Weaving Lighthouses and Stitching Stories: Blind and Visually Impaired People Designing E-textiles

We describe our experience of working with blind and visually impaired people to create interactive art objects that are personal to them, through a participatory making process using electronic textiles (e-textiles) and hands-on crafting techniques. The research addresses both the practical considerations about how to structure hands-on making workshops in a way which is accessible to participants of varying experience and abilities, and how effective the approach was in enabling participants to tell their own stories and feel in control of the design and making process. The results of our analysis is the offering of insights in how to run e-textile making sessions in such a way for them to be more accessible and inclusive to a wider community of participants

Textile and Apparel: an historical and "glo-cal" perspective. The Italian case from an economic agent's point of view

What might happen to the Italian Textile and Apparel industry? Does it deserve to survive, even if in a reduced dimension, or is it going to disappear, simply being a piece of our past without a passport to our future? This paper call for debate and reach a better view of a changing industry, starting from a different perspective from the usual one which regards the Textile and Clothing industry as a sunset one for western Europe. With the end of the quota system the Italian industry is facing market disruption produced by the flood of exports from China. Too much, too soon, too cheap. Italian entrepreneurs are over-reacting to this and technological innovation is no longer regarded as an opportunity to cultivate differential competitive advantage. Anti - dumping, tariffs and quotas are considered as controversial issues in the search for a new global balance. To reach this, we shouldn't forget that both structural and strategic aspects are always in action when international competition is concerned. All in all, transparency is very important and could be supported by product traceability. This issue is connected with the difference of standards and the difficulty to make them become a purchasing and innovation driver.

Soft capacitor fibers using conductive polymers for electronic textiles

A novel, highly flexible, conductive polymer-based fiber with high electric capacitance is reported. In its crossection the fiber features a periodic sequence of hundreds of conductive and isolating plastic layers positioned around metallic electrodes. The fiber is fabricated using fiber drawing method, where a multi-material macroscopic preform is drawn into a sub-millimeter capacitor fiber in a single fabrication step. Several kilometres of fibers can be obtained from a single preform with fiber diameters ranging between 500um -1000um. A typical measured capacitance of our fibers is 60-100 nF/m and it is independent of the fiber diameter. For comparison, a coaxial cable of the comparable dimensions would have only ~0.06nF/m capacitance. Analysis of the fiber frequency response shows that in its simplest interrogation mode the capacitor fiber has a transverse resistance of 5 kOhm/L, which is inversely proportional to the fiber length L and is independent of the fiber diameter. Softness of the fiber materials, absence of liquid electrolyte in the fiber structure, ease of scalability to large production volumes, and high capacitance of our fibers make them interesting for various smart textile applications ranging from distributed sensing to energy storage

The New Multi-Ministry Response to Conduct Problems: A SWOT analysis

The Inter-agency Plan for Conduct Disorder/Severe Antisocial Behaviour 2007-2012 (Ministry of Social Development, 2007) is assessed according to the SWOT dimensions of strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats. The document is one of the most important statements for the social services in New Zealand because of the primacy that it gives to current knowledge about conduct problems and for its endorsement of research-based practices. The plan's limitations include its risk-focused approach, its unsystematic response to 0-2 year-olds in difficult care-giving circumstances, and its lack of reference to adolescent girls with emotional issues who can contribute to the next generation of antisocial young people. As well, the plan might have considered the role of social systems in regard to conduct problems like the school, the neighbourhood, and community values. The implementation of the document could be imperilled by numerous influences, such as contrasting professional perspectives and non-empirical emphases in education

The View from the Front

A creative piece detailing the personal and public history of a small Pennsylvania town, specifically dealing with its crimes and their effect on the collective memory and atmosphere of the area

"Apparel Distribution:@Inter-firm Contracting and Intra-firm Organization"

Prepared for a forthcoming book on the distribution sector in Japan, this essay introduces the distribution network in the apparel industry. We note the varying patterns of cross-market contracting and intra-firm organization in the industry, and trace the economizing logic involved. More specifically, we show how the decision at the firm level of whether to integrate wholesale, retail and production depends crucially on an informational and incentive-based logic, and how that logic is in turn driven by patterns of consumer demand.