• Scent-Tracking Dogs Help Hospitals Track Superbug

    The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimates that each year C difficile causes more than 450,000 infections in U.S. hospitals, is associated with more than 29,000 deaths, and costs the U.S. healthcare system nearly $5 billion. One of the main reasons C difficile has become such a burden for hospitals is that it spreads easily—typically through contact between sick patients and healthcare workers—and it’s very hard to get rid of. One hospital fights C difficile by employing a dog trained to smell of the deadly bacterium.

  • Microplastics Harming Our Drinking Water

    Plastics in our waste streams are breaking down into tiny particles, causing potentially catastrophic consequences for human health and our aquatic systems. Approximately 300 million tons of plastic are produced globally each year and up to 13 million tons of that is released into rivers and oceans, contributing to approximately 250 million tons of plastic by 2025. Since plastic materials are not generally degradable through weathering or ageing, this accumulation of plastic pollution in the aquatic environment creates a major health concern.

  • Designed Super Shrimp Could Increase Yield, Help Prevent Disease

    Single-sex prawns could help alleviate poverty, reduce disease and protect the environment, according to researchers at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev (BGU) who have developed a monosex prawn that may make this winning trifecta possible.

  • U.S. Measles Cases Hit 1,234 as Brooklyn Outbreak Called Over

    The other day the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) confirmed 19 new measles infections, raising the 2019 total to 1,234 cases in 31 states. One additional state has been affected since the CDC’s last update, but the number of active outbreaks has been reduced to four, down from six noted last week.

  • Measles Epidemic: Parents Reluctant to Vaccinate Their Children Need to Hear of the Horrors of Forgotten Diseases

    There’s been a surge in measles cases across Europe, putting people’s lives at risk according to new findings from the World Health Organization. This has in part been put down to disinformation about the MMR (measles, mumps and rubella) vaccine on social media putting parents off vaccinating their children. Why are people reluctant to have screening tests and vaccinations to prevent diseases? Sarah Pitt writes in The Conversation that while some of the reasons may include loss of trust in “experts” and people in authority, I wonder if it is also partly because the stories of such diseases have been long forgotten. “Gruesome photos on cigarette packages, for example, massively help to reduce tobacco use, so maybe something similar now needs to happen in terms of vaccinations to tackle the latest epidemic and anti-vaxxer campaigns around the world,” she writes.

  • Measles Outbreaks: Europe Losing Ground, with 4 Countries Losing “Measles Elimination” Status

    The number of measles cases in Europe is soaring, with four European countries — Britain, Greece, the Czech Republic, and Albania — losing their elimination status owing to measles outbreaks, according to the World Health Organization (WHO). In the first six months of 2019, Europe saw 90,000 cases in 48 European countries, more than doubling last year’s total number. Close to 365,000 measles cases have been reported worldwide this year, the WHO said, almost three times as many as in the first half of 2018.

  • The Message of Measles

    If we have to pick a Patient Zero, Andrew Wakefield will do. Wakefield is the British gastroenterologist who produced the notorious article, published in The Lancet in 1998, linking the M.M.R. vaccine to autism. The study, which featured just twelve subjects, was debunked, the article was pulled, and Wakefield lost his license to practice medicine—as well as his reputation, in scientific circles anyway. But, owing to his persistence in the years since, his discredited allegations have spread like mold. In the anti-vaxxer pantheon, he is martyr and saint.

  • New Model Agrees with Old: Nuclear War Between U.S. and Russia Would Result in Nuclear Winter

    Most people who lived through the nuclear age have heard of nuclear winter, in which global cooling would result from a major nuclear war. Early fears of such an outcome have been bolstered by sophisticated computer models that showed what would happen if a large number of nuclear bombs were detonated in large urban areas. The planet would grow colder due to the huge amount of smoke generated by fires ignited by the atomic blasts—the smoke would cover the entire planet for years, blocking the sun.

  • How Does USAMRIID Shut Down Impact Nation’s Bioterrorism Laboratory Response Network?

