Directly adjacent to the Chesapeake Bay lies the Aberdeen Proving Ground, a U.S. Army facility where testing of armor-piercing ammunitions has resulted in the deposition of >70,000 kg of depleted uranium (DU) to local soils and sediments. Results of previous environmental monitoring suggested limited mobilization in the impact area and no transport of DU into the nation's largest estuary. To de...

This study examined the relationship between the emotion-regulating factor alexithymia and the occurrence of posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) after critical incidents in a nonclinical sample of 136 nurses and ambulance personnel working in military facilities. The results showed that alexythima accounts for variance in PTSD symptoms. Breaking PTSD into its 4 symptom clusters, alexithymia wa...

J. Robert Oppenheimer, ambitious leader of the Manhattan Project, struggled with intense ethical dilemmas. To continue to work on the atom bomb, he had to abandon his communist friends in order to prove to military monitors his loyalty to the US government. Later, Oppenheimer faced the moral implications of the project’s success. His struggles with ambition, betrayal, and moral quandaries made ...

T theme for this year’s supplement, ‘‘Partnering for Preparedness,’’serves notice to the nation regarding the urgency to maintain our investment in combat casualty care research, both to benefit our US military service members and to best prepare our nation on the home front. Department of Defense funding primarily seeks to optimize combat casualty care for US service members injured in conflic...

The postwar morbidity of Gulf War veterans has been closely examined. However, data have not been available to evaluate morbidity suffered during the 1991 Gulf War. In this report, the authors examine archived records of hospitalizations in US military facilities in the Kuwaiti theater of operations or those medically evacuated to facilities in Europe. Using multivariable logistic regression mo...

Industrial hygiene specialists from the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH) visited hospitals and medical centers throughout Taiwan. They assisted with designing and evaluating ventilation modifications for infection control, developed guidelines for converting hospital rooms into SARS patient isolation rooms, prepared designs for the rapid conversion of a vacated mili...

BACKGROUND Post-September 11, 2001, the U.S. government has labeled thousands of Afghan war detainees "unlawful combatants". This label effectively deprives these detainees of the protection they would receive as "prisoners of war" under international humanitarian law. Reports have emerged that indicate that thousands of detainees being held in secret military facilities outside the United Stat...

BACKGROUND Nearly 1300 cases of leishmaniasis have been identified in American military personnel deployed to Iraq and Afghanistan. The symptoms of this disease can range from a mild, self-limiting cutaneous infection to a deadly visceral infection and are not prevented by chemoprophylaxis or immunization. Effective treatments, however, are available. The disease-causing parasite is spread thro...

Alongside support for renewed funding for microbiological research, many scientists are also backing a greater role for international agreements to control potential biological weapons. But such efforts present considerable challenges. One of Britain's leading microbiologists, Hugh Pennington at Aberdeen University, has written of the ease of obtaining agents such as anthrax. " In principle any...