• Predicting disease outbreaks to protect soldiers -- and civilians

    Researchers from Johns Hopkins University and the Pentagon develop a new method to predict dengue fever outbreaks several weeks before they occur. The method extracts relationships between clinical, meteorological, climatic, and socio-political data. It can be used in any geographical region and extended to other environmentally influenced infections affecting public health and military forces worldwide. DoD is currently evaluating the method for use in mitigating the effects of infectious disease in various operational settings.

  • Hidden dune filters treat coastal stormwater runoff

    When it rains, untreated stormwater can sweep pollutants into coastal waters, potentially endangering public health. Now researchers have developed low-cost filtration systems that are concealed beneath sand dunes and filter out most of the bacteria that can lead to beach closures.

  • Antimicrobial resistance poses “catastrophic threat” to mankind

    The U.K. Department of Health says that global action is needed to tackle the catastrophic threat of antimicrobial resistance, which in twenty years could see any one of us dying following minor surgery. A new report, providing a comprehensive overview of the threat of antimicrobial resistance and infectious diseases, highlights a “discovery void” with few new antibiotics developed in the past two decades. It highlights that, while a new infectious disease has been discovered nearly every year over the past thirty years, there have been very few new antibiotics developed, leaving our armory nearly empty as diseases evolve and become resistant to existing drugs.

  • Using plants for herbal defluoridation of drinking water

    A filtration system based on a medicinal herb can quickly and easily remove “fluoride” from drinking water, say researchers in India. The technology uses parts of the plant Tridax procumbens as a biocarbon filter for the ion.

  • Arsenic in groundwater in Bangladesh naturally occurring

    Human activities are not the primary cause of arsenic found in groundwater in Bangladesh. Instead, a team of researchers found that the arsenic in groundwater in the region is part of a natural process that predates any recent human activity, such as intensive pumping.

  • Sea surface temperature indicates onset of malaria epidemics

    An estimated nine million malaria cases occur in India annually. Researchers find that sea surface temperatures in the tropical South Atlantic Ocean can be used accurately to forecast, by up to four months, malaria epidemics thousands of miles away in northwestern India.

  • New drug developed to combat flu pandemic

    Scientists have helped to design a new drug to safeguard against epidemic and pandemic flu strains. The new drug has been proven to be effective in preventing the spread of different strains of influenza in laboratory models — including resistant strains of the virus.

  • Malaria infection risk influenced by daily variations in temperature

    Identifying areas of malarial infection risk depends more on daily temperature variation than on the average monthly temperatures, according to researchers, who believe that their results may also apply to environmentally temperature-dependent organisms other than the malaria parasite.

  • Malaria can be defeated without a global eradication program

    In 1955, the World Health Organization (WHO) launched a malaria eradication campaign that eliminated the disease in many temperate and subtropical regions but did not achieve worldwide eradication. The program was scrapped after less than two decades in favor of controlling malaria. WHO, however, attributed about 660,000 deaths to the disease in 2010, mostly African children. New research finds that malaria does not have to be eradicated globally for individual countries to succeed at maintaining elimination of the disease.

  • Six in ten people worldwide lack access to flush toilets, adequate sanitation

    It may be the twenty-first century, with all its technological marvels, but six out of every ten people on Earth still do not have access to flush toilets or other adequate sanitation that protects the user and the surrounding community from harmful health effects.

  • Defusing the threat of ionizing radiation

    The damage to Japan’s Fukushima nuclear reactor after the 2011 Tohoku earthquake raised concerns regarding U.S. preparedness to treat large-scale human exposure to ionizing radiation. Additionally, the immediate destructive potential of nuclear and radiological weapons, as well as their long-term health and economic impacts, continue to be of concern to DoD. Researchers look for  novel approaches to mitigate immediate and long-term health damage from acute exposure to ionizing radiation and model its biophysical effects.

  • Countering the threats of fake or substandard medications

    No country acting alone can protect its citizens against the health risks posed by illegitimate medications, and reducing this problem requires international cooperation. A new study calls for global agreement on an international code of practice on drug quality. It also recommends establishing a mandatory drug tracking system and tightening the licensing requirements on medication wholesalers in the United States.

  • Keeping an eye on the world’s dangerous chemicals

    In the chemistry labs of the developing world, it is not uncommon to find containers, forgotten on shelves, with only vague clues to their origins. The label, if there is one, is rubbed away. Left alone for years, some chemicals can quietly break down into explosive elixirs, and what was once an innocent experiment by a well-meaning scientist becomes a very real, unsecured threat. Should such chemicals fall into malicious hands, the consequences could be widespread and deadly.

  • Toxic legacy of lead pollution persists despite regulatory efforts, modest gains

    Efforts to reduce lead pollution have paid off in many ways, yet the problem persists and will probably continue to affect the health of people and animals well into the future. The good news, he said, is that atmospheric lead concentrations in the United States have fallen by 89 percent in the past three decades.The bad news is that blood lead levels are still about 100 times higher than the natural background level, and there is no known threshold for lead toxicity. In other words, even tiny amounts of lead in the body can be harmful.

  • Sewage lagoons remove most pharmaceuticals from wastewater

    Despite these advances made under the Clean Water Act, sewage remains a major source of pharmaceuticals and personal care products (PPCPs) and naturally occurring hormones found in the environment. New research shows the effectiveness of rural lagoon systems at removing these compounds from wastewater.