Recent News

By Region: North America

BioWatch Acquisition Delayed by Analysis of Alternatives

(HomelandSecurityToday) The procurement of the next generation of the BioWatch surveillance program for biological agents won’t begin until after an analysis of alternative biodetection systems, the BioWatch program manager testified Tuesday. On behalf of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), the Institute of Medicine and National Research Council will host a workshop on June 25-26  Read More »

BioWatch’s chief aim is off-target, U.S. security officials say

(LATimes) Homeland Security Department planners have privately rejected a central premise of BioWatch, the nation’s decade-old system for detecting biological weapons released into the air, according to government documents and testimony Tuesday at a congressional hearing. Although BioWatch was designed with the belief that hostile foreign governments could sponsor large-scale germ attacks on American cities,  Read More »

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 »

U.S. Bioterror Detection Program Comes Under Scrutiny

(ScientificAmerican) A cutting-edge biological terror alert system detected a potential threat in the air one morning back in 2008, threatening to derail then-Sen. Barack Obama’s acceptance speech in Denver for his party’s presidential nomination at the Democratic National Convention. Initial results from a pricey national air sampling system suggested that bacteria that could cause tularemia  Read More »

Saint Louis University researchers discover a way to detect new viruses

(EurekAlert) In research published in Biochemical and Biophysical Research Communications, Saint Louis University researchers describe a technology that can detect new, previously unknown viruses. The technique offers the potential to screen patients for viruses even when doctors have not identified a particular virus as the likely source of an infection. In the new approach, scientists  Read More »

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