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Screening for Ebola will be particularly difficult at ports in Mbandaka, Democratic Republic of the Congo, a major city that has one confirmed case.   BRYAN DENTON/THE NEW YORK TIMES

Despite spread to port city, Congo Ebola outbreak isn’t an international emergency yet, WHO says

The Ebola outbreak underway in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) is still too limited in scope to warrant a Public Health Emergency of…

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Health care workers at Bikoro hospital in the Democratic Republic of the Congo get sprayed with disinfectant after leaving a quarantined Ebola treatment unit. JOHN BOMPENGO/DEMOCRATIC REPUBLIC OF THE CONGO MINISTRY OF PUBLIC HEALTH

Hoping to head off an epidemic, Congo turns to experimental Ebola vaccine

  The first ever effort to use a vaccine to stop an Ebola outbreak in its initial stages is taking shape in the Democratic Republic…

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A federal appeals court today heard arguments that the U.S. patent office made legal mistakes when reviewing its ruling on CRISPR, the genome editor. ISTOCKPHOTO/NO_LIMIT_PICTURES

Federal appeals court hears CRISPR patent dispute

Here’s a double-negative brain twister with potentially huge financial ramifications and a Nobel Prize resting on the answer: For an invention to be “nonobvious”—and therefore…

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Sacramento County Sheriff's Department deputies leave the California home of Joseph James DeAngelo, who last week was arrested on suspicion in a string of violent crimes in the 1970s and 1980s. He was identified using a public database of people's DNA. RICH PEDRONCELLI/AP PHOTO

A chat with the geneticist who predicted how the police may have tracked down the Golden State Killer

Yaniv Erlich, a geneticist at Columbia University, was far from surprised at last week’s news that police may have found a serial murderer and rapist,…

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U.S. Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein at a press conference this morning that announced the indictment of nine Iranians who allegedly stole data from researchers around the world. YURI GRIPAS/REUTERS

Massive cyberhack by Iran allegedly stole research from 320 universities, governments, and companies

Nine Iranians working on behalf of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps hacked the computers of 7998 professors at 320 universities around the world over the…

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New studies in rhesus macaques, the main animal model used to study the AIDS virus, are showing the way forward for both a vaccine and a cure. BRENNAN LINSLEY/AP PHOTO

Monkeys reveal new clues toward elusive HIV vaccine and cure

BOSTON—Despite enormous efforts over more than 30 years, HIV/AIDS researchers have yet to develop either a vaccine or cure for the disease. But they have…

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Cynthia, a sex worker who lives near Nairobi, is one of the 13,000 people in Kenya who recently started using pre-exposure prophylaxis. JUOZAS CERNIUS/JHPIEGO

A daily pill can prevent HIV infections. Why don’t more people use it?

BOSTON—There’s no question that a simple regimen of a single daily pill can slash HIV infections in people at risk. But although millions of people…

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