The paper presents a new approach for analyzing mold growth risk in buildings, based on a mixed simulation approach with consideration of uncertainties in relevant building parameters. The approach is capable to predict and explain unexpected mold growth occurrences that would typically not show up in standard deterministic simulation. This study simulates the local environmental conditions at material surfaces in buildings by using a mix of standard simulation tools. By introducing uncertainties in relevant input parameters, this approach generates a statistical distribution of time aggregated mold growth conditions at a number of "trouble spots"in a specific building case. This distribution is then translated into an overall mold risk indicator. In addition, our method identifies those parameters whose uncertainty range has a dominant effect on an increase in mold risk. By thus identifying the critical influence of building components, building operation and maintenance factors on the increase in risk, appropriate actions during the building design and procurement process can be set up to address these risks.

As English has been rapidly spreading to non-Western communities, we have had numerous varieties of English. In the Outer Circle, English gained an official status, which resulted in nonnative varieties of English. In the Expanding Circle, English achieved the status of the first foreign language. With a range of English varieties, educators and administrators have been faced with controversial questions such as: (1) how to define native speakers of English? and (2) which varieties to teach? This qualitative study investigates four Korean EFL teachers’ perception of speakers of English and the issue of target varieties. Using data from semi-structured interviews and personal conversations collected for one academic semester, the researcher found that the participants considered various features when identifying an individual as a native or nonnative speaker of English. They used to consider ethnicity and nationality important in the past, which have been replaced by language precedence, cultural attachment, native speaker’s intuition, and mutual intelligibility. The findings of this study also demonstrate that American English is regarded as the most preferred variety as an educational target in Korean ELT because of the power that its speakers have.

Mormonilla phasma is redescribed, based on the specimens from the Northeastern Pacific. M. phasma in the study area has the following morphological characteristics; second endopodal segment of mandible partly fused to basis and a distinct three-segmented

A novel sintering process is proposed for bonding of and layers. Common commercial glass was used and infilterated among filler particles. As the kind of commercial glass, the phenomenon of the infilteration is different. Although Sud-1140 glass forms a glass/filler composite, it is not completely infilterated into the filler particles at . However as the increase of sintering temperature the infilteration of glass was improved. In this study, GA-1 and GA-12 glasses were infilterated the more than Sud-1140 glass. However, they are reacted by layer. The results of the experiment show that constrained sintering and the co-firing of the different materials were possible for glass infilteration using Sud-1140 glass at .

Hopkinson bar dynamic test under strain rates ranging from 2000 to 8000 at room temperature revealed that the flow stress of tungsten heavy alloys depended strongly on the strain, strain rate, and the content of molybdenum. The variation of flow stress was caused by the competition between work hardening and heat softening in the materials at different strain rates. The high temperature strength of the matrix phase was increased by the addition of molybdenum, which enhanced the strength of the tungsten heavy alloys in high strain rate test.

Mechanochemical synthesis of zinc ferrite, ZnFe2O4, was attempted from a powder mixture of iron (III) oxide, alpha-Fe2O3 and zinc (II) oxide, ZnO. Nanocrystalline zinc ferrite, ZnFe2O4 powders were successfully synthesized only bymilling for 30 hours. Evidence of the ZnFe2O4 formation was absent for the powders milled for 10 and 20 hours; the milling lowered the crystallinity of the starting materials. Heating after milling enhanced the formation of ZnFe2O4, crystal growth of ZnFe2O4 and the unreacted starting materials. The unreacted starting materials decreased their amounts by heating at higher temperatures.

Significant advances in mechanical testing for hard materials are discussed in this paper. There are three specific areas that are covered. In the measurement of fracture toughness factors such as the control of slow crack growth to produce strating cracks, and evaluating reproducibility and repeatability of tests have been recently examined. The miniaturization of tests reduces the amount of material that is used in testing, improves the throughput of tests, and also improves cost effectiveness. New techniques such as stepwise testing and micro scratch testing have contributed to significant additions to the knowledge of the wear mechanisms that operate in these materials.

This study was conducted to detect the apoptosis incidence in blastocysts and to compare the abundance of Bax, Bcl2L1, VEGF and FGFR2 in in vitro fertilized (IVF), parthenogenetic (PAT) and nuclear transfer (NT) embryos. Oocytes matured for 40 hr were enucleated and reconstructed with confluenced fetal fibroblasts (FFs) derived from a ～45 day fetus. Reconstructed eggs were then fused with 2 DC pulses (2.0 kV/cm, 30 μsec) and cultured with 7.5 μg/ml cytochalasin B for 3 hr. Parthenotes (PAT) were produced with the same electric strength and culture for NT eggs. The embryos were cultured in NCSU-23 medium at 39℃, 5% CO2, 5% O2 in air. In 3 runs, set of 10 embryos at the 4-cell to blastocyst stages were used to extract total RNA for analyzing the gene expression patterns of pro-apoptotic (Bax), anti-apoptotic (Bcl2L1), vasculogenesis (VEGF), implantation (FGFR2III) using real-time quantitative PCR. Cleavage and blastocyst rates were significantly higher (P<0.05) in IVF and PAT (79.3±8.5 and 25.5±6.1, and 85.0±6.4 and 38.6±5.5, respectively) than NT counterparts (65.1±5.2 and 15.6±3.0, respectively). Significantly higher (P<0.05) total cells were observed in IVF controls and PAT (34.7±5.8 and 38.1±4.1) than NT embryos (24.8±3.2). Apoptosis index was significantly lower (P<0.05) in IVF than NT embryos. The Relative abundances (RA) of Bax and VEGF were significantly higher (P<0.05) at blastocyst stage in NT than IVF control. The RA of Bcl2L1 and FGFR2III were significantly higher (P<0.05) at blastocyst stage in IVF than NT. The present study observed the abnormal gene expressions in NT embryos at various developmental stages, suggesting certain clues to find out the cause of the low efficiency of NT to term.