While acknowledging some positive efforts over the past year by the White House and Congress, the bipartisan Blue Ribbon Study Panel on Biodefense says the incremental progress is not enough to defend against biological emergencies, let alone catastrophic events. Their report states that while the biological threat is real and continues to grow, our nation remains woefully under-prepared for dangerous biological incidents.
In a September article, the Department of Homeland Security Science and Technology (S&T) Directorate asked if rural volunteer fire departments have unique needs, and if so, what S&T’s First Responders Group might do to address them. The volunteer firefighter community responded passionately with detailed emails and posts, which are detailed here.
The Department of Homeland Security Science and Technology Directorate Explosives Division has funded research at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory to continue development of the Incident Management Preparedness and Coordination Toolkit (IMPACT), a geospatial tool designed to enhance situational awareness, communication, and collaboration during and for security events.
The Department of Homeland Security Science and Technology Directorate’s First Responders Group (FRG) is working to provide firefighters with a timely warning system that PPE failure is imminent. FRG is working with TDA Research, Inc. to develop the Burn Saver Thermal Sensor, a battery-powered device that will be carried by firefighters and detects thermal changes in their operating environments.
The Department of Homeland Security Science and Technology announced the eighth cybersecurity technology transitioning to commercialization as a part of its Cyber Security Division’s Transition to Practice program. ZeroPoint, an exploit detection and analytics tool focuses on analyzing documents, email, web content and server traffic for potentially hazardous content known as exploit payloads.
Baltimore biotech firm, PathSensors Inc., announced the launch of its new Bioflash MailGuard™ mail security screening solution. The Bioflash MailGuard™ system provides a fast, highly accurate, easy to use and low-cost threat detection solution for government and commercial mail room operations that need to screen mail and packages for potential threats such as anthrax.
A Northwestern University research team has developed a model that shows that earthquake clusters can occur on faults with long-term memory. The memory comes from the fact that the earthquake did not release all the strain that built up on the fault over time, so some strain remains after a big earthquake and can cause another.
Pluristem Therapeutics Inc. announced a milestone in its development program for PLX-R18, which is being evaluated as a medical countermeasure in the treatment of the hematologic components of Acute Radiation Syndrome (ARS) by the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), a part of the National Institutes of Health (NIH).
Mariana Leguia, Ph.D, head of the Genomics and Pathogen Discovery Unit at the U.S. Naval Medical Research Unit No. 6 (NAMRU-6) in Lima, Peru, provides insight on how next generation sequencing technologies can be used to advance public health research and pathogen detection.
The National Institutes of Health (NIH) has awarded Rutgers University a five-year grant for more than $19 million for research that would lead to the development of drugs to treat toxicity from chemical agents used in terrorist attacks.
