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...

Fumonisins in maize (Zea mays L.) grain silo bags in the conditions of three Argentine provinces were analyzed to determine how this kind of storage affects contamination and if differential storage durations or times of the year of silo bag closing and opening are factors that could modify it. Moisture content, water activity (a(w)), molds and yeasts present, and fumonisins were analyzed in 16...

Hooks and other sub-surface features in continuous-cast ultralow-carbon steel samples were examined using optical microscopy, electron backscattering diffraction, energy dispersive X-ray spectroscopy, and electron probe microanalysis techniques. Special etching reagents revealed dendrites growing from both sides of the line of hook origin. This line was found to represent the frozen meniscus an...

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-...

A process of micromolding, delivering micro- and nanopatterned ceramic surfaces for biomaterial applications is described in this work. To create the desired structures, tape casting of ceramic slurries on microfabricated silicon mold was used. Several tape casting slurry compositions were tested to evaluate the feasibility of transferring micro- and nano-features from silicon molds. Used ceram...

This study explored the effects of cryogenic treatment on the microstructure, hardness, and wear-resistance of diamond-like carbon (DLC) by cryogenically treating NAK 80 mold steel coated with DLC. Raman spectroscopy analyzed the structure of the DLC film. Nanoindenter analyzed the hardness and Young’s modulus of the film, and their relationship determined the wear resistance. Wear test assesse...