Effectiveness of Air Filters and Air Cleaners in Allergic Respiratory Diseases: A Review of the Recent Literature

Air filtration is frequently recommended as a component of environmental control measures for patients with allergic respiratory disease. Residential air filtration can be provided by whole house filtration via the home’s heating, ventilation, or air conditioning system, by portable room air cleaners, or a combination of the two. Appliances to filter the sleep breathing zone also have been developed. High-efficiency whole house filtration, high-efficiency particulate air sleep zone air filtration, and high-efficiency particulate air room air cleaners all appear to provide various degrees of benefit. Recent studies of various types of filtration, used alone or as part of more comprehensive environmental control measures, are reviewed

The state of the Martian climate

60°N was +2.0°C, relative to the 1981–2010 average value (Fig. 5.1). This marks a new high for the record. The average annual surface air temperature (SAT) anomaly for 2016 for land stations north of starting in 1900, and is a significant increase over the previous highest value of +1.2°C, which was observed in 2007, 2011, and 2015. Average global annual temperatures also showed record values in 2015 and 2016. Currently, the Arctic is warming at more than twice the rate of lower latitudes

Proposal, project, practice, pause: developing a framework for evaluating smart domestic product engagement

Smart homes are fast becoming a reality, with smart TVs, smart meters and other such “smart” devices/systems already representing a substantial household presence. These, which we collectively term “smart domestic products” (SDPs), will need to be promoted, adopted, and normalized into daily routines. Despite this, the marketing canon lacks a substantive discourse on pertinent research. We look to help correct this by melding ideas from organizational sociology, innovation diffusion and appropriation studies, and service dominant logic. Consequently, we suggest a framework for research that responds directly to the specific characteristics of SDPs. Using the SDP eco-system as a context, our framework emphasizes the interplay of embeddedness, practice, value and engagement. It comprises a four-stage horizontal/ longitudinal axis we describe as proposal, project, practice and pause. Cross-sectionally we focus on value, and combine aspects of existing thought to suggest how this impacts each stage of our engagement continuum. We subsequently identify perceived personal advantage as the resultant of these two axes and propose this as the key for understanding consumer and SDP sociomaterial engagement. This article also advances a definition of SDPs and ends with an agenda for further research

Gender, turning points, and boomerangs: returning home in young adulthood in Great Britain

The idea of a generation of young adults “boomeranging” back to the parental home has gained widespread currency in the British popular press. However, there is little empirical research identifying either increasing rates of returning home or the factors associated with this trend. This article addresses this gap in the literature using data from a long-running household panel survey to examine the occurrence and determinants of returning to the parental home. We take advantage of the longitudinal design of the British Household Panel Survey (1991–2008) and situate returning home in the context of other life-course transitions. We demonstrate how turning points in an individual’s life course—such as leaving full-time education, unemployment, or partnership dissolution—are key determinants of returning home. An increasingly unpredictable labor market means that graduate employment cannot be taken for granted following university graduation, and returning home upon completion of higher education is becoming normative. We also find that gender moderates the relationship among partnership dissolution, parenthood, and returning to the parental home, reflecting the differential welfare support in Great Britain for single parents compared with nonresident fathers and childless young adults

The Effect of State Anxiety on Paranoid Ideation and Jumping to Conclusions. An Experimental Investigation

Theoretical models of persecutory delusions have emphasized the impact of reasoning biases and negative emotion at the early stages of symptom formation. However, the causal mechanisms remain unclear. This study tests the hypothesis that state anxiety will increase paranoid ideation and that this increase will be moderated by the level of individual vulnerability and mediated by the tendency to jump to conclusions. Healthy participants (n = 90) with varying levels of vulnerability (psychosis symptoms assessed by the Community Assessment of Psychic Experiences) were randomly assigned to either an anxiety or a nonanxiety condition. Anxiety was induced by pictures from the International Affective Picture System and by in sensu exposure to individual anxiety-provoking situations. During each condition, symptoms of paranoia were assessed by a state-adapted version of the Paranoia Checklist. Jumping to conclusions (JTC) was assessed using a modified version of the beads task. Overall, participants in the anxiety condition reported significantly more paranoid thoughts and showed more JTC than participants in the neutral condition. Participants with higher baseline vulnerability were more likely to show an increase in paranoia as reaction to the anxiety manipulation. Moreover, the association of anxiety and paranoia was mediated by the increased tendency to jump to conclusions in the beads task. The results are in line with a threat anticipation conceptualization of paranoia and provide evidence for an interaction of anxiety and reasoning biases in the development of paranoid beliefs. A combination of meta-cognitive training directed at reasoning biases and promoting emotion regulation skills might prove beneficial in preventing symptoms