Today's Headlines: August 16, 2018
Biological Agents & Infectious Diseases
41 Deaths from Ebola in Congo; Health Officials 'Worried' (
CNN) An ongoing Ebola outbreak is spreading across the Democratic Republic of Congo's North Kivu province, and it has health officials gravely concerned due to conflict in the area along with other factors. The country's Ministry of Health announced Monday that 57 cases of hemorrhagic fever have been reported in the region: 30 confirmed and 27 probable.
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The Spectre of Smallpox Lingers (
Nature) Forty years ago, the UK city of Birmingham was in a panic. A medical photographer called Janet Parker was admitted to hospital on 11 August 1978, her body riddled with lesion and scars. She passed away a month later, the last known person to die from one of the world's deadliest diseases: smallpox.
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Global Health & Security
On-Demand Medical Drone Delivery (
Stanford Social Innovation Review) Delivery by drone is not a novelty for Silicon Valley-based startup Zipline -- it's a matter of life and death in the regions that the drone-delivery system serves. In October 2016, the company launched an on-demand service in contract with the government of Rwanda to deliver more than 50 different types of blood products (blood, plasma, and platelets) for immediate medical treatment.
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Government Affairs & National Security
NIH Begins Clinical Trial of Live, Attenuated Zika Vaccine (
NIH) Vaccinations have begun in a first-in-human trial of an experimental live, attenuated Zika virus vaccine developed by scientists at the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), part of the National Institutes of Health. The trial will enroll a total of 28 healthy, non-pregnant adults ages 18 to 50 at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health Center for Immunization Research in Baltimore, Maryland, and at the Vaccine Testing Center at the Larner College of Medicine at the University of Vermont in Burlington.
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Pentagon's Artificial Intelligence Programs Get Huge Boost in Defense Budget (
Fast Company) On Monday, President Trump signed the $717 billion annual National Defense Authorization Act, which was easily passed by Congress in weeks prior. Much attention has understandably been placed on big-ticket items like $7.6 billion for acquiring 77 F-35 fighters, $21.9 billion for the nuclear weapons program, and $1.56 billion for three littoral combat ships -- despite the fact that the Navy requested only one in the budget.
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What's in the New NDAA (
Lawfare) President Donald Trump signed the John S. McCain National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) for fiscal year 2019 into law on Monday afternoon, at an event at Fort Drum military base in upstate New York. Amidst banter with the audience and references to his administration's purported policy successes, Trump then proceeded to highlight some of the authorizations that the NDAA provides, including a pay raise for US service-members and up to $716 billion in funding for new military hardware and activities.
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FirstNet Board Approves $84 Million Budget (
Homeland Preparedness News) The First Responder Network Authority's board of directors, an independent authority within the US Department of Commerce, recently approved an $81 million budget for operations in fiscal year 2019. The budget will be used for the focus on the deployment of the nationwide public safety broadband network and public safety engagement.
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Medicine & Public Health
FDA: Modeling, Simulation Offer Opportunity to Advance Public Health (
Healio) Modeling and simulation are valuable research and product development tools that are helping to advance regulatory science, according to the FDA. The FDA is using modeling and simulation to help achieve its objectives of improving health care, broadening access and advancing public health goals, Tina Morrison, PhD, chair of FDA's agency-wide modeling and simulation working group and regulatory advisor of computational modeling for FDA's Office of Device Evaluation, said at an FDA Grand Rounds meeting.
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