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COVID-19 Origins Linked to Wildlife Sales at Chinese Market; Other Scenarios Extremely Unlikely: Studies
Analyses based on locations and viral sequencing of early cases indicate the COVID-19 pandemic started in Wuhan’s Huanan Seafood Wholesale Market, with two separate jumps from animals to humans.
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U.S. Launches Heat.gov with Tools for Communities Facing Extreme Heat
The administration launched Heat.gov, a new website to provide the public and decision-makers with clear, timely and science-based information to understand and reduce the health risks of extreme heat. Heat.gov will provide a one-stop hub on heat and health for the nation and is a priority of President Biden’s National Climate Task Force and its Interagency Working Group on Extreme Heat.
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NIST Updates Guidance for Health Care Cybersecurity
In an effort to help health care organizations protect patients’ personal health information, NIST has updated its cybersecurity guidance for the health care industry. The revised draft publication aims to help organizations comply with HIPAA Security Rule.
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Amid Climate Change and Conflict, More Resilient Food Systems a Must: Report
Increased demand for water will be the No. 1 threat to food security in the next 20 years, followed closely by heat waves, droughts, income inequality and political instability.
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During Pandemic: More News, More Worry
Anxiety and fear went hand in hand with trying to learn more about COVID-19 in the early days of the pandemic in the United States — and the most distressed people were turning on the television and scrolling through social media.
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Google/Apple's Contact-Tracing Apps Susceptible to Digital Attacks
Since the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, scientists and health authorities have relied on contact-tracing technologies to help manage the spread of the virus. Yet there’s a major flaw in a framework that many of these mobile apps utilize – one that attackers could exploit to ramp up false positive notifications.
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Local Focus Can Prevent Failures in Large Networks
We live in an increasingly connected world, a fact underscored by the swift spread of the coronavirus around the globe. Underlying this connectivity are complex networks — global air transportation, the internet, power grids, financial systems and ecological networks, to name just a few. The need to ensure the proper functioning of these systems also is increasing, but control is difficult.
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Strengthening U.S. Government’s Enhanced Potential Pandemic Pathogen Framework, Dual Use Research
Group of scientists, public health experts, policy researchers propose strengthening of U.S. government’s policies regarding enhanced potential pandemic pathogen framework and dual use research of concern.
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Review: IT in Health Care Has Produced Modest Changes — So Far
Large study of existing research shows incremental improvement in patient outcomes and productivity, without big employment changes.
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Research Collaboration Informs International Classification of Firefighting as Carcinogenic
The International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) recently classified occupational exposure as a firefighter as carcinogenic, changing the previous classification of possibly carcinogenic.
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Europe Heat Wave: U.K. Records Hottest-Ever Temperature
Western Europe continues to bake in extreme heat, with the UK recording a temperature over 40 degrees Celsius for the first time, and wildfires burning through French forests. Relief is expected later in the week.
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Is Australia’s Biosecurity System Ready for Foot-and-Mouth Disease?
Several reports have highlighted the inevitable and growing threats to Australia’s security and prosperity. Chief among these are the biosecurity risks that threaten one of Australia’s greatest strategic advantages: The country’s ability to feed and clothe twice its own population, its food security, and ultimately its national security.
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Is There a Link Between Mental Health and Mass Shootings?
There have already been more than 300 mass shootings in the United States this year—the latest at a 4th of July parade in the Highland Park suburb of Chicago. That shooting left seven dead, including both parents of a 2-year old toddler, and dozens injured – among them an 8-year old with a severed spinal cord, leaving him paralyzed from the waist down for the rest of his life. As the United States reckons with these increasingly common public massacres, many blame mental illness as the fundamental cause. The reality, however, is that people with mental illness account for a very small proportion of perpetrators of mass shootings in the United States, says one expert.
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To Reach the Public, Highlight the Health Implications of Climate Change: Expert
Among the health effects of climate change: Increases in extreme heat can lead to more heat-related illness and death from heat stroke and dehydration. Poor air quality can cause more lung infections, asthma and allergy attacks, bronchitis, and deaths. Rising temperatures can also increase the geographic range of disease-carrying insects and animals, resulting in faster and wider spread of diseases like Zika virus. Rising temperatures and extreme weather conditions make it easier for food and water to become contaminated by bacteria, viruses, parasites, and other toxins.
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What Makes a Pandemic Take Off?
Looking for potential “black swan” outbreaks can help us prepare for the future.
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The long view
Are We Ready for a ‘DeepSeek for Bioweapons’?
Anthropic’s Claude 4 is a warning sign: AI that can help build bioweapons is coming, and could be widely available soon. Steven Adler writes that we need to be prepared for the consequences: “like a freely downloadable ‘DeepSeek for bioweapons,’ available across the internet, loadable to the computer of any amateur scientist who wishes to cause mass harm. With Anthropic’s Claude Opus 4 having finally triggered this level of safety risk, the clock is now ticking.”
A Brief History of Federal Funding for Basic Science
Biomedical science in the United States is at a crossroads. For 75 years, the federal government has partnered with academic institutions, fueling discoveries that have transformed medicine and saved lives. Recent moves by the Trump administration — including funding cuts and proposed changes to how research support is allocated — now threaten this legacy.
Vaccine Integrity Project Says New FDA Rules on COVID-19 Vaccines Show Lack of Consensus, Clarity
Sidestepping both the FDA’s own Vaccines and Related Biological Products Advisory Committee and the CDC’s Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP), two Trump-appointed FDA leaders penned an opinion piece in the New England Journal of Medicine to announce new, more restrictive, COVID-19 vaccine recommendations. Critics say that not seeking broad input into the new policy, which would help FDA to understand its implications, feasibility, and the potential for unintended consequences, amounts to policy by proclamation.