The growth of mould in the indoor environment is an important contributor to the development and exacerbation of atopic disease, and potentially poses other health risks. Moreover, the detection and elimination of mould have resulted in massive remedial expenditures, often without clear engineering knowledge of the nature of the moisture events that led to the damage, especially for residential...

Physarum polycephalum is a macroscopic single celled plasmodial slime mould. We employ plasmodial phototactic responses to construct laboratory prototypes of NOT and NAND logical gates with electrical inputs/outputs and optical coupling; the slime mould plays dual roles of computing device and electrical conductor. Slime mould logical gates are fault tolerant and resettable. The results present...

BACKGROUND Exposure to mould or dampness at home has been associated with adverse respiratory effects in all age groups. This exposure has also been related to insomnia in adults. We aimed to investigate the association between exposure to visible mould or dampness at home and sleep problems in children. METHODS The study population consisted of 1719 10-year-old children from the German popul...

Groundnut or peanut (Arachis hypogaea L.) is one of the important economic oilseed crops of the world. The cultivated groundnut belongs to family Fabaceae, subfamily Papilionaceae. Groundnut is grown in nearly 100 countries. It occupies 21.7 million ha worldwide with a total production of 38.6 million tonnes during 2011 (FAOSTAT, 2011). Among the soil-borne fungal diseases of groundnut, stem ro...

Mould mite numbers were successfully monitored in tissue culture laboratories using black tape where numbers of mites were high. Natural diamite and Parafilm “M” were the best barriers for preventing mould mite contamination. Treating surfaces with a miticide-containing paint (Artilin 3A) or bendiocarp prevented mites from entering containers holding food suitable for mould mites. Mites were no...

Abstract In this study, the effects of mould materials on microstructure and mechanical properties of cast A356 Al alloy were investigated. The alloy was poured into three different moulds. Then the samples were homogenised and applied T6 heat treatment. The optical, Scanning Electron Microscopy (SEM) and Energy Dispersive Spectroscopy (EDS) studies were made. Secondary dendrite arm spacing (SD...

In plants, resistance to pathogens is frequently determined by dominant resistance genes, whose products are proposed to recognize pathogen-encoded avirulence gene (Avr) products. The tomato resistance locus Cf-2 was isolated by positional cloning and found to contain two almost identical genes, each conferring resistance to isolates of tomato leaf mould (C. fulvum) expressing the corresponding...

Slime mould Physarum polycephalum is large single cell with intriguingly smart behaviour. The slime mould shows outstanding abilities to adapt its protoplasmic network to varying environmental conditions. The slime mould can solve tasks of computational geometry, image processing, logics and arithmetics when data are represented by configurations of attractants and repellents. We attempt to map...

Slime mould Physarum polycephalum is a large single cell visible by unaided eye. We design a slime mould implementation of a tactile hair, where the slime mould responds to repeated deflection of hair by an immediate high-amplitude spike and a prolonged increase in amplitude and width of its oscillation impulses. We demonstrate that signal-to-noise ratio of the Physarum tactile hair sensor aver...