TB remains a big killer despite the development of a better test for detecting the disease.

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Two South American metropolises are enlisting bacterium-infected mosquitoes to fight Zika. The effort is the world’s biggest test yet of an unconventional but promising approach to quell mosquito-borne diseases.

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On 26 April, a team led by microbial population geneticist Daniel Croll, who is at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich, reported on github.com that the Bangladeshi wheat-blast strain is closely related to those collected in Brazilian wheat fields and on nearby weeds. His team’s analysis, which uses the data on the website Open Wheat Blast, reveals that the sample is not closely related to known rice-blast-causing strains of M. oryzae.

The world's first vaccine against malaria should be rolled out in limited 'pilot' demonstrations in Africa, an advisory group to the World Health Organization (WHO) in Geneva said on 23 October. The demonstrations — involving up to 1 million children — are needed because the vaccine is ineffective against malaria unless children receive four doses spread out over 18 months, and even then offers only modest protection. (Editorial)

When Ebola broke out in West Africa in December 2013, triggering the largest-ever epidemic of the disease, there was no vaccine or drug that had been shown to be safe and effective in people. Just 20 months later, a vaccine seems to confer total protection against infection, according to the preliminary results of a trial in Guinea.

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ust three years ago, Nigeria was a threat to the global push to eradicate polio. Africa’s most populous nation recorded 122 cases in 2012, more than all other countries combined, and funders of the eradication campaign were growing exasperated with the nation’s faltering vaccination efforts and exportation of cases. Now Nigeria is on the brink of being free of the virus, thanks in large part to its embrace of innovative approaches to vaccination and public health.

A 25-year, US$10-billion global effort has taken the number of polio cases from hundreds of thousands per year to just hundreds, but it is now struggling to stamp the virus out of its final strongholds in Pakistan, Afghanistan and Nigeria, where transmission has never been interrupted. Of these, Nigeria was the only one to see an increase in cases from 2011 to 2012, and public-health experts worry that the virus's recalcitrance here will prevent global eradication, and eventually lead to a wider resurgence of the disease.

Inactivated virus vaccine could deliver the final blow.

The Olympics is a vast experiment in human performance, sport technology and global travel. Nature meets some of the scientists behind the scenes.

With "hormone-free", "cage-free" and "antibiotic-free" becoming common labels on our supermarket shelves, might "pain-free" be the next sticker slapped onto a rump roast? As unlikely as that may seem, progress in neuroscience and genetics in recent years makes it a very real possibility. In fact, according to one philosopher, we have an ethical duty to consider the option.