a bulletproof vest, KlimaJack could keep police officers and bodyguards cool on hot days. It is still too early to say when the jacket might come on the market and how much it will cost.
Germany's Ministry of Education and Research provided several hundred thousand euros in funding for KlimaJack.
Beyond Klimajack's work and health benefits, Stork is trying to get the lifestyle industry interested. He points to a Japanese vendor who put the Kuchofuku shirt on the market in 2011 with two fans built into the back.
"It always billows out a little," Stork remarked.
He said that as far as he knew about 50,000 of those shirts had been sold, mainly after the accident at Fukushima which left many air-conditioning systems without power.
The KlimaJack idea came to Stork during a European heat wave in the summer of 2003.
After a number of experiments, including with ice jackets, Stork concluded the best method would be to optimise the body's natural cooling mechanism.
