• Malaria detection model wins Georgia Tech Spring Design Expo

    Georgia Tech students design of a microfluidic cell sorter that aids in the detection of malaria; no current products exist that can be used for population screening at the desired sensitivity of buyers such as non-governmental organizations, while being both portable and non-electric

  • Congress considering biodefense measure

    H.R. 2356, the WMD Prevention and Preparedness Act of 2011, will soon be debated before four different House committees, before going to the Senate to be debated further – all this four years after a congressionally mandated commission defined bioterrorism as a grave threat to the United States; critics charge that the reason is the unwieldy and dysfunctional manner in which Congress oversees DHS: currently there are 108 congressional committees and subcommittees with oversight responsibilities for different parts of DHS

  • MRSA superbug spreads from big city hospitals to regional health centers

    MRSA — methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus — first started to appear around fifty years ago following the introduction of antibiotics, to which the bacteria has become increasingly resistant; scientists now find how the superbug spreads among different hospitals

  • Anti-malaria garment drives bugs away

    Malaria kills 655,000 people annually in Africa; insecticide-treated nets are commonly used to drive away mosquitoes from African homes, but now there is another solution: a fashionable hooded bodysuit embedded at the molecular level with insecticides for warding off mosquitoes infected with malaria

  • Advanced genetic screening to speed vaccine development

    Infectious diseases, both old and new, continue to exact a devastating toll, causing some thirteen million fatalities per year around the world; vaccines remain the best line of defense against deadly pathogens and now researchers are using clever functional screening methods to attempt to speed new vaccines into production that are both safer and more potent

  • New devices tests food for safety, quality

    A new spectrometer will allow consumers to gage the quality of food before they buy it; the device is no bigger than a sugar cube, is inexpensive to manufacture, and could one day be installed in smartphones

  • H1N1 discovery paves way for universal flu vaccine

    Each year, seasonal influenza causes serious illnesses in three to five million people and 200,000 to 500,000 deaths; university of British Columbia researchers have found a potential way to develop universal flu vaccines and eliminate the need for seasonal flu vaccinations

  • New plan would control deadly tsetse fly

    The tsetse fly is an African killer that spreads “sleeping sickness” disease among humans and animals and wipes out $4.5 billion in livestock every year; the tsetse, which feeds on the blood of vertebrate animals, lives in thirty-seven sub-Saharan countries and infects thousands of people and millions of cattle every year

  • New app to keep food safer

    FoodCheck, an application developed for Android tablet devices, can minimize dangerous and costly errors in food preparation by automating the process of controlling and monitoring food by using wireless temperature monitoring

  • Bacteria discovery could lead to antibiotics alternatives

    Researchers say findings of new research could lead to the development of new anti-infective drugs as alternatives to antibiotics whose overuse has led to resistance

  • Al-Awlaki, posthumously, urges biological, chemical attacks on U.S.

    In a 5-page article published in al Qaeda in Yemen’s English-language magazine, Anwar al-Awlaki, the U.S.-born jihadist who was killed last September by a missile launched from a CIA-operated drone, writes that the use of poisons of chemical and biological weapons against U.S. population centers is allowed and strongly recommended “due to the effect on the enemy”

  • Hospital-based disaster preparedness center opens in Utah

    A 7,000 square-foot disaster preparedness center opened in Salt Lake City; the center is a fully-equipped environment with eighteen patient rooms, medical training mannequins, training classrooms, disaster simulation labs, and a secure supply area; the key is that the preparedness training is done in a working environment

  • Clean drinking water for everyone, everywhere

    Nearly 80 percent of disease in developing countries is linked to bad water and sanitation; now scientists have developed a simple, cheap way to make water safe to drink, even if it is muddy

  • Budget, safety concerns cast doubt on Kansas BioLab

    Uncertainty continues to surround the National Bio and Agro-Defense Facility, or NBAF, which is scheduled to be built on the campus of Kansas State University in Manhattan, Kansas, to replace the aging Plum Island facility; the price tag for the lab has increased from $415 million to an estimated $1.14 billion, and concerns about the safety of building a Level-4 BioLab in the middle of tornado alley are yet to be fully addressed

  • USDA announces fourth Mad Cow case

    The U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) has announced it had identified a cow suffering from mad cow disease, or bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE); this is the fourth case of mad cow disease found in the United States since 2003, and the first since 2006