• More than half of all cancer is preventable

    Public health researchers outline obstacles standing in the way of cancer prevention; ore than half of all cancer is preventable, and society has the knowledge to act on this information today

  • Developing crop for livestock in dry climates

    Scientists at the University of Liverpool are working with international partners to develop new forage crop for the hot and dry climate of regions such as Pakistan and Saudi Arabia

  • Detection technology detects viruses, pathogens within 24 hours

    New detection technology could enable food safety professionals, law enforcement, medical professionals, and others to detect within twenty-four hours any virus or bacteria that has been sequenced and included among the array’s probes

  • Earth's crust is slowly being destroyed

    New research shows that the Earth’s crust is now undergoing high rates of destruction; the research shows the sharp decrease in the growth of the continental crust indicates a dramatic change in the way the Earth has generated and preserved this crust in the last 4.5 billion years

  • Two RNA-based therapeutic candidates for Ebola, Marburg viruses

    Under a contract for up to $291 million from the U.S. Department of Defense, AVI BioPharma has initiated clinical studies for two RNA-based drugs for the treatment of Ebola and Marburg viruses

  • Firefly technology sheds new light

    A new device, employing the same chemical which lights up fireflies, can easily detect food contamination; the researchers who developed the system hope it will soon be used to test for other diseases, including HIV-AIDS

  • Army scientists work to improve biothreat detection

    A married couple, both scientists working at the U.S. Army’s Edgewood Chemical Biological Center, one of forty-five Biosafety Level 3 labs in the United States; they collaborate on improving the ability of soldiers and first responders to detect, identify, and protect against potentially lethal biological threat agents

  • 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