The environmental relative moldiness index (ERMI) metric was previously developed to quantify mold contamination in U.S. homes. This study determined the applicability of the ERMI for quantifying mold and moisture damage in Finnish residences. Homes of the LUKAS2 birth cohort in Finland were visually inspected for moisture damage and mold, and vacuumed floor dust samples were collected. An ERMI...

An important step in the mold design process that ensures disassembly of mold pieces consists of identifying various regions on the part that will be formed by different mold pieces. This paper presents an efficient and robust algorithm to find and highlight the mold-piece regions on a part. The algorithm can be executed on current-generation computer graphics hardware. The complexity of the al...

Mold contamination is a growing concern for homeowners in terms of both physical health and insurance. Health experts, although they concede that exposure to mold can cause respiratory illnesses, are calling for further research into other mold-related health effects and for development of standards for mold sampling and data analysis. The insurance industry is grappling with how---and whether-...

The incidence of invasive mold infections has increased during the 1990s among patients undergoing allogeneic hematopoietic stem cell transplantation (HCT) after myeloablative conditioning. In this study, we determined risk factors for invasive mold infection and mold infectionrelated death among 163 patients undergoing allogeneic HCT with nonmyeloablative conditioning. The cumulative incidence...

BACKGROUND Students spend a large portion of their day in classrooms which may be a source of mold exposure. We examined the diversity and concentrations of molds in inner-city schools and described differences between classrooms within the same school. METHODS Classroom airborne mold spores, collected over a 2 day period, were measured twice during the school year by direct microscopy. RES...

Automated planning is a branch of artificial intelligence which deals with the computation of the best strategies of action sequences, typically for execution by machines or robots (Russell & Norvig, 2003). In general, the automated planning solutions are complex, combinatory and have to be searched in a multidimensional space. Solutions usually resort to iterative trial and error processes com...

A polymeric microfluidic device for solid-phase extraction (SPE)-based isolation of nucleic acids is demonstrated. The plastic chip can function as a disposable sample preparation system for different biological and diagnostic applications. The chip was fabricated in a cyclic polyolefin by hot-embossing with a master mold. The solid phase consisted of a porous monolithic polymer column impregna...

Polymeric microneedles fabricated by microinjection molding techniques have been demonstrated using Topas COC as the molding plastic material. Open-channel microneedles with cross-sectional area of 100 lm · 100 lm were designed and fabricated on top of a shank of 4.7 mm in length, 0.6 mm in width, and 0.5 mm in depth. The tip of the microneedle has a round shape with a radius of 125 lm as limit...

INTRODUCTION Recently, a milling for die using a small end mill of diameter less than 1 mm is increased, because sizes of plastic mold parts such as connectors for an IT and an electronics becomes micro extremely. In general, a tool life is long and a good cut surface is obtained as a cutting speed is high. A speed-increasing spindle, which is attached to a shank may be used to increase the cut...

Injection mold development lead time has been reduced presently by over 50% by employing rapid prototyping based tooling methods. Rapid tooling methods however, have certain limitations in terms of mold material, accuracy, surface finish, and mold life. The relevant process knowledge, especially for newer routes, is not very well established, resulting inconsistent or inappropriate rapid toolin...