Over the past decade, there has been a tremendous increase in the demand for polymeric nanofibres which are promising candidates for various applications including tissue engineering, protective clothing, filtration and sensors. To address thisdemand, researchers have turned to the development of various techniques such as electrospinning, meltblowing, bicomponent spinning, forcespinning and flash-spinning for the fabrication of polymeric nanofibres. However, electrospinning is the widely used technique for the fabrication of continuous nanofibres. The ability to fabricate nanofibrous assemblies of various materials (such as polymers, ceramics and metals) with possible control of the fibre fineness, surface morphology, orientation and cross-sectional configuration, gives electrospinning an edge over other processes. Although several researches have been done in electrospinning, understanding some of the other processes is still in infancy. In this perspective article, we summarize the fundamentals of various techniques for the fabrication of nanofibres. This paper also highlights a gamut of recent advances in the techniques for nanofibre fabrication.

The feasibility of fabricating polypropylene (PP) nanofibers has been explored by using different additives, such as sodium oleate (SO), poly(ethylene glycol) (PEG) and poly(dimethyl siloxane) (PDMS), during melt electrospinning. PP of high melt flow index (1000) was used with PEG and PDMS for the reduction of the melt viscosity; and it was used with SO for improving the electrical conductivity during melt electrospinning. It was observed that all the additives used in this study helped to reduce the fiber diameter. The most promising additive, SO, was effective in reducing the fiber diameter to the nanometer scale due to the increase in the electrical conductivity. The fiber diameter was decreased by the addition of PEG and PDMS due to the decrease in the melt viscosity. The effect of die shape on the fiber cross-sectional shape was analyzed and an interesting finding is that the die shapes did not have an effect on the cross-sectional shape of the fibers. That is, irrespective of the die shapes (i.e. trilobal, tetralobal, multilobal and circular) used in this study, the cross-sectional shapes of melt electrospun fibers were circular. The distribution of the additives in the fiber was analyzed by energy-dispersive X-ray analysis and was found to be uniform. Tensile tests were performed on single nanofibers with limited success, due to the problems in preparing fiber samples and successfully holding them in the jaws of the testing machine without slippage.

Social media marketing facilitated prospective students to communicate and collaborate to gather information relevant to higher education institutions and their respective brand equity. More complex and dynamic models focusing on customer-based brand equity often lack empirical support in higher education sectors, particularly from more than one country. Drawing from the elaboration likelihood model, this study empirically investigated how higher education institutions can develop brand equity using social media marketing. The quantitative findings from 936 undergraduates from Sri Lanka and Vietnam indicated social media marketing influences the brand equity of higher education institutions through brand credibility. Taking into the comparison between two emerging countries, Vietnamese students are more concerned about brand credibility through social media marketing activities to form brand equity compared to their Sri Lankan counterparts. The findings provide some practical implications for educational marketers to promote their higher education institutions.

Fire-fighters’ personal protective clothing is the only source of protection for fire-fighters during fire-fighting. The protective clothing should provide adequate protection as well as should be comfortable to wear. The protection and comfort requirements are always the contradicting fact in several protective clothing including fire-fighters’. Appropriate material selection, clothing design and final evaluation of the results play a critical role in predicting the clothing performance and comfort. Several researches have been done on the performance and comfort improvement of fire-fighter’s protective clothing. However, detailed review related to these parameters is not being reported in recent years. In this perspective review, we report the recent trends in the performance and comfort properties of the fire-fighters protective clothing. The clothing design and different materials used to achieve a balance between performance and comfort is illustrated. Various test standards related to the performance and comfort is also being discussed. In addition, the future scopes and challenges while designing tomorrows advanced protective clothing are cited. This would provide a guideline in terms of comfort and performance while developing and designing the fire-fighter protective clothing for different climatic conditions.

In the field of textile and clothing, radio frequency identification (RFID), which is one of the most promising technological innovations, is used in manufacturing, inventory control, warehousing, distribution, logistics, automatic object tracking and supply chain management. Various retailers and manufacturers (of clothing as well as consumer goods) such as CVS, Tesco, Prada, Benetten, Wal-mart and Procter & Gamble, are now implementing the technology and exploring the impact of the technology on their business. RFID technologies may improve the potential benefits of supply chain management through reduction of inventory losses, increase of the efficiency and speed of processes and improvement of information accuracy. The basic of success lies in understanding the technology and other features to minimize the potential problems. Although the technology existed for several years, the technological challenges and cost issues are the major hurdles for the widespread use of RFID. In this paper, the authors have addressed the technology of RFID and various applications related to inventory management, production control, retail management, brand segregation etc. in textile and clothing industry. In addition, the disadvantages, challenges and future directions of RFID technology have also been highlighted.

Since the invention of small arms ammunition, the human torso has required protection from hand-gun bullets, and today’s civil and military personnel are regularly clad in soft body armor systems to cope with these threats. However, increasingly, the threat spectrum has widened to include a plethora of both edged and pointed weapons. Over the past two decades in particular, this has required development of either specific soft armors to defeat that particular threat, or the development of multi-threat vests that can resist both hand-gun bullets and knife and spike attacks. In this review, we provide more details about the various material combinations that are used to defeat a knife or spike, since these armor materials are a lot different from the conventional aramid fabrics, and numerous, widely-different solutions are being pursued. The penetration mechanisms associated with the various forms of attack—stabbing and slashing—are discussed, as well as the use of new fibers, shear thickening fluids, and nano-materials in developing these body armor systems.