• Fibers and Polymers
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• v.7 no.1
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• pp.8-11
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• 2006

It has been reported for several decades that microbes, which naturally contaminate cotton fibres during crop growth and subsequent storage can have an adverse effect on the structural quality of cotton lint. Although several studies have analysed the relationship between numbers of Gram-negative bacteria or bacterial endotoxin and particular physical properties, these studies have been limited to cotton from the United States, and the possible effects of fungal contamination have not been examined in detail. This study quantified the Gram-negative bacteria and fungal cells, as well as measuring concentrations of bacterial endotoxin and fungal glucan, on cotton lint samples from international sources. Spearman's rank correlation coefficients calculated between these results and quality data analysed by an automated testing instrument revealed several significant correlations. Findings included inverse correlations between the biological contamination parameters and fibre elongation, micronaire and reflectance. The possible causes and implications of these findings were also discussed.

• Fibers and Polymers
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• v.5 no.4
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• pp.297-302
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• 2004

In many engineering applications, the final decision is based on the evaluation of a number of alternatives in terms of a number of criteria. This problem may become very intricate when the selection criteria are expressed in terms of different units or the pertinent data are difficult to be quantified. The Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP) is an effective way in dealing with such kind of complicated problems. Cotton fiber is selected or graded, in the spinning industries, based on several quality criteria. However, the existing selection or grading method based on Fiber quality Index (FqI) is rather crude and ambiguous. This paper presents a novel approach of cotton fiber selection using the AHP methodology of Multi Criteria Decision Making.