It seems like whenever I turn on the cable TV news networks, there's an awful lot of Ebola coverage. Not so much Ebola in west Africa either, but about the possibility of Ebola becoming epidemic here. (I live in the US, but I gather that worries are the same elsewhere in the world.)

So...

Do you think that all the anxious news coverage is justified? Or is it maybe being overdone a bit? Or alternatively, is it possible that the public isn't as concerned as they should be?

I voted Yes.!!!

http://abcnews.go.com/Health/texas-ebola...d=26045360

The 2014 Nobel Prize in Chemistry has been awarded to three researchers, one at the Max Planck Institute of Biophysical Chemistry in Gottingen, one at the Howard Hughes Medical Institute in Virginia, and the third at Stanford.

http://www.nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/c...press.html

Apparently the three of them, each working independently, discovered two different (but seemingly closely related) ways for optical microscopes to resolve objects smaller than 1/2 the wavelength of visible light. Both of the methods seem to my layman's eye to involve stimulating desired molecules with lasers so that they glow, then capturing that light.

"The more curious we are about a topic, the easier it is to learn information about that topic. New research publishing online October 2 in the Cell Press journal Neuron provides insights into what happens in our brains when curiosity is piqued. The findings could help scientists find ways to enhance overall learning and memory in both healthy individuals and those with neurological conditions.

"Our findings potentially have far-reaching implications for the public because they reveal insights into how a form of intrinsic motivation -- curiosity -- affects memory. These findings suggest ways to enhance learning in the classroom and other settings," says lead author Dr. Matthias Gruber, of University of California at Davis.

For the study, participants rated their curiosity to learn the answers to a series of trivia questions. When they were later presented with a selected trivia question, there was a 14 second delay before the answer was provided, during which time the participants were shown a picture of a neutral, unrelated face. Afterwards, participants performed a surprise recognition memory test for the faces that were presented, followed by a memory test for the answers to the trivia questions. During certain parts of the study, participants had their brains scanned via functional magnetic resonance imaging.

The study revealed three major findings. First, as expected, when people were highly curious to find out the answer to a question, they were better at learning that information. More surprising, however, was that once their curiosity was aroused, they showed better learning of entirely unrelated information (face recognition) that they encountered but were not necessarily curious about. People were also better able to retain the information learned during a curious state across a 24-hour delay. "Curiosity may put the brain in a state that allows it to learn and retain any kind of information, like a vortex that sucks in what you are motivated to learn, and also everything around it," explains Dr. Gruber.

Second, the investigators found that when curiosity is stimulated, there is increased activity in the brain circuit related to reward. "We showed that intrinsic motivation actually recruits the very same brain areas that are heavily involved in tangible, extrinsic motivation," says Dr. Gruber. This reward circuit relies on dopamine, a chemical messenger that relays messages between neurons.

Third, the team discovered that when curiosity motivated learning, there was increased activity in the hippocampus, a brain region that is important for forming new memories, as well as increased interactions between the hippocampus and the reward circuit. "So curiosity recruits the reward system, and interactions between the reward system and the hippocampus seem to put the brain in a state in which you are more likely to learn and retain information, even if that information is not of particular interest or importance," explains principal investigator Dr. Charan Ranganath, also of UC Davis.

The findings could have implications for medicine and beyond. For example, the brain circuits that rely on dopamine tend to decline in function as people get older, or sooner in people with neurological conditions. Understanding the relationship between motivation and memory could therefore stimulate new efforts to improve memory in the healthy elderly and to develop new approaches for treating patients with disorders that affect memory. And in the classroom or workplace, learning what might be considered boring material could be enhanced if teachers or managers are able to harness the power of students' and workers' curiosity about something they are naturally motivated to learn."===http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/201...123631.htm

The 2014 Nobel Prize in physics has been awarded to three Japanese, two of them at the U. of Nagoya, the third currently at U. California at Santa Barbara. (He apparently was working in industry in Japan at the time he did the work that won the prize.)

http://www.nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/p...press.html

The award was for inventing diodes that emit blue light. LEDs that emitted red and green light had already existed for several decades, and adding a blue emitter made it possible to create white-light LED lightbulbs.

I realize that the Nobel committee was probably thinking about 'saving the planet', but this seems like more of an engineering development than an advance in physics to me. Aren't physics Nobels supposed to be awarded for developments that change how we conceive of the universe? I don't know, maybe there's some deep physical reason why these blue emitters emit blue.

Fracking wastewater that is treated for drinking produces potentially harmful compounds

"Concerns that fluids from hydraulic fracturing, or "fracking," are contaminating drinking water abound. Now, scientists are bringing to light another angle that adds to the controversy. A new study, appearing in the ACS journal Environmental Science & Technology, has found that discharge of fracking wastewaters to rivers, even after passage through wastewater treatment plants, could be putting the drinking water supplies of downstream cities at risk...."