Mites set to bite the dust
After years of waging war on asthma and allergy sufferers, the house mite may be about to bite the dust. Researchers at Southampton University believe they have found a method of controlling the millions of microscopic creatures that live unseen in beds, carpets and curtains.
Electrostatics technology, which is already used in vacuum-cleaner filters, has been adapted by the university's department of electrical engineering into electrets, special fibres that act like magnets and trap the dust mites and prevent skin contact.
"We are still at the evaluation stage,'' said Professor John Hughes at the department of electrical engineering. He explained the technique to develop the fibres is an adaptation of existing technology that he hopes will bring the product on to the market within two years if clinical trials are successful. "The electrets have very good fibre-catching characteristics and are especially good in the house dust area for preventing asthma and hay fever.''
The fibres work on the principle of electrostatically attracting the dust mites, which colonise soft furnishings in houses, and trapping them. Hughes suggests they can be woven into standard carpet and curtain material and used in other soft furnishings where the dust mites live and
breed.
Researchers at Southampton are also developing a cream and gel with similar electret properties, which will enable allergy sufferers to be mite free indoors and outdoors.
Current mite statistics are frightening. A quarter of the adult population of Great Britain some 12m people suffer from asthma, eczema, rhinitis or an allergy which is believed to be caused by house dust mites. There are more than 2m house dust mites found in the average double mattress, and 10% of the weight of an average pillow is accounted for by dead skin and house dust mites.
The mites develop from eggs into adults in about four weeks and live for up to 40 days. It is estimated that if all the house mites in the average bed were laid nose to tail, they would stretch the length of five football pitches.
House-dust mites are a key trigger for common allergic conditions because they cause itching skin and induce asthma attacks. Sensitivity to the mites droppings is also increasing.
"It's the droppings which are the problem in terms of allergies because they can enter the nasal cavities and lungs,'' said Hughes. "The electrets work as a filter where the ultimate aim is to prevent inhalation of such small particles. But with an average of 2m mites in each bed they create a lot of droppings.''
There are mite repellants on the market that act as a physical barrier to the mites but the filter element in the electrets is new. It charges the mites, holds on to them and, rather than making an actual cover, the fibres are incorporated in to other materials which will still be permeable but will not encourage sweat a key factor in attracting mites in beds.
Taken several stages further electret fibres could be used in the bands and collars of animals as a pest control against fleas that cause disease in dogs, cats and large farm animals.
The researchers hope the product will be marketed but are seeking an industrial partner to take over the prototype evaluation. "This can take years but we hope that because we are using fibres already on the market we could be looking at as little as one or two years,'' said Hughes.
Any development to help allergy sufferers is welcomed by the British Allergy Foundation (BAF). "Although trials on the electrets have not started yet, we hope these improvements in materials that will trap house dust mites and their allergens will greatly reduce the risk of these diseases in high-risk families,'' said Dr Jill Warner of the BAF.
Electrostatics technology, which is already used in vacuum-cleaner filters, has been adapted by the university's department of electrical engineering into electrets, special fibres that act like magnets and trap the dust mites and prevent skin contact.
"We are still at the evaluation stage,'' said Professor John Hughes at the department of electrical engineering. He explained the technique to develop the fibres is an adaptation of existing technology that he hopes will bring the product on to the market within two years if clinical trials are successful. "The electrets have very good fibre-catching characteristics and are especially good in the house dust area for preventing asthma and hay fever.''
The fibres work on the principle of electrostatically attracting the dust mites, which colonise soft furnishings in houses, and trapping them. Hughes suggests they can be woven into standard carpet and curtain material and used in other soft furnishings where the dust mites live and
breed.
Researchers at Southampton are also developing a cream and gel with similar electret properties, which will enable allergy sufferers to be mite free indoors and outdoors.
Current mite statistics are frightening. A quarter of the adult population of Great Britain some 12m people suffer from asthma, eczema, rhinitis or an allergy which is believed to be caused by house dust mites. There are more than 2m house dust mites found in the average double mattress, and 10% of the weight of an average pillow is accounted for by dead skin and house dust mites.
The mites develop from eggs into adults in about four weeks and live for up to 40 days. It is estimated that if all the house mites in the average bed were laid nose to tail, they would stretch the length of five football pitches.
House-dust mites are a key trigger for common allergic conditions because they cause itching skin and induce asthma attacks. Sensitivity to the mites droppings is also increasing.
"It's the droppings which are the problem in terms of allergies because they can enter the nasal cavities and lungs,'' said Hughes. "The electrets work as a filter where the ultimate aim is to prevent inhalation of such small particles. But with an average of 2m mites in each bed they create a lot of droppings.''
There are mite repellants on the market that act as a physical barrier to the mites but the filter element in the electrets is new. It charges the mites, holds on to them and, rather than making an actual cover, the fibres are incorporated in to other materials which will still be permeable but will not encourage sweat a key factor in attracting mites in beds.
Taken several stages further electret fibres could be used in the bands and collars of animals as a pest control against fleas that cause disease in dogs, cats and large farm animals.
The researchers hope the product will be marketed but are seeking an industrial partner to take over the prototype evaluation. "This can take years but we hope that because we are using fibres already on the market we could be looking at as little as one or two years,'' said Hughes.
Any development to help allergy sufferers is welcomed by the British Allergy Foundation (BAF). "Although trials on the electrets have not started yet, we hope these improvements in materials that will trap house dust mites and their allergens will greatly reduce the risk of these diseases in high-risk families,'' said Dr Jill Warner of the BAF.
