Recent News

By Category: Countermeasures

Making Bacteria Make More Antibiotics More Quickly

(MedicalNewsToday) An antibiotic has been found to stimulate its own production. The findings, to be published in PNAS, could make it easier to scale up antibiotic production for commercialisation. Scientists Dr Emma Sherwood and Professor Mervyn Bibb from the John Innes Centre were able to use their discovery of how the antibiotic is naturally produced Read More »

June 19, 2013
| Filed under North America, Biotechnology, Countermeasures, and Research
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University of Toronto breakthrough allows fast, reliable pathogen identification

(EurekAlert) Life-threatening bacterial infections cause tens of thousands of deaths every year in North America. Increasingly, many infections are resistant to first-line antibiotics. Unfortunately, current methods of culturing bacteria in the lab can take days to report the specific source of the infection, and even longer to pinpoint the right antibiotic that will clear the Read More »

June 13, 2013
| Filed under North America, Agents & Toxins, Countermeasures, Public Health, and Research
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House Slashes Bioweapon Detection Funds, Citing Upgrade Delays

(GlobalSecurityNewswire) The U.S. House of Representatives last week rejected an $11.1 million funding boost requested by President Obama in the coming budget cycle for a federally operated network of biological-weapon agent sensors. Legislation approved by the chamber would instead provide $79.5 million for the Biowatch program in fiscal 2014, essentially holding spending at the level Read More »

June 13, 2013
| Filed under North America, Bioterrorism, Countermeasures, and Policy & Initiatives
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NTU designs social media and web system that can predict dengue hotspots

(EurekAlert) When it comes to stopping dengue, social media posts, tweets and a web system may be just what the doctor ordered. Researchers at Nanyang Technological University (NTU) have developed a social media-based system called Mo-Buzz that can predict where and when dengue might occur. It combines a web system that taps into historical data Read More »

June 12, 2013
| Filed under Asia/Pacific, North America, Agents & Toxins, Countermeasures, International, Public Health, and Research
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WHO simplifies pandemic alert system after criticism

(Health24) The World Health Organisation on Monday published a new plan on how to alert the world to possible flu pandemics, following harsh criticism of its handling of the H1N1 swine flu pandemic in 2009. The UN’s health agency said it had simplified its alert system and redefined what constitutes a pandemic to put more Read More »