• Senate Republicans Release COVID Origins Report

    Senate Republicans have released their report exploring the origins of the COVID-19 pandemic, building on the short interim report released in October 2022. Critics note that as was the case with the interim report, this fuller version relies on circumstantial evidence, not scientific facts, and that it contains many factual errors, in addition to poor understanding of the Chinese language.

  • Poorly Understood Environmental Trends Could Become Tomorrow’s Security Threats

    There is an urgent need to understand how a range of emerging ecological challenges could trigger catastrophic instability and insecurity, argues a new report. The authors stress that uncertainty and knowledge gaps should galvanize rather than delay both research and action to prevent, mitigate or adapt to consequences that could be catastrophic.

  • Vaccine Could Improve Herd Immunity Around the World

    A low-cost, protein-based COVID-19 vaccine tested in rhesus monkeys offered immunity against known variants for at least one year. Researchers hope the vaccine, which can remain unrefrigerated for up to two weeks and may be especially beneficial for infants, will help alleviate the need for boosters while improving herd immunity around the world.

  • As States Replace Lead Pipes, Plastic Alternatives Could Bring New Risks

    Across the country, states and cities are replacing lead pipes to address concerns over lead-contaminated drinking water, an urgent health threat. But critics say that substituting PVC for lead pipes “may well be leaping from the frying pan into the fire.”

  • Fentanyl and the U.S. Opioid Epidemic

    Opioid addiction and abuse in the United States has become a prolonged epidemic, endangering public health, economic output, and national security. Since 2000, more than a million people in the United States have died of drug overdoses, the majority of which were due to opioids.

  • “Flash Droughts” More Frequent as Climate Warms

    ‘Flash droughts’ have become more frequent due to human-caused climate change, and this trend is predicted to accelerate in a warmer future. Flash droughts, which start and develop rapidly, are becoming ‘the new normal’ for droughts, making forecasting and preparing for their impact more difficult.

  • Warning: Prospecting for Unknown Viruses Risks a Deadly Outbreak

    The coronavirus pandemic which swept the globe offered a scary case study in how a single virus of uncertain origin can spread exponentially. The pandemic has also challenged conventional thinking about biosafety and risks, casting a critical light on widely accepted practices such as prospecting for unknown viruses.

  • Fighting Biological Threats

    Modeling the emergence and spread of biological threats isn’t as routine as forecasting the weather, but scientists in two of the U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE) national laboratories were awarded funding to try to make it so. The scientists will work together to advance computational tools and solutions for known and unknown diseases.

  • New Statistical Model Accurately Predicts Monthly U.S. Gun Homicides

    The United States experiences a staggeringly high rate of gun homicides, but accurately predicting these incidents – especially on a monthly basis – has been a significant challenge. A new methodology, overcoming limitations of official government data, could change that.

  • COVID Omicron Variant Infection Deadlier Than Flu: Studies

    Two new studies suggest that COVID-19 Omicron variant infection is deadlier than influenza, with one finding that US veterans hospitalized with Omicron in fall and winter 2022-23 died at a 61% higher rate than hospitalized flu patients.

  • How Russia Turned America’s Helping Hand to Ukraine into a Vast Lie

    Russia’s sustained disinformation campaign about a fictional U.S. bioweapons program in Ukraine is an example of how, “In a world that connects billions of people at a flash, the truth may have only a fighting chance against organized lying,” the Washington Post writes. “Disinformation is not just “fake news” or propaganda but an insidious contamination of the world’s conversations. And it is exploding.”

  • The Origin of SARS-CoV-2: Animal Transmission or Lab Leak?

    The origin of the virus that causes COVID-19, which spread from China to the rest of the world and has killed millions of people, is a scientific mystery, the answer to which has strong political implications. Gigi Kwik Gronvall writes that “by comparison to past deadly epidemics, what we know about the early days of SARS-CoV-2 is less obscure. Though the origin of the COVID-19 pandemic is now the focus of hearings in the U.S. House of Representatives and headlines focused on whether the virus emerged from nature or a laboratory, the most likely origin of SARS-CoV-2 is animal-to-human transmission, like most emerging diseases.”

  • What Makes a Global Killer

    Larry Brilliant, doctor who helped vanquish smallpox, assesses COVID response and warns of rising threats, including lack of trust. “The first lesson is that we live in a cause-and-effect world. Truth matters and communicating that truth in as transparent and honest a way as you possibly can matters” Brilliant says.

  • mRNA Vaccine Beats Infection for Key Defense against COVID-19: Stanford Scientists

    The Pfizer/BioNTech mRNA vaccine directed at COVID-19 is much better than natural infection at revving up key immune cells called killer T cells to fight future infection by SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19.

  • Guns Now Kill More Children and Young Adults Than Car Crashes

    For the past few decades, motor vehicle crashes were the most common cause of death from injury— and the leading cause of death in general—among children, teenagers, and young adults in the U.S. But now, firearms exceed motor vehicle crashes as the leading cause of injury-related death for people ages one to 24.