• Europe crops damaged by pollution crossing oceans, continents

    Pollution originating from North America is responsible for a 1.2 million ton annual loss of wheat in Europe; this is the biggest intercontinental ozone pollution-related impact on any food crop

  • New food-pathogen detection system

    A new food pathogen detection system is based on a combination of technologies involving isothermal DNA amplification and bioluminescence detection

  • Scientists offer new information for fighting flu

    Influenza is the world’s leading cause of morbidity and mortality; seasonal viruses affect up to 15 percent of the human population and cause severe illness in five million people a year; in the United States, financial losses caused by seasonal influenza are estimated to exceed $87 billion annually

  • Stealthy leprosy pathogen evades immune response

    Leprosy, one of the world’s oldest known diseases, is a chronic infectious disease that affects the skin, the peripheral nerves, the upper respiratory tract, and the eyes and can lead to disfigurement of the hands, face, and feet; scientists’ findings point to new treatment pathways for leprosy – and other infectious diseases

  • How new viruses evolve and become deadly

    Scientists demonstrate how a new virus evolves, which sheds light on how easy it can be for diseases to gain dangerous mutations; this demonstration follows recent news that scientists in the United States and the Netherlands produced a deadly version of bird flu

  • Scientists urge accelerated flu research

    The discovery by scientists that H5N1 virus could potentially be transmitted between mammals has led to fears both of misuse and of accidental release – and to requests of two leading science publication to edit and redact portions of two articles in which the findings of the research are reported; a leading specialist argues that H5N1 viruses circulating in nature may already pose a threat because influenza viruses constantly mutate and can cause pandemics

  • Farmers urge Congress to reject antibiotic restrictions in animals

    Pending bills H.R. 965 (House) and S. 1211 (Senate) would remove specific antibiotics and classes of antibiotics from animal feed; the purpose is to make sure that bacteria these antibiotics are aimed to combat do not become drug-resistant, thus endangering human health and lives; farmers and ranchers say the bills go too far

  • Federal court hears debate over California bio weapons research facility

    Earlier this month opponents of the bioweapons research center at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory argued before a federal appeals court that government officials failed to heed a 2006 court ruling and recklessly went ahead with the research facility without considering terrorist threats

  • New $25 million beef safety research effort

    The $25 million effort will focus on ways to reduce the occurrence and public health risks from Shiga toxin-producing Escherichia coli (STEC), a serious threat to the food supply that results in more than 265,000 infections in the United States each year

  • Kansas State takes over pathogen research from Plum Island

    As New York’s Plum Island Animal Disease Center begins to shut down, much of its pathogen work will be transferred to Kansas State University’s Biosecurity Research Institute in preparation for the opening of DHS’ new National Bio and Agro-Defense Facility (NBAF) in nearby Manhattan, Kansas

  • U.S. drug shortages a threat to public health, patient care

    Shortages in the United States of key drugs used to fight infections represent a public health emergency and can put patients at risk; frequent anti-infective shortages can substantially alter clinical care and may lead to worse outcomes for patients

  • Delicate balance: scientific freedom and national security

    Two legal scholars argue that the U.S. government’s request that the journals Science and Nature withhold scientific information related to the genetically modified H5N1 virus because of biosecurity concerns does not violate the First Amendment

  • New disease tracking system for London Olympics

    To help track and control the spread of infectious diseases at the London Olympic Games, Canadian researchers are teaming up with British authorities to develop a new system capable of tracking diseases at both the global and local level

  • La Nina weather pattern may lead to flu pandemics?

    Pandemics of influenza around the world caused widespread death and illness in 1918, 1957, 1968, and 2009; a new study examining weather patterns around the time of these pandemics found that each of them was preceded by La Niña conditions in the equatorial Pacific

  • Chicago's new bio-attack response facility

    Chicago is preparing itself for a biological attack with the recent unveiling of a new 40,000 square-foot, fourteen story state-of the-art medical decontamination facility; the new facility is fully equipped to handle a sudden influx of patients from a biological attack or other mass casualty incident