• Global food-trade network vulnerable to fast spread of contaminants

    As the world’s population climbs past seven billion, the sustainable production and distribution of food is balanced against the need to ensure its chemical and microbiological safety; this is not easy: a rigorous analysis of the international food-trade network shows the network’s vulnerability to the fast spread of contaminants as well as the correlation between known food poisoning outbreaks and the centrality of countries on the network

  • Improving malaria control and vaccine development

    Each year more than 250 million people worldwide contract malaria, and up to one million people die; malaria is particularly dangerous for children under five and pregnant women; Plasmodium falciparum is the most lethal of the four Plasmodium species, and is responsible for most clinical disease

  • Rattlesnakes in San Diego: potent, powerful venom a cause for concern

    For the second year in a row, University of California-San Diego Medical Center toxicologists are reporting unusually powerful snake bites and unusually extreme patient reactions to those bites; since January, several patients have suffered bites with severe symptoms, such as difficulty breathing, often after a bite from the Southern Pacific Rattlesnake

  • Veterinary profession trends short-change biosecurity, food security, public health

    More than half of veterinary students in the United States seek training in companion animal or pet medicine – with fewer and fewer graduate veterinary students pursuing Ph.D. training which would prepare them for academic careers, key jobs in the public sector, and some positions in industry; the result is a dwindling supply of veterinarians to fill jobs overseeing and enforcing food safety and animal health standards, conduct research in human drug development and advances in pet health, and participate in wildlife and ecosystem management, infectious disease control, biosecurity, and agro-terrorism prevention

  • A 50-year cholera mystery solved

    For fifty years scientists have been unsure how the bacteria that gives humans cholera manages to resist one of our basic innate immune responses; that mystery has now been solved

  • Scientists show why swine flu virus develops drug resistance

    H1N1-2009 is a new, highly adaptive virus derived from different gene segments of swine, avian, and human influenza; within a few months of its appearance in early 2009, the H1N1-2009 strain caused the first flu pandemic of the twenty-first century

  • New approach to attacking flu virus

    Researchers demonstrate ways to use manufactured genes as antivirals, which disable key functions of the flu virus; the proteins have proven effective in attacking many pandemic influenza viruses, including several H1N1 (Spanish flu, Swine flu) and H5N1 (Avian flu) subtypes

  • Expanding the reach of an innovative virus-tracking software

    SUPRAMAP is a Web-based application which synthesizes large, diverse datasets so that researchers can better understand the spread of infectious diseases across hosts and geography; researchers have restructured this innovative tracking software to promote even wider use of the program around the world

  • Making food, water supply safe is a challenge for today's sensors

    Sensors that work flawlessly in laboratory settings may stumble when it comes to performing in real-world conditions; these shortcomings are important as they relate to safeguarding the U.S. food and water supplies

  • “Killer silk” kills anthrax and other microbes in minutes

    A simple, inexpensive dip-and-dry treatment can convert ordinary silk into a fabric that kills disease-causing bacteria — even the armor-coated spores of microbes like anthrax — in minutes

  • Less costly anti-malarial drug

    Malaria sickens 300-500 million people, and kills more than one million, annually; scientists are reporting development of a new, higher-yield, two-step, less costly process that may ease supply problems and zigzagging prices for the raw material essential for making the mainstay drug for malaria

  • The way one MARSA strain becomes resistant to antibiotic

    Researchers have uncovered what makes one particular strain of methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) so proficient at picking up resistance genes, such as the one that makes it resistant to vancomycin, the last line of defense for hospital-acquired infections

  • Pandemic 2009 H1N1 vaccination may lead to pan-influenza vaccine

    The pandemic 2009 H1N1 vaccine can generate antibodies in vaccinated individuals not only against the H1N1 virus, but also against other influenza virus strains including H5N1 and H3N2; the discovery brings closer the day of a pan-influenza vaccine

  • Bacteria's strength in numbers challenged

    Scientists have opened the way for more accurate research into new ways to fight dangerous bacterial infections by proving a long-held theory about how bacteria communicate with each other

  • Researchers produce potential malarial vaccine from algae

    Malaria affects more than 225 million people worldwide in tropical and subtropical regions, resulting in fever, headaches, and in severe cases coma and death; researchers have succeeded in engineering algae to produce potential candidates for a vaccine that would prevent transmission of the parasite that causes malaria