Smocking is a handicraft technique of sewing and making pleats to produce shapes over the surface of cloth, and has been widely used in clothing and fashion. However, it is not easy to combine several pieces of smocking without wrinkles on cloth, since it is necessary to satisfy constraints on angles among pleats. For instance, regular polygons have been widely used in smocking, since admissible twist angles can be easily determined in terms of the number of vertices. However, it has been difficult to utilize more generalized shapes for combinatorial smocking design. For the type of smocking which corresponds to petaloid folding in Origami, this paper proposes petaloid folding of general triangles so that combinatorial smocking without wrinkles can be realized. We derive the admissible twist angle of any triangle to realize petaloid folding in a closed form in terms of the angle and size of the triangle. Since the size of triangle can be reflected in our derivation, it is possible to produce the intended shape of smocking for the specified size of cloth. Based on the derived twist angle, we propose two classes of combinatorial smocking design by utilizing non-regular triangles and regular polygons. The proposed approach is implemented using GeoGebra, and it is validated through several pieces of handcrafted combinatorial smocking.

This study aimed to quantify the firefighters’ joint mobility and muscular activity during self-contained breathing apparatus (SCBA) carriage and evaluate the effectiveness of shoulder strap length variation. Three varying-strapped SCBAs and a control condition with no SCBA equipped were evaluated. Joint range of motion (ROM) and surface electromyography (sEMG) signals were synchronously collected when twelve male subjects walked in four test samples. Results showed that carrying SCBA had more pronounced impacts on the joint ROM and sEMG around the proximal torso, suggesting that the training of firefighters focuses on the coordinated movement of muscles and joints in the trunk. The length of the SCBA strap was suggested to be set at 98–105 cm for firefighters who are 172-178 cm.

Consumers use functional values to evaluate fashion products, which are influenced by an individual’s nationality and cultural background. Although previous cross-cultural studies in luxury consumption determined the similarities and differences between Western and Asian consumers, there is scarce information on the influence of functional value perception between Australian and Chinese millennial consumers in their luxury handbag purchasing. In this study, a consumer’s functional values were measured through three specific values: usability, quality, and uniqueness. Usability value refers to an individual’s evaluation of a handbag’s functions as satisfying their needs, such as size and ease of use. Quality value is a consumer’s evaluation of a handbag’s physical qualities, such as material quality, craftsmanship, and lifespan. Uniqueness value is a consumer’s need to be unique or distinct from others, which is evaluated in terms of a handbag’s exclusivity. 49 Australian and 52 Chinese millennial luxury-fashion-brand consumers were invited to a survey that required participants to do a pairwise comparison of the importance of these three values on their purchasing decision of a luxury fashion handbag. This pairwise comparison method and data analysis were based on the analytic hierarchy process (AHP), which is a mathematically based, multi-objective, decision-making tool. The results demonstrate that quality value has the greatest impact on luxury fashion handbag purchasing decisions for both Australian and Chinese millennial consumers, while the uniqueness value has the lowest impact on former and the usability value on latter. This study may assist brands and product developers to better understand the influence of both Australian and Chinese consumers’ functional values on their intention to purchase a luxury handbag from a cross-cultural perspective, helping to establish user-centered design criteria for developing luxury fashion handbags.

To solve the current lack of thermal and humidity comfort in medical protective clothing for workers in high-risk environments, this paper seeks to adopt moisture-absorbing materials in the design of work clothes for medical staff, thus presenting an innovative design framework for hygroscopic workwear. This paper uses hospital staff in high-risk environment, such as nurses who operate within hospital hot zones and community service personnel, as research subjects. Their activities were recorded and subsequently analyzed Then, the MET values of these actions were discovered and listed. After calculation, the average medium-high-intensity work MET value was ≈5.8, and the medium-low-intensity MET value was ≈2.8, with the corresponding speed of 6.3 km/h and 2.8 km/h, respectively. These two speeds were the references for human motion experiments.
In the human motion experiment, the objects wore medical protective clothing, the ambient temperature was set to 26-28 ◦n, and the motion status was determined to be 2.8 km/h: 5 min-6.3 km/h: 25 min-2.8 km/h: 10 min. The filtering paper method was employed to measure the regional body sweat. Then, the regional body sweat map was obtained. According to the results, the structural scheme for hygroscopic workwear was proposed to further promote the research process of the hygroscopic workwear.
In the human body wearing verification experiment, the experimental group was the subjects wearing hygroscopic clothes, and the control group was the subjects wearing pure cotton clothing. In the process of exercise, the hygroscopic performance of the work clothes was compared by the changes of internal environment humidity and the feelings of subjects. Through data analysis, compared with pure cotton upper and lower garment, the hygroscopic work clothes can effectively maintain the comfortable balance of internal environment humidity.

