See Also: What Is Stopping the Use of Genetically Modified Insects for Disease Control? (
PLOS: Pathogens) Insect-borne pathogens impose a substantial burden on health, the environment, and agricultural production, and rapid outbreaks of such pathogens are becoming more common. Population control is an important component of strategies to control insect-borne pathogens. However, some technologies such as insecticide use are becoming less effective due to resistance, or their use is increasingly restricted due to environmental legislation.
Go to article Zika Viral Dynamics and Shedding in Rhesus and Cynomolgus Macaques (
Nature: Medicine) Infection with Zika virus has been associated with serious neurological complications and fetal abnormalities. However, the dynamics of viral infection, replication and shedding are poorly understood. Here we show that both rhesus and cynomolgus macaques are highly susceptible to infection by lineages of Zika virus that are closely related to, or are currently circulating in, the Americas.
Go to article Full Genome Sequence and sfRNA Interferon Antagonist Activity of Zika Virus from Recife, Brazil (
PLOS: Neglected Tropical Diseases) The outbreak of Zika virus in the Americas has transformed a previously obscure mosquito-transmitted arbovirus of the Flaviviridae family into a major public health concern. Little is currently known about the evolution and biology of ZIKV and the factors that contribute to the associated pathogenesis. Determining genomic sequences of clinical viral isolates and characterization of elements within these are an important prerequisite to advance our understanding of viral replicative processes and virus-host interactions.
Go to article Domestic Preparedness & Response
Florida Hospitals Brace for Hurricane Matthew, Some Close (
CNBC) Thousands of people are fleeing Hurricane Matthew as it barrels toward Florida, but some hospital staffers are sticking around. Florida hospitals prepared Thursday to get hit by the monster storm, with many facilities altering their normal operations, and a number of them closing and evacuating patients.
Go to article Government Affairs & National Security
CDC Funds 34 Innovative Projects to Combat Antibiotic Resistance (
CDC) CDC has awarded more than $14 million to fund new approaches to combat antibiotic resistance, including research on how microorganisms naturally present in the human body (referred to as a person's microbiome) can be used to predict and prevent infections caused by drug-resistant organisms. The awards, made through CDC's Broad Agency Announcement, support activities in the CDC Antibiotic Resistance Solutions Initiative.
Go to article Global Health Security
Controlling Neglected Tropical Diseases (NTDs) in Haiti: Implementation Strategies and Evidence of Their Success (
PLOS: Neglected Tropical Diseases) Lymphatic filariasis and soil-transmitted helminths have been targeted since 2000 in Haiti, with a strong mass drug administration program led by the Ministry of Public Health and Population and its collaborating international partners. By 2012, Haiti's neglected tropical disease program had reached full national scale, and with such consistently good epidemiological coverage that it is now able to stop treatment for LF throughout almost all of the country. Essential to this success have been in the detail of how MDAs were implemented.
Go to article Medicine & Public Health
Real-time Monitoring of Vaccination Campaign Performance Using Mobile Phones--Nepal, 2016 (
MMWR) All 33 districts included in the second phase of the campaign during February 2016 used paper-based RCM, but the MoH and WHO-Nepal selected 10 districts among them that included a mix of high- and low-performance in immunization service delivery and different geographic topographies (five were in the plains and five were hilly) for pilot testing RCM-MP on a limited scale. Thus, in the 10 pilot districts, there was a mix of VDCs where RCM was conducted using paper forms or mobile phones.
Go to article Science & Technology
As DNA Reveals Its Secrets, Scientists are Assembling a New Picture of Humanity (
STAT) When Benedict Paten stares at his computer monitor, he sometimes gazes at what looks like a map of the worst subway system in the world. The screen is sprinkled with little circles that look like stations. Some are joined by straight lines--sometimes a single path from one circle to the next, sometimes a burst of spokes radiating out in many directions. And sometimes the lines bend into sweeping curves that soar off on express routes to distant stations.
Go to article GEN Roundup: PCR from the Lab to the Point of Care (
GEN) If a laboratory technique is around long enough, it can start to seem like a comfortable piece of furniture. That's the case for PCR, a technique so venerable that even its descendents, digital PCR and real-time PCR, have become familiar--to researchers, at least. Outside the laboratory, however, those who could make use of PCR don't see it something they can settle into.
Go to article Alphabet's Latest Project Is Birth Control for Mosquitoes (
MIT Technology Review) At one of Alphabet's campuses in Mountain View, California, entomologists working behind the steel door of a bio-safety lab are breeding mosquitoes in a new effort by the search giant to create automated insect farms. The work is a surprise new project by Alphabet's health spin-off, Verily, which says it hopes to release millions or billions of sterilized mosquitoes as a way to battle the spread of dengue and the Zika virus, including in US cities.
Go to article Democratic Databases: Science on GitHub (
Nature) When the Ebola outbreak in West Africa picked up pace in July 2014, Caitlin Rivers started to collect data on the people affected. Rivers, then a PhD student in computational epidemiology, wanted to model the outbreak's spread. So every day she downloaded PDF updates released by the ministries of health of the virus-stricken countries, and converted the numbers into computer-readable tables. Rather than keeping these files to herself, she posted them to GitHub.com, a hugely popular website for collaborative work on software code.
Go to article Other 21st Century Threats
Chemical Weapon for Sale: China's Unregulated Narcotic (
ABC News) It's one of the strongest opioids in circulation, so deadly an amount smaller than a poppy seed can kill a person. Until July, when reports of carfentanil overdoses began to surface in the US, the substance was best known for knocking out moose and elephants--or as a chemical weapon.
Go to article Storm Surge Could Prove More Devastating Than Wind (
The Post and Courier) South Carolina may escape a direct strike, but Hurricane Matthew's swirling mass will still send an enormous pulse of seawater toward us, an ocean flood that could put vast swaths of the Lowcountry under water. Forecasters on Thursday said there's a strong chance that Matthew's surge will exceed 5 feet in the Charleston area.
Go to article When Neuroscience Leads to Neuroweapons (
Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists) In general, the universal prohibition on biological weapons is widely supported, and there is healthy concern over how dual-use technologies--those with both beneficial and dangerous applications--might threaten it.
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