■ United States
Scholars get into reality TV
Last night, ABC was to show the first of six installments of The Scholar, in which 10 high school seniors pursue a scholarship worth as much as US$240,000 by outsmarting one another before a panel of actual college admissions officers. That sum is intended to cover tuition, room and board at an Ivy League or comparable institution for four years, as well as incidentals like books and travel. In the first episode one boy, on the brink of tears, says he cannot bear to inform his immigrant parents that he has just lost an early round of the competition. Each contestant will walk away with a US$20,000 scholarship.
■ Canada
Hope for an Ebola vaccine
Scientists in Canada and the US may have found a way of containing the world's deadliest diseases. They report that new vaccines have proved 100 percent effective against infection from the Ebola and Marburg viruses in laboratory monkeys. Heinz Feldmann of the Public Health Agency of Canada, who reports with colleagues in Nature Medicine yesterday, said, "It will be some time before we can use these vaccines in the field, but ... we are getting closer."
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