With its good biocompatibility and excellent mechanical properties, silk fibroin microneedles can transport drugs to the body fluid circulation system and then act on the affected area, so as to replace intravenous injection and oral administration, and achieve the purpose of treating diseases. In the process of processing and use, silk fibroin microneedles are non-toxic, harmless, pollution-free and biodegradable to human body and environment. Therefore, the application prospect and application range of silk fibroin microneedles are very wide.
In this paper, the effects of proline and its derivatives prolinamide and hydroxyproline on the performance of silk fibroin microneedles were studied on the basis of the previous experiments of constructing microneedles to carry drugs. The composite silk fibroin microneedles were obtained by pouring the amino acid/silk fibroin mass ratio of 0/10, 1/10, 2/10, 3/10 and 4/10 into a polydimethylsiloxane mold, after vacuum defoaming and drying. The length of the microneedles was about 600 µm. The aggregation structure of amino acid/silk fibroin microneedles was measured by X-ray diffraction (XRD), Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy (FTIR) and Raman Scattering Spectroscopy. The mechanical properties of the microneedles were measured by texture analyzer. The results showed that: (1) The silk fibroin microneedles prepared by adding proline and its derivatives had predominately Silk I crystal structure; (2) When the mass ratio of proline and its derivatives to silk fibroin reached 2/10, it had a higher swelling degree and a lower dissolution rate; (3) The silk fibroin microneedles prepared by proline and its derivatives have good mechanical properties. The following conclusion was drawn: with the addition of proline and its derivatives, silk fibroin microneedles with higher swelling degree and lower dissolution rate can be obtained. The crystal structure of Silk I is formed inside the microneedles, which has good penetration and fracture properties. It is expected that the microneedles can be used as swelling microneedles for drug transdermal delivery.

Protective clothing research is booming worldwide and has become a hotspot in academia. This paper compares the literature in Chinese Core Journals with international journals on protective clothing researches to provide framework for future study. By using the system of CiteSpace, the literatures on protective clothing were selected from CNKI and WOS databases, and knowledge visualization analysis was conducted in terms of the number of articles, clustering graph, time zone view, emergent words, timeline, etc.. The commonalities and differences between literature in Chinese Core Journals with those in international one are discussed, and the achievements in protective clothing research are summarize to providing new research perspectives. It is found that the research themes in both Chinese literature and international literature have changed in response to the social and natural environment, and the research topics on protective clothing are constantly new on the basis of the previous period; the research themes of Chinese literature focus on “emergency rescue”, “thermal protection”, “public safety” and “medical treatment”, while the themes of international literature focus on “textile”, “composite”, “mechanical property”, “antibacterial” and “nanoparticle”.

Persons exposed to solar heat radiation in hot and dry climates are at increased risk of heat illnesses. Clothing can reduce such exposure. The effectiveness of clothing to reduce such heat loading depends on the ability of the fabric to reflect this heat radiation. However, incomplete reflection results in fabric heating which will heat the body by conduction. The protection against heat radiation by a garment can be offset by the retention of metabolic heat due to insulation. This will counteract the IR attenuation benefits offered by the clothing. An accurate understanding of such a trade-off is needed in order to optimize the selection of clothing when managing heat stress resulting from exposure to solar IR heat radiation. Laboratory experiments were performed on multiple layers of Cotton, Nylon, Wool and Polyester fabric to evaluate their heat insulation characteristics and IR heat attenuation properties. The relationship between fabric layers and IR attenuation properties was examined under controlled laboratory conditions. The results of this study showed that fabric insulation heat gain and corresponding IR radiation attenuation was proportional to the number of fabric layers used. However, the IR heat radiation attenuation was significantly greater with each additional fabric layer than the heat gain penalty associated with fabric insulation. Additionally, heat transfer by condition was seen to contribute about 18% of the radiant heat transfer to the body. Separating the fabric from the body using a spacer will reduce this amount of heat transfer to the skin. The results of this study show that multiple fabric layers can significantly reduce the risk of IR heat radiation overexposure while limiting the metabolic heat build-up inside protective clothing. The study also confirms that by selecting the appropriate number of fabric layers, it is possible to optimize the IR heat radiation protection while limiting metabolic heat build-up inside clothing.