Power from the people

March 6, 2015  |  My Take

In 1979, I bought a house (yes, I was very young), the direct result of an initiative by President Jimmy Carter to promote solar energy use. Designed for passive and active solar gain, our system partially heated a house for an eventual family of five and generated more hot water than we could use. …
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When is a fabric a fabric?

February 10, 2015  |  My Take

This month, our featured material is not about a specific market area, per se, but rather about the challenge of commercializing new technology in any segment of the industry. There’s enough to talk about here to fill a shelf of encyclopedias (remember those?), so the challenge was to manage the t…
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The sum of its parts

January 12, 2015  |  My Take

There are layers and layers (so to speak) to the flexible composites story. We’re going to start with architectural applications in this issue and move on to additional applications throughout this month. Bruce Wright offers up-to-date information on this topic in his article, “Flexible composit…
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Green is growing

December 8, 2014  |  My Take

Each month Advanced Textiles Source features a topic of interest in the industry. It’s a useful way for us organize our publication and ensure that we continue to provide you with interesting unique content in our “Featured” section. This month the topic is sustainability. We always cover news…
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This is a different kind of fight

November 24, 2014  |  My Take

The military is used to deploying to dangerous locations around the globe, but these are generally combat missions with a foe whose ideology threatens our security. There is another foe with which U.S. troops will do battle; its name is “Ebola.” What’s needed in this fight against a clearly da…
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Disrupt or be disrupted

November 11, 2014  |  My Take

At IFAI’s Advanced Textiles Expo in October, Dr. Benham Pourdeyhimi from NCSU’s Nonwovens Institute concluded his presentation with this admonition: “Disrupt or be disrupted.” (See “Keynotes offer overviews” on this site.) Nonwovens markets are growing, but they are also undergoing signi…
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Medical textiles save lives

October 10, 2014  |  My Take

Medical professionals are limited in what they can do to save someone who is very sick with an Ebola virus; there is no magic cure or a vaccine to prevent it. But there is a way to prevent the spread of the frequently deadly viruses and potentially save thousands of lives. It involves fabric. This &…
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Horizontal and vertical programming

September 8, 2014  |  My Take

There’s a lot going on in this year’s Advanced Textiles Conference, running Oct. 13–14. A good cross-section of markets is well represented in the conferences symposiums, as well as in-depth sessions on specific materials and technologies. The conference, which opens one day prior to IFAI Spec…
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Invisibility technologies: Just beginning to see the possibilities

August 11, 2014  |  My Take

The topic of invisibility technology is a little irresistible. Who isn’t fascinated with the prospect of making things—or people—disappear? In fact, there have been real strides in “cloaking,” as it is called, although it does not involve a Harry Potter-esque fabric cloak. But that’s not…
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Cleanroom, one word

July 9, 2014  |  My Take

The dictionary says clean room is two words, but those who deal with “cleanrooms” more often use one word. I’m going with the people closest to the topic, so one word it is. (English teachers like me, no matter how long it’s been since they were last in the classroom, tend to obsess about th…
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