Best Comforts and Beauty found at Home
Julian Schnabel has been compared by his harsher critics to a baby hippo,
beef-on-the-hoof and a Strasbourg goose. The hottest young artist on two
continents, in other words, and whichever way you look at it, he's
big.
The great new genius of American painting also goes in for Rocky Balboa singlets and On the Waterfront T-shirts rolled back to his armpits, which doesn't help. Julian's been lifting a little weights this year because he wasn't doing anything and his wife thought he was getting kinda fat, but the evidence of a Brooklyn-Jewish childhood and an adult passion for Tex-Mex cooking hasn't nearly been worked off.
If Schnabel is big, however, 'Schnabels' are bigger, and made of even tougher stuff: oil on linoleum, aluminium, elk-horn, buffalo-hide and timber; and, most notoriously, oil, in the form of mythical and pseudo-religious imagery, crudely splashed on to plaster and a scabby surface of broken plates.
Six years ago, examples of Schnabel's bombastic, heavy-duty painting could be picked up for dollars 3,000. Charles Saatchi, who owns more Schnabels than any other private collector, started buying when they cost even less. The paintings currently on show at the Waddington gallery in London are priced at between dollars 55,000 and dollars 125,000 each.
Agony, Schnabel once wrote, was the reason he started painting. 'Maybe I make paintings larger than I am so that I can step into them and they can massage me into a state of unspeakable,' he has said. He is as garrulous as his friend Andy Warhol is un-giving in the presence of strangers and, having committed a new Christian name to memory, instantly goes into his rap. http://tailoryourhome.com/window-treatment/dont-try-budget-blinds-until-you-read-this has a great variety of beautiful budget blinds that you can choose for your lovely home.
It is a rap full of words like 'imagistic' and 'deconstruction' and sentences which seem to have no beginning and no end. 'Even in these paintings that are completely embedded in their own materialism in order to exist,' he begins, setting off up Cork Street, and continues in the gallery, in the basement library, in the back of the Daimler and in the lift at Claridges, as he walks through the door of his suite.
He has transferred his patronage from the Ritz to Claridge's, he says, ever since the Ritz misplaced a smoked salmon that his father-in-law had given to his wife. His wife, it appears, is in Belgium with their two daughters. Lola Montes and Stella, recuperating from the trip to India they have just made.
'Let me read something I wrote just the other day in the airplane,' he says, opening an exercise book and beginning to pick his way through the notes for an essay to be called - he announces the title with all the earnestness of a fourth-former called out before the school - The Perrformance of Making a Painting.
The hottest painter on two continents, it's becoming obvious by now, is intent on talking himself out of the 'Lifestyle' ghetto and on to the heavy-weight pages further on in the 'Review'. But just how important this is to him only becomes apparent when the photographer arrives. Home improvement offers a lot of tips to make your home a lot better and beautfiul.
beef-on-the-hoof and a Strasbourg goose. The hottest young artist on two
continents, in other words, and whichever way you look at it, he's
big.
The great new genius of American painting also goes in for Rocky Balboa singlets and On the Waterfront T-shirts rolled back to his armpits, which doesn't help. Julian's been lifting a little weights this year because he wasn't doing anything and his wife thought he was getting kinda fat, but the evidence of a Brooklyn-Jewish childhood and an adult passion for Tex-Mex cooking hasn't nearly been worked off.
If Schnabel is big, however, 'Schnabels' are bigger, and made of even tougher stuff: oil on linoleum, aluminium, elk-horn, buffalo-hide and timber; and, most notoriously, oil, in the form of mythical and pseudo-religious imagery, crudely splashed on to plaster and a scabby surface of broken plates.
Six years ago, examples of Schnabel's bombastic, heavy-duty painting could be picked up for dollars 3,000. Charles Saatchi, who owns more Schnabels than any other private collector, started buying when they cost even less. The paintings currently on show at the Waddington gallery in London are priced at between dollars 55,000 and dollars 125,000 each.
Agony, Schnabel once wrote, was the reason he started painting. 'Maybe I make paintings larger than I am so that I can step into them and they can massage me into a state of unspeakable,' he has said. He is as garrulous as his friend Andy Warhol is un-giving in the presence of strangers and, having committed a new Christian name to memory, instantly goes into his rap. http://tailoryourhome.com/window-treatment/dont-try-budget-blinds-until-you-read-this has a great variety of beautiful budget blinds that you can choose for your lovely home.
It is a rap full of words like 'imagistic' and 'deconstruction' and sentences which seem to have no beginning and no end. 'Even in these paintings that are completely embedded in their own materialism in order to exist,' he begins, setting off up Cork Street, and continues in the gallery, in the basement library, in the back of the Daimler and in the lift at Claridges, as he walks through the door of his suite.
He has transferred his patronage from the Ritz to Claridge's, he says, ever since the Ritz misplaced a smoked salmon that his father-in-law had given to his wife. His wife, it appears, is in Belgium with their two daughters. Lola Montes and Stella, recuperating from the trip to India they have just made.
'Let me read something I wrote just the other day in the airplane,' he says, opening an exercise book and beginning to pick his way through the notes for an essay to be called - he announces the title with all the earnestness of a fourth-former called out before the school - The Perrformance of Making a Painting.
The hottest painter on two continents, it's becoming obvious by now, is intent on talking himself out of the 'Lifestyle' ghetto and on to the heavy-weight pages further on in the 'Review'. But just how important this is to him only becomes apparent when the photographer arrives. Home improvement offers a lot of tips to make your home a lot better and beautfiul.