• Firearms Kill More Children Than Car Crashes: Report

    Latest CDC data show that guns now kill more children than any other cause, but health care interventions show promise for prevention.

  • U.S. Can End Pandemics Within a Decade

    A new report from the Bipartisan Commission on Biodefense containins specific recommendations to Congress and the administration about how the U.S. could put an end to pandemics within a decade.

  • CDC Launches New Center for Forecasting and Outbreak Analytics

    New center will enhance capability for timely, effective decision-making to improve outbreak response using data, models, and analytics

  • Geoengineering Could Bring Back Malaria for One Billion People

    Geoengineering the climate would have massive repercussions for the health of billions of people at risk of malaria who live in tropical countries. The study focuses on solar radiation management (SRM), an intervention that hypothesizes emergency actions aimed at reducing dangerous impacts of climate change.

  • Machine-Learning Techniques for Predicting the Evolution of Epidemics

    Machine learning techniques can provide an assumption-free analysis of epidemic case data with surprisingly good prediction accuracy and the ability to dynamically incorporate the latest data. The techniques used to analyze case data show promise for predicting the evolution of an epidemic.

  • The Information Age Is Starting to Transform Fishing Worldwide

    The post-industrial area – with its robots, sensors, artificial intelligence, and machine learning — has transformed manufacturing and farming. Commercial fishing, one of the oldest industries in the world, is a stark exception, with industrial fishing, factory ships, and deep-sea trawlers still the dominant hunting mode in much of the world. This approach has led to overfishing, stock depletions, habitat destruction, the senseless killing of unwanted by-catch and wastage of as much as 30% to 40% of landed fish. But these patterns are starting to change.

  • New Network to Improve Biosecurity in Livestock

    Health and welfare, safety and sustainability are crucial elements for ensuring the future of livestock production. Biosecurity aims to prevent the introduction and spread of pathogens within and between farms and, consequently, results in better welfare, increased food safety and better sustainability. A new network to improve biosecurity in livestock.

  • Risks of a Dirty Bomb Attack Are Increasing

    In a new factsheet, the GAO says that the risks of a dirty bomb attack are increasing and the consequences could be devastating.

  • ‘Ukraine Biolabs’: How Attempts to Debunk a Conspiracy Theory Only Helped It Spread

    As Russian forces moved into Ukraine on 24 February, stories of U.S.-funded biolabs and bioweapon research in Ukraine began to spread on social media. The false claims spread from right-wing circles but became more wide-spread, and were soon picked up by Fox News host Tucker Carlson. It wasn’t long until the Russian government, which had spread tales of Ukrainian biolabs in the past, adopted the narrative as a belated justification for the invasion. But, ironically, the very effort to debunk the Russian propaganda promoted by Carlson and Russia only gave to story more oxygen.

  • Redefining the Longest Drought

    Maps of the American West have featured ever darker shades of red over the past two decades. In some areas, conditions have blown past severe and extreme drought into exceptional drought. But rather than add more superlatives to the descriptions, one group of scientists believes it’s time to reconsider the very definition of drought.

  • Trump’s Vaccine Endorsement Moves the Needle on COVID-19 Vaccines

    A team of economists and political scientists that included Stanford’s Brad Larsen ran a large-scale advertising experiment in thousands of U.S. counties showing a video compilation of former President Donald Trump’s Fox News interview recommending the COVID-19 vaccine, leading to a significant increase in vaccinations.

  • Uranium Detectable in Two-Thirds of U.S. Community Water System Monitoring Records

    A study on metal concentrations in U.S. community water systems (CWS) found that metal concentrations were particularly elevated in CWSs serving semi-urban, Hispanic communities independent of location or region.

  • SAVE: Pandemic's Urgency Drove New Collaborative Approaches Worldwide

    In January 2021 the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases assembled a team, drawing on experts from around the world who specialize in relevant research fields such as viruses, the immune system, vaccines, epidemiology, structural biology, bioinformatics, virus genetics, and evolution. The team is called SAVE, for SARS-CoV-2 Assessment of Viral Evolution. SAVE team changed how science is done, spanning 58 institutions.

  • Food Security During a Nuclear Winter

    A nuclear war would cause global blockage of the sun for several years due to injections of black carbon soot into the upper atmosphere, covering most of the planet with black clouds. This could result in less than 40 percent of normal light levels near the equator and less than 5 percent normal light levels near the poles. Research focuses on how meeting food security and nutrition in post-catastrophe conditions, which could last 15 years in some wet tropical forests.

  • War Could See Ukraine’s Population Fall by a Third

    Ukraine’s population could decline by a third over the next two decades as a result of the Russian invasion, researchers say. The population of Ukraine is also likely to become proportionately older over time with continued large-scale emigration the longer the war persists.