Countermeasures
The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) recently announced that its Pandemic Prevention Platform (P3) program has all performer institutions under contract and working to developing technology that can quickly prevent the spread of infectious diseases.
P3 was launched last year in... Read More »
More than 50 groups marshalled by the Infectious Diseases Society of America (IDSA) seek an act of Congress to rush urgently needed new antimicrobial drugs to market that protect America’s national security and the health of its citizens against biothreats posed by antimicrobial resistant (AMR)... Read More »
The 2018 Joint Civil & DoD CBRN Symposium presented by the Defense Strategies Institute will take place on March 5-6 at the Mary M. Gates Learning Center in Alexandria, Virginia. The event will provide a forum for members of the Department of Defense, federal government, private industry, academia,... Read More »
A multi-agency team of 30 law enforcement officers recently conducted an active shooter drill at an elementary school in Erie County, Pennsylvania.
Marine Interdiction Agents assigned to Air and Marine Operations’ Erie Marine Unit, agents from U.S. Border Patrol’s Fairview Station and... Read More »
A new saliva-based diagnostic test for Zika virus is being developed by researchers at New York University College of Dentistry, in collaboration with Rheonix, Inc., and allows test results to be delivered in minutes rather than hours or days.
Current Zika testing is conducted using blood... Read More »
Researchers at MIT have discovered the means of growing their own dormant malaria parasites, granting them the ability to study how it operates, its vulnerabilities, and how it seemingly resurrects itself.
All of this is housed in engineered human liver tissue. With the malaria parasite so... Read More »
Citing North Korean ballistic missile threats, U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) called on the Department of Defense (DoD) to include development and deployment of space-based missile defense in the 2018 Missile Defense Review (MDR).
In a letter to Defense Secretary James Mattis, Cruz highlighted... Read More »
International researchers recently launched an online, open-access database that pools emerging data from a wide range of fields — ranging from economic modeling to weather surveillance to genomic medicine — to improve collaboration on epidemiological research.
A single epidemiological... Read More »
More than 80 percent of cybersecurity professionals believe that their employer will experience a “catastrophic” data breach within the next three years, and 66 percent believe that it could “seriously diminish” shareholder value, according to a global study released on Wednesday.... Read More »
A clinical trial has begun on a new generation of typhoid vaccines and, in a major step, the first African child has been vaccinated.
The trial revolves around a typhoid conjugate vaccine (TCV) and is being run by Professor Melita Gordon of the University of Liverpool, in conjunction with the... Read More »
A new x-ray image analysis training system that tracks the eye movements of Transportation Security Administration (TSA) officers as they conduct visual searches of travelers is currently being tested at airports across Oregon.
Known as ScreenADAPT, the technology is being developed by the... Read More »
U.S. Congressman Scott Peters (D-CA), whose 52nd District in San Diego County encompasses a large military presence that partners in strategic national defense, thinks it’s important the United States find smart solutions to biothreats that include preparedness for any catastrophic biological... Read More »
The U.S. Department of Justice (DoJ) will use a new Cyber-Digital Task Force to assess its current efforts to combat global cyberthreats and identify areas of improvement, Attorney General Jeff Sessions announced on Tuesday.
The deputy attorney general will appoint a senior department official... Read More »
Researchers at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) are currently exploring the potential use of “collaborative autonomy” to creates a network of autonomous machines and humans that could be used by first responders.
The research team is developing a coordinated and distributed... Read More »
The effort to identify and contain the capabilities of infectious diseases is going robotic, with the development of a new artificial intelligence algorithm by University of South Carolina (USC) researchers.
A team from USC’s Viterbi School of Engineering developed the algorithm using a mix of... Read More »
The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) announced plans on Tuesday to develop new sensors and networks that are capable of detecting chemical, biological and explosives threats in real time, which will alert authorities immediately.
DARPA’s SIGMA program currently detects... Read More »
U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) officers at the Port of Nogales in Arizona recently seized over 200 pounds of methamphetamine and cocaine worth approximately $1 million and apprehended six people after intercepting multiple separate smuggling attempts.
On Feb. 15, officers at the Dennis... Read More »
Facing a Cholera outbreak in Mozambique that has gone on since Aug. 14, 2017, the World Health Organization (WHO) has committed a great many resources, but now, they are also calling for nationwide improvements.
Since the start of the outbreak--an annual occurrence in Mozambique--1799 cases have... Read More »
Charles Perez was sworn in as the director of Customs and Border Protection (CBP) Santa Teresa Port on Friday and will oversee and manage all officers, agriculture specialists, and canine enforcement officers working in the port area in his new role.
Perez served as the area port director for... Read More »
Al-Qaeda operative Ibrahim Suleiman Adnan Adam Harun, aka Spin Ghul, 47, was recently sentenced to life in prison following his March 16, 2017, trial conviction of multiple terrorism offenses.
Harun was convicted of offenses including conspiracy to murder American military personnel in... Read More »
The National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) has a plan to secure needed inventories of low-enriched uranium through 2038, but a recent Government Accountability Office (GAO) review found that longer-term enriched uranium needs haven’t been clearly defined and cost estimates are... Read More »
The Transportation Security Administration (TSA) highlighted last week two new checkpoint technologies recently unveiled at the Los Angeles International Airport (LAX).
The technologies available include facial recognition and less invasive body scanners with increased detection capabilities.... Read More »
After assessing the extent to which critical infrastructure sectors have adopted the federal Framework for Improving Infrastructure Cybersecurity standards, the Government Accountability Office (GAO) has since made nine recommendations for improvement.
The framework in question was developed in... Read More »
Using drugs or illegal substances to compel victims of human trafficking to perform commercial sex acts would be considered coercion, and new protections would be established for human trafficking victims, under bicameral legislation introduced on Thursday.
U.S. Sen. John Cornyn (R-TX) and U.S.... Read More »
The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Science and Technology Directorate (S&T) announced recently that it is developing a Predictive Threat Model (PTM) to help Custom and Border Protection's (CBP) Air and Marine Operations Center (AMOC) identify and stop nefarious aircraft.
“We can rethink... Read More »
Republican senators introduced legislation on Thursday that would establish a $25 billion trust fund for border security and codify legal protections for people covered under the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program.
U.S. Sens. Jerry Moran (R-KS), Rob Portman (R-OH), and John... Read More »
The Port Authority of New York and New Jersey’s Board of Commissioners recently approved the construction of a $30 million permanent U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) inspection area at the Stewart International Airport to accommodate the increase in international passengers at the airport... Read More »
The 2018 Joint Civil & DoD CBRN Symposium presented by the Defense Strategies Institute will take place on March 5-6 at the Mary M. Gates Learning Center in Alexandria, Virginia. The event will provide a forum for members of the Department of Defense, federal government, private industry, academia,... Read More »
The Open Philanthropy Project awarded a $2.5 million grant to the Blue Ribbon Study Panel on Biodefense on Thursday, which will be used to help the organization continue to assess biodefense, identify needed changes and make recommendations.
In a 2015 report, the panel made 33 recommendations... Read More »
The Congressional Task Force on Election Security released a report on Wednesday that outlines 10 recommendations to protect state election systems for cyberattacks, including allocating funds, more training, minimum requirements for voting machines, and threat assessments.
The task force was... Read More »
Crowley Logistics has completed the first military delivery under a $2.3 billion Department of Defense (DoD) contract as of this week.
The company reported successful delivery by truck to the U.S. Tobyhanna Army Depot in Pennsylvania, and future deliveries will include a mix of vendor... Read More »
The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Science & Technology Directorate (S&T) named five finalists for a $300,000 grant to develop an early warning system that detects emerging biothreats using existing data on Wednesday.
Finalists for the grant, which is being administered by the S&T... Read More »
In urging Congress to reject public health cuts proposed by the Trump Administration, the Infectious Diseases Society of America (IDSA) said on Wednesday that the fiscal year 2019 budget proposal reflects a “narrow and short-sighted understanding of national safety and well-being.”... Read More »
The John Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health Center for Health Security recently on Wednesday a preliminary analysis of health security funding in President Donald Trump’s proposed fiscal year 2019 (FY2019) budget, which highlighted several major budgetary and organizational... Read More »
Homeland security stakeholders will gather on March 5-6 in Virginia at the 6th Annual Joint Civil and Department of Defense (DoD) Chemical, Biological, Radiological and Nuclear (CBRN) Symposium, where participants will have the opportunity to discuss challenges and improvements to the nation’s... Read More »
