Residential greenspace and COVID-19 Severity: A cohort study of 313,657 individuals in Greater Manchester, United Kingdom.

Background: Greenspaces contribute positively to mental and physical well-being, promote social cohesion, and alleviate environmental stressors, such as air pollution. Ecological studies suggest that greenspace may affect incidence and severity of Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19).

Objective: This study examines the association between residential greenspace and COVID-19 related hospitalization and death.

Long-term exposure to air pollution and COVID-19 severity: A cohort study in Greater Manchester, United Kingdom.

Exposure to outdoor air pollution may affect incidence and severity of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19). In this retrospective cohort based on patient records from the Greater Manchester Care Records, all first COVID-19 cases diagnosed between March 1, 2020 and May 31, 2022 were followed until COVID-19 related hospitalization or death within 28 days. Long-term exposure was estimated using mean annual concentrations of particulate matter with diameter ≤2.

A comparison of experience sampled hay fever symptom severity across rural and urban areas of the UK.

Hay fever affects people differently and can change over a lifetime, but data is lacking on how environmental factors may influence this. This study is the first to combine atmospheric sensor data with real-time, geo-positioned hay fever symptom reports to examine the relationship between symptom severity and air quality, weather and land use. We study 36145 symptom reports submitted over 5 years by over 700 UK residents using a mobile application.

Experimental reductions in subdaily flow fluctuations increased gross primary productivity for 425 river kilometers downstream.

Aquatic primary production is the foundation of many river food webs. Dams change the physical template of rivers, often driving food webs toward greater reliance on aquatic primary production. Nonetheless, the effects of regulated flow regimes on primary production are poorly understood.

UK daily meteorology, air quality, and pollen measurements for 2016-2019, with estimates for missing data.

In recent years, quantifying the impacts of detrimental air quality has become a global priority for researchers and policy makers. At present, the systems and methodologies supporting the collection and manipulation of this data are difficult to access. To support studies quantifying the interplay between common gaseous and particulate pollutants with meteorology and biological particles, this paper presents a comprehensive data-set containing daily air quality readings from the Automatic Urban and Rural Network, and pollen and weather data from Met Office monitoring stations, in the years 2016 to 2019 inclusive, for the United Kingdom.

Accurate Prediction of Organic Aerosol Evaporation Using Kinetic Multilayer Modeling and the Stokes-Einstein Equation.

Organic aerosol can adopt a wide range of viscosities, from liquid to glass, depending on the local humidity. In highly viscous droplets, the evaporation rates of organic components are suppressed to varying degrees, yet water evaporation remains fast. Here, we examine the coevaporation of semivolatile organic compounds (SVOCs), along with their solvating water, from aerosol particles levitated in a humidity-controlled environment.

New Approach Combining Molecular Fingerprints and Machine Learning to Estimate Relative Ionization Efficiency in Electrospray Ionization.

Electrospray ionization (ESI) is widely used as an ionization source for the analysis of complex mixtures by mass spectrometry. However, different compounds ionize more or less effectively in the ESI source, meaning instrument responses can vary by orders of magnitude, often in hard-to-predict ways. This precludes the use of ESI for quantitative analysis where authentic standards are not available.

Maternal carriage of Prevotella during pregnancy associates with protection against food allergy in the offspring.

In mice, the maternal microbiome influences fetal immune development and postnatal allergic outcomes. Westernized populations have high rates of allergic disease and low rates of gastrointestinal carriage of Prevotella, a commensal bacterial genus that produces short chain fatty acids and endotoxins, each of which may promote the development of fetal immune tolerance. In this study, we use a prebirth cohort (n = 1064 mothers) to conduct a nested case-cohort study comparing 58 mothers of babies with clinically proven food IgE mediated food allergy with 258 randomly selected mothers.

Transient cavity dynamics and divergence from the Stokes-Einstein equation in organic aerosol.

The diffusion of small molecules through viscous matrices formed by large organic molecules is important across a range of domains, including pharmaceutical science, materials chemistry, and atmospheric science, impacting on, for example, the formation of amorphous and crystalline phases. Here we report significant breakdowns in the Stokes-Einstein (SE) equation from measurements of the diffusion of water (spanning 5 decades) and viscosity (spanning 12 decades) in saccharide aerosol droplets. Molecular dynamics simulations show water diffusion is not continuous, but proceeds by discrete hops between transient cavities that arise and dissipate as a result of dynamical fluctuations within the saccharide lattice.

Comparison of Approaches for Measuring and Predicting the Viscosity of Ternary Component Aerosol Particles.

Measurements of the water activity-dependent viscosity of aerosol particles from two techniques are compared, specifically from the coalescence of two droplets in holographic optical tweezers (HOT) and poke-and-flow experiments on particles deposited onto a glass substrate. These new data are also compared with the fitting of dimer coagulation, isolation, and coalescence (DCIC) measurements. The aerosol system considered in this work are ternary mixtures of sucrose-citric acid-water and sucrose-NaNO-water, at varying solute mass ratios.

Secondary organic aerosol reduced by mixture of atmospheric vapours.

Secondary organic aerosol contributes to the atmospheric particle burden with implications for air quality and climate. Biogenic volatile organic compounds such as terpenoids emitted from plants are important secondary organic aerosol precursors with isoprene dominating the emissions of biogenic volatile organic compounds globally. However, the particle mass from isoprene oxidation is generally modest compared to that of other terpenoids.

