Defense in Biological News

Early detection and quick response are key to defense against anthrax attack

NEW YORK (July 24, 2009) -- A large attack on a major metropolitan area with airborne anthrax could affect more than a million people, necessitating their treatment with powerful antibiotics. A new study finds that in order for a response to be effective, quick detection and treatment are essentia...

New discovery suggests trees evolved camouflage defense against long extinct predator

Many animal species such as snakes, insects and fish have evolved camouflage defences to deter attack from their predators. However research published in New Phytologist has discovered that trees in New Zealand have evolved a similar defence to protect themselves from extinct giant birds, provi...

Supply Chain Council Seminar Focuses on Defense and IT

Design Chain Operations Model and Convergence Theme WASHINGTON, April 8 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- Supply Chain Council (SCC) will host at the Georgia Institute of Technology , the following events around the internationally used standard, the Supply Chain Operations Reference Model (SCOR): ...

Supply Chain Council Seminar Focuses on Defense and IT

Design Chain Operations Model and Convergence Theme WASHINGTON, April 8 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- Supply Chain Council (SCC) will host at the Georgia Institute of Technology , the following events around the internationally used standard, the Supply Chain Operations Reference Model (SCOR): ...

Researchers discover primer to plant defense system

OAK RIDGE, Tenn., April 3, 2009 -- By identifying a novel compound that primes a plant's immune system, researchers at Oak Ridge National Laboratory and the University of Chicago may be on a path to developing disease-resistant plants. In a paper published in Science , a team that includes Tim...

Reforming defense department acquisition policy: UM expert

COLLEGE PARK, Md. There's no "silver bullet" for reforming U.S. Department of Defense purchasing and acquisition policies, but they do need reforming, says University of Maryland public policy professor Jacques Gansler, who testified today before the Senate Armed Services Committee. Gansler d...

CSC Awarded Department of Defense Biometrics Contract

FALLS CHURCH, Va., Feb. 2 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ -- CSC (NYSE: CSC ) announced today that it is one of 12 contractors awarded a Biometrics Operations and Support Services Unrestricted contract by the Department of Defense's U.S. Army Biometrics Task Force (BTF). The indefinite-delivery/indefinit...

SectorWatch.biz Issues Commentary for Investors of Homeland Defense Companies FOUR, MAGS, NSSC, PNTR, BCO, and CKP

IRVINE, Calif., Feb. 3 /PRNewswire/ -- SectorWatch.biz announces the availability of a commentary of interest to investors of Homeland Defense equities including 4C Controls, Inc. (OTC Bulletin Board: FOUR), Magal Security Systems Ltd. (Nasdaq: MAGS ), Napco Security Systems Inc. (Nasdaq: NSSC...

Raytheon Chosen to Help Provide Department of Defense Biometrics Operations and Support Services

Raytheon one of 12 companies selected for BOSS-U $497 million award RESTON, Va., Jan. 27, 2009 /PRNewswire/ -- The U.S. Army Biometrics Task Force has selected Raytheon Company (NYSE: RTN ) to provide biometric-related services and support to enhance the ability of the Department of Defense...

Lockheed Martin Team Wins Role on Key Department of Defense Biometrics Contract Vehicle

Corporation One of 12 Industry Leaders Chosen for BOSS-U ROCKVILLE, Md., Jan. 8 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ -- The U.S. Department of Defense Biometrics Task Force (BTF) has named Lockheed Martin (NYSE: LMT ) an industry leader capable of being awarded task orders under the Biometrics Operations...

New dummy design and development wins US Department of Defense award

Blacksburg, Va. -- The Virginia Tech Wake Forest University's School of Biomedical Engineering and Science's Center for Injury Biomechanics has received the Army Modeling and Simulation Award for 2008. The Office of the Deputy Chief of Staff of the Army and Director of the Army presented the ...

New vaccine may give long-term defense against deadly bird flu and its variant forms

WEST LAFAYETTE, Ind. - A new vaccine under development may provide protection against highly pathogenic bird flu and its evolving forms, according to researchers at Purdue University and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention who discovered the new preventative drug and have tested it in m...

