BACKGROUND The house dust mite is the most important environmental allergen implicated in the aetiology of childhood asthma in the UK. Dust mite barrier bedding is relatively inexpensive, convenient to use, and of proven effectiveness in reducing mattress house dust mite load, but no studies have evaluated its clinical effectiveness in the control of childhood asthma when dispensed in primary c...

[1] Using a combination of idealized radiative transfer simulations and a case study from the first field campaign of the Saharan Mineral Dust Experiment (SAMUM) in southern Morocco, this paper provides a systematic assessment of the limitations of the widely used Spinning Enhanced Visible and Infrared Imager (SEVIRI) red-green-blue (RGB) thermal infrared dust product. Both analyses indicate th...

We investigate the impact of dust-induced gas fragmentation on the formation of the first low-mass, metal-poor stars (<1M ) in the early universe. Previous work has shown the existence of a critical dust-to-gas ratio, below which dust thermal cooling cannot cause gas fragmentation. Assuming that the first dust is silicon-based, we compute critical dust-to-gas ratios and associated critical sili...

[1] Recent work has shown a statistical climatological link between African dust outbreaks and North Atlantic tropical cyclone frequency and intensity. However, a definite causal link between year-to-year changes in African dust and Atlantic tropical cyclones has yet to be proven. Here we show that variability in Atlantic dust cover is linked to changes in tropical cyclone activity through the ...

Effects of young stellar clusters on their gas and dust environment are probed using mid-infrared (MIR) wavelengths. The strong MIR [NeIII]/[NeII] ratios (∼ 5 to 10) reveal the presence of current massive stars less than 5Myr. Using MIR line ratios along with optical and NIR data from the literature, composite SEDs are constructed for NGC 1569, NGC 1140 and II Zw40. The stellar SEDs are then us...

Workers at metal machining workstations are exposed to airborne dust particles containing metals and their compounds. Their harmful impact on the workers' health depends on both their chemical composition and their distribution. The aim of this study was to determine the content of metals in dust fractions emitted in the process of mechanical machining of products made of brass, steel and cast ...

[1] We investigate the triggering mechanism of a crossequatorial dust storm observed by Mars Global Surveyor in 1999. This storm, which had a significant impact on global mean temperatures, was seen in visible and infrared data to commence with the transport of linear dust fronts from the northern high latitudes into the southern tropics. However, other similar transport events observed in nort...

Dust storms include particulate matter that is transported over land and sea with biota that could impact downwind ecosystems. In addition to the physico-chemical compositions, organismal diversities of dust from two storm events in southern Israel, December 2012 (Ev12) and January 2013 (Ev13), were determined by pyro-sequencing using primers universal to 16S and 18S rRNA genes and compared. Th...