The viscosity of atmospherically relevant organic particles.

The importance of organic aerosol particles in the environment has been long established, influencing cloud formation and lifetime, absorbing and scattering sunlight, affecting atmospheric composition and impacting on human health. Conventionally, ambient organic particles were considered to exist as liquids. Recent observations in field measurements and studies in the laboratory suggest that they may instead exist as highly viscous semi-solids or amorphous glassy solids under certain conditions, with important implications for atmospheric chemistry, climate and air quality.

Characterising the evaporation kinetics of water and semi-volatile organic compounds from viscous multicomponent organic aerosol particles.

The physicochemical changes experienced by organic aerosol particles undergoing dehydration into the surrounding gas phase can be drastic, forcing rapid vitrification of the particle and suppressing internal diffusion. Until recently, experimental studies have concentrated on quantifying diffusional mixing of either water or non-volatile components, while relatively little attention has been paid to the role of semivolatile organic component (SVOC) diffusion and volatilisation in maintaining the equilibrium between the gas and particle phases. Here we present methods to simultaneously investigate diffusivities and volatilities in studies of evolving single ternary aerosol particle size and composition.

Erratum: Gut microbial metabolites limit the frequency of autoimmune T cells and protect against type 1 diabetes.

This corrects the article DOI: 10.1038/ni.3713.

Development of lithium attachment mass spectrometry - knudsen effusion and chemical ionisation mass spectrometry (KEMS, CIMS).

Lithium ion attachment mass spectrometry provides a non-specific, non-fragmenting, sensitive and robust method for the detection of volatile species in the gas phase. The design, manufacture and results of lithium based ion attachment ionisation sources for two different mass spectrometry systems are presented. In this study trace gas analysis is investigated using a modified Chemical Ionization Mass Spectrometer (CIMS) and vapour pressure measurements are made using a modified Knudsen Effusion Mass Spectrometer (KEMS).

Dietary Propolis Ameliorates Dextran Sulfate Sodium-Induced Colitis and Modulates the Gut Microbiota in Rats Fed a Western Diet.

Propolis is an important hive product and considered beneficial to health. However, evidence of its potential for improving gut health is still lacking. Here we use rats to examine whether dietary supplementation with propolis could be used as a therapy for ulcerative colitis.

Accurate representations of the physicochemical properties of atmospheric aerosols: when are laboratory measurements of value?

Laboratory studies can provide important insights into the processes that occur at the scale of individual particles in ambient aerosol. We examine the accuracies of measurements of core physicochemical properties of aerosols that can be made in single particle studies and explore the impact of these properties on the microscopic processes that occur in ambient aerosol. Presenting new measurements, we examine here the refinements in our understanding of aerosol hygroscopicity, surface tension, viscosity and optical properties that can be gained from detailed laboratory measurements for complex mixtures through to surrogates for secondary organic atmospheric aerosols.

Gut microbial metabolites limit the frequency of autoimmune T cells and protect against type 1 diabetes.

Gut dysbiosis might underlie the pathogenesis of type 1 diabetes. In mice of the non-obese diabetic (NOD) strain, we found that key features of disease correlated inversely with blood and fecal concentrations of the microbial metabolites acetate and butyrate. We therefore fed NOD mice specialized diets designed to release large amounts of acetate or butyrate after bacterial fermentation in the colon.

Measured Saturation Vapor Pressures of Phenolic and Nitro-aromatic Compounds.

Phenolic and nitro-aromatic compounds are extremely toxic components of atmospheric aerosol that are currently not well understood. In this Article, solid and subcooled-liquid-state saturation vapor pressures of phenolic and nitro-aromatic compounds are measured using Knudsen Effusion Mass Spectrometry (KEMS) over a range of temperatures (298-318 K). Vapor pressure estimation methods, assessed in this study, do not replicate the observed dependency on the relative positions of functional groups.

Measurements and Predictions of Binary Component Aerosol Particle Viscosity.

Organic aerosol particles are known to often absorb/desorb water continuously with change in gas phase relative humidity (RH) without crystallization. Indeed, the prevalence of metastable ultraviscous liquid or amorphous phases in aerosol is well-established with solutes often far exceeding bulk phase solubility limits. Particles are expected to become increasingly viscous with drying, a consequence of the plasticizing effect of water.

High wholegrain barley β-glucan lowers food intake but does not alter small intestinal macronutrient digestibility in ileorectostomised rats.

Using barley cultivars differing widely in β-glucan content, we aimed to determine their effects on small intestinal macronutrient digestion in 24 ileorectostomised rats. The rats were fed 1 of 4 experimental diets, each containing a different barley variety, for 11 d. The diets had a content of 0, 2.

Polyphenol-Rich Propolis Extracts Strengthen Intestinal Barrier Function by Activating AMPK and ERK Signaling.

Propolis has abundant polyphenolic constituents and is used widely as a health/functional food. Here, we investigated the effects of polyphenol-rich propolis extracts (PPE) on intestinal barrier function in human intestinal epithelial Caco-2 cells, as well as in rats. In Caco-2 cells, PPE increased transepithelial electrical resistance and decreased lucifer yellow flux.