Emergent BioSolutions Inc. announced that the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) is advancing its anthrax preparedness strategy with multiple contract actions for anthrax vaccines. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority (BARDA) contract actions reflect the government’s intention to transition the stockpile of anthrax vaccines from BioThrax to NuThrax beginning in 2019.
To dramatically increase the effectiveness of small-unit combat forces operating in urban environments, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) has launched its new OFFensive Swarm-Enabled Tactics (OFFSET) program. OFFSET seeks to develop and demonstrate 100+ operationally relevant swarm tactics that could be used by groups of unmanned air and/or ground systems numbering more than 100 robots.
Applications are now being accepted for the NextGen First Responder Technologies solicitation jointly funded by the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Science and Technology Directorate (S&T) and the Israeli Ministry of Public Security. The NextGen First Responder Technologies program is looking for innovations in fields such as protective clothing, wearable technology, and situational awareness.
Purdue President Mitch Daniels announced that the university is opening a new Institute for Global Security and Defense Innovation in Discovery Park. The institute will work with Purdue’s other research centers and institutes to research areas such as advanced instrumentation, nanotechnology, social and behavioral sciences, big data analytics, and simulations to deliver integrated systems solutions to the nation’s security and defense communities.
Physicians at five U.S. medical centers are planning to enroll up to 400 children in a clinical trial to evaluate whether a shorter course of antibiotics is effective at treating community-acquired pneumonia. The clinical trial, sponsored by the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), will use an evaluation method developed by scientists who specialize in antibiotic resistance research.
At the first hints of a disease outbreak, epidemiologists, healthcare providers, policy makers, and scientists turn to predictive models to determine how an illness is spreading. A research collaboration between the New York University (NYU) Tandon School of Engineering and Politecnico di Torino in Italy is yielding predictions that are simpler to calculate and more attuned to a hyper-connected world.
By mimicking how dogs get their whiffs, a team of government and university researchers have demonstrated that “active sniffing” can improve by more than 10 times the performance of current technologies that rely on continuous suction to detect trace amounts of explosives and other contraband.
A new bioinformatics platform called Empowering the Development of Genomics Expertise (EDGE) will help democratize the genomics revolution by allowing users to quickly analyze and interpret genomic sequence data. The ability to characterize organisms through accurately and rapidly comparing genomic data is an important part of Los Alamos’ national security mission.
The U.S. Department of Homeland Security Science and Technology Directorate announced the Next-Generation Incident Command System (NICS) will be implemented in some North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) member and partner countries as part of NATO’s Science for Peace and Security Project Advanced Regional Civil Emergency Coordination Pilot.
The World Health Organization (WHO) emergency committee states that the Zika virus and related microcephaly cases no longer represent a Public Health Emergency of International Concern (PHEIC). The Zika virus remains a significant enduring public health challenge and will receive high-level attention and sustained funding by WHO.
