A deadly earthquake that rocked southern California two centuries ago was likely caused by the slippage of one fault line that then triggered a second fault, according to a new study. The research not only offers a solution to a long-standing seismic "whodunit," it also demonstrates how the rupturing of multiple faults can trigger more powerful temblors.
The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) announced the release of fiscal year 2016 Notices of Funding Opportunity for 10 DHS preparedness grant programs totaling more than $1.6 billion. The grants aim to improve the nation's readiness in preventing, protecting against, responding to, recovering from, and mitigating terrorist attacks, major disasters, and other emergencies.
Control of mosquitoes that transmit Zika, dengue, and chikungunya viruses must be ramped up in the Americas. The new Technical Advisory Group on Public Health Entomology is looking at ways to strengthen vector control programs, including specific measures for Aedes aegypti, the mosquito that transmits Zika, dengue, chikungunya, and yellow fever in the Americas.
A clinical trial in which volunteers were infected with dengue virus six months after receiving an experimental dengue vaccine developed by scientists from the National Institutes of Health (NIH) were protected from infection. The study underscores the importance of human challenge studies, in which volunteers are exposed to disease-causing pathogens under carefully controlled conditions.
Although clear progress has been made with certain drug-resistant hospital infections, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) report that these infections still occur in more than one in four patients in long-term acute care facilities. The CDC is challenging clinicians and other healthcare providers to accelerate their current efforts to combat drug-resistant "superbugs."
A tool being developed by the Kansas State University National Agricultural Biosecurity Center will assist agricultural emergency management coordinators in planning efforts to combat animal disease outbreaks and other emergencies. The tool is a database called ICAAR, which stands for Identifying Corrective Actions from Agricultural Response.
The U.S. Defense Threat Reduction Agency has awarded University of Central Florida's (UCF) assistant mechanical and aerospace engineering professor, Subith Vasu, a grant to figure out how long it takes the toxic chemicals from weapons of mass destruction to break down after they have been destroyed with bombs.
As part of the effort to upgrade global biosurveillance capabilities in the wake of recent pandemics, a mainly nuclear nonproliferation program created in the 1990s has evolved to address biological threats around the world. The precursor to the Defense Threat Reduction Agencys (DTRA) Cooperative Biological Engagement Program began in November 1991 as a U.S. threat reduction and nonproliferation effort.
Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory researchers are using their supercomputers, to simulate the energy requirements for candidate drug molecules to permeate cell membranes - shaving weeks of compound testing by determining in advance how readily they will enter cells to perform their activities. This research applies to nerve agents, which are classified by the United Nations as weapons of mass destruction.
The Departments of Defense (DoD) and Homeland Security are developing a system that lets epidemiologists scan the planet for anomalies in human and animal disease prevalence, warn of coming pandemics, and protect warfighters and others worldwide. The Biosurveillance Ecosystem is a program of the DoD's Defense Threat Reduction Agency (DTRA).
