MIT News September 16, 2020 Researchers at MIT Lincoln Laboratory have developed Rapid Agent Aerosol Detector (RAAD) for the U.S. military’s early warning system for biological warfare agents. It pulls aerosol to cull out the small particles. NIR laser diode creates a structured trigger beam that detects the presence, size, and trajectory of an individual aerosol particle. If the aerosol article is roughly 1 to 10 micrometers a UV laser is activated to illuminate the particle. If the particle seems threat-like, it is vaporized to collect atomic emission to characterize the particle’s elemental content. The steps are integrated into a […]
Tag Archives: Bioagents
Explosion Confirmed at Russian Lab Storing Smallpox, Ebola
Global Biodefense September 21, 2019 One worker was hospitalized after a gas explosion on Sep. 16 caused a fire to break out at the Russian biological research facility in the Siberian city of Koltsovo. According to news coverage and the World Health Organization, the explosion did not occur near any storage areas of smallpox or other virus stockpiles; they remain intact and secure. The State Research Centre on Virology and Biotechnology, known as Vector, is the only center in the world other than the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention approved and known to have live samples of the […]