Cool article about an interesting innovation that an Indian student at MIT, Kranthi Vistakula dreamed up and executed on it. Love it. From the Economist Magazine:

His first approach was to build a jacket with built-in heating and cooling systems. Packed with motorised fans, heating pipes and electric wiring, the resulting apparel was bulky and weighed 7 kilograms. “When I wore it to college, my friends joked that I was going to blow up the place,” says Mr Vistakula. So he went back to the drawing board, and turned instead to a thermoelectric device called a Peltier plate, which operates like its better-known cousin, the thermocouple, but in reverse.

I shared that snippet because last year, a group of undergrad business students in my New Venture Creation class used a peltier system in their business plan for a efficient, constantly cooled & hygenic automatic salad dressing dispenser — no more crusty plastic bottles in melted ice at salad bars.

Vintakula of MIT has built a bunch of products and now has customers for his wares — both private and government. The company is Dhama Innovations — check out their stuff. Its pretty cool.

via Climate-controlled clothing: Don’t forget to recharge your jacket | The Economist.