• U.S. hospitals shipping sick immigrants back to their home countries

    Hundreds of immigrants who are in the United States illegally end up in the hospital only to find out they will be sent home through a removal system run by hospitals trying to avoid the high cost of treating illegal immigrants.

  • Bird flu mutation study offers vaccine clue

    Scientists have described small genetic changes that enable the H5N1 bird flu virus to replicate more easily in the noses of mammals. So far there have only been isolated cases of bird flu in humans, and no widespread transmission as the H5N1 virus cannot replicate efficiently in the nose.

  • Finding the right tools to respond to suspicious powder incidents

    HazMat teams across the United States respond to hundreds of white powder calls each year in large cities where quick decision-making is critical. DHS makes it easier to buy the right technology for bio-threat incidents.

  • New device will quickly detect botulinum, ricin, other biothreat agents

    Researchers are developing a medical instrument which will be able quickly to detect a suite of biothreat agents, including anthrax, ricin, botulinum, shiga, and SEB toxin. The device, once developed, approved by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), and commercialized, would most likely be used in emergency rooms in the event of a bioterrorism incident.

  • Same-day water test keeps beaches open, swimmers’ health protected

    With warm summer days at the beach on the minds of millions of winter-weary people, scientists are reporting that use of a new water quality test this year could prevent unnecessary beach closures, while better protecting the health of swimmers.

  • More than 10,000 pesticides approved by EPA without rigorous review

    Congress allowed the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to use what is called “conditional registration” to approve pesticides deemed especially beneficial for food production – even before all the toxicity tests have been completed. Congress intended conditional registration to be used only sparingly, but the EPS has been using the loophole in a wholesale fashion to approve 65 percent – or more than 10,000 – of the 16,000 pesticides submitted to it for approval. The EPA cannot easily track the history of conditionally approved pesticides to determine whether required toxicity data was submitted, whether that caused a dangerous use of a pesticide to be cancelled, or whether the uses or restrictions should be modified based in such data.

  • Predicting disease outbreaks to protect soldiers -- and civilians

    Researchers from Johns Hopkins University and the Pentagon develop a new method to predict dengue fever outbreaks several weeks before they occur. The method extracts relationships between clinical, meteorological, climatic, and socio-political data. It can be used in any geographical region and extended to other environmentally influenced infections affecting public health and military forces worldwide. DoD is currently evaluating the method for use in mitigating the effects of infectious disease in various operational settings.

  • Hidden dune filters treat coastal stormwater runoff

    When it rains, untreated stormwater can sweep pollutants into coastal waters, potentially endangering public health. Now researchers have developed low-cost filtration systems that are concealed beneath sand dunes and filter out most of the bacteria that can lead to beach closures.

  • Antimicrobial resistance poses “catastrophic threat” to mankind

    The U.K. Department of Health says that global action is needed to tackle the catastrophic threat of antimicrobial resistance, which in twenty years could see any one of us dying following minor surgery. A new report, providing a comprehensive overview of the threat of antimicrobial resistance and infectious diseases, highlights a “discovery void” with few new antibiotics developed in the past two decades. It highlights that, while a new infectious disease has been discovered nearly every year over the past thirty years, there have been very few new antibiotics developed, leaving our armory nearly empty as diseases evolve and become resistant to existing drugs.

  • Using plants for herbal defluoridation of drinking water

    A filtration system based on a medicinal herb can quickly and easily remove “fluoride” from drinking water, say researchers in India. The technology uses parts of the plant Tridax procumbens as a biocarbon filter for the ion.

  • Arsenic in groundwater in Bangladesh naturally occurring

    Human activities are not the primary cause of arsenic found in groundwater in Bangladesh. Instead, a team of researchers found that the arsenic in groundwater in the region is part of a natural process that predates any recent human activity, such as intensive pumping.

  • Sea surface temperature indicates onset of malaria epidemics

    An estimated nine million malaria cases occur in India annually. Researchers find that sea surface temperatures in the tropical South Atlantic Ocean can be used accurately to forecast, by up to four months, malaria epidemics thousands of miles away in northwestern India.

  • New drug developed to combat flu pandemic

    Scientists have helped to design a new drug to safeguard against epidemic and pandemic flu strains. The new drug has been proven to be effective in preventing the spread of different strains of influenza in laboratory models — including resistant strains of the virus.

  • Malaria infection risk influenced by daily variations in temperature

    Identifying areas of malarial infection risk depends more on daily temperature variation than on the average monthly temperatures, according to researchers, who believe that their results may also apply to environmentally temperature-dependent organisms other than the malaria parasite.

  • Malaria can be defeated without a global eradication program

    In 1955, the World Health Organization (WHO) launched a malaria eradication campaign that eliminated the disease in many temperate and subtropical regions but did not achieve worldwide eradication. The program was scrapped after less than two decades in favor of controlling malaria. WHO, however, attributed about 660,000 deaths to the disease in 2010, mostly African children. New research finds that malaria does not have to be eradicated globally for individual countries to succeed at maintaining elimination of the disease.