A wearable keyboard is demonstrated in which conducting polymer electrodes on a knitted textile sense tactile input as changes in capacitance. The use of a knitted textile as a substrate endows stretchability and compatibility to large-area formats, paving the way for a new type of wearable human-machine interface.

We experimentally discussed the effects of airflow geometries in an air suction gun on the suction characteristics of running yarn. Geometry parameters focused on were 1) compressed-air inflow angle of nozzle, 2) diverging angle of nozzle, 3) throat diameter of de Laval tube, 4) converging angle of de Laval tube and 5) yarn propulsion tube length. As a result, effects of the geometry parameters on the yarn suction force, the mass flow rate of compressed-air and the yarn suction efficiency, which is defined as the yarn suction force divided by the mass flow rate of compressedair, were made clear and the optimum geometry of an air suction gun was obtained on the basis of the energy efficiency. In addition, the yarn suction force showed two types of time dependency because of different yarn motion on some experimental conditions.

The inverse magnetostrictive effect is an effective property for energy harvesting; the material needs to have large magnetostriction and ease of mass production. Fe–Co alloys being magnetostrictive materials have favorable characteristics which are high strength, ductility, and excellent workability, allowing easy fabrication of Fe–Co alloy fibers. In this study, we fabricated magnetostrictive polymer composites, in which Fe–Co fibers were woven into polyester fabric, and discussed their sensor performance. Compression and bending tests were carried out to measure the magnetic flux density change, and the effects of magnetization, bias magnetic field, and the location of the fibers on the performance were discussed. It was shown that magnetic flux density change due to compression and bending is related to the magnetization of the Fe–Co fiber and the bias magnetic field. The magnetic flux density change of Fe–Co fiber reinforced plastics was larger than that of the plastics with Terfenol-D particles.

Plastic Optical Fiber (abbreviate POF) is used in the various fields; short range communication, sensor, illuminate exploitation and so on. The fabric is one of the forms in illumination fields, but there are no reports about the lighting properties of POF fabrics. In addition, for the fabric development, it is very important to estimate the optical characteristic in the textile design stage.In this report, the lighting properties of POF fabrics are measured and the new method to estimate the optical properties of POF fabric is suggested.

The peptide and retinal mixture of bacteriorhodopsin, composed of two synthetic peptides corresponding to helices F (160-197) and G (202-237) and a proteinase V8-derived fragment V1 (1-166), generated the characteristic features of bacteriorhodopsin with absorbance maximum at 550 nm and fluorescence quenching as in two synthetic peptides corresponded to helix A (sequence 7-31) and B (41-65) and a chymotryptic fragment (72-248). The recovery of reconstitution estimated from the absorption and the fluorescence quenching of these mixture was 16-19% and 25-32% of the native purple membrane, respectively, whereas mixtures lacking any one of the peptides exhibited no absorption recovery Circular dichroism of each peptide fragment showed complete formation of alpha-helical structure in a membrane-mimetic medium of sodium dodecyl sulfate. These results indicate that the specific interactions or mutual recognitions between alpha-helices in lipid bilayers are essential for correct bundling of the seven helices and formation of the retinal binding pocket.