A harmless shard from the shell of a common childhood virus may halt a biological process that kills a significant percentage of battlefield casualties, heart attack victims and oxygen-deprived newborns, according to research presented Sunday, September 6, 2009, at the 12th European meeting on complement in human disease in Budapest, Hungary.

Yes, Virginia, there is a Santa Claus, and the latest edition of Mac OS X, 10.6 or Snow Leopard, does include malware protection.

Reports of a peephole video showing ESPN's reporter Erin Andrews nude first emerged on Friday, but since then it's continued to be one of the most widely searched for terms on the Internet. Hackers aren't wont to pass that sort of opportunity up, and are attempting to infect your computer via purported links to the video.

A promising antimicrobial agent already known to kill bacteria can also kill viruses and stimulate the innate immune system, according to researchers at National Jewish Health. In a paper appearing online June 4 in the Journal of Investigative Dermatology, Michael Howell, PhD, Assistant Professor of Pediatrics, and his colleagues demonstrated that the synthetic compound CSA-13 can kill vaccinia virus in cell cultures and in mice.

As controversy swirls about using the term "swine flu" for the A H1N1 virus currently sweeping around the globe, the question arises: what the heck does H1N1 mean?

An international team of researchers has determined key structural features of the largest known virus, findings that could help scientists studying how the simplest life evolved and whether the unusual virus causes any human diseases.

While not saying it in quite those terms, Symantec released its latest Internet Security Threat Report on Tuesday, stating that "malicious activity continues to grow at a record pace." Certainly, those watching the activity surrounding Conficker might agree that things are somewhat risky out there.

Hackers have already jumped on the earlier good news about Conficker detectors for networked PCs, and have poisoned search engine results to point to malware rather than the detection tools themselves.

HIV is so deadly largely because it evolves so rapidly. With a single virus as the origin of an infection, most patients will quickly come to harbor thousands of different versions of HIV, all a little bit different and all competing with one another to most efficiently infect that person's cells.

A team of researchers from Penn State University and the University of Chicago has uncovered clues that may explain how and why a particular virus, called N4, injects an unusual substance -- an RNA polymerase protein -- into an E. coli bacterial cell.

The 3-D structure of the virus, known as Seneca Valley Virus-001, reveals that it is unlike any other known member of the Picornaviridae viral family, and confirms its recent designation as a separate genus "Senecavirus."

For millennia, humans and viruses have been locked in an evolutionary back-and-forth -- one changes to outsmart the other, prompting the second to change and outsmart the first. With retroviruses, which work by inserting themselves into their host's DNA, the evidence remains in our genes.