Pets such as dogs and cats shed a significant amount of fur, much of which goes to waste. Unlike wool, pet fur is coarse, thick, and lacks flexibility, making processing difficult and hindering widespread reuse. In households with pets, managing shedding becomes a burden, often resulting in disposal. However, transforming pet fur into easily processed forms that can become familiar items for anyone was envisioned to reduce waste and create special memories for pet owners. In this study, we developed a device to fabricate handicraft pipe cleaners from pet fur, enabling a seamless process from fur collection to handicraft pipe cleaner production. Our findings indicate variability in the durability of the handicraft pipe cleaners created yet demonstrate the ability to preserve the unique texture of pet fur. Moreover, the process of handicraft pipe cleaner production was found to enhance emotional value for pet owners, fostering creativity and offering unique experiences.

The Noisy Color Phenomenon (NCP) refers to a perceptual discomfort that arises when a color stands out excessively against its surroundings. This study investigated influence of four color attributes (hue, lightness, chroma, and area ratio) on the elicitation of NCP in Japanese adults through affective evaluation experiments. The experiments used stimuli composed by two squares having different colors. ANOVAs and data plots revealed that NCP was more likely to occur when the foreground color included reddish hues, when the hue difference between foreground and background was large, when tones had low lightness or high chroma, or when the lightness difference was small. Moreover, NCP was less likely when the foreground-to-background area ratio was small, or when the absolute area of the foreground was reduced. Multiple regressions using CIE L*a*b* and L*C*h metrics confirmed the effects of the foreground’s a*, b*, lightness, chroma, hue difference and lightness difference. The background’s a* was found to positively affect NCP. The findings enhance our understanding of the psychological basis of NCP and provide insights for designing color schemes that balance visual salience and comfort.

In structuralism analysis of narrative, classical methods that involve carefully reading narratives have been widely used, but there are many cases where analysis is difficult. One example is the analysis of long novels with large amounts of text. In recent years, many quantitative text analysis methods have been proposed, and it has been shown that the above problems can be solved by computer processing. However, in this paper, we propose a method for extracting the story structure of novels using LSA. As an example of analysis using the proposed method, we selected long-form novels consisting of more than 100 episodes and present an analysis of two works: “Tearmoon Empire,” chosen from the recently flourishing genre of web novels, and “Kokoro” by Natsume Soseki’s. The results demonstrate that the proposed method using LSA can extract story structures not only from web novels but also from pure literature. This finding is considered to hold significant implications as a new insight in both the fields of narratology and text analysis.