The hand of fabric is one of typical sensory characteristics of textile products. There is an opinion that visual factors should be taking into consideration to evaluate the fabric hand, but here in this paper, the hand is regarded as a tactual evaluation judged from physical stimuli of fabrics. In regard to measuring the fabric hand, it is necessary how to pick up subjective characteristics of fabrics in order to catch the sensory figure of hand and how to substitute objective measurements of fabrics for the sensory figure in order to express it as the physical figure of hand, In this paper, the outline of technical methods of measuring the fabric hand is reviewed.

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The purpose of this study is to show the ability of the new type tactile sensor in measuring softness of the skin. Usually, the sensory evaluation technique which has been employed in evaluating the mechanical properties of the skin is closely concerned with the performance of cosmetics. In this study, we apply a tactile sensor system which uses a vibration element and vibration pickup. The sensor vibrates at a resonant frequency and the frequency shifts when the top of the sensor touches to the subject. The resonance frequency is dependent on the softness of the subject, because the vibration mode is influenced by variation in the acoustic impedance of the sample. The experiments carried out in order to evaluate the softness of the various models in vitro. The results achieves by the sensor showed a good correlation with the stress measured by a rheometer and sense of touch. Furthermore, the skin softness modulation after adding creams and the improvement of skin softness for scaled skin by continuous applying cream were detected. The results demonstrated that the sensor was capable of detecting softness levels both in vivo and in vitro and was very compact system and easy to handle.

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On the basis of the hypothesis that eye irritation by chemicals is a consequence of damage to the cellular plasma membrane and to proteins, we have developed a spectrophotometric hemoglobin denaturation assay to predict eye irritation. Serial dilution of 12 kinds of surfactants were examined and the results were compared with the Draize scores already reported by our colleague. Correlation analysis, factorial analysis and multi-regression analysis yielded the following results.
1) Quite good correlations were found between hemoglobin denaturation ratio and the Draize scores.
2) Factorial analysis indicated that there are two concentration dependent factors predominantly influence hemoglobin denaturation.
3) Higher correlations could be obtained by multi-regression analysis (corneal and total Draize scores gave correlation coefficients of r=0.878 and r=0.861, respectively).
23 surfactants were subjected to hemoglobin denaturation test, then their structural group were categorized and quantification theory (category 1) was applied to elucidate the structure-activity relationship. Results of the analysis indicated that very high correlation (r=0.92) were obtained on the structure-activity relationship. The results make it possible to predict the eye irritancy scores of surfactants containing any combination of the classified structure without any experimental efforts.

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An investigation of consumer's opinion about the foundation was conducted to 1600 Japanese females. We also carried out the examination of the facial skin conditions on 125 healthy Japanese females objectively and asked same questionnaire.
From the analysis of the questionnaire, people are more conscious about “oilyness”, “coming off”, “shining”, and so on which are related with sebum in general. Therefore, two evaluation methods in vivo for the deterioration of foundation were developed. Two evaluations were performed by measuring 1) the reflective light, and 2) amount of removed foundation from the face. The relationship between sebum and these evaluated values from two experiments clearly investigated that the deterioration of foundation was caused by sebum.
According to our investigations, we concluded that the main reason of the wear-off during the foundation application is sebum.

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Mica was modified with alcoholic hydroxyl group, and the product was characterized in various respects (i.e. the identification of structure, the physical property, and the skin improving effect).
The chemical vapor deposition of 1, 3, 5, 7-tetramethylcyclotetrasiloxane (TMCTS) was employed on mica, in which TMCTS was polymerized to form a coating layer of poly (methylsiloxane) (PMS). Mica modified with alcoholic hydroxyl groups was synthesized from PMS-coated mica by hydrosilylation (G-MICA). The alcoholic hydroxyl groups on mica were confirmed by FT-IR, ¹³C-CP/MAS NMR, and thermal analysis.
The property of G-MICA was intermediate between that of hydrophobic and hydrophilic by the contact angle and the adsorption of water. The property of the dual-purpose foundation using G-powder type (powder modified with glycerol group) was the fittingness and the longlasting.
The skn-improving effect of G-MICA was recognized by the transepidermal water loss and the scaling amounts.

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Several methods for quantitative evaluation of male pattern baldness have been reported. Recently, the progress of computer and image analysis technique are remarkable. Some investigators have attempted to apply these techniques to evaluation of male pattern baldness. We have also developed two image analysis systems to study human hair growth. One is ‘hair diameter measuring system’, and the other is a novel system to measure the anagen/telogen ratio.
By using hair diameter measuring system, 15 subjects were measured their hair diameter over one year. In the measurement of the hair growth rate exactly, we used animmersion photomethod and compared 6 normal subiects and 6 subjects with male pattern baldness. Close-up photographs were applied to the measurement of the anagen ratio and the growing hair-area. The term ‘hair-area’ was defined as the proportion of hair to the total area in the binary image. Three parameters, the hair growth rate, the anagen ratio, and the growing hair-area, were obtained by our novel system.
The average hair diameter decreased and the distribution pattern of hair diameter remarkably changed with progression of male pattern baldness. Furthermore, the hair diameter showed a straight line decrease over one year. In male pattern baldness the growth rate of anagen hair was 20% slower than in normal subjects. We also investigated a seasonal change in anagen ratio in 15 subjects, It was shown that the anagen ratio had a peak in February. The growing hair-area was a novel parameter, which was calculated with comparing two photographs. We measured the growing hair-area with 52 sets of close-up photographs that the anagen ratio was measured by visual observation. The growing hair area decreased with decline of anagen ratio.
We consider that our image analysis systems are useful to evaluate male pattern baldness and reliable for testing the effects of hair growth agents.

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