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EUREAKALERT!                                                  June 15, 2015
(Scroll down for link to PLOS One article.)

ARISONA STATE UNIVERSITY --

Using Twitter and Google search trend data in the wake of the very limited U.S. Ebola outbreak of October 2014, a team of researchers from Arizona State University, Purdue University and Oregon State University have found that news media is extraordinarily effective in creating public panic.

Because only five people were ultimately infected yet Ebola dominated the U.S. media in the weeks after the first imported case, the researchers set out to determine mass media's impact on people's behavior on social media.

"Social media data have been suggested as a way to track the spread of a disease in a population, but there is a problem that in an emerging outbreak people also use social media to express concern about the situation," explains study team leader Sherry Towers of ASU's Simon A. Levin Mathematical, Computational and Modeling Sciences Center. "It is hard to separate the two effects in a real outbreak situation...."

Towers states that this study will be useful in future outbreak situations because it provides valuable insight into just how strongly news media can manipulate public emotions on a topic.

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who.int - reuters.com - Reporting by Jack Kim; Editing by Robert Birsel - June 12, 2015

SEOUL (Reuters) - A World Health Organization (WHO) team of experts said on Saturday South Korea's outbreak of Middle East Respiratory Syndrome (MERS) is "large and complex" and more cases should be anticipated.

The WHO has conducted a joint review with South Korean officials and experts of the country's response to the MERS outbreak which has infected 138 people and killed 14 of them since the first case was diagnosed on May 20.

(READ COMPLETE ARTICLE)

WHO - Disease Outbreak News (DON) - Middle East respiratory syndrome coronavirus (MERS-CoV) – Republic of Korea
June 12, 2015
Starting from 12 June 2015, Disease Outbreak News concerning MERS-CoV in the Republic of Korea will be published on a bi-weekly basis (on Tuesdays and Fridays).
http://www.who.int/csr/don/12-june-2015-mers-korea/en/

Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I.) has a new plan to combat climate change: sue fossil fuel companies for fraud.

In a May 29 op-ed in The Washington Post, Whitehouse argued that the fossil fuel industry’s efforts to discredit climate science and attack environmentalists may constitute deliberate deception of the kind the tobacco industry perpetrated in previous decades. In 2006, a federal judge found the tobacco industry guilty of fraud in a civil lawsuit brought under the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act (RICO). Cigarette companies' efforts to hide the health effects of tobacco consumption included lying about the findings of their own studies on smoking.

AUSTRALIAN BROADCASTING CORP.     June 10, 2015

ADELAIDE, Australia --The Ebola virus can live in eye fluid 10 weeks after it is no longer detectable in a patient's blood,

Australian research has confirmedAustralian research has confirmed.

A study undertaken by researchers from Flinders University in South Australia involved Ebola survivor Dr Ian Crozier, an infectious diseases specialist who contracted the disease while treating patients in Sierra Leone in West Africa last August.

Dr Crozier survived after getting treatment in the United States and was declared free of the virus in his blood, but two months later fluid from his eye tested positive for Ebola.

Flinders ophthalmology researcher Professor Justine Smith, who took part in the study, told 891 ABC Adelaide the discovery of Ebola virus in the clear fluid in the front of the eye, between the lens and the cornea, could have big implications for Ebola survivors and for the medical staff who treat them.

Professor Justine Smith says Ebola survivors have little risk of passing on the virus from casual contact if it lurks in their eye fluid.Courtesy: Flinders University