    The Laboratory Response Network (LRN) is a collaborative federal effort run by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in cooperation with other federal agency and public health partners. The U.S. Army Research Institute of Infectious Diseases (USAMRIID) Special Pathogens Laboratory at Fort Detrick is one of only three National Laboratories at the top of the protective umbrella of the LRN structure, along with those operated by the CDC and the Naval Medical Research Center (NMRC), responsible for specialized characterization of organisms, bioforensics, select agent activity, and handling highly infectious biological agents. It begs the question then, what happens when an important component of the nation’s biopreparedness infrastructure fails to meet CDC biosafety requirements and has its Federal Select Agent certification pulled?

  • Governments Failing to Understand Global Catastrophic Risks: Report

    Governments are failing to understand the human-driven catastrophic risks that threaten global security, prosperity and potential, and could in the worst case lead to mass harm and societal collapse, say researchers. The plausible global catastrophic risks include: tipping points in environmental systems due to climate change or mass biodiversity loss; malicious or accidentally harmful use of artificial intelligence; malicious use of, or unintended consequences, from advanced biotechnologies; a natural or engineered global pandemic; and intentional, miscalculated, accidental, or terrorist-related use of nuclear weapons.

  • Evaluate AI capabilities in Helping Paramedics

    Paramedics must make numerous life-saving decisions, often in the back of an ambulance with limited time. While they at times call doctors for additional medical directives, precious seconds tick away for the patient during these back-and-forth conversations. DHS S&T partnered with its Canadian counterpart to examine whether artificial intelligence could be used to improve that information overload.

  • Russia's Nclear Propulsion Experiment a Cause for Worry

    An explosion last Tuesday at a Russian military test site caused a spike in radiation levels, forcing the evacuation of a small town. Experts say the incident occurred during the test of a new nuclear-powered cruise missile. Both superpowers experimented with nuclear propulsion of rockets during the cold war, but without success. Experts worry if a nuclear-powered cruise missile carries a conventional warhead to its target, an accident occurring with this missiles may turn what was meant to be a non-nuclear attack into a nuclear one, even if the explosion and radiation dispersion would be smaller relative to a “real” nuclear attack.

  • Yes, Flesh-Eating Bacteria Are in the Warm Coastal Waters – but it doesn’t mean you’ll get sick

    News reports about flesh-eating bacteria — V. vulnificus —tend to focus on people dying or losing limbs from the bacteria. It’s not front-page news when someone has a mild skin infection or eats a bad oyster and spends a couple days in the bathroom. We don’t often identify the most mild illnesses because people typically don’t seek medical care for them. Even so, V. vulnificus infections are rare. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimates that about 205 infections occur each year, of which 124 were reported in 2014, including 21 deaths.

  • Nuclear Power Offers an Abundant Supply of Low-Carbon Energy. But What to Do With the Deadly Radioactive Waste?

    The dilemma of how to manage nuclear waste — radioactive materials routinely produced in large quantities at every stage of nuclear power production, from uranium mining and enrichment to reactor operation and the reprocessing of spent fuel — has taxed the industry, academics and governments for decades. Along with accidents, it has been a major reason for continuing public opposition to the industry’s further expansion despite substantial interest in nuclear power’s status as a low-carbon power source that can help mitigate climate change. The race is on to develop new strategies for permanently storing some of the most dangerous materials on the planet.

  • Bashar al-Assad’s Updated, Sinister Version of Biological Warfare

    Biological warfare is generally understood as the deliberate wartime introduction of a lethal pathogen with the intent to kill or maim. Syria under President Bashar al-Assad is pursuing a sinister variation—one with long and dangerous historical precedents. Assad’s government has allowed pathogens normally controlled by public health measures—such as clean water, sanitation, waste disposal, vaccination, and infection control—to emerge as biological weapons through the deliberate destruction and withholding of those measures. The conflict has in effect reversed public health advances to achieve levels of disease not seen since the Napoleonic era.