We investigated that the effect of based compound on machinability of two types of PM steels. One is a copper steel which is selected as a general PM steel, and the other is a diffusion alloyed steel selected as a high strength PM steel. It is found that based compound addition improves machinability in drilling of both of the PM steels. Although the compound addition degrades the mechanical properties of PM steels, it is considered that decrease of the properties can be compensated by increasing density.

Despite the great importance of chemical insecticides, with the ever increasing resistance of pest insects to chemical insecticides and the growing concern over environmental pollution, it becomes evident that the problem of pest attack on crops cannot be solved by anyone system. Under these circumstances, main pathogens of insects, i.e., viruses, bacteria, fungi and protozoa, have been studied to control many insect pests. Some of these pathogens are now being produced as microbial insecticides at the rate of hundreds of tons per year in the world. Some microbial insecticides are very effective against numerous or target insects under suitable environmental condition, and microbial control has been played an important role in integrated control program. They have many unique properties such as selectivity, multiplication and harmless to higher animals. However, we must be aware also that there are many problems to be solved, such as safety, persistence and difficulty of efficacy, etc_ on the microbial insecticides.

We investigated the expression patterns of a granule-bound starch synthase I (GBSSI = Waxy) gene at different developmental stages of storage and non-storage organs in Amaranthus cruentus. GBSSI transcripts were strongly expressed in the middle and mid-late stages of seed development and thereafter expression decreased. In addition, this gene was expressed in all non-storage organs tested (the leaf, stem, petiole and root) and showed a tendency to increase during plant development. Therefore, our results indicate that the amaranth GBSSI gene exhibits late expression in the perisperm, and that it is expressed in both storage and non-storage tissues. We also investigated the genetic diversity of GBSSI among 37 strains of amaranth grains originating from New World. A comparison of the GBSSI coding sequence revealed an extremely high level of sequence conservation, and a single nucleotide polymorphism between the sequences of non-waxy (Type I) and waxy (Type II) phenotypes was detected. This indicates that a G–T polymorphism in exon 10 (a nonsense mutation) was a unique event in the evolution of the GBSSI gene in amaranth grains.