The Malaysian Insider :: Features
The Malaysian Insider :: Features |
| US babies learn ‘self-rescue’ from drowning Posted: 24 Jul 2011 03:28 AM PDT  Swimming instructor Katie Smith helps her student Victoria Phelan, 10 months, in Dale City, Virginia on June 8, 2011. — AFP pic Victoria timidly floats on her back in a swimming pool not far from the US capital, Washington. If she moves too much she will swallow a mouth full of water. Victoria is 10 months old. Wearing a pink one piece swimsuit, the little one comes to Infant Swimming Resource (ISR) meetings Monday through Friday to learn a controversial method of drowning prevention for children as young as six months old. "At the beginning, she was a little fussy, but she got used to it very quickly," said 31-year-old Sara, whose daughter can now turn herself over in the water and float flat on her back. "It takes a lot of dedication but it is definitely worth it. I know she can save herself." Each day, mother and daughter drive two hours to the Dale City pool in Virginia, where Katie Smith teaches the technique during 10-minute courses spread over four to six weeks. The "self-rescue" method, designed to teach a child who accidentally falls into the water to roll onto his or her back and float, is taught in the United States and 11 other countries, according to company website infantswim.com. At 20-months-old, Evan can swim underwater and kick his feet to turn face up and breathe. "The first times he cried but because he was doing something new. Now, he cries when he gets out of the water!" said his mother Wendy. "I still watch her, but if I turn away I am not so nervous," said 37-year-old Amy, mother of four-year-old Gaby. But the method has its detractors. Risks with infant swimming "Some of the techniques that anyone can see on the Internet right now could and should be viewed as, at the very least, child abuse," said Jim Reiser, an instructor who preaches a gentler approach to child swimming. Reiser was appalled watching the YouTube video "Lincoln in ISR", which shows an instructor letting a one-year-old repeatedly sink into a pool, pulling himself up and catching his breath between swallowed water and tears. "I had to turn it off," Reiser said. "I was in tears and sick to my stomach. Imagine what the child was thinking but couldn't verbalise because he was too young. If the teacher was doing that to an adult, the adult would think the guy was trying to kill him." When AFP contacted the mother of the child featured in the video, Jennifer Feagans, she said 4-year-old Lincoln now "adores" the water. "I know that video of Lincoln is hard to watch but he is an amazing swimmer now," she said. A video of Lincoln's first ISR lesson can be seen here http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5gkCuUTlduc Richard Lichenstein, a pediatric emergency medical physician at the University of Maryland Hospital for Children in Baltimore, Maryland, does not recommend the method. "The technique does not teach a baby to swim nor can it be conclusively proven that it teaches an infant to survive," he said. "Worse it may give a parent the false sense that their child will not drown or knows how to swim. "Infants can become hypothermic from exposure, get water intoxication from swallowing water and develop gastrointestinal and skin infections. There are risks associated with infant swimming," Lichenstein added. In 2007 there were 525 accidental drownings among infants from one to six years old, according to the American Centres for Disease Control and Prevention. — AFP-Relaxnews Full Feed Generated by Get Full RSS, sponsored by Used Car Search. |
| ‘Air-conditioned clothes’ help Japan beat heat Posted: 24 Jul 2011 02:34 AM PDT  Hiroshi Ichigaya (left) president of Japanese power-saving goods venture "Kuchofuku," meaning air-conditioned clothing in Japanese, displays a jacket which has cooling fans on its back, at the company's headquarters in Toda city, suburban Tokyo on July 12, 2011. — AFP pic Kuchofuku Co. Ltd — whose name literally means "air-conditioned clothing" — has seen orders soar amid power shortages in Japan after the devastating March 11 earthquake and tsunami. As parts of the nation sweat out an uncomfortable summer shackled by restrictions on electricity use, demand has grown for goods that provide guilt-free respite from the unrelenting summer heat. Two electric fans in the jacket can be controlled to draw air in at different speeds, giving the garment a puffed-up look. But this has not deterred those happy to be cool rather than "hot" when it comes to fashion. "I work in a very hot place and have to wear long sleeved outfits, so I came over to buy this to stay cool and to prevent heat stroke," said Ryo Igarashi, 33, as he left the Kuchofuku office after buying an air-conditioned jacket. Igarashi said the clothing offers him relief at hot construction sites where he, coincidentally, installs air conditioners in buildings. Nearly 1,000 companies in Japan use Kuchofuku, including automobile giants, steelmakers, food companies and construction firms. Among its other products, the company also sells air-conditioned cushions and mattresses that use Kuchofuku's patented plastic mesh system that allows air to circulate while supporting weight. The products have taken on extra significance since the closure of the tsunami-crippled Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant and a government decree obliging big companies in the Tokyo and Tohoku northern region to reduce power usage by 15 per cent to avoid blackouts. Initiatives such as "Super Cool Biz" encourage employees to ditch jackets and ties and turn down air conditioning, while the power-saving drive has also sparked demand for cooling gadgets. Personal air-conditioning Imports of electrical fans through Tokyo port hit a record high in May, jumping 70 per cent from a year earlier to 1.24 million units, according to the customs office. The fans in the Kuchofuku jacket are connected to a lithium-ion battery pack that lasts for 11 hours on a single charge, consuming only a fraction of the power used by conventional air-conditioning, said company president Hiroshi Ichigaya. Ichigaya says that his clothing offers a counter-intuitive solution: that by wearing more, a person can feel cooler than if baring it all. "People are now trying to wear as little as possible in such campaigns as Super Cool Biz, but wearing more Kuchofuku makes you feel much cooler," Ichigaya told AFP. Up to 20 litres per second of air circulates throughout the jacket and escapes through the collar and cuffs, drying off sweat and cooling down the wearer. The idea of "personal air-conditioning" struck Ichigaya — a Sony engineer for two decades until the early 1990s — when he was trying to invent an air conditioner that would use little electricity. "It came to me that we don't need to cool the entire room, just as long as people in it feel cool," he said. Kuchofuku, first launched in 2004, typically draws demand from factories and construction sites but the company has recently seen orders come in from office workers and housewives. A standard air-conditioned jacket sells for around 11,000 yen (RM420), with others priced higher. A central government official recently approached the company to buy half-a-million jackets, but Ichigaya said he had to turn the order down because the company was unable to boost production in time to meet demand. The company will sell a total of 40,000 jackets, cushions and other air-cooled products this year, double last year's figure, Ichigaya said, adding that sales would reach 80,000 if he could manufacture enough. — AFP-Relaxnews Full Feed Generated by Get Full RSS, sponsored by Used Car Search. |
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