A 24 year old man developed severe asthma two years after starting to work in a plywood plant. Four years later the patient had to stop working because of the increasing severity of his asthma. Three months after leaving his job, the patient's asthma was greatly improved. His job consisted of placing plywood sheets into a drying machine. The plywood sheets had stayed outside in wet conditions f...

The official WHO/IUIS database (www.allergen.org) currently lists 77 mould allergens from a variety of protein families. To date, only eight recombinant single allergens from three mould species are available for molecular allergy diagnosis of mould sensitization. These include rAlt a 1, the major allergen in Alternaria alternata-sensitized individuals, and enolase rAlt a 6 with it potential cr...

We construct electronic oscillator from acellular slime mould Physarum polycephalum. The slime mould oscillator is made of two electrodes connected by a protoplasmic tube of the living slime mould. A protoplasmic tube has an average resistance of 3 MOhm. The tube’s resistance is changing over time due to peristaltic contractile activity of the tube. The resistance of the protoplasmic tube oscil...

Classify the apple’s internal quality is important for apple’s quality. Mould core apple is not eatable and can reduce the juice quality if used for making juice. The core tissue’s color is brown and the density of mould core apple is lower than a normal apple. This paper describes the detection of apple’s one internal quality (mould core disease) on the physical basis -density. X-ray technolog...

This paper is concerned with the injection moulding process, in which hot molten plastic is injected under high pressure into a thin cold mould. Assuming that the velocity and temperature profiles across the mould maintain their shape, a simple steady state model to describe the behaviour of a Newtonian fluid during the rilling stage is developed. Various phenomena of the process are examined, ...

The liquid metal flow and the solidification behaviours in a multi-cavity casting mould of two automotive cast parts were simulated in three dimensions. The commercial code, FLOW-3D® was used because it can track the front of the molten metal by a Volume of Fluid (VOF) method and allows complicated parts to be modeled by the Fractional Area/Volume Obstacle Representation (FAVOR) meth...

Mould growth in buildings affects indoor air quality. To prevent mould growth in building components, there is a need for design tools that take into account both microclimate and mould growth patterns. We propose a novel laboratory method to assess mould growth as a function of RH, temperature and substrate by measuring the thermal power produced by the fungal metabolism as a measure of growth...

The aim of this study was to analyse the prevalence of mouldy homes and their association with respiratory symptoms and diseases in a subarctic climate. A questionnaire was mailed to a random sample of 2,000 males and females, aged 25-64 yrs, living in the county of Kuopio, Finland. A total of 1,521 (76%) responded and 1,460 were selected for the final analysis. The prevalence of homes with vis...

Moulds are complex devices and their quotation is one of the most risky tasks in mould industry. In this paper a digital work environment based on a computer assisted mould quotation tool is proposed in which all the relevant information is quickly available to assist a robust and rapid quotation. The tool involves a new way to directly access past quotation, design and even manufacturing data ...

The slime mould Physarum polycephalum has been used in developing unconventional computing devices for in which the slime mould played a role of a sensing, actuating, and computing device. These devices treated the slime mould rather as an active living substrate yet the slime mould is a selfconsistent living creature which evolved for millions of years and occupied most part of the world, but ...