Recreating deadly diseases with mail-order DNA: Here’s how.
Science reports on a group of researchers who recreated an extinct cousin of smallpox – one of the deadliest and most-weaponized diseases on Earth – […]
epidemiology
Melting permafrost is releasing ancient diseases.
Sounds almost medieval, doesn’t it? But no, it’s not the vapors. BBC shows how dormant viruses and bacteria are waking up after centuries or even […]
GMO mosquitoes will fly. Probably.
Just a short note (from a Fusion story), but one kind of overlooked story from election day is that the Florida Keys approved releasing genetically […]
Florida Keys voting on genetically-modified mosquito plan.
FiveThirtyEight Science has an in-depth article on a genetic reponse to the Zika threat and the scientific stakes of ballots cast in Florida’s southernmost county: […]
Zika is an American disease now.
NPR reports that the mosquito-borne illness is probably here to stay: So far, local officials in Miami have successfully cleared just one zone of local […]
A new way to catch Zika.
The Washington Post puzzles over a case of Zika in Utah that points to a new way for the virus to transmit itself: Until now, […]
Scientists track elusive badger-cow encounters.
Nature goes out to the country to track the spread of TB (an unpleasant and expensive disease) by looking at how badgers meet cows… or […]
Dogs stymie the battle to wipe out guinea worm.
As Nature notes, we’ve almost eradicated guinea worm – a terribly infectious parasite – but the worm seems to be striking back in the form […]
Parasitic worm boosts human fertility.
The BBC has me wondering just how many worm-babies there are out there (like blackout babies or blizzard babies). Because being infected with this parasitic […]
Step aside HIV. Tuberculosis is now the deadliest infectious disease.
New Scientist reveals that, worldwide, more people died from TB than from AIDS: This year marks the deadline for the Millennium Development Goal of cutting […]
What makes tick-borne diseases so tough?
Nature tries to figure out why we’re not making the headway we should against Lyme, Rocky Mountain spotted fever, and the rest of the tick-borne […]
A flu vaccine that really works. All the time.
Wired brings up the potential of a universal flu vaccine – and the problems getting one together: Today, independent teams reported in Science and Nature […]
Genetically modified mosquitoes swarm Brazilian city.
And, New Scientist points out, they’re here to help… because they breed fast and their young die too quickly to spread dengue fever: Millions of […]
Italian police pressure scientists investigating olive blight.
Nature uncovers just how hard it can be to do research when your subjects keep dying: In the past year, plant scientists at various institutes […]
Penicillin-resistant germ found – from more than a decade before penicillin was discovered.
New Scientist has more on WWI germ that can survive all kinds of modern medicines: Ernest Cable was a British soldier who died in 1915 […]