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By Category: Agents & Toxins

UN: ‘More should be done’ to prevent bio-terrorism

(BBC News) A UN official delivered the warning at the BioDesign Forum on synthetic biology being held in the UK. Piers Millet from the UN’s Biological Weapons Convention said there was no global organisation to ensure biotech was not used for “nefarious” purposes. But international bodies did exist to watch out for nuclear and chemical  Read More »

A novel coronavirus

(The Economist) MOST of the time, for most people, respiratory diseases such as influenza and the common cold are little more than a snotty inconvenience. Occasionally, though, the viruses that cause them mutate into something truly nasty. The Spanish flu of 1918 may have killed more people than the first world war. More recently, there  Read More »

Hoya Citings: Student contributes to foot-and-mouth disease research in Shanghai laboratory

(Vox Populi) Until this summer, Georgetown student David Schaffer (COL ’14) never thought he’d need to know how to say “flask” in Chinese. And no, this is was not his way to get to know Shanghai’s nightlife. Schaffer spent the summer in China at Shanghai’s State Key Laboratory of Genetic Engineering in Fudan University, scrambling  Read More »

Biologists Replay 500 Million Years Of E Coli Evolution In The Lab

(Technology Review) Biology is changing so rapidly and fundamentally that it’s hard to keep track of the revolutionary transformations that are afoot. Here’s one of them. Synthetic biology is the design and construction of biological systems not found in nature. This is engineering– using molecular building blocks to create new biomolecules, such as genes. Here’s  Read More »

Emergency responders train for worst case scenarios at Togus class

(Kennebec Journal) The exercise at VA Maine Healthcare System-Togus imagined dozens of fatalities and injuries from two explosions, including one from a bomb laced with anthrax. It was designed to hone coordination skills between federal, municipal and private agencies, said Maine VA Medical Center spokesman James Doherty. “You hope something never happens, but you want  Read More »

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