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Tag: "weapons" at biology news

Microbial forensics: The next great forensic challenge

...tute for Defense Analysis. Murch created the FBI's weapons of mass destruction forensic unit in 1996 and has ... biologic agents that potentially could be used as weapons based on the criteria of public health impact, ease of dissemination or transmission, requirements f...

Researchers uncover sequence of major rice pathogen

...ecreted proteins that are likely used as offensive weapons to damage rice plants; and redundant, or duplicate, mechanisms that protect the fungus from efforts to fight against it. "It's a clever system," Dean says. "If you have important genes, you tend to have a lot of them." The paper also reports that t...

Could microbes solve Russia's chemical weapons conundrum?

...tion products of mustard from the Russian chemical weapons stockpile," Inna T Ermakova, Natalya S Safrina, Ivan I Starovoitov, Yelena V Lyubun, Alexander A Shcherbakov, Oleg E Makarov, Paul V Kosterin, and Alexander M Boronin, Journal of Chemical Technology and Biotechnology; Published Online: March 2, 2005....

Secret of smallpox's success may lead to bioterror cure

...ses as well, making available a who new arsenal of weapons against disease. Antigen-eliciting genes from hard-to-treat viruses such as HIV could potentially be added to the mutant vaccinia virus, which would draw the immune system's attention to the target virus's proteins, thus creating a strong immune resp...

Studies reveal how plague disables immune system, and how to exploit the process to make a vaccine

...y more slowly but bring powerful and very specific weapons targeted at those individual pieces. "This is a very clever system for this particular kind of bacteria," said Schneewind. It can take eight to 10 days for the B and T cells to multiply and fully engage. "By that time, with plague," he said, "the ho...

Immune system's distress signal tells bacteria when to strike back

...ous, they produce two virulence factors, molecular weapons known as PA-I and Pyocyanin. PA-I causes the barrier cells that line the host's bowel to become more permeable, which renders them more susceptible to the microbe's toxins. Pyocyanin enhances the germ's ability to pass through the weakened bowel wall...

US Army plans to bulk-buy anthrax

...on, programme director for biological and chemical weapons at the Center for Arms Control and Non-Proliferati...hich is quite lethal." The US renounced biological weapons in 1969, but small quantities of lethal anthrax were still being produced at Dugway as recently as 1...

New tooth enamel dating technique could help identify disaster victims

...tmosphere and food. Atmospheric testing of nuclear weapons from 1955 to1963 produced a dramatic surge in the amount of radiocarbon in the atmosphere, Buchholz said. "Even though the detonations were conducted at only a few locations, the elevated carbon-14 levels in the atmosphere rapidly equalized around t...

Researchers develop new testing methods for potential monkeypox or smallpox outbreak

...ked with smallpox or other dangerous poxviruses as weapons of bioterrorism". ...

US/African project deciphers deadly parasite genome

...ajor focus of our analysis was to identify the key weapons in the parasite's genetic armory that it could use to trigger and maintain the cancerous state of the infected host cell." ...

Researchers find Amchitka seafood safe for now

...y wastes at sites involved in the nation's nuclear weapons production process that began in the 1950's. CRESP was specifically created to address the recommendation by the National Academy of Sciences that the U.S. Department of Energy's Environmental Management Office needed an independent academic mechanis...

Dangerous tricksters: Some bacterie use immune cells to reproduce

Macrophages are effective weapons used by our immune system to absorb and digest pathogenic intruders. Some bacteria, however, can subvert this defence mechanism and even multiply within the macrophages. Cell biologists at the University of Bonn have revealed such a strategy in a rec...

ORNL leading effort to help harness power of Shewanella

...and hydrogen production, cleanup of former nuclear weapons production sites and minimizing global warming by controlling the cycling of atmospheric carbon dioxide. ...

Newly discovered protein kills anthrax bacteria by exploding their cell walls

Not all biological weapons are created equal. They are separated into categories A through C, category A biological agents being the scariest: They are easy to spread, kill effectively and call for special actions by the pubic health system. One of these worrisome organisms is...

AIDS drug from sunflowers

...laudio Cerboncini wanted to find out what chemical weapons the fungus-resistant sunflowers have at their disp...hese substances to expand our arsenal of effective weapons against the disease,' Dr. Esther Vogt of the Immunological Out-Patient Service of Bonn University Cl...

Study may help slay 'Yellow Monster'

...rst Gulf War. Military uses of depleted uranium in weapons continue today. Closer to home, questions continue to be asked about environmental exposure to uranium from mine tailings that dot the landscape across the Navajo Nation. "When the uranium mining boom crashed in the '80s, it really crashed and the...

Avian flu modeled on supercomputer, explores vaccine and isolation options for thwarting a pandemic

...cale simulation platform developed for the nuclear weapons program. It runs on the Los Alamos supercomputer known as Pink, a 1,024-node (2,048 processor) LinuxBIOS/BProc "Science Appliance" running Clustermatic 3, the largest single-system image Linux cluster in the world. Pink's nodes have dual 2.4 GHz Inte...

Encoded metallic nanowires reveal bioweapons

When dangerous infectious diseases or biological weapons are suspected, fast help is required. The first step is a reliable, sensitive, and unambiguous, yet also fast and simple, identification of the pathogen; preferably, this test should be carried out on the spot, not in a laboratory. Portable miniature...

Nanosecond-scale release of stinging jellyfish nematocysts

...prey capture and defense. These miniature cellular weapons contain a cocktail of hemolytic and neurotoxic poisons, making some cnidarians the most venomous animals known. Injection of the toxins requires an effective release mechanism that breaks the physical barrier of the prey's outer-surface tissue. It wa...

Alarming decline in Nepal's rhinos and tigers in former Maoist stronghold

...poachers armed with locally made muzzle guns. Four weapons and a large cache of ammunition were seized along with more than 660 pounds of smoked Sambar, spotted deer, barking deer, and four-horned antelope -- all important prey species of tiger and other carnivores. Virtually all the guard posts inside the B...

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