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The optimal balance of vaccine stockpiles
Once a disease has been eradicated there is a danger it could reappear, either naturally or as a result of an intentional release by a terrorist group; how much vaccine should be produced and stored for a disease that may never appear again — or which may infect hundreds of thousands tomorrow? modelers target optimal vaccine storage for eradicated diseases
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Botox as a bioterror threat
Botox may be used to straighten wrinkles and lift sagging body parts, but the proliferation of counterfeit Botox worldwide — fueled by consumer demand — has made the toxin, which is deadly in sufficient quantities, far more easily available for would-be bioterrorists than it was in the past
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Video study finds risky food-safety behavior more common than thought
New study finds that that risky practices in restaurants, cafeterias, and other food-service places happen more often than previously thought; one expert says: “Meals prepared outside the home have been implicated in up to 70 percent of food poisoning outbreaks, making them a vital focus area for food safety professionals”
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New method manipulates particles for sensors, crime scene testing
Researchers develop a new tool for medical diagnostics, testing food and water for contamination, and crime-scene forensics; the technique uses a combination of light and electric fields to position droplets and tiny particles, such as bacteria, viruses, and DNA, which are contained inside the drops
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Dengue fever strikes United States after 65-year absence
After an absence of sixty-five years, dengue fever has reentered the United States through the Florida Keys; the CDC reports that twenty-eight people in Key West came down with the dangerous fever; infected mosquitoes have been moving northward thanks to global warming, and there has been increased travel between the United States and South and Central America and the Caribbean — areas which have seen nearly five million cases of dengue fever from 2000 to 2007
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Wooden or plastic pallets are a dangerous link in food chain
Pallets are often stored in warehouses or outside behind grocery stores, where they are easily reached by debris from garbage or bacteria from animals; new sanitation tests found that about 33 percent of the wooden pallets it tested showed signs of unsanitary conditions, where bacteria could easily grow; 10 percent tested positive for e. coli, which can cause food poisoning, and 2.9 percent had an even nastier, and often deadly, bug called listeria
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Coral snake antivenin to run out in October
If you live in Florida, you should now be doubly careful not to be bitten by the poisonous coral snake; the only company making antivenin for coral snake bites is no longer producing the drug — and the last batch will hit its expiration date in October.
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Safer food imports goal of public-private venture
With imports accounting for 15 percent of the U.S. food supply, the United States needs a better way of ensuring food safety than border inspections; the University of Maryland teams up with a Massachusetts company to launch training center for foreign foodproducers
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Food-labels contaminate food
Chemicals used in adhesive which is used to attach food labels to packaging can seep through packaging and contaminate food; one of those chemicals is considered highly toxic and found in high concentration in some adhesives
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Katrina, Rita cleaned up polluted, lead-laden New Orleans soil
It appears that hurricanes Katrina and Rita, with all the devastation they have caused, made one beneficial contribution to the future of New Orleans: decades of Louisiana-type corruption and collusion between the oil industry and the state government have caused the city’s soil to be heavily polluted, laden with lead, arsenic, and other poisonous substances; the sediments washed into the city by the hurricanes have blanketed the polluted soil, resulting in a dramatic drop in the presence of lead and arsenic in the city’s soil — and in the blood stream of children in the city
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Faster salmonella strain detection now possible with new technique
New scientific method identifies salmonella strains much faster than current methods in use; faster detection of specific strains can mean recognizing an outbreak sooner and stopping tainted food from being delivered and consumed
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Failure to test for six strains of E. coli leaves gaps in U.S. food safety network
Six E. coli strains are not regulated by the U.S. Department of Agriculture; E. coli O157:H7 causes 73,000 illnesses and 50 deaths every year in the United States; the six other strains are considered less pervasive, sickening an estimated 37,000 people a year and killing nearly 30; they could be causing more illnesses that labs do not detect because they are not testing for them
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Epidemic, bioterrorism study in Las Vegas
A research project in Nevada looks to help hospitals and public health officials do a better job of quickly identifying the sources and pathways of influenza, E. coli, and other contagious pathogens that can quickly spread through a population; the project will also help in designing ways to cope with a bioterror attack
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More delays in opening Fort Detrick BioLab
DHS’s new BioLab at Fort Detrick, Maryland, is hobbled by a series of flaws and glitches which have prevented researchers from moving into the facility years after it had been dedicated; the most serious problem was the placement of valves that allow access to HEPA filters in biosafety level 3 lab; the filters must be decontaminated or replaced every few years, but the valves to let workers into the air ducts were too far from the filters
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Allowing for important medical research while keeping medical data private
Algorithm developed to protect patients’ personal information while preserving the data’s utility in large-scale medical studies; a Vanderbilt team designed an algorithm that searches a database for combinations of diagnosis codes that distinguish a patient; it then substitutes a more general version of the codes — for instance, postmenopausal osteoporosis could become osteoporosis — to ensure each patient’s altered record is indistinguishable from a certain number of other patients. Researchers could then access this parallel, de-identified database for gene-association studies
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More headlines
The long view
Huge Areas May Face Possibly Fatal Heat Waves if Warming Continues
A new assessment warns that if Earth’s average temperature reaches 2 degrees C over the preindustrial average, widespread areas may become too hot during extreme heat events for many people to survive without artificial cooling.