Never Again! - DA Henderson

Announcing the Hyperspectral Biology Fund: It's possible to see engineered microbes from space; not with the naked eye, but by the distinctive way their molecules absorb light. The secret is hyperspectral cameras. Whereas a normal camera captures just three colors (red, green, and blue), a hyperspectral camera captures the full spectrum of light at every pixel. When merged with synthetic biology, one can create engineered organisms that sense something (a pathogen, explosive, pollutant, etc) and then monitor them using satellites with hyperspectral cameras orbiting Earth. The end goal is to build a planetary-scale biosensing network. I'm giving away $75,000 in microgrants to help grow this field. Applications are due by July 10. Thanks to @davidtlang and the Experiment Foundation for making this possible.

bioRxiv: A Single-Dose Bundibugyo Virus Vaccine Protects Macaques Within 3 Days Kyle L O'Donnell et al bit.ly/4eP1Cbx

America’s next health emergency won’t wait for Washington, write W. Craig Vanderwagen and Jennifer B. Alton. trib.al/VMgu9Dw

This is a CAISI staff appreciation tweet. A remarkable set of ML experts at CAISI, including my PhD classmates, have stuck it out through all the uncertainty of the last few years, foregoing extremely lucrative industry offers to ensure the USG can now react well to frontier AI. Thank you for your service.

The New World screwworm is stretching beyond an initial control zone in Texas as the number of infections grows to a dozen, adding some urgency to efforts to contain the deadly pest threatening the US cattle herd. bloomberg.com/news/articles/…

U.S. troops can now sequence DNA in the desert, Arctic, or at sea share.google/yC5fQXFcqykv7zV…

"Do remember they can't cancel spring" RIP David Hockney.

Jil Haase from Rocky Mountain Labs will give our next One Health Seminar entitled ''From Outbreak to Containment ‒ Understanding Ebola viruses and the Current Bundibugyo Ebolavirus Outbreak” Jun 24th 2026, 3-4pm CET, online Register here: soap.lbg.ac.at/events/one-he…

Online now: Duckweed biomanufacturing: longstanding promise, decade-long lag, recent renaissance dlvr.it/TT12t3

David Hockney, one of the most popular and influential artists of the past century, has died aged 88. ft.trib.al/YLDTpOW

The arrival of the invasive New World screwworm in Texas, a parasitic fly whose larvae burrow into the flesh of living warm-blooded animals, could exacerbate existing inflation pain for Americans already grappling with high beef prices. Trading down to more affordable cuts of meat is how Americans have dealt with past periods of beef inflation, said Goran Haiem, founder of Destination Wagyu. Haiem doesn’t expect the higher prices to end anytime soon, given the effect of the historically low cattle supply in the U.S., but if the outbreak is contained quickly, already volatile beef prices may at least stabilize at current levels. “We are at a 75-year low right now on U.S. cattle herd, and this does not help because screwworm further disrupts ranchers expanding their herd,” Haiem said. Read more: cnb.cx/4ezI4sv

The new OMB grant rules are being sold as anti-DEI reform. They are much worse: a government-wide machinery for political control of science. Every award must advance “the President’s policy priorities.” Peer review becomes advisory. Grants can be killed on political whim. The nationalization of American science. marginalrevolution.com/margi…

NPR: White House response to hantavirus and Ebola contrasts with COVID criticisms n.pr/4otaxnq by Rob Stein @NPR

Introducing EpiBench, an agentic benchmark for practical epigenomics analysis. 106 evaluations span CUT&Tag/CUT&RUN, ATAC-seq, ChIP-seq, and DNA methylation workflows. The best agent–harness pair passes 45.0% of evaluations. Evaluations reflect the assay outputs scientists use in practice. A task may depend on alignment files, peak calls, methylation tables, QC metrics, sample metadata, genomic annotations, or downstream summaries. Solving them requires a mix of coding, data analysis, and scientific judgment. Ground truth is hard to define even for short-horizon scientific tasks. Alternative task interpretations can produce multiple plausible answers. Candidate tasks are hardened through manual quality control. We remove prompts that over-specify the method, answers that can be solved with general literature knowledge, and ground truths that fail to reproduce under peer reproduction. Short-horizon tasks are the current frontier for scientific agents in epigenomics. Before models can own deeper biological reasoning, they need to become reliable at local assay-specific decisions.

LATEST: The Pentagon went into a shelter-in-place Thursday as officials locked down multiple floors and hallways in response to a potential air hazard situation, according to three officials. abcnews.link/CKapZGy

Exciting opportunity from @WHO @WHOEMRO is seeking a Regional Emergency Director to lead WHO’s Health Emergencies Programme in a region facing some of the world’s largest and most complex health emergencies. I encourage qualified candidates to apply ⬇️ careers.who.int/careersectio…

The New World Screwworm (NWS - despite it’s name is a cousin of the blowfly 🪰) is a scourge to livestock like cattle (🐄) and other warm blooded animals larger than a squirrel (🐿️). We eradicated it in 1966 in the U.S., pushed it back to Panama thanks to the USDA and held it at bay for more than half a century. It broke through and it’s back. But we’re on it together with the @USDA and the interagency; @DARPA is developing novel technologies to safely and efficaciously eliminate the risk that invasive species’ pose! 🚫🪰 ✅🐄 🫡🇺🇸 Thank you for the highlighting coverage @DefenseScoop !

Virtually attended the 2026 BSL4ZNet International Virtual Conference! Cybersecurity and biosecurity at BSL‑4 facilities: site.pheedloop.com/portal/ev…

🔊 ‘This is by far the best way to combat a larger screwworm infestation.’ @SchlitzHeather tells the Reuters World News podcast that the best weapon against an outbreak is lab-bred, sterile male flies reut.rs/4utMnuh

Terrific Q&A with #WHO's @Chikwe_I about DRC's #Ebola response: how long the outbreak has likely been underway, whether Bundibugyo virus is more transmissible than other Ebola species & what it's like not having US experts on the ground. By @kakape. science.org/content/article/…