Lois Moran, editor and publisher of American Craft magazine, said that Mr. Merritt brought to the school as visiting masters people like the English weaver Peter Collingwood, the Columbian textile artist Olga de Amaral, the German sculptural fiber experts Ritzi and Peter Jacobi and the Dutch jeweler Emmy van Leersum.
To find out, the Nexia researchers teamed up with fiber-spinning experts at the U.S. Army Soldier Biological Chemical Command in Natick, Massachusetts.
But Mr. Veeder was the lab's sole expert on fiber evidence, such as threads recovered from clothing at crime scenes.
Public health experts said fiber might nonetheless play another role long attributed to it: reducing the risk of heart disease and diabetes.
There will doubtlessly be plenty of worthy applications for high-strength, electronically active fibers, says Wade Adams, a nanotechnology expert at Rice University in Houston.
Defense experts said bamboo fiber may be one ingredient that can be adapted to these environmentally friendly bullets.
In particular, Mr. Maddox said there might have been inconsistencies in the analysis of the evidence conducted by Michael Malone, an F.B.I. agent and expert on hair and fiber analysis.
"This is a game-changer if it works," said James C. Fajardo, the top materials processing expert on the hollow-fiber research team at Corning, the leader in the $4.9 billion optical fiber market.
A Turkish carpet expert can provide information about the fiber content and quality.
"It was totally comfortable to believe that low-fat, high-fiber diets would be beneficial," said one public health expert, Dr. Gilbert S. Omenn, executive vice president for medical affairs at the University of Michigan, who was not involved in the research.
