• Confirmed: oil from Deepwater Horizon disaster entered food chain

    For months, crude oil gushed into the water at a rate of approximately 53,000 barrels per day; new study confirms that not only did oil affect the ecosystem in the Gulf during the blowout, but it was still entering the food web after the well was capped

  • Antibiotic-resistant bacteria proliferate in agricultural soils

    Infectious diseases kill roughly thirteen million people worldwide, annually, a toll that continues to rise, aided and abetted by resistance genes. Now a study finds reservoirs of resistance in agricultural soils

  • New antibiotic to make food safer, cows healthier

    Chemists discovered a molecule very similar to the antibiotic nisin, found naturally in milk and added to food for decades to fight pathogenic bacteria; the new molecule, geobacillin, is more stable than nisin, which could make it more effective

  • Radiation-laced Japanese seafood detected in South Korea

    The effects of the Japanese nuclear crisis at the Fukushima Daichii atomic energy plant are continuing to ripple across the world

  • Medical tattoos – a growing trend

    Forget medical bracelets, a growing number of individuals with special medical needs have taken to tattooing their bodies to warn first responders about critical medical conditions; medical bracelets commonly list a person’s allergies, chronic diseases, and end-of-life wishes, but more and more people have started tattooing that information on their bodies

  • Hospital fountains a dangerous source of bacterial outbreaks

    A recent study conducted by researchers at the Wisconsin Division of Public Health found that fountains in health care facilities can actually be a dangerous source of air-borne bacterial diseases; “Fountains and health-care facilities don’t mix,” said Thomas Haupt, a respiratory diseases epidemiologist and the study’s lead author

  • Killer silk kills anthrax, other microbes dead

    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

  • CDC: outbreaks linked to imported foods increasing

    U.S. food imports grew from $41 billion in 1998 to $78 billion in 2007; as much as 85 percent of the seafood eaten in the United States is imported, and depending on the time of the year, up to 60 percent of fresh produce is imported; the increase in imported food has been accompanied by an increase in foodborne illnesses, with fish and spices the most common sources

  • Solving antibiotic resistance in humans -- and premature bee death

    The stomachs of wild honey bees are full of healthy lactic acid bacteria that can fight bacterial infections in both bees and humans; the finding is a step toward solving the problems of both bee deaths and antibiotic resistance in humans

  • Japanese military buys biowarfare detectors

    The U.S. military deploy the Joint Biological Point Detection System (JBPDS), and the Japanese military want to do the same, awarding a North Carolina company a $9 million contract

  • Rethinking the toilet model in developing countries

    More than 2.6 billion people around the world lack access to basic sanitation, and more than 40 percent of the world’s population lack access to even the simplest latrine; the lack of sanitation creates serious problems, including environmental pollution, unsafe surroundings, and increasing the outbreak of lethal epidemic diseases such as cholera; Swedish company offers a solution

  • New wheat strain could ease food shortages

    Researchers in Australia have developed a new strain of salt-tolerant wheat that could help minimize food shortages

  • The bioterrorism threat and laboratory security

    Leonard A. Cole, an expert on bioterrorism and on terror medicine who teaches at Rutgers University, investigates the security of U.S. high containment labs in light of the dramatic growth in the number of these labs, which handle dangerous pathogens, following 9/11 and the anthrax attacks

  • Origami-inspired paper sensor tests for malaria, HIV for less than 10 cents

    Chemists have developed a 3-D paper sensor that may be able to test for diseases such as malaria and HIV for less than ten cents a pop; such low-cost, point-of-care sensors could be useful in the developing world, where the resources often do not exist to pay for lab-based tests, and where, even if the money is available, the infrastructure often does not exist to transport biological samples to the lab

  • High manganese levels making air breathing dangerous in some areas

    In residential neighborhoods near manufacturing industries, a breath of air may be more hazardous than refreshing; research finds manganese concentrations higher in residential neighborhoods than industrial sites, levels vary by region