Spinoff is NASA's annual publication featuring successfully commercialized NASA technology. This commercialization has contributed to the development of products and services in the fields of health and medicine, consumer goods, transportation, public safety, computer technology, and environmental resources.

Embrace Innovations' product line spun out of a project to supply baby warmers to populations lacking access to modern medical care. Today, every item purchased from the company results in a warmer donated to an infant in need.

A spacesuit is, by necessity, almost impermeable to temperature. While its many layers of insulation protect the wearer from the extreme temperatures on its outside surfaces in space, they also work the other way, holding in body heat that, if not regulated, would quickly become uncomfortable. One method NASA investigated in the 1980s for managing heat inside a spacesuit was the use of phase-change materials (PCMs).

Like ice cubes in a drink, these materials steadily absorb heat as they change phase from solid to liquid, and, if exposed to colder temperatures, they release that heat as they refreeze. The trick was finding materials that could hold more heat and transfer it more quickly than water, and would change phase at a temperature comfortable to humans. The material would also have to be nontoxic and nonflammable.

In 1987, Johnson Space Center awarded a Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) contract to Triangle Research and Development Corporation to experiment in using such materials, contained in tiny microcapsules, to create a passive spacesuit liquid cooling garment instead of one based on an active heat exchanger. In 1988, the company experimented with incorporating these materials into synthetic fibers to insulate an astronaut glove under another Johnson SBIR contract.

PCMs never quite caught on for spacesuits, but a company called Gateway Technologies saw their potential for commercial applications, and licensed the exclusive patent rights for incorporating the material into fabrics and fibers. Now called Outlast, the company supplies fabrics infused with microencapsulated PCMs to hundreds of companies that use them in everything from bedding to athletic clothes, dress wear, underwear, pajamas, sleeping bags, and more.

Stanford University MBA student Jane Chen and a small team of classmates was assigned in 2007 to come up with an infant incubator that could be manufactured for just $200, or 1 percent of the price of traditional incubators. They found PCMs, came up with a prototype, and started a nonprofit called Embrace, with Chen as the CEO. Upon graduating, the group moved to Bangalore because India has the highest number of premature births per year.

The company's NASA-derived product line includes baby swaddles and sleeping bags in various sizes, as well as a quilted blanket.

Since their final product was developed, the Embrace infant warmer has been used to treat hundreds of thousands of premature and otherwise low-birth-weight infants in populations lacking access to modern medical care throughout 14 developing countries. A couple years ago, Chen moved back to the Bay area, where many of her friends were having babies. A common complaint among the new parents was that they never knew if their babies were too hot or too cold. Chen decided to look for a solution.

Already familiar with PCMs, she looked for a way to use them for infant comfort and discovered Outlast. Through a Kickstarter campaign in the spring of 2015, Embrace Innovations raised $130,000 and started taking preorders for a line of infant swaddles, sleeping bags, and blankets, marketed as the Little Lotus product line, all made with Outlast linings shot through with microencapsulated PCMs. The products absorb or release heat to keep babies at a comfortable skin temperature. Fewer temperature fluctuations mean a baby rests more easily, which means the parents also rest easier.

The Little Lotus line includes a swaddle for infants up to three months old, as well as three sizes of sleeping bags for babies three to 18 months old. Also available is a quilted blanket. The warmers' removable PCM packs can be heated with boiling water or an electric heater, and reinserted to keep the warmers at about 98 degrees for up to six hours. They're portable and reusable, and they cost less than $200.

With every product purchased, a baby in a developing country will be helped with an infant warmer. Embrace Innovations retains the same primary mission as the nonprofit it sprang from: to reduce the world's infant mortality rate by helping to save premature babies in underserved populations. To donate the warmers, the company is partnering with other nonprofits.

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