• Achieving Foundational Security for Food Systems

    U.S. cereal crops such as corn, rice, and wheat feed hundreds of millions of Americans and millions more around the world. Ensuring active defense of these and other staple food grasses is a critical national security priority. New DARPA project seeks advanced threat-detection and warning capabilities for crop defense.

  • Plum Island One Step Closer to Permanent Preservation

    Plum Island is one step closer to permanent preservation. Plum Island is currently owned by the United States government and has been home to the Plum Island Animal Disease Center for nearly 70 years. The Department of Homeland Security is in the process of excessing the island, opening it up for transfer to another entity.

  • U.S. Gun Violence Soars in 2022

    Across America, gun violence surged in many communities in 2022 as overall death rates from firearms rose to the highest level in nearly three decades. The year saw a near-record number of mass casualty shooting incidents, including several motivated by hate.

  • Machine Learning Could Predict Rare Disastrous Events Like Earthquakes or Pandemics

    Researchers suggest how scientists can circumvent the need for massive data sets to forecast extreme events with the combination of an advanced machine learning system and sequential sampling techniques.

  • McDonald's Sets Targets for Reducing Antibiotics in Its Beef Supply

    Following criticism that it was backtracking on a commitment to reduce the use of medically important antibiotics in its beef supply chain, fast-food giant McDonald’s has set targets for responsible antibiotic use in the countries that supply most of its beef.

  • Tackling Crowd Management in Subways During Pandemics

    Mass transit, and subways in particular, are essential to the economic viability and environmental sustainability of cities across the globe. Researchers are working with NYC’s MTA to develop machine learning and traffic models to optimize traffic flow during pandemics.

  • Phosphorus Supply Is Increasingly Disrupted – We Are Sleepwalking into a Global Food Crisis

    Without phosphorus food cannot be produced, since all plants and animals need it to grow. Put simply: if there is no phosphorus, there is no life. All farmers therefore need access to it, but 85% of the world’s remaining high-grade phosphate rock is concentrated in just five countries, making the global food system extremely vulnerable to disruptions.

  • Pathogen Early Warning

    When COVID-19 struck in late 2019 and early 2020, governments worldwide were caught off guard. The systems that countries and international institutions established, particularly those designed to spot novel threats before they metastasized into something more dangerous, proved insufficient to halt COVID-19’s spread. Since then, the importance of effective early warning systems has only increased.

  • House Intelligence Panel Releases COVID-19 Reports

    The House Intelligence Committee released a declassified report examining the Intelligence Community’s response to the COVID-19 pandemic following a two-year investigation. The report examines the IC’s posture to support global health security policymakers, the IC’s performance in the early months of the COVID-19 pandemic, and the steps the IC must take to strengthen any future pandemic response.

  • WHO Urges China to Share Data on Origin of COVID-19 Pandemic

    The World Health Organization has urged China to share data on the origin of the coronavirus that caused the devastating COVID-19 pandemic.

  • COVID Vaccine More Effective Than Infection Against Death, Hospital Care, Study Finds

    One of the first large studies to compare deaths, hospitalizations, and emergency department visits among COVID-19 vaccine recipients versus those who were infected shows the vaccines were more effective in preventing negative outcomes, especially for adults aged 60 years and older.

  • Software Tracking Pandemics

    DHS has awarded $5 million to create tools to increase the nation’s level of preparedness for biological threats — including an infection rate tracking program for COVID-19 developed by a Sandia National Laboratories team in 2020.

  • Biodefense and Emergency Use Authorization

    Emergency-use-authorization (EUA) is the representative biodefense policy that allows the use of unlicensed medical countermeasures or off-label use of approved medical countermeasures in response to public health emergencies. The EUA policies of the United States and South Korea produced drastically different outcomes.

  • The Cold War Legacy Lurking in U.S. Groundwater

    In America’s rush to build the nuclear arsenal that won the Cold War, safety was sacrificed for speed. ProPublica has cataloged cleanup efforts at the 50-plus sites where uranium was processed to fuel the nation’s nuclear arsenal. Even after regulators say cleanup is complete, polluted water and sickness are often left behind.

  • When Will COVID-19 Become Endemic?

    Government leaders are optimistic that COVID-19 is becoming endemic, meaning more predictable and manageable. But many scientists say it’s too soon to behave like the pandemic is over.