Environmentally friendly modification of the wool cuticle to enhance wool fabric comfort is an important goal for the industry. The present study describes the effect of a keratinase from Meiothermus ruber H328 (Keratinase H328) on wool fiber keratin. Keratinase H328 treatment corroded the wool scale. The effect was characterized by physicochemical analyses using scanning electron microscopy (SEM), amino acid analysis, and Fourier-transform infrared-attenuated total reflectance (FTIR-ATR). Subsequently, Keratinase H328 treatment was combined with Proteinase K treatment for the wool fabric. Enzymatically treated wool fabric showed a higher moisture regain than its control at 80% and 90% R.H. The keratinase-proteinase treatment reduced the maximum tensile strain and maximum stress without altering Youngʼs modulus significantly.

In this study, we aim to develop a technology to drive electrically conductive nanofibers made of polymers as an actuator. In a conventional actuator, because the potential is applied to a two-dimensional planar film shape, large electric power is necessary, the displacement is small, and application is difficult.

In this research, we focus on nanofibers. Because nanofibers have a diameter of 1 μmorlessandalarge specific surface area, physicochemical energy change is expected to affect the driving process. Hence, we expect to realize an actuator without a large energy loss that strongly drives using a “small, lightweight, soft,safe, and low driving voltage.”Therefore, we aim to develop nanofiber actuators that are composed of unique Fe/polyurethane conductive nanofibers. As a result of the drive test of the developed nanofibers, we confirmed that the displacement became larger as the applied voltage was increased, although the voltage was as high as that of the polymer actuator; its maximum displacement was 50 μm. With regard to the frequency characteristics, the displacement was constant up to 10 Hz.

Identification of animal hairs has been investigated by laser Raman microprobe spectroscopy on four different animal species such as cashmere, sheep, camel, and yak. Attention was focused, in the present studies,on those non-destructive methods which provide skeletal information of the protein composed of amino acids. Then, Raman spectroscopy was found to be the most promising analytical method that gives information on skeletal vibrations of the compound. As expected, this method enabled us to successfully differentiate the hairs by the number of characteristic Raman peaks and their peak position, as well as their spectral shape. Laser Raman microprobe spectroscopy is thus concluded to be the most appropriate, non-destructive tool for the identification of animal hairs.