CONTEXT Studies from different geographical regions have assessed the relations between indoor dampness and mold problems and the risk of asthma, but the evidence has been inconclusive. OBJECTIVE To assess the relations between indicators of indoor dampness and mold problems and the risk of developing new asthma, and to investigate whether such relations differ according to the type of exposu...

It has recently been demonstrated that patients who develop chronic illness after prior exposure to water damaged buildings (WDB) and mold have the presence of mycotoxins, which can be detected in the urine. We hypothesized that the mold may be harbored internally and continue to release and/or produce mycotoxins which contribute to ongoing chronic illness. The sinuses are the most likely candi...

We report a case of a 38-year-old mold-allergic patient who developed episodes of generalized urticaria and systemic anaphylactic shock immediately after ingesting button mushrooms. A manganese-dependent superoxide dismutase (MnSOD) and a NADP-dependent mannitol dehydrogenase (MtDH) from Agaricus bisporus mushroom were identified as patient-specific IgE-binding proteins. Cross-reactivity betwee...

The mold design/manufacturing plays a crucial role in the development of high-volume mold-injected, pressed, and/or formed products. A mold fabrication consists of a set of sub-processes and usually takes several months to complete its design and production. Due to the shortening of product lifecycle, the sequence of process execution has to be reengineered to improve its efficiency. This resea...

Electroformed microfluidic chip mold faces the problem of uneven thickness, which decreases the dimensional accuracy of the mold, and increases the production cost. To fabricate a mold with uniform thickness, two methods are investigated. Firstly, experiments are carried out to study how the ultrasonic agitation affects the thickness uniformity of the mold. It is found that the thickness unifor...

BACKGROUND When the federal levee system broke after Hurricane Katrina, 80 percent of New Orleans, approximately 134,000 homes, flooded. As repopulation and revitalization activities continue, exposure to mold and other respiratory irritants has emerged as a major health concern; however, there has been no study examining children's respiratory health and indoor mold levels in the post-Katrina ...

The objectives in this work were to develop, calibrate, and apply a model to predict ideal taper profiles down the narrow faces of the SIDERAR slab casting mold for several different casting speeds, steel grades, flux powder compositions, and widths. A significant amount of original research was undertaken for this challenging problem. A finite difference model of transient 1-D heat conduction ...