Researchers discover critical detail of cellular defense against genetic mistakes

Researchers are closing in on a completed diagram of how human cells protect themselves against constant genetic mistakes that contribute to most diseases, according to a study to be published in the April 18 edition of the journal Cell. The blueprint for the human body is encoded in genes. ...

US Army, US Navy, US Air Force, US Marines, US Department of Defense conference held at UH

HOUSTON, Oct. 26, 2007 From defusing bombs to treating post trauma, the U.S. armed forces face challenges on multiple fronts. The University of Houston will host a Department of Defense (DoD) research conference to address such issues Nov. 1 and 2 at the Hilton UH Hotel and Conference Center. ...

Sex involved in plant defense

Why do some plants defend themselves from insect attacks better than others? New evidence shows that the difference might be due to whether they're getting any plant love. In research published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences , scientists from North Carolina State Universit...

UBC discovery unlocks tree genetics, gives new hope for pine beetle defense

UBC researchers have discovered some of the genetic secrets that enable pine and spruce trees to fight off pests and disease, uncovering critical new information about forests natural defense systems. Assoc. Prof. Joerg Bohlmann says this genetic analysis will allow forest stewardship programs ...

Newly discovered antibody may be body's natural defense against Alzheimer's

In an important advance in the battle against Alzheimer's disease, physician-scientists at NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital/Weill Cornell Medical Center have identified naturally occurring antibodies in human blood that may help to defend against this form of dementia as well as other neurodegenerati...

Using nature's most primitive anti-viral defense system to find new approaches to cancer research

The humble fruit fly and a grant from the AICR ?the Association for International Cancer Research - are helping a leading scientist in London identify potential targets for drugs that block the spread of cancer. In one of the first studies of its kind, Dr Buzz Baum of the UCL Branch of the globa...

Oxidation defense in mosquitoes benefits malaria parasite

Scientists from two universities in Italy and Virginia Tech in the United States have determined the structure of a protein that is responsible for the production xanthurenic acid (XA) in Anopheles gambiae, the malaria carrying mosquitoes. XA plays a key role in the sexual reproduction of the malar...

A clue from macaques yields evidence for impaired retroviral defense genes in humans

Researchers Harmit Malik and Michael Emerman and colleagues at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center have found that a surprisingly large fraction of humans may be impaired in the function of a recently discovered arm of the body's defense against invading retroviruses such as HIV. One of t...

Study shows that cells have a natural defense against HIV

Scientists here have discovered a previously unknown mechanism that cells use to fight off the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV), the cause of AIDS. The findings indicate that two proteins that normally help repair cellular DNA can also destroy the DNA made by HIV after it enters a human cell. ...

Sea slug mixes chemical defense before firing at predators

When threatened by predators, sea slugs defend themselves by ejecting a potent inky secretion into the water consisting of hydrogen peroxide, ammonia and several types of acids. A team of researchers with the Atlanta-based Center for Behavioral Neuroscience (CBN) has found that this secretion is pr...

Study: Plants use dual defense system to fight pathogens

Researchers have uncovered the link between two biochemical pathways that plants use to defend themselves against pathogens ?pathways that scientists have long believed worked independently of each other. Knowing how these pathways of immunity work may one day help researchers breed plants that ...

Researchers discover new tumor defense system

Researchers have discovered that tumors release fatty acids that interfere with the cells that are trying to kill them. Consequently, strategies that reduce the amount of fatty acids surrounding the tumors may give a boost to anti-cancer therapeutics. The details of these findings appear in the Sep...

Researchers uncover E. coli's defense mechanism

Iron key to nitric oxide reductionResearchers at the Georgia Institute of Technology and the John Innes Centre in the United Kingdom have uncovered a mechanism with which disease-causing bacteria may thwart the body's natural defense responses. The findings, which could ultimately lead to the devel...

Ancient immune defense mechanism is no match for HIV-1

Researchers have discovered that mammalian cells infected with HIV-1 engage a primitive defense mechanism that was previously observed only in plants and invertebrates. The research also reveals exactly how HIV-1 successfully thwarts this rare form of immunity in vertebrate cells. However, elucidat...

In the sea slug's defense against lobsters, confusion is key

Like many other marine creatures, Aplysia, a common sea slug, enlists chemical defenses against its predators, but the mechanisms by which such chemical attacks actually work against their intended targets are not well understood by researchers. New work has now shown that such chemical defenses ca...

Female sex hormones play a vital role in defense against sexually transmitted diseases

Two McMaster University studies, to be published in the Journal of Virology, show that sex hormones have a profound effect on susceptibility of female mice to the herpes simplex virus, type 2 (HSV-2 ), one of the most common sexually transmitted diseases. Charu Kaushic, assistant professor and s...

How plague-causing bacteria disarm host defense

Effector proteins are the bad guys that help bacterial pathogens do their job of infecting the host by crippling the body's immune system. In essence, they knock down the front door of resistance and disarm the cell's alarm system. Now, researchers at the University of California, San Diego (UC...

Animal and plant communication at the ESA Annual Meeting

...n than better utilization of host plants as food. Specialists might also be more adept than generalists, he postulated, at using their host plants for defense or refuge from predation, specifically by birds. The team tested this idea by excluding birds from experimental plots in a temperate forest in Con...

Restoring a natural root signal helps to fight a major corn pest

...considerably fewer surviving rootworms. Further fine-tuning of this natural defense strategy will allow for an environmentally friendly growing of maize with m...ematodes than the non-transformed equivalents. "The use of this indirect defense is an attractive strategy to increase plant resistance against herbivores a...

Microbes and their hosts -- exploring the complexity of symbiosis in DNA and cell biology

...ientific topics and disciplines related to microbial symbiosis. These include "The Oral Microbial Consortium's Interaction with the Periodontal Innate defense System," which describes a process called "local chemokine paralysis," in which the membership and characteristics of the bacterial community that pop...

Frost & Sullivan: North American Government Biometrics Markets Thrive With Active R&D Thrust

...roducts to meet the industry's current and future requirements will establish biometric technologies as an integral component of national security and defense strategies in the near future," says Frost & Sullivan Research Analyst Neelima Sagar. "With specific end user requirements in mind, market parti...

New Report Just Published: World Solid-State, Fiber, Gas and Dye Lasers Market Report

...NUI Galway II-42 Powerlase and Eolite Systems Join Forces II-42 Oerlikon Completes Acquisition of Exitech II-42 LEI Successfully Completes defense Deal with ITT II-42 Laser Photonics Partners with FANUC Robotics II-43 IPG Laser Receives Supply Contract from BMW Group II-43 Zecotek and...

US Government Places 6,1 Million USD Orders Related to Precise Match-on-Card(TM) for Cyber Security Programs

...://www.prnewswire.com/mnr/precisebiometrics/38917/ The solution delivered by Precise Biometrics is related to US Government security and cyber defense programs to prevent hostile infiltration of government systems within critical infrastructure. Thomas Marschall, CEO at Precise Biometrics, com...

Sustainable bioenergy project has global launch

...and director of Penn State Institutes of Energy and the Environment. The three-stage project is led by Richard, Nathanael Greene, Natural Resources defense Council who chairs the steering committee and Lee Lynd, Thayer School of Engineering, Dartmouth College and Mascoma Corporation. The first stage of th...

Study finds role for parasites in evolution of sex

...not as obvious as one might think. An article published in the July issue of the American Naturalist suggests that sex may have evolved in part as a defense against parasites. Despite its central role in biology, sex is a bit of an evolutionary mystery. Reproducing without sexlike microbes, some plants ...

Reading the brain without poking it

...signals collected by electrodes in or on the brain, or by electrodes planted in the residual limb. The new study was funded partly by the defense Advanced Research Projects Agency's bionic arm project, and by the National Science Foundation and Blackrock Microsystems, which provided the system t...

MicroRNAs help control HIV life cycle

...in human T-cells. In particular, miR29 plays a key role in controlling the HIV life cycle. The study suggests that HIV may have co-opted this cellular defense mechanism to help the virus hide from the immune system and antiviral drugs. The research was published today in the journal Molecular Cell . Tari...

Novel handheld device detects anthrax with outstanding accuracy and reliability

...ould help fuel its wider use among such first responders as fire and police departments, HazMat teams, postal services, port and airport security, and defense and military authorities." John Delaney is Captain, Arlington County, Virginia Fire Department and Manager, National Medical Response Team-National...