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More and more textile enterprises are optimizing their corporate social responsibility (CSR) codes by producing green textiles

Among other chemical companies, DuPont is one providing an example of a successful CSR firm. It used to rely heavily on fossil fuels to make paint, plastics and polymers. In the 1990s, renowned for its R&D that created products such as nylon, the company decided to spend billions of dollars on developing safe, environmentally friendly products. It has since cut greenhouse gas emissions by 72% and air carcinogen emissions by 92% at its facilities worldwide, according to Dawn Rittenhouse, DuPont's director of sustainable development.

The company vowed to make US$2 billion a year in revenue by 2015 from 1,000 products that would save energy and reduce pollutants. "What's good for business," Rittenhouse said, "must also be good for the environment and for people worldwide."

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Doctors Roth and Reuss, of Vienna, used bent glass rods to illuminate body cavities in 1888. French engineer Henry Saint-Rene designed a system of bent glass rods for guiding light images seven years later in an early attempt at television. In 1898, American David Smith applied for a patent on a dental illuminator using a curved glass rod.
In the 1920s, John Logie Baird patented the idea of using arrays of transparent rods to transmit images for television and Clarence W. Hansell did the same for facsimiles. Heinrich Lamm, however, was the first person to transmit an image through a bundle of optical fibers in 1930. It was an image of a light bulb filament. His intent was to look inside inaccessible parts of the body, but the rise of the Nazis forced Lamm, a Jew, to move to America and abandon his dream of becoming a professor of medicine. His effort to file a patent was denied because of Hansell's British patent.

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Microfiber is causing a stir in the cleaning industry. It is quickly becoming the cleaning and polishing fabric of choice in all facets of auto detailing, but this versatile and highly absorbent material is also replacing traditional cleaning methods in hospitals and universities around the world!A unique combination of two basic fibers: Polyester and Polyamide (a nylon by-product) are the backbone of microfiber. These are densely constructed fibers 1/16th the size of a human hair. This network of fibers is then woven and manufactured in distinct ways, producing different varieties for a myriad of uses.

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Everyday and night we are surrounded by fabrics. From clothing to sheets on our beds to upholstery on furniture or car seats, these are the fabrics of our lives.
Fabrics are around us nearly all the time, but did you know that your material choices could either help or harm your health?
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While organic farming and agriculture has its many virtues, the future of many crops - and their products such as textiles and food - may depend on an unlikely marriage that organic will have with...genetic engineering.

Beginning in 1997, an important change swept over cotton farms in northern China. By adopting new farming techniques, growers found they could spray far less insecticide. Within a few years they had reduced their annual use of the poisonous chemicals by over 60 million kilos (60000 T), cotton yields climbed, and production costs fell. Equally importantly, the number of insecticide-related illnesses among farmers in the region dropped to a quarter of their previous level.

If you thought all these had to do with the virtues of organic farming, you are wrong. The hero in this story isn't organic farming. It is genetic engineering.

How come?

The most important change embraced by the Chinese farmers was to use a variety of cotton genetically engineered to protect itself against insects. The plants carry a protein called Bt, a favorite insecticide of organic farmers because it kills pests but is nontoxic to mammals, birds, fish, and humans. By 2001, Bt cotton accounted for nearly half the cotton produced in China.

The organic farming movement has shown that it is possible to dramatically reduce the use of insecticides. The positive aspects of organic farming are there for all to see - less dependence on fossil-based fertilizers hence more green, lower exposure to phosphorus-based pesticides in our foods, making our farming more sustainable, and so forth.

But organic farming also has serious limits. The two most important limitations are that there are many pests and diseases that cannot be controlled using organic approaches (PDF), and organic crops are generally more expensive to produce and for people to buy and consumer.

The statistics prove that the above limitations have had their effect. The % of farming that is under organic farming today is a rather small percentage, mainly owing to the reasons mentioned above - certified organic cropland accounted for 0.1 percent of U.S. pasture and 0.4 percent of U.S. cropland. The figures for another country India - 124 million hectares of cropland, 114037 hectares under organic or about 0.9%. (see data on the amount of land under organic farming for various countries here - page 28)

1% of total cropland at best! Even the diehard organic lover will agree that it is not something write home about. Just in case the diehard organic lover feels that things could be much better very soon because of the rate of growth in organic cultivation, here are some more stats - "Certified organic crop acreage increased 11 percent between 2001 and 2003" - USDA. A 11% growth in 2 years (about 5% growth per year) is not exactly awesome for such a disruptive and obviously useful idea such as organic farming. Organic is a great idea, but let's face it, even great ideas need helping hands at times. This helping hand in the case of organic farming could just be genetic engineering.

How exactly can genetic engineering help organic farming? Well, it so happens that the real limitations of organic farming are precisely those domains in which genetic engineering can excel. By being able to gently manipulate the genes, genetic engineering can precisely attack those dangers to which organic farming is vulnerable, some specific pests for instance. By lending themselves to mass production, genetic engineering methodologies can bring down the costs of making goods. Genetic engineering, of course, has some additional benefits as well which organic techniques cannot provide -producing entirely novel & value added products that provide both farmers more money and consumers better value. Seen in this light, genetic engineering is a perfect fit to organic farming.

So, this is the upshot. There is no question that organic is the way to go, but increasingly, agricultural scientists and environmentalists have begun to ask whether organic should go it alone or whether it requires a visionary new approach: combining genetic engineering and organic farming.

In a way, they make an odd couple. The concept of organic goes back to our reliance on and admiration of nature. Genetic engineering, on the other hand, is about humans using their technological advancements to gently nudge nature to act according to their will. A marriage between these two appear to be a marriage of incompatibles. But well, not all marriages are between perfectly matched people. There have been marriages that have had the most unlikely people brought together to tie the knot. And in many cases, these odd couples had lived happily ever after.

In a former article entitled 'Important fibers of technical fabric industry - Part 1' , this blog discussed about five fibers Polyethylene, Polyester, Nylon, Carbon and Polypropylene. In this article it covers other five major fibers of technical fabric industry. The properties, application and prima makers are also covered.

These fibers are listed below:

1. Glass fibre

2. Cellulose Xanthate fibre

3. Acrylic Fiber fibre

4. Protein fibre

5. Metallic Element fibre

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Two Triad textile firms that have survived their industry's off-shoring shakeout are turning their hard-won expertise in a traditional craft into high-tech advances in the arena of battlefield injuries and traumatic wound care.

National Spinning Co. of Glen Raven and Carolina Narrow Fabric of Winston-Salem are working with Entegrion, a Research Triangle Park-based firm, on a new kind of bandage that can significantly reduce the amount of time it takes for even major wounds to clot, lessening the chances of death due to blood